[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekend warriors home improvement show, built by bar lumber. When it comes to big or small projects around the home, Tony and Cory have got the know how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Here they are, your weekend warriors, Tony and Cory.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: On this show, we usually talk about larger projects. I don't know why.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Expensive projects.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Expensive things that cost you money.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Right. Because we're trying to talk about things that are going to improve the resale value of your home.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: And it seems like if you're going to improve the resale value of your.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Home, you got to spend money to do it 100%. So that's kind of where we are. We're always talking about things that cost you money.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: So on this show today, we're going to be talking about projects that you can do around your home or in your home that are either free or affordable.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. And they do have a tendency to be smaller projects.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: And as such, these smaller projects are usually do it yourself projects, DIY projects, weekend warrior type projects.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: That's the idea.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: No good excuse for not tackling one of these projects if it's something that applies to your home.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. So we're going to start outside and work our way inside. So we've split up this list, and the very first one on the list that we made is something that's super easy. You can replace the numbers on your house if they've been painted over a few times, if they're rusty, if they're falling off, you can go out and buy brand new numbers for probably less than $20 would be my guess. I replaced all of mine when I moved into my home.
They were horizontally under the one lamp post that I had. Or not lamp post, but I had lights on either side of my garage.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Now I do. Sorry. When I moved in, there was only one light on one side of the garage. It was off center.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: It looked weird lopsided.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: And then it had those old school numbers that kind of came down at a slight angle. I thought it looked terrible, so I tore them off. I actually cut a Light block extra long. So the light block comes down. I don't know how long do you think that is? 3ft?
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say it's at least 24 inches.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: 24, 30 inches, something like that. So the light sits at the top of it and the light block comes down. And then I did the numbers vertically.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: And I bought numbers that are kind of modern. My house is like a mid century modern type house. So they come away from the surface of the house. So they stick off about a half an inch and you nail them in. And, man, that project cost me, with the light block and everything, probably 50, $60. But it completely changed the front of my house.
[00:03:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: I mean, you had to get power over there. There wasn't power over there. There was a little bit of electrical work.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Well, that light was already there. What I did was I did add another light to the other side of the garage.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: So that project, I would count separately.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Oh, separately. Okay.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: Because we're just talking about house numbers. The house numbers that I have.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: But the project you did was one project, and you did include adding a second light to balance the garage door, which as a part of that project, it was really, really great. Still, even though you had to do a little bit of electrical, which we don't do ourselves.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: It still was not a very expensive project. And yet it was complete. It was a complete project.
I think we look at the house numbers on our house, or we don't even see them. We look right past them or right through them. Yeah, I've seen a house. I was looking at a house, and the house numbers were like 40, 516.
And they were really thin, little metal house numbers. And there was a nail that was holding each one of them on a nail at the top and a nail at the bottom. Well, the nail had come out of the top of the six, and it swung down and became a nine. So the guy's address now was 40 519 instead of 40 516. That is the silliest thing ever. House numbers cost about $5 apiece. So for the price of $20, you could replace your house numbers and change things for your home.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: This is a great opportunity to freshen up the curb appeal of your home.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: And if you don't have numbers, it is important to put house numbers on your home.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:05:08] Speaker A: You got to consider an ambulance showing up, a fire truck, food delivery, Amazon. If they can't find your address immediately, then you're going to have a hard time getting your packages. Sometimes they're not going to deliver them. So if you move into a house, or if it's just been that way for a long time, it's a good time to do it. It's cheap.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Absolutely. I agree. You should have house numbers. They should be prominently displayed, and they should not be the same color as the house that they're attached to.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: So either needs to have some sort of contrasting plate behind it, or the numbers need to be contrasting, and they should be larger and easy to read. And if the opportunity presents itself, they should be lighted.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Because people actually look for homes after daylight.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Well, for half the year, it's dark for half the day.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great project. Not very expensive, and it really can change things for your home. So take a look at your house numbers, see how they look.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Absolutely. Next one on the list is to work on your entryway. Make it welcoming. You can add potted plants, flowers. Sometimes that's difficult to do during the winter months, but you can do certain things. You can buy fake trees. I've seen plenty of houses where they have bought fake shrubbery to put it out front. And you would think it sounds cheesy, but, man, it looks great. Freshen up your entry door. You can replace the door knocker. You can replace the handle set. You can paint the door. If the door is beat up and old, you can replace it. But if you don't have the money to replace it, because an entry door, of course, is a fairly significant project, and it's fairly expensive. But a coat of paint, you can paint usually an entire door with a quart. So you're talking 20, $30 handle sits can get kind of pricey, but guess what? You can paint them, take them off, strip them, sand them, lightly sand them, clean them up, and then rattle can them. And I've seen people do it, and it looks great.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: The entry to your home can be like an onion, where there's lots of different layers that you can work to, depending on what your budget is or what your capability is. If you've got a front door that is not covered, if you don't have a front porch cover, that'd be a great thing to add. Homes with front doors that don't have a porch cover are desperately in need of one.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: Yeah, but now you're getting into money.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Sure. And I'm just saying that you should be able to look at the entry of your home and see all of the things that could be done. And the simplest of those things is removing the cobwebs from around the door and the light or whatever happens to be right there cleaning. You replace the doorbell, add a peep site in your door, you can replace the doormat. These are all very simple things that can be done, and some of those things can be expensive, and some of those things don't have to be.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: I will never forget a long time ago, I can't remember many years ago, me and my wife were out looking for homes. We were house shopping, and we pulled one up. We looked at the pictures. That looked great in the pictures. And then we got there. We pulled up front, got out of the car, walked up to the front door, which they clearly never used, ever.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: They had the garage door open, and that's where they were having the open house. You would go through the garage and tour the home. And we had just incidentally, walked up to the front door, and it was gross.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Hideous.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: All the glass was clouded. There was cobwebs everywhere, even hornets nests. There was hornets nests up in the corners of the entryway. And I took one look at that and said, gross. We were absolutely not buying that house.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: So it makes a pretty big impact on a lot of people.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: You really want your entryway to look just like you described it one day a year.
