Pam and Fred are a married couple who completely remodeled their house in Carmel, California while living in it. They faced a dizzying array of choices and decisions that most of us would rather avoid. Those decisions were not just about doorknobs, floor tiles, contractors and sheet rock but about also about how to communicate in the face of constant disagreement and opinions. Sound familiar? Here's a series on how they modeled a way to build a strong relationship.

                                         Remodelers’ Relationship Tip: Avoid Deadlines

Pam: There’s a lot to be said about doing most of the work with your own hands when you remodel a house. One primary benefit is that you don’t have a contractor rushing you by dropping the news on a Friday afternoon that he will be installing all the doors and windows the following week and you must research and decide on all the hardware by Monday morning. No, that is too stressful. Deadlines put added pressure on a project that do-it-yourselfers usually don’t have to face.

Fred and I have written about aging decision making like fine wine. It does help not to have the pressure of a deadline for any decision if you don’t need one. Aging decisions can lead to better decisions, too. That said, I found that sometimes we got mired in minutia, or so it seemed. We had big projects to get done, but often we got distracted by less important projects that consumed our time. It’s easy to do and it can lengthen the project by many months.

After about a year into our house remodel project I began to wonder if we would ever turn the final corner and start on the downhill slope to the finish line. About that time I received a phone call from a friend with whom we had enjoyed a wonderful trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico nine months earlier. I hadn’t planned on creating an opportunity to nudge Fred to speed up the progress on our remodel, but it just happened that way when I said yes to hosting a reunion of eight of us who vacationed in Mexico together. It seemed like a good idea to me. Fred didn’t see it that way.

Fred: Pam’s frustrating way to create deadlines drove me nuts. If she needed to clean up the house, she invited someone over for dinner. If she wanted to speed up a remodeling project, she invited six people to spend the weekend. I pointed out that we didn’t have a place for our Mexico reunion group to sleep and that our kitchen was out of order. Her response? “No problem.” We had seventeen days to deal with it. I had no choice but to complete as many projects as possible before the guests arrived.

I have to admit that after a really enjoyable weekend with our very adventuresome friends, I felt pleased by all the progress we had made because of the deadline Pam foisted upon me. I’m just happy I don’t have to deal with deadlines all of the time. Once in a while is about all I can take.

Pam and Fred Gilberd are calling for stories from readers who created unique ways to stay happily married during a house remodel. Please email them through their Web site: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams and build great relationships. 

Pam and Fred are a married couple who completely remodeled their house in Carmel, California while living in it. They faced a dizzying array of choices and decisions that most of us would rather avoid. Those decisions were not just about doorknobs, floor tiles, contractors and sheet rock but about also about how to communicate in the face of constant disagreement and opinions. Sound familiar? Here's a series on how they modeled a way to build a strong relationship.

                                                 Remodelers’ Relationship Tip: Divide Labor.

Pam:  Ever watch a team of five-year-old field hockey players trying to make a goal? Picture a swarm of bees following the ball all over the field. Such “teamwork” rarely results in a goal being made. With everyone performing the same job chaos reigns.

The same can be true of a remodel, or any project, that you perform with a spouse, partner or co-worker.

When Fred and I first decided to remodel our house, I envisioned long hours toiling side by side on a mutually chosen project and at the end of the day feeling exhausted but proud of our achievement. What a fantasy! It became immediately and blatantly apparent that Fred and I had such different ways of approaching work that even our choices of projects differed in importance greatly.

Fred’s “to-do” list and mine rarely had the same items on them. It’s like the Buddhist story of the blind men and the elephant: each explored a different part of the elephant—leg, trunk, ears—and described the elephant completely differently. Fred and I each looked at our house project through different eyes, blind to the other’s in many ways.

We decided the happiest way to work on our house renovation together was to divide the labor. Fred chose what he wanted to work on and I chose my own.

A surprising bonus came out of that tacit agreement: we had lots to talk about over dinner. We could report on progress/frustrations while sharing a vested interest and an enormous degree of sympathy.

Fred: I caught on to the value of this concept out of self defense. Pam has the ability to generate a steady stream of sometimes-brilliant new ideas at a rate that I can't keep up with. So I found the days proceeded more smoothly if I just let her run with her ideas and try to not get involved.

A good example was the day that she announced that she was going to paint the front door. I thought it looked fine red but she wanted "periwinkle". The color sounded odd to me and I also thought there were other more important things she could occupy herself with that day, but I was too busy with my plumbing project to give it a lot of thought.

At the end of the day I had to admit her beautiful faux painting technique turned our front door into a work of art. We probably get as many favorable comments about it as anything else we remodeled in the house. 

