I suggest you disappear for the week she'll be there... Go have yourself a vacation!

She was visiting my house, had my grandmother over, saw the paint and they decided to do me a favor and paint a room for me. It was so spotty and blotchy I had to redo the whole thing and wipe up paint spills. They also borrowed my “old” clothes to paint in which weren’t actually old until they got paint on them. 

Were you guys planning on painting? If not then that’s out of line. If so, if she’s a decent painter it may not be so bad. Oooh, or is she painting an extra bedroom because she’s moving in?

And your DH is a doofus for not consulting with you on all of that. 

I would be furious! And also wonder what was wrong with my SO!

It would be one thing to volunteer if you were knee deep in a project - under guidance of what the family member who owned the house wanted done.  But to just decide, or even do without clearance, that’s just colossally rude!  

I agree that you should make this your vacation week.  Get out of dodge with major threats to your DH if even an armchair has been rearranged in your absence.

Paint the house??? What even??? I swear that would be as stupid as my MIL informing me she was putting up wood pannelling everywhere (she has this weird obsession with it...). It would be an absolute No-go!

I think you say no to that and take a much needed trip AWAY from the house. Do something you love and let your DH handle all the chaos!

Wtf. That's all i have

Omg. If my MIL, or anyone for that matter, said they were coming over & were going to paint my house it’d be an instant no. No, you’re not going to wreak havoc in my home, place your own stamp on it, or call the shots where I reside. 

If I asked for, wanted, or agreed to the help, that’d be a different story. But nobody comes into my home & calls the shots like that. 

I took my kids to see a family member in Iowa for a week and left a friend to house sit and pet sit my dog.  I came back to find my bathroom that I had just painted blue painted turkey sh*T brown. and She rearranged all my furniture!  I find that rude.  I had to repaint my bathroom and put my furniture back. 

How inconsiderate of your MIL. What kind of person goes to visit someone just to try to rearrange their life without asking? And your DH is crazy for being mad. 

girl, you just set off my MIL anxiety like a loaded freight train. 

When BM vacated marital home, it sat empty for 6 months. I told MIL to leave stuff alone, especially on DH’s desk. He was out of town for most of the time and I didnt want to trash something he needed. The very next time I went over, there’s MIL with a bag of stuff for trash from his desk. She also deliberately changed the measurements of my custom cabinets so they were too small for my kitchen. I have a 4 inch gap now. I didn’t know until the lady at Lowe’s read the notes on my account to me when I went to go find out wtf happened.

DH is at the house right now packing up the rest of our stuff. I have been sick with anxiety that she will throw away something I treasure. I’ve told him she’s not welcome in the house for any reason until it’s completely cleared of my things.

It’s all a power ploy. A way to mark her territory. “I just want to help” and if you refuse to let her make major changes to your home, she’s “devastated” that you are “rejecting her” because she’s “not good enough”. 

My Mom always wanted to be useful when she visited. One day she decided to wash the windows. No objection there! My neighbors asked where I found the window lady and could they hire her too?  Hilarious. 

Maybe you need to rent out MIL to keep her out of your house. 

Good for you! Stand your ground.

Yeah, this is giving me MIL triggers too, because this is the type of controlling crap she *tries* to pull here to. I mean, I recently had to inform my MIL she had no business going into our bedroom to straighten it up and make our bed. That’s MY personal space, FFS, because who in the world does that!? 

Also, this is the defensive + passive aggressive verbal vomit crap my DH used to pull a long time ago. He stopped when I started clapping back that, “Yes, you’re right DH, I don’t like your mom. Should I let her know myself, or are you going to be a big boy and align with your wife?”

My MIL loves to meddle as well, although she'd never offer to do work at our house. Right now, she sticks to making plans on our behalf including telling BIL's in-laws that we will spend Christmas at their home (no thanks, MIL...spending Christmas with one set of awkward in-laws is enough, I do not feel obligated to spend holidays with my awkward in-laws' even more awkward in-laws, they are too far removed for me to have to suffer through a holiday with them), scheduling things for Skids and then telling DH what he has to pay for them, changing things DH has scheduled for Skids and then providing them with her updated schedule / plans, etc, bringing all of her old junk over to the house under the guise that it is DH's stuff (90% of the time, it's not DH's stuff). She would not offer to paint our house, she would just try to convince DH to come to renovate her house for free, every weekend. 

She also loves to tell DH what he should do to make sure his kids are protected from me...the wicked stepmother. She told him - in front of me - that he should make his brother the executor of his will, to ensure that his kids get what is rightfully theirs. And what would that be MIL? When I met DH he had nothing but debt...I'm happy to save some of that debt for Skids and pass that along to them when DH is gone.

Your DH - like mine - has no clue what normal boundaries look like between a parent and child (particularly an adult child). Like the small child who follows every order from his mother, DH always obliges without a second thought and no objections made to MIL, even though he grumbles about it to me later. The most recent was MIL texting him saying she needed him to fix a few outlets at her house, only to have him arrive and discover that she wanted every switch and outlet replaced. DH was so angry, but when he spoke with MIL about it, he simply said, "I don't think I'll be able to do all of that today...I didn't realize you wanted me to rewire the entire house." MIL simply replied, "yes, I was hoping you could do that" to which DH said, "I'll have to come back then..." When he got off the phone, I said, "you didn't exactly make it clear to your mother that what she was asking you to do was unreasonable..." 

With me, she mostly just tries to disguise her insults as "compliments" and make hints about all that she expects me to do to help her in her old age. The most recent was her telling me repeatedly that she was doing me a favor by cleaning out her house now, so I won't have to do it. Um, you have 3 kids of your own lady, what makes you think I'll be cleaning out your house when you're gone? Fortunately for me, MIL told my mother that Silent SIL has told MIL that she will care for MIL in her old age, because that's what they do in her culture. I told my mother that was good, because in my "culture" we just put old people in the home. My mother laughed and said, "oh really?" I'm sure MIL really expects DH to take care of her in her old age, because when his father died (when DH and his siblings were all young adults), MIL told DH that he had to come home to "take care of her", because his siblings needed to be allowed to go off and do whatever it was that they were doing, but DH - as the underachiever of the family in MIL's eyes - didn't have anything impressive to do, so he could become her stand-in husband. DH dutifully obliged, thereby giving up any chance of getting away from his domineering mother...who pushed him to marry BM because at age 25 he was way too old to be single, according to MIL. 

DH accuses me all the time of not liking his family or his kids...I don't think DH really likes his family, either, he just pretends that he does, because admitting that he doesn't like his family would mean admitting that the perfect image they have crafted for themselves over the years is a sham.