October 31.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah, on October 31, fake cobwebs up on my entry door. This year.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah, on October 31. You want it to be as uninviting as possible, but every other day, absolutely not.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: You know, the first thing you see, Corey, is not even the front door or the entryway. The first thing you generally see when you approach a property is the mailbox.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: This is true.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: The mailbox also tells a story because it kind of sits out there by itself. It gets hit by passing cars. Kids hit it with baseball bats. Birds have a tendency to relieve themselves on it. It's one of the things that just never seems to be properly taken care of. And there's an opportunity there, folks, to do something special with your mailbox. Build a mailbox surround, replace the mailbox with something new, paint it, toll paint it.
Do something cool with the mailbox. That sets the tone for what people would see if they were walking through the inside of your home.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes you have your mailbox by your entry door. One of the houses that I had in my past had our mailbox right outside the front door. It was at the front entry, one of those ones that hangs on the wall.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: Oh, sure. Yeah, those are cool.
[00:10:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: And it was ancient. We replaced it, and it made a pretty big difference.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. That's an important one.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: All right, talking about walking up to your entryway, what about creating a DIY pathway, maybe some stepping stones or a gravel pathway?
Those sorts of things are very inexpensive. You can go to the landscaping supply and usually buy some nice flat flagstones or something like that. You could probably get that done for under $100.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: You can even save more money. Buy one of those concrete paver forms, mix up some concrete, and you can pour some forms. You flip it back and forth and it makes sort of this faux stone pathway inexpensive, of course, because bags of concrete. And that takes a little bit more creativity. You might want to stain it, but also makes a very cool pathway.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just one of those things. If you have something old, clean it up, add edging.
You ever use edging?
[00:12:04] Speaker B: I've used an edger.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: An edger? Yeah, I think it looks really clean. I like it.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Black plastic with sort of that black round top thing.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Or you can get it where it's just thin, like a thin strip landscape edging. Where you drive it down.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: You push it down into the ground or. Yeah, drive it down into the ground.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Sometimes there's stakes that go with it.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Like, it's not just that old school rubber, plastic, black.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: I have seen edging used, and in some cases, I've liked it. In some cases, they didn't do a good job installing it. If it's really wavy and all over the place and not down where it's supposed to be, in some places it can look poorly executed.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: I agree. But here's another thing. You can use bricks, maybe even reclaimed bricks or stones.
I saw a house one time that had stone, like, larger stones that they had collected and used that as edging around their garden. Fantastic. Down in California, I saw lots of houses that had paved curbs.
Actual curbs.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Really slope on them. They poke around, all of them. And it looks really cool in my opinion. I almost did it at my house, but that's a little bit more of an expensive project because you kind of have to hire, unless you're really good at concrete. But you kind of, kind of hire.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: That out for my taste. Probably that would be a little too clean for me. I'm a little bit more of a rustic sort of look. So I collected 7700 stones and stacked them around my garden bed areas.
[00:13:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Very ununiformly rustic.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: We'll just stick with that.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: Stick with rustic.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: You could always install a bird feeder. Put a bird feeder, maybe a little bird bath in. It'll bring some wildlife to your yard. Looks good.
[00:14:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:06] Speaker A: I always enjoy having a bird feeder.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: I do like bird feeders and bird baths. Both of those very cool.
There is a little side note. Maybe a cautionary thing.