Pam and Fred Gilberd are calling for stories from readers who created unique ways to stay happily married during a house remodel. Please email them through their Web site: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams and build great relationships. 

Pam and Fred are a married couple who completely remodeled their house in Carmel, California while living in it. They faced a dizzying array of choices and decisions that most of us would rather avoid. Those decisions were not just about door knobs, tiles,contractors and sheet rock but about also about how to communicate in the face of constant disagreement and opinions. Sound familiar? Here's a series on how they modeled a way to build a strong relationship.

                        “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Old maxim

Pam: My husband Fred is a master at keeping his mouth shut. If he doesn’t agree with me, he says nothing at all. It can get pretty quiet around our place, especially when we work on big projects together.

At first, during our house remodel when I would present some idea such as reusing a cabinet as a desk or louvered door as a headboard, I thought that he just didn’t hear me. But I learned that he didn’t’ like telling me no.

“If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all” applies well in most situations when working with others—be it your spouse during a remodel project or a co-worker in the office—but it doesn’t always work.

While it’s all too easy to try to correct, suggest or otherwise impart your critical analysis when it’s not expected, necessary or appreciated, I don’t think it’s necessarily advantageous to say nothing at all. Communication goes nowhere without some give and take of ideas. The trick is to explore the other’s ideas as though they would work out, before deciding that they would not.

How do you do that? Say yes. Agreement is the basis of theater improvisation. You must agree with everything your fellow player offers. It provides the only way to keep the action moving forward. Once you say no to a suggestion (or “offer” in improv terms) the action ends, the skit is over, your teammate is left unsupported.

Does that mean you have to agree with something you don’t like? No. It means listen to your partner’s ideas as if they would work out. Listen to the ideas carefully and completely before you start tearing them apart in your mind. You may find that they hold more value than you immediately think. You may find that they actually support your desires, but approach them from a different angle.

That said, I doubt Fred would say yes to my thesis. And, while I like my theory, I don’t know if I’d prefer a yes-man to my strong, silent type.

Fred: Pam is a yes-person. She says yes to just about everything anyone asks of her. She likes to try new things. She likes to help out. She likes to encourage. It isn’t in her nature to say no. I’ve always found her optimistic outlook refreshing.

However, I prefer to think about things first. I tend to deliberate even at times that no deliberation is needed. When something is my idea, I’ve thought about it for a while and feel confident in moving forward. When it’s not my idea, I have a hard time reacting quickly to it and rather than nix it all together, which often is my first inclination, I say nothing. If I say nothing, I hope that Pam might forget about her idea and move on to another that I might understand and appreciate more. So in that way, I might be considered the strong, silent time.

As far as not hearing Pam, which she has often accused me of, there might be some truth to that. But today, I am a new man. I am wearing a hearing aid for the first time and I don’t have a good excuse for not answering Pam. I think what will make her most happy is my not saying, “What?” after everything she says. She claims that by not hearing well I was missing too much. Maybe so.

My new project is to oil all the squeaky doors around the house that have started annoying me all of a sudden.  

Pam and Fred Gilberd are calling for stories from readers who created unique ways to stay happily married during a house remodel. Please email them through their Web site: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams and build great relationships.

Pam and Fred are a married couple who completely remodeled their house in Carmel, California while living in it. They faced a dizzying array of choices and decisions that most of us would rather avoid. Those decisions were not just about door knobs, tiles,contractors and sheet rock but about also about how to communicate in the face of constant disagreement and opinions. Sound familiar? Here's a series on how they modeled a way to build a strong relationship. 

                                         Remodelers’ Relationship Tip: Practice Happy Talk

“Happy talk, keep talkin' happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do.
You got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?”  Happy Talk lyrics from musical South Pacific

Pam: House remodels, or any project where you work with a partner, require techniques to keep the proper focus on the relationship. No one likes to talk with someone who blabbers on and on about faults and complaints. It’s much more fun to talk with someone who looks for the funny side of a mistake and diffuses anger and frustration.

It’s a natural tendency to get frustrated when things don’t go as you hope and then complain about it. I found that Fred and I couldn’t get much done when we focused on what wasn’t going right with our house remodel. However, when we talked about disappointments and frustrations without balancing them with something positive and rewarding, we compounded the problem. We lost enthusiasm and energy. Since nothing in life goes completely smoothly, we could have spent most of our time talking about problems and demoralizing ourselves.

We weren’t perfect about finding all the silver linings all the time—although we found that often the most frustrating things made the funniest stories later. The times I fell into the doom and gloom trap, a glum mood invariably spilled over into our relationship. Blame worked its way into our conversations, even when no one was to blame. The best antidote to those grumpy moods was happy talk.

