PLEEEEZE do not categorize engineers!!! They are NOT all alike. My daughter is a chemical engineer for a large prestigious company and she is a very warm and sweet person. She loves to do crafts, scrapbooking, and I am trying to get her interested in quilting now. I taught her how to sew when she was very young and she showed alot of interest in. She even made some of her own clothes. She understands the practical "needs" of a quilter and does not over-evaluate everything. Maybe it's that "women" engineers think differently. They deal with problems at home and at work and don't make a huge complicated project out of everything.
So.......please don't put all engineers in the same category. There are some that don't fit the general mold.
I hope these comments don't offend anyone, but the idea just pulled at my heart strings. LOL

That sounds exactly like something my DH might do.
I asked for a smallish piece of pegboard for the wall behind my sewing table, and ended up with this pvc pipe monstronsity that sits on my sewing table. He did include the pegboard, though.

Yep I can relate w/ the electrician...everything turns into a major project so I do my darnest to do it myself..lol

Rosie, my husband is a chemical engineer and he does OVER think, OVER build and is just OVER the top in everything in his life. I have met some male engineers who were not as intense as my husband, but as a whole they are a intense group of people. Maybe your daughter being a female balances things out better those most male engineers. You actually give me hope because I could see my 17 year daughter being some type of engineer. :)

Don't be offended by those of us that have lived with engineers for many years. My engineer is a good husband, good father, good provider, but he is kind of exhausting. However, if he is on a engineering blog there is no telling what he writes about his stay-at-home wife/mom of his kids/quilter!!! ;)

OK, here you go. Drive yourself to Home Depot, Lumber City, etc. Tell the nice man that you want a piece of strong plywood measuring ( by ). Tell the nice man you also want a piece of fabric like an ironing board cover measuring a Little larger. Ask him if he'll load it in your car (these guys love to help us poor little girls, makes them feel sooooo... superior, don'cha know). Anyway, he'll load everything up for you and you're off. Leave everything in the car until darling hubby leaves for work. Then set up your regular ironing board, cover it with the plywood and the appropriate padding and covers. So simple, you'll be done by lunch and you can sit and admire your handiwork.
Honey, we lov'um, but sometimes we just have to take matters into our own hands.
Fix him a nice dinner and explain that he works soooo hard that you didn't want him stressing over your little project when he could be relaxing with a cocktail watching his his favorite team. LOL

Your husband is what we call 'nuking it.' I have a son in the nuclear propulsion dept. on theUSS Ronald Reagan, and when he was in nuke school, we found that they have a tendency to overthink things.
My husband now, a change from earlier, takes my suggestions as that, suggestions.
He put brackets on the underside of the big board, so it would go on top of the regular board just so, and it is kind of heavy, but gets moved rarely, so it's not much of an issue
I remember him picking a certain kind of board because he didn't want it to warp from the moisture, the brackets help

You know what I'm talking about, he NUKES it!

I've stayed on this thread long, I guess because I 'feel at home,' and I got to thinking, we may be married to engineer types, but at least they're employed!
My husband is not a trained engineer, but he's in charge of one of the units out at the BP Refinery, something that takes an engineer brain

Thats how he gets out of making it He goes over-board with brilliance and it becomes easier and faster to do it ourselves and without needing Tylenol :-)

Crafty ... yes ... AND forwarded it to him. THAT is what I'm trying to get him to make. I think part of the problem is that it's TOO simple. No lights, whistles, bells, moving parts, pnuematics, or hydraulics so it can't possibly be engineered properly.

Oh yes, he did find a hydraulic lift professional presser on E-bay for a few thousand dollars. He looked at it long enough that I knew he was reverse engineering it in his head.