Yeah, maybe buy a bird feeder that is better at containing the bird feed that's not being eaten. If you buy one where the bird feed has a tendency to spill off the sides and collect on the ground below. That can bring rodents that you don't want.
So be careful of that. But I do think that a bird feeder on the property is a good touch.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: And squirrels, you got to protect it from the squirrels.
[00:14:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: And the squirrels.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Goodness.
Here's another one. Add a DIY arbor or trellis. You can either go out and buy them or you can build one fairly inexpensively. If you want to just add one to the front of your home or even the back of the home.
You could dig some posts. A couple of four x four cedar, a couple of two x four or two x six across it. It's not hard.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: No.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Right. Or that really cool planter box trellis that we made where we built a little rectangle box.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we did a video about that.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: And then a couple of four x fours going up the back. And then we put some hog panel on there.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: And you have a climbing climatis.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: It's in my backyard currently. And it looks great. It's actually an evergreen.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: It's been a few years ago since we built that.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: That thing has really filled in too.
[00:15:38] Speaker B: It does look really good.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: If you're interested in that, you can go check it out on our YouTube channel. YouTube. Just search WW home show or search par lumber. Par parr. Yeah, find our channel.
What's another one? Tony?
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Outdoor lighting. This is something that you have maximized the opportunity at your property. You are an outdoor lighting sort of connoisseur, if you will.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: I do enjoy outdoor lighting. Honestly, depending on which way you go, outdoor lighting can be pretty expensive. If you go with the low voltage and the wire and the direct bury, you got to bury the cable going back to a timer and a transformer and all that stuff.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's obviously just like the entryway, there's different levels, the varying levels that you can commitments that you have to make here. For example, adding lighting, accent lighting to the back of your property behind your home can be as simple as buying a 40 foot string of led lights that you run along an 8th inch stainless steel cable from one structure to another. And it just lights the space between two buildings. Like from your home to your shed or to your shop or whatever you have back there. Maybe to your barbecue cover. Right. So many things out there that doesn't have to be expensive. But you also can add lighting to your landscaping, uplights, downlights, accent lights, all of that stuff.
[00:17:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: And solar lights. I'll be honest, I've gone that route. You get a little solar light, you put it in. But the problem is, at least in Oregon, is we don't get a lot of sun during the winter months, so there's not a lot during the day to charge those things up. And when it gets dark, they might only fire on for 45 minutes to an hour, which might be fine for you, sure. But I have mine that are direct wire to a transformer. But that project, honestly, probably costs around $800 for all the lights that I put in, so, not super cheap, but if you wanted to go the, if you got a decent led, solar powered light, I feel like you could get it done.
[00:17:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: I do like exterior lighting. I think that's a great project. If it's not something you've got around your home, you'll like it.
How about planters? Have you built planters? Do you have window boxes under your windows? I know that you have shutters on the front of the house.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: We do have shutters, and I don't have window boxes.
We opted not for planters, so to speak, on the front. We do have lots of flower pots. That's how we do our flowers in the front of the house.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Still a planter. Even if it's not a garden box, it's still a plant.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Yeah. We got larger potted flower pots that we just reuse year after year. And, I mean, if you live in the Portland area or even anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, and you have a Fred Meyer, you can go to Fred Meyer in the springtime, and they have this event where you buy plants from them, and then they have a huge truck bring in this really nice dirt, like potting soil, and then they'll plant it for you.
You take the pot, and then you buy the plants, and then they fill it with dirt and put the plants in there, make it all nice, and then you take the finished thing home.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Wow, that's interesting.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: We do that every year.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: I've never seen anything like that.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: I think it's around Mother's Day. Is that right? Mother's Day is in the spring.
[00:19:20] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: That sounds good. That sounds like a great time.
[00:19:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: We're not related to them in any.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Way, but they're a local business to where we're at.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we see them all the time. Sure.
[00:19:35] Speaker C: That's cool.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: But we do that every spring.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: But no window boxes. No sort of cedar boxes underneath your windows that are holding flowers?
[00:19:42] Speaker A: No.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: That's a fun little project.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: You do that? You've had that?
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. It's a fun little project.
The hardest thing about that, planter boxes, planted pots, all of those things. The hardest thing is a regular watering schedule a regimen. You have to keep it watered. If you don't keep it watered, then you've failed, essentially.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: Well, especially if you don't have a lot of time on your hands. We have two kids, so we're constantly sports and working and school and just stuff. We're all over the place, and we tried to make the kids do it on a chore schedule. Sure. The problem is, if they forget and they don't do it, we're expecting them to do it. But if they don't do it, plants die.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: So, actually, just this last year, our backyard pots that we keep, we have a sprinkler head really close. So I connected a drip line to it, and now it dripped.
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Smart.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: All of our little plants right there.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Smart.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: So works out perfect.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: But you also have, notably, you also have a sprinkler system on your property.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Another project, maybe not something we would consider affordable, but it's also not remodeling your kitchen, so it's quite a bit less expensive than that.