Fred:  I always have thought that you measure the magnitude of a screw-up by the time it takes before you can laugh about it. Sometimes it’s a matter of hours. Sometimes months or years. Sometimes it is never. Pam and I try really hard to avoid these types of screw-ups.

We generally are able to take a step back and put things in perspective. “It could have been worse.” Look at all we have accomplished.” Sometimes we think of someone we know who has a much bigger problem than we do, but that doesn’t necessarily make us feel better.

Pam’s “happy talk” often means talking about something in the future to look forward to doing together. I’ve learned that when all else fails it’s time play the Out of Africa CD, have a glass of wine, and plan our next trip to Hawaii.

Pam and Fred Gilberd are calling for stories from readers who created unique ways to stay happily married during a house remodel. Please email them through their Web site: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams and build great relationships. 

Pam and Fred are a married couple who completely remodeled their house in Carmel, California while living in it. They faced a dizzying array of choices and decisions that most of us would rather avoid. Those decisions were not just about door knobs, tiles,contractors and sheet rock but about also about how to communicate in the face of constant disagreement and opinions. Sound familiar? Here's a series on how they modeled a way to build a strong relationship. 

                                       Remodelers’ Relationship Tip: Age decisions like fine wine.

Pam:  One good thing about remodeling a house by ourselves was that we weren’t forced into making quick decisions. If we had worked with a contractor, he might have announced on a Friday that he planned to install all the doors the next week and that we had to let him know what style hinges and door handles we wanted by Monday. Fred and I didn’t have that kind of pressure, so when we couldn’t come to an immediate agreement about whether we should have doors with six panels or four panels, we could put off making that decision indefinitely.

Aging decisions makes good sense. We found that putting off decisions gave us time to let each other’s differing ideas slowly sink in. If you have to make up your mind too quickly, the process can become a battle to see who can win. That always means the other loses. We didn’t want winners and losers during our house remodel. Neither of us wanted to go to bed feeling like a loser. So our decisions had to benefit both parties in some way. That usually takes a little time.

Often if we put off a decision, say, for the doors, we had time to understand why the other wanted six paneled doors instead of four paneled doors. Fred wanted six panels because that was what he had in a previous house. I wanted four panels because they looked less formal. It didn’t take Fred too long to agree with me, once he understood my thinking. When he understood that I really wanted him to create hand-hewn doors, he became much more enthusiastic about installing four paneled doors. That’s how the door panel issue became a win-win.

Fred:    Anyone who has ever remodeled a house will say one of the hardest aspects of the process is making joint decisions on door handles or soap dishes or whatever. One reason it is so difficult is that there can be endless numbers of choices.

We had decided to look at Home Depot for our new kitchen cabinets. The salesman explained there were 3 different manufacturers, 23 different styles, 5 types of wood, 16 different finishes. This added up to 5520 possibilities. How can anyone deal with that quickly? I certainly couldn’t deal with all of those choices in the first go-around. Instead, we headed for the paint department to buy some sand paper for the dining room table I was preparing to paint. No big decisions needed to be made that day.

Pam and I definitely put off the kitchen cabinet question, but slowly, each time we went to Home Depot, we narrowed the possibilities. Finally, we had reduced the field to 5 choices and the day of reckoning was upon us. “I think I like the maple with the honey ginger glaze,” reported Pam that day.

“Ok,“ I said. “It sounds like my favorite barbecue sauce.” I was delighted we had come to a decision. We had started with a hopeless impasse and, with time, we had found something we could happily agree on.

Pam and Fred Gilberd are calling for stories from readers who created unique ways to stay happily married during a house remodel. Please email them through their Web site: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams and build great relationships. 

Pam and Fred are a married couple who completely remodeled their house in Carmel, California while living in it. They faced a dizzying array of choices and decisions that most of us would rather avoid. Those decisions were not just about door knobs, tiles,contractors and sheet rock but about also about how to communicate in the face of constant disagreement and opinions. Sound familiar? Here's a series on how they modeled a way to build a strong relationship. 

“The key to remodeling together, said Fred Gilberd, was to withhold criticism and lavish praise, and not get into major battles over small things.” Kathy McKensie Nichols, reporter

Pam: While Fred and I developed many useful ways to stay happily married through our hands-on remodel of our fixer-upper in Carmel Valley, I can’t say that we consciously thought about what we were doing as we went along. We didn’t have a Remodelers’ Relationship Guidebook or anything remotely like such a book, if it existed, to help us. So we stumbled along in our own individual manner trying to get what we wanted during the remodel without ruffling the other’s feathers too much. Irritating our friendship would have defeated our over-all goal of doing something together to learn and laugh and grow.

