back to fighting every day again

My old stove and oven are trashed. Because I have to replace them, I now must replace all of the cabinets and countertops as well. Nothing will match unless I replace the cabinets and tops on both sides. I now have to completely renovate the kitchen. I might as well throw in a new sink and vent-hood while I'm at it.

Monster wishes to be in charge of the reconstruction. Fine, since I don't have time, being at work, and he thinks it's a huge waste of money to hire someone to do it. Now we argue about it every day when I'm home from work. It should be simple. I want name-brand appliance from companies that have local representatives and that will be around, in one form or another. Therefore I want to buy all of the appliances at HomeDepot or BestBuy. The cabinets at HomeDepot are all too ornate and old-fashioned. There are no good, affordable sources for simple cabinets anywhere to be found locally, so we can buy cheap modern modular cabinets at IKEA. Cheap white shells with birch doors and facades on the outside.

The latest thing that cropped up last night is he wants me to buy cheap, unknown, quirky appliances at IKEA, like the ugly range fans they sell there, and don't I know how wasteful I'm being with buying the expensive General Electric and Nutone brand names appliance I picked out?

He keeps referring to "when we sell this" which translates into when I sell the only thing I own and pull money out of nowhere to buy a house. No. Not going to happen. He's been listening to the newest neighbors talking about buying into the building because "any day now, some huge developer will come in an buy this place to put a high-rise luxury condo & office building". I've heard that exact argument for twenty years, ever since I first bought this place. I'm stuck with the condo. We will probably have to move back in some day in the hopefully-quite-distant future. Maybe years from now. Unless HE makes enough money to buy a house or pull funds together with me to do so. Right now it looks like there will be no funds left on my side to put a down-payment on a house with. It's all been eaten up in the last year repairing my poor condo.