Building up and breaking down

My husband, genius that he is, can build anything. Right now, he has become transfixed with repairing our house. In the last few months, he has rebuilt a deck that had some dry rot shape, replaced and refinished all the doors, supervised the placement of a new French drain in the garden (he doesn't like digging himself), acid-etched and painted gutters, and put in all new outdoor lighting. He has done a beautiful, beautiful job. The problem is, the work comes at a great, great cost. He alienates virtually everyone who assists with any task. He accuses them all of shoddy workmanship. In the last few months, the alienated workers include: the gutter hangers (who didn't appreciate my husband's workmanship sufficiently and didn't feel inspired to match it); the person who brought the debris box (who didn't place it exactly where my husband wanted); the gardener who built the french drain (he went 4 inches over the property line into the woods of our neighbors). And that's just on the projects this month. Previously, we've built an apartment over our garage and redone our kitchen. My husband almost came to blows with both contractors and constantly criticized their shoddy workmanship. He even ripped out dry wall to show them he could do it better himself. One of them eventually called my husband "a f&%^& hard-ass", something that galls him to this day. From my perspective, the contractors' work looked fine to me. Several of my friends have subsequently hired them and been quite pleased.

The new construction fight is not even about our house. Rather, my neighbor has been trying to renovate a "tear down". My husband has somehow taken it over as his project and has been directing our rather naive and young neighbor in what should be done, ripping out joists, putting in beams, etc., etc. As usually, he is excessively demanding (and occasionally ridiculing) of our inexperienced neighbor. The neighbor finally decided he didn't want to devote his life to the project or to serfdom, and hired a contractor. My husband is furious! After all, he was willing to do the work with the neighbor for free! It seems, though, that free contracting from my husband is not worth the emotional price.

On the home front, my husband is constantly angry at the world because the house repairs prevent him from "getting his own work done" . He is seething at me because he feels what he does isn't appreciated. I do appreciate his workmanship. It's beautiful. And I don't interfere with what he wants to do even though, personally, I don't see the need for such perfectionism. And although I can empathize with his need for quality work, he cannot accept my desire to minimize stress, hire someone who is 95% good, get the work done promptly (albeit imperfectly), and move on with life.