[00:21:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: And honestly, for instance, my neighbor, he installed, like, a DIY sprinkler system where you hook it up to your hose bib with a timer, and it goes down. And then a hose goes over to this section, and a hose goes over to this section. He's got a little manifold that separates out the areas, and then they fire on one after another.
And the problem is, he doesn't have his set on timers, so he'll go out.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Turn on the hose bib and then go take a nap.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: So sometimes his sprinkler system will run for an hour.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: A long nap.
[00:21:51] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, an hour. My sprinkler turns on every morning for eight minutes. That's it. And my lawn stays perfectly fine, green, I have no problems.
But I've seen people where they have their sprinklers running twice a day for too long. 2030 minutes. It's too much water.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: So, I mean, in the long run, I think the sprinkler system saves me.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Money if it's used properly with anything, of course.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: And I did do a lot of that work myself. I trenched all the holes. I laid all the pipe. I had a plumber come out and help do attach it. You have to attach it to the water main before it goes into the house. You got to tee it off there.
[00:22:33] Speaker C: Sure. Okay.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: You don't want it going into your house and then out to your sprinkler, because every time, if you're in the shower and the sprinklers. Go on, you'd blast it. You know what I mean? So you want that water pressure outside, right? At least that's what they tell me. But that's how we did it. We hooked it to the water main and it works perfect.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: I'd like to have a sprinkler system in my house, but it's down the list of priorities for me. Eventually, maybe.
[00:23:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: I mean, it's a lot of work, I'll tell you that. If you do it yourself, it's a lot of work. You prepare to get muddy, you have to rent some machines. I rented a big machine that digs trenches, a trenching machine, like a walk behind. And it digs, know, way down there. 3ft, 2ft or 3ft down.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: Wow. It's got to be below the frost.
Yeah. What's funny is I grew up in Michigan and I remember installing fences at a couple properties, at my parents property. We installed the fence one time. I helped friends install fences a couple of times and we had to dig those post holes slightly more than 4ft.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Whoa.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: 4Ft.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: So every time we would go out and buy posts, all of them were ten footers. That was normal. Wow.
And then you come out here and the frost, it's because of the frost line, it gets so far down.
You don't want those posts to get under the concrete and heave. They would heave up if you don't dig them deep enough.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Your fence will be all out of whack in a few years.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: But here you get away with 2ft, no problem. I'm not sure about central Oregon. I'll bet you they have to be deeper, much deeper than the valley.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: That's very interesting. Very interesting.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: I've never given any consideration to that. Of course, I've never lived anywhere but here.
[00:24:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: I mean, it's something to consider if you're listening to the show, maybe and you're building a fence, might be worth asking the person at, whoever you're buying the fencing materials from. Hey, how deep do I need to put these fence? Yeah, they might know.
[00:24:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Very interesting.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: Hey, how proficient are you with a pressure washer?
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Very proficient.
[00:24:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: I could use you at my house. Let's just schedule a time you to come over, pressure wash some of my surfaces.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: I could show you how to start it for sure.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: I don't own a pressure washer, and so if I'm going to do it, I'm going to either have to buy one or rent one. But I definitely have some work to do.
[00:25:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: You can borrow one for sure from me. I'll lend it to you. I'll show you how to start it.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Okay. You give me a lesson on how to use it first.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: Super easy. I have this attachment for mine and.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: The karchner or Cartier cartridge.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: It's like a round disc that attaches to your pressure washer.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: Looks kind of like a floor buffer.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: And it has an extension on, it has like a three foot extension so I can stand up. And it has a spinning wheel on the inside with two nozles. And it's got like a brush, a broom around the outside of it. But you run that thing across the ground and it's almost like a little UFO.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: It just spins.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah, because if you turn the water off, it's really hard to move it back and forth, turn the water on.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: And it like levitates, glides across, glides across the concrete.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: And that thing works fantastic. And it's super easy. I actually paid my 13 year old daughter to do it this summer.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Really nice. Yeah, I could use. I've got an exposed aggregate driveway. And, yeah, it has not been pressure washed in years and years. It desperately needs some.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Well, I'll give you a tip. If you don't have a pressure washer and you don't want to pressure wash 30 seconds, outdoor cleaner actually works pretty well.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: And a broom, not even a broom. You just spray it on there. Really? And let it do its thing.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Depending on how bad it is, of course. But I did that on mine and it lightened everything up. Looked great. Interesting. A couple of years ago.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: That's a good tip. Good tip.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Yeah. So here's another one. Outdoor seating. Now, adirondack chairs, not everybody can afford them. Sometimes they can be kind of, to use a west coast term, spendy. Yeah, that's one of the words I learned when I moved here from Michigan. Somebody said spendy. I was like, oh, that's a fun word.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: I use that word all the time.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: I know I do too, now, but it is funny. It was new to me.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Adirondack chairs can be spendy. That much is true.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: You can be spendy.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: You oftentimes can get one that's plastic, that's less expensive, $20 or $30 probably. But if you want a good solid wood Adirondack chair, that will last you for a while. Yes, they're going to cost you a couple of, agree.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: But you can build your own. You can use some reclaimed wood. You could even go out and find old and refurbish. Buy something on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace and bring it home and give it a nice sand job and paint it.