Not until we wrote about our experience did I learn what Fred thought about dealing with me during the remodel project. Reading what he wrote informed me that Fred was a master at holding his tongue.

I do agree that holding the criticism produces better results than blurting out what you think at the moment. Even helpful criticism can feel mighty harsh when you’re faced with massive amounts of projects ahead.

I don’t remember Fred lavishing me with praise, but I did feel good when he would tell others that he liked something I had created.

And, yes, we rarely argued over small things. But sometimes it was hard not to know the difference between what should be considered small or large at the time.

Fred: That reminds me of a story a doctor who worked in ER at a local hospital told us at one of our book signings in Carmel. He said that late one night when the place wasn't packed and he had time to chat with the patients he asked a 90-something year-old man who accompanied his equally-old wife who needed some stitches. The couple had been married 64 years and appeared to still be quite happy. The ER doctor said he asked the old man how his marriage had lasted so long. The elderly man replied, "Well, soon after our wedding my wife and I had a heart-to-heart talk. We decided that she would make all the small decisions and I would make all the big decisions. And, so far, we haven't had any big decisions." 

I think one of the reasons I was able to hold my tongue, which I did a lot, was that Pam was working just as hard or perhaps harder than I did and I really appreciated her attitude.  My project had become our project as we went along and she was turning out some great work. Her sewing, painting, plastering and a variety of other jobs were mostly things I hadn’t expected or even thought about at the beginning of our journey.

I also learned that even a modest critique could land her project in my lap and my lap was already full.

Pam and Fred Gilberd are calling for stories from readers who created unique ways to stay happily married during a house remodel. Please email them through their Web site: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams and build great relationships.

(Pam: By the way, I was so excited when I saw Fred’s remodel relationship wisdom highlighted on the Home Improvement page in a “Did You Know” article.)

Pam and Fred are a married couple who completely remodeled their house in Carmel, California while living in it. They faced a dizzying array of choices and decisions that most of us would rather avoid. Those decisions were not just about door knobs, tiles,contractors and sheet rock but about also about how to communicate in the face of constant disagreement and opinions. Sound familiar? Here's a series on how they modeled a way to build a strong relationship. 

Pam:

In 2000 when Fred convinced me to buy our fixer-upper in Carmel Valley there were very few houses on the market. That was one of Fred's prime motivations why he wanted to buy the house quickly. “Look, Pam,” he said, “It’s a hot market and we don’t want to lose out.”

Pam and Fred Gilberd like to learn and laugh together, then share what they know. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams. Learn more on their website: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com. 

Pam: They say opposites attract. The trick, then, is not to get stuck. And if you do, figure out how to get unstuck without ruining what attracted you in the first place.

Today, my husband Fred and I embark on a new journey: writing a she-said, he-said column for SuccessTelevision.com. We don’t claim to be Relationship Specialists, just two people who have devised a ton of useful relationship survival skills while remodeling a house together with our own four hands and then writing a she-said, he-said book about our adventure.

I’m not a bit surprised that getting started on this project proves frustrating. Fred and I differ greatly in approach no matter what we undertake—raising six kids in our blended family, cooking meals for company or remodeling a house. If I over-think an issue, I’ll get too overwhelmed to start. And I do that when I can’t see the big picture. Fred, however, will jump right in if it is something to do with his hands, even if he doesn’t have a complete plan in his head. Writing a column seems to be a different use of his hands, so he’s blocked. 

To get unblocked, Fred wants to list all possible topics we might discuss, the chronology by which to organize them and the format of the articles including word count and style. To accommodate Fred and to address his creative needs, I sat with him this afternoon by the fire with a notebook and pen in hand. We volleyed a few thoughts back and forth, but came up with very short list. We drifted away from our conversation when our daughter telephoned and we got distracted.  

So, to get the ball rolling, here I am at the computer starting this new undertaking despite having no list to guide me. It’s the only way I know to break the inertia. I think Fred secretly appreciates it. 

Fred: I see a big ball rolling straight for my head, inertia flying. I look back on what Pam and I have done together and realize there were reasons we survived our trials and tribulations. The biggest reason is that Pam doesn’t recognize failure as an option. Oh sure, there were a million problems, issues, roadblocks, crises and pot holes along the way but they all (or almost all) became stepping stones to success. 

So, on to a new adventure together. I like to think we are good at that.

Pam and Fred Gilberd like to learn and laugh together, then share what they know. They wish to encourage others to follow their dreams. Learn more on their website: www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com.