Essentially, if you are a person of normal-ish height, you will see this:
That’s the bottom edge of a picture frame. What’s in the picture frame, you ask? A family portrait? Art? The back of a paper placement that our child crayoned and we are now trying to pass off as art? Possibly. My doctor told me not to look anymore, on account of all the strain to my neck.
My husband is tall. Not Freak Tall, or even That-Tall-Guy-On-Top-Chef Tall, but he’s pretty tall. He is also extremely possessive of our electric drill, which means he took it upon himself to hang every picture frame in our new house himself.
Which means, again, this:
That’s a mirrored key rack by our front door. I thought it would be nice to have a small mirror by the door, for the requisite girly hair checks and last-minute lipstick applications, so I asked him to hang it for me.
If I stand on my tiptoes, I can see the top of my head.
As God is my witness, I will never leave the house with a crooked hair part again!
I think he needs to re-hang it, and I also think that spackling and repainting are clearly part of the re-hanging process, and thus also his responsibility. He thinks I should re-hang it, since “it is not my fault you like your mirrors low, like for hobbits.”
Uh-huh. He called me a hobbit. When he gets home his keys are going to be hung on a wee little dollhouse hook, two inches off the floor.
September 17th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Oh my too funny. I’d too be making him hang the mirror.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
That is great to see it through your eyes! My husband would have done the exact same thing had I not intervened! Great story! And tell him he is definitly in charge of spackling and repainting.
September 18th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
The lovely people who flipped our house (READ: never had to live with what they did) hung a chandelier in our bathroom so low that anyone above 5′7″ hits their head on it and the mirror in that same room so high that anyone under 5′7″ can only see their part in it. I guess they figured they couldn’t make everyone happy so they would concentrate on making no one happy!
September 18th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Why do most guys not ‘get’ these things? That is something my husband would do and then go off and pout an not lift another finger for a year because ‘he just can’t do anything right.’
September 18th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
My husband is extremely possessive of ALL tools. He is partial to the power tools, but even getting a simple screwdriver is no easy task.
September 18th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I sympathize. I am 5′0. My husband is 6′4. He, too, feels an unnatural attachment to the power tools and reacts much like our toddler when we try to take away his choochoos — MINE! Complete with the little body twist to tuck the drill behind his back.
Thankfully after our first place together he’s learned not to hang things without me standing beside him specifically telling him it is ok to hang it and at what height. Though I do have to hear him complain that he’s turning into a hunchback to to my dwarfish stature — he hasn’t broken out the hobbit cracks…yet. Give him time!
September 18th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Gah, I totally have the same problem. To compound the issue, our apartment has high ceilings, so he hung things EXTRA high to compensate for the visual effect of so much wall.
September 18th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I had a bit of an advantage on some of the other commenters. My boyfriend lived on his own when we met, and he hung stuff on the walls there by himself. Everything was hung so the top was within 6″ of the ceiling there, so when we moved into our house together, I made sure that he held the painting/picture/mirror while I stood back a bit and made him lower it a little more… little more… little more. It was a real team effort.
September 18th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Too funny! Lucky for me my husband and I are exactly the same height. Of course that really doesn’t help since he never seems to hang anything anyway. Aw well.
September 18th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
HAHAHAHAHA!!
(That’s all.)
September 18th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
We’re going through this debate right now. We have pictures to hang in the breakfast nook. I say they need to go just a few inches above the chair rail. My 6′2″ husband wants them at “eye level” which means at about 5′10″. I figure if we spend most of our time in the breakfast nook sitting down, the pictures should be just slightly higher than eye level WHEN WE’RE SITTING DOWN.
Nothing is going up until we settle the debate. Which should be, you know, Easter.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
I don’t want to sound catty, but if you don’t like how it’s done, do it yourself! I don’t know why some women are so scared of tools. My boyfriend isn’t allowed to touch MY power tools, if he doesn’t like how I’ve done something, he can learn to use a drill and do it himself. If he doesn’t want you to touch his tools, go get some of your own! There are some seriously cheap ones at Target.
And if I were Ladybug’s husband and were told to hang something and then told to re-do it because it wasn’t just right, I’d probably react the same way.
I bet if anyone of you just redid it yourselves one day and kept quiet, the husbands would never notice. If I had a tool-wielding type of husband, I’d find that pretty funny.
September 19th, 2007 at 7:39 am
I found that the best way to keep my husband in line (which should be read “doing what I want”) was a simple threat to paint all his power tools pink and commandeer them as my own.
We eventually compromised. He can do whatever he wants with those power tools outside but inside? Not so much.
Naturally I could do it myself. I know how all those power tools work and I even found where he hid them once when I was looking for potting soil. But why? Heavy lifting, hanging pictures and home improvements. That’s 3/4 of the reason I married him in the first place.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:15 am
I’m NOT scared of our tools. I DO hang things up and assemble things and all that. I AM, however, very LAZY. And re-hanging this stuff means plastering, sanding and painting over the old holes. And that’s where the stand-off is coming from, because HE messed it up and I want HIM to fix it.
He has admitted that the mirror thing is way too high (after a couple friends came to visit and cracked up when they saw it) but same deal…he just doesn’t feel like dealing with all the extra jobs that will come from lowering it.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Wait, so all married couples have silly things like this? I thought we were the only ones.
Get this…my husband used to be a professional hanger of the art. For reals. So he knows the actual rules of hanging stuff on walls. He’s just a little too anal about it.
(Maybe you’d like to borrow him?)
September 19th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Amalah!!! Woman! You are utterly hysterical!!
September 19th, 2007 at 10:54 am
HAAAAAAAAAA! I love the hobbit reference! Our problem was we would hang everything at OUR eye level and we are 6′0 and 6′3″. So, when my little 5′2″ mother came over . . . well, I had to learn to squat down a little when hanging things!!!
September 19th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Amy- totally just use the hole/hook and hang a decorative metal scroll or arts bunch of twigs or plaque or something. It will hde the hole AND everyone will goo over your mad decorating skillz.
September 19th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Remind me to never invite your husband to my house because not only are my pictures hung for hobbits, but I don’t dust above where I can see. And I’m 5ft 2in.
September 19th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
My husband (who lived in this house for 6 months before I joined him) hung EVERYTHING at the wrong height. (He’s 5′8″ and I’m 5′2″). I just changed them all to the PROPER hanging height over the course of a month or so while he was at work, and he never even noticed. I think he had height evny.
Whatev.
Someone once said that I was just a ‘little Smurfette’ of a thing. Hmmm. Not quite sure what that meant. I also am able to install faucets, switches and light fixtures, and damn, I LIKE it!
September 20th, 2007 at 9:30 am
My husband does the same thing, hangs all the pictures and shelves too high, and then when I complain, says “they’re the right height for me”. And then I hit him over the head with a level.
The people who built the house we live in were giants, I’m sure of it. We are lucky to have two and a half bathrooms, and one of the full baths is mine. As in, MINE. But the medicine cabinet? Is hung so high that I have to use my daughter’s stepstool in order to see my face in the mirror. And there’s TILE all around the cabinet, so moving it would involve chipping out all the old tile and re-tiling, and heck NO. So, stepstool for me.
September 24th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
I have to say I laughed so, so very hard at the hobbit comment. This is all me in reverse. I am 5′10 and my husband is 5′3. Yes. It makes for interesting wall hangings. Like can you please hang it a little higher because all I’m seeing is my cleavage and neck. So the problem is, who gets to see themselves? It has to be one or the other, unless we find long mirrors and portrait type paintings. But, I could care less about wall holes and spackling since I’m lucky to get anything hung at all. He hates having wall holes and having to spackle, so, easier to have blank walls.
September 26th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
When we were hanging stuff on the walls in our new apartment this summer, my husband (who is 6 feet tall) would hold something up and tell me (5′2″) to say when it was where I wanted it. Then I would hold it there so he could stand back and look. Every time he thought it was too low, and would make me lift it up higher and then we’d switch places again, and I would call it too high.
September 28th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Hee hee…Yeah, this happened to me when my hubby and I were first married. Now, I have to stand waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay far back (for perspective, y’know) and say, “Up a little, to the left, uh, back over, ummmm, do you think it would be better on THAT wall?” Yeah, I was put on earth to teach my husband patience.
Spackle…hobbit…those words crack me up!
Thanks for the post!
Jenn
October 9th, 2007 at 11:03 am
awesome.
I just had Mike (6′2″) redo the doorbell location he installed. I am not short either (5′7″) but even I was like, “dude, take it down - like by about a foot. we’re not all Lou Ferrigno, you know.” I mean, my niece (tall for 5) couldn’t reach it.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:33 am
I’m 5′3″ and my hubby is 6′3″. It’s the same at our house…..