Painting something and refurbishing something is super inexpensive compared to buying brand new.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: And you're keeping it out of the landfill.
[00:27:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: That's a good tip.
[00:27:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: You can even, like I just said, if you have old furniture anyway, if you have old furniture that maybe just needs new cushions or a fresh coat of paint, it's something to think about. Yes, absolutely.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: I feel like that it might require some more glue or some fasteners to stiffen it up in some areas where it could be becoming loose. But definitely after you get that done in a coat of paint, it could.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: Stick around for place some bolts, stick.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Around for another five years easily.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: This is one that I like to do every couple of years. And you could spend little money on it, or you can go all out. And recently, in the last couple of years, few years, I've been going all out and I'm talking about mulching or bark dust.
That's another term they use here in the Pacific Northwest, bark dust.
I never heard that term until I moved out.
It's like, it's mulch that you put in your beds. Garden beds.
[00:28:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: So I'm confused a little bit.
The term mulching. What do you do when you have your lawnmower set to tear up the grass?
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Well, there's aerating and there's mulching. A mulching mower will take your lawn grass and mulch it.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Okay, so I'm not crazy. There's multiple definitions to mulch.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Sure. But again, in Michigan, that's what we called anything that you got that you put around a flower bed. A flower bed. We called it mulch.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: I see. I don't know why not bark dust.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: Bark dust. But why is it called bark dust?
[00:29:34] Speaker B: It's the dust from the bark on.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: The tree, but it's not.
It's a weird term.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: I mean, it kind of is bark dust. It's dusty and it's bark. It's bark dust. Anyway, here, I tell you what, we'll leave it with this. If you go out to the flower bed.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: There's a company that is from here, actually, called bark dusters.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: If you go out to your flower bed, where you have recently applied mulch, as you say, and you bury your hand in it and take it back out, what's on it? That, my friend, is bark dust. And it's on your hand, except it's not.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: It's like shredded tree. That's what all that stuff is like, that when you buy the hemlock, this is what I learned. When you buy bark dust or mulch and have it put down or put it down yourself, a lot of times it's just shredded trashwood that they treat with chemicals to kill off all of the Weeds. And then they add colorant to it to make it the color that you want, like red or dark brown.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: That's what that is.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Well, I can tell you from experience, at one time, it was bark.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Really?
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, so now I would walk on, as a child, I would walk out and grab a handful, and it was all bark.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: That's different.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: These are literally just pieces of bark from a tree.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: That's different. That's bark dust. No, that's not bark dust. Bark chips.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: It's bark chips. With dust. It's bark chips.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Come on.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Chips and dust.
[00:31:07] Speaker A: It's bark chips. If you're putting down bark chips, it's totally different. Like big chunks.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Well, that's where the name came from.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: Dusty bark chips.
It didn't come from shredded tree. Okay. I think shredded tree might be new.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: I don't know.
We'll have to get some landscaping old timers in here and ask them. Yeah, maybe if, you know, one of our listeners knows, tell us.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: We need a mystery lesson on bark chips, shredded tree and mulch.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, there's bark chips and then there's wood chips.
[00:31:48] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Which is different.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: That's wood chips.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: Wood chips.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: You'll see a lot on playgrounds. They're larger chunks of wood that are chipped bark.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: And then there's the bark allowger.
[00:32:08] Speaker A: The woof chips.
[00:32:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Then there's the bark chips.
[00:32:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: Those are just. They're different.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Interesting topic of conversation.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: I had no idea. When I wrote mulching, I mentioned earlier.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: That you have shutters on the exterior of your home.
[00:32:27] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: And I remember this. When you recited your house, you decided that you were going to recite, of course, with the same siding that you had, and you were not necessarily doing the whole house, but you did decide that you were going to retain the shutters because you liked the look. You recall this?
[00:32:46] Speaker A: I did. We considered taking them off and removing them altogether, which we did. We took them off and left them in the garage for a week. Drove up to the house every day just to see what we thought. And we didn't like it. We actually liked the shutter look.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: And did you then replace them with new shutters?
[00:33:07] Speaker A: No, we just painted them.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: We painted them a newer color because they were like a black. Black.
Like a really jet, basic black. And so we painted them with, like a bluish, very dark blue. I can't even remember the name of the color.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Midnight sky, something like that.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Indigo. Indigo sky, maybe.
[00:33:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: I love the shutters on your house. I think that it fits the style of house. It absolutely looks really wonderful. If you don't have shutters around your windows or you're considering changing your window treatments, shutters can be a good way to go. Whether they're panel shutters or louver shutters, shutters can be a good way to go.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Can get a little spendy.
You can buy them out of vinyl, like you said, pre manufactured. They come in set heights and set widths.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: And that's it. You could build them out of wood. So you can build them any size you want to build your own. Would be a lot less expensive than to go out and buy the vinyl ones and screw them to the side of your house.
But the nice part about vinyl is if you want them white, they make them white.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: You don't have to paint them. And then they also have other colors. But then you can just buy them paintable. But you're going to spend, I mean, my guess, $80 to $150 per shutter.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Yeah. It depends on how many windows you have on the front elevation of your home. And if you decide to just do the front elevation of the.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: Yeah. But.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: But it's still affordable.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: I agree. Comparatively.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:50] Speaker B: This is something that I need, Corey. A diY. I want to diy my own privacy screen. I have a hot tub on the back patio that was given to us by some friends of ours. And so we have nothing into it with the exception of the chemicals and stuff that we have to buy to keep it operating. And then, of course, the power that it requires in the water.
It was a minor, minor, minor investment. But, you know, every time we crawl into it, we think, wow, we're kind of out in the open here.
Something that would be really great would be a privacy screen so that it could just be stored maybe. And then when we use it, we can just pop it out, stand it up to screen the hot tub use, and then when we get out, we can put it back.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Or you could build it in.
You could grow it. Oh, bamboo or something.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, it's on a concrete patio, so it would have to be planted or potted or something. But a privacy screen is a great project. If you have something in your backyard that you want to keep just for yourself.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Absolutely. The last one on the exterior of the home is this is the easiest thing in the world. Sorry. I shouldn't say that because it's not easy.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: It's the most obvious thing.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: It's the most obvious. And it's very cheap, free, unless you need to do some repairs. But cleaning your gutters.
There are people in my neighborhood that have literal trees growing out of their gutters.
[00:36:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: And I'm not exaggerating. You look up and you see just mountains of pine needles coming down to pine trees coming out of their gutters. And that is the single easiest thing. You just get on a ladder and clean them out.
[00:36:49] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:36:49] Speaker B: And what you don't do is fall.
Yeah, don't fall. Because then it gets expensive if you fall.
[00:36:57] Speaker A: And one thing I was going to say is, if you're up there, we did this at your house a few years ago. You had a lot of problems with your gutters.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I did.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: They were falling off the house.
[00:37:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: My gutter spikes had stopped performing, and.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: So we bought some Tim Basin master gutter screws. Yes, that's right. You take the old ferrule spikes, spikes, and ferrules out, and then you screw in these longer gutter screws, and, man, they held on tight.
We don't have to do all of them. Just some of them.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Right. The only real caveat there was the ones that we bought had a five inch ferrule. I had four inch k style gutters. We ended up having to trim those ferrules down.
[00:37:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: All of them.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: By an inch in order to make them work for us. But I also didn't look to see if they had four inch ferrules. We might have been able to reuse the ferrules.
[00:37:48] Speaker C: I had.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: I don't know. We didn't look into it. But something to note, actually, I do.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Remember this, and I don't believe they did have a four inch. And we couldn't reuse the ferrules that you have. And I guess we should explain what a ferrule is. A ferrule is just a little metal tube, little aluminum tube that goes inside of the gutter that when you drive the nail from the outside of the gutter through the ferrule into the wood, it won't allow you to crush the gutter.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:38:18] Speaker A: It props it open. So the ferrules that we took out from your old ones that used the old gutter spikes were too.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Oh, they were. Diameter was too.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Diameter was too small.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: These screws that we got were pretty good size.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: They're a little bit bigger.
[00:38:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: But we made it work, didn't we?
[00:38:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: And it turned out great.
[00:38:37] Speaker B: It did turn out great. And my gutters are stronger than ever. I mean, I can hang from them now, and I'm not a small guy.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: Wouldn't test that.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: I have interior. Okay, let's talk about some of the things you can do inside the home. We've done all of these things.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Between the two of us, in our personal homes, we've done all of these things.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: Yes. We've done them recently, as a matter of fact.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: The very first one. Go ahead.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: We can vouch that all of the things on this list are things you can do as a weekend warrior. This is something you can do. Install crown molding.
This might have the trickiest part, the most difficult thing to do. If you've got a crown molding coming together in an inside corner, there's a bit of a challenge, an angle challenge there where these two pieces are coming together.
But what better way to learn how to use your miter saw than to grab a couple of pieces of something and figure out how to fit them together in a 90 degree corner?
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
I've installed crown molding, like fancier crown molding and getting those angles.
[00:39:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: That is tough, especially on an older house where the corners aren't square.
And I tell you, people that do it for a living are craftsmen.
That is such a hard thing.
You got to cope the corner. You know what I mean? You got to really know what you're doing, I feel like. But you can also buy crown molding. That's not that difficult. It's more of a square cut. So it just depends on what you choose to go with.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: Crown molding is a beautiful thing, and as long as it's done right. I have seen Crown molding not installed correctly.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Filled with caulking.
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
It cannot look great real quick.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Absolutely. But here is one that you can do yourself.
[00:40:42] Speaker B: Very forgiving.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: That is simple.
Installing Wayne scotting or Wayne's coating.
I think we had this discussion once how it's actually pronounced, and both are generally accepted.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: It's interesting because I feel like if it was pronounced Wayne's cotting, that there would be two t's.
[00:41:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: And I feel like if it was pronounced Wayne's coating, that it would have an a.
And yet here it is with neither. With. Oh, it does have two t's.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: Well, no, it doesn't.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: Oh, I see it.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: Somebody just.
[00:41:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: So it's Wayne's cot. Wayne Scott. Wayne Scott.
W-A-I-N-S-C-O-T. Wayne Scott. If you were typing Wayne's cot and the word was Wayne's cotting, you would.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: Add A-T-I think you would.
[00:41:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: According to dictionary, the present participle. Wayne's scotting. Wayne's cotting.
[00:41:40] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: This is a treatment that you put on a flat wall.
Oftentimes it is only a partial height of the wall. It can come up 3ft or 4ft, 5ft or 6ft.
And it's a wall treatment that you put on a wall that just adds a little different decorative feel to the room. Sometimes it's combined with chair rail. And then you put chair rail in your dining room, for example, so that the top of your chair, when it rubs the wall, does not dig into the sheet rock. So instead they put chair rail on the wall. So the top of the chair rubs the chair rail. And then oftentimes they will wainscot below the chair rail.
[00:42:27] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And that chair rail looks really cool. And you can do it half wall. You can do a short one, like four foot tall. Or I've seen it where it's three quarters of the wall, where it comes up really high.
[00:42:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: Also, I think that looks super cool.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: I do too. I agree with that.
We recently made a video with a three quarter height wall, Wayne Scott. That was actually mimicking the original Wayne's cotting that was in the house from a hundred years ago.
[00:42:59] Speaker C: Right.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: It turned out really good.
[00:43:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: I really liked it. Here's something interesting, Tony. So I googled Wayne Scott.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Wayne Scott.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: And it actually is acceptable.
Wayne's coat.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Oh, it said Wayne's coat. Wayne's coat. Interesting. Wayne Scout.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's kind of a weird Wayne'scoat. Wayne's coat. But it comes from middle German, middle low German. The two words wagon and shut, which means partition.
And it was an old german word called Wagenshot.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: Wagenshot.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: And now in middle English, they'd say Wayne Scott. Wayne Scott. Or Wayne Scott.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: Wayne's coat.
[00:43:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:42] Speaker B: I love that.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: I love it.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: It's very.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: So that's interesting. So if it's singular, I guess you would say wainscoat, but if you're using it as a verb, or you would say that it has Wayne Scotting.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: Wayne Scotting.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: You would say that it has Wayne. This house has Wayne Scotting.
But if you are talking about it singularly, you would say Wayne Scot.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: But if it doesn't have Wayne Scotting, no one's talking about it. That's weird because it's just a dumb wall.
[00:44:16] Speaker A: It's a weird word.
[00:44:16] Speaker B: It's just a dumb wall if it doesn't have Wayne Scotting on it. Wayne's cot. That's a great, affordable project that you can do in the house and really change the look of a room, like a dining room or even a family room.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it looks cool. Paint it. Paint it a different color.
[00:44:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Anyway, next one on the list is to create some built in shelves.
[00:44:40] Speaker B: Built in shelves.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Do you have a little nook in your home? That is useless.
[00:44:47] Speaker B: I absolutely do not have a nook. If I had a nook, it would already have shelves built in it.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: Do you have a closet?
[00:44:55] Speaker B: I have several closets. As a matter of fact, I'm about to add shelves to all of them.
[00:45:00] Speaker A: I know, but I have seen, yeah, I mean, you could do that.
You could build shelving within a closet, close the door, but you also have open shelving. I have seen where people have taken, like a linen closet or a coat closet that doesn't get used very much. It's in a weird location or something. Take the door off, trim it out, open it up, and then build in, like, open shelving in that closet. Interesting. I've seen that.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: And not put the door back on.
[00:45:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: Wow. They leave it open.
[00:45:35] Speaker B: Very interesting.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: I actually saw somebody that had a small home where they did that, and they created like a desk. So it was almost like an inset little office inside of this closet. It's kind of cool.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: Office closet.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: Funny thing is, I work with a guy, I think I told you about.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Him, that has an office closet.
[00:45:57] Speaker A: He does.
He's a voice actor on the side. Oh, okay. All right. Kind of a prolific voice actor.
He's voiced over program or video games, such as Skyrim. He actually has some voices in that video game.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: Interesting. Very interesting.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: And he told me that he's got in his apartment, he lives in an apartment, and he has this little closet, and that's the only place he can put all of his gear. And he opens the door and bam. He's got his little desk, little chair, little soundproofing microphone.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Office closet.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: Office closet.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Kind of cool.
[00:46:35] Speaker B: A window seat. I don't think we see window seats very much these days. They used to be very common. Another thing that was very common was a bay or a bow type window in a home. And oftentimes when you found a bay or a bow window, there was a window seat in front of it. So it used to be very common. I think it's less common now, but that doesn't mean that it's not still a good thing to do. What's your take on that?
Is this a timeless sort of project, a window seat, or do you think it is past its prime?
[00:47:10] Speaker A: I'm with you. It just depends on the home.
If you've got a breakfast nook, for example, I've seen people take the breakfast nook where, you know, the 1980s, 1990s breakfast nook with the octagonal bump out.
[00:47:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: I've seen people take those and build in a window seat in that whole area with storage, seating or storage under the seat, and then put a big cushion in there. And it's kind of like a little relaxing spot to sit and read books and whatnot. Interesting.
[00:47:44] Speaker B: Very interesting.
[00:47:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:46] Speaker A: And you can get it done pretty inexpensively. I mean, you're talking about a couple of pieces of plywood, a couple of pieces of trim, some foam, some fabric. You'll probably get it done for a couple of $100.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: Sounds like a fun project.
[00:47:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: If you have that situation. What's funny is the house before, the one I live in now, had that octagonal 90s bump out. I know you know what I'm talking about.
[00:48:11] Speaker B: It's called a bay window.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: A bay window. Well, the floor also bumps out. It's not just the window.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: Okay, well, they said they call it a bay.
[00:48:23] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. Whatever you call it. Bay.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: They call it a bay.
[00:48:26] Speaker A: I just may.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Just like you call me. You're bay.
No, he absolutely does not. I was trying to. Is that B-A-E? Yeah, B-A-E bay.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: I call it a bump out.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fine. Call it a bump out. I hear what you're saying. It's a great place for a window reading. Window seat.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: Window seat.
What about installing a barn door? You're doing that?
[00:48:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: When you install a barn door in a place where there was already a hinged door, or are you adding a place? I am remodeling my master bed and bath, and I have added two doors. Those doors will be barn style doors. And so, yes, I will be installing some barn style doors. I'm buying a door slab only, with no prep, in a 32 inch, five panel hollow core. And I'm going to hang that from the barn door hardware that goes over top of the door. And then, of course, the same width of the door to one side. I actually framed the wall and I framed supports in where that barn door track will go so that the weight of the door is carried all the way over.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: I think you're doing that just so your wife can yell at you when you leave it open and say, well, you're born in a barn.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: Born in a barn, yes. That door will never be left open. It is the door to the toilet.
[00:49:53] Speaker A: Room, which, I'm just going to be honest, I find that weird because I've stayed in hotels. There's hotels that have recently, within the last probably five years, done a remodel on the hotel and they've put in these sliding barn doors. Well, if you don't know anything about sliding barn doors, they don't actually close flush to the door. You've got trim. So it actually sticks away from the wall. Right.
Half inch, three quarters of an inch. So when you close it, kind of see right in there.
[00:50:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: Noises.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: I think they're kind of hanging their hat on. If you're sharing a hotel room with.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Someone, you want to hear what's going on in there.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: Not a big deal. If you can see into the bathroom. That's all I'm saying.
[00:50:46] Speaker C: I guess.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: Just leave it open.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Just leave it open.
[00:50:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:49] Speaker B: Why not?
[00:50:50] Speaker A: I'm just going to say this real quick.
My wife works in the hotel business and she told me there is a. I can't remember the brand, but there is a brand of hotel that caters to the younger generation and, like 20 to 30. 20 to 30 range. And one of the popular things to do is have the bathroom open.
No door, like, with just like a piece of glass wall.
And that's the bathroom.
Interesting.
[00:51:28] Speaker B: Yeah, very interesting. I've seen too much.
[00:51:32] Speaker C: Yeah. I've seen.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: I've seen some pictures of bathrooms recently. I've been surfing through pictures of bathrooms to be inspired. And I've seen pictures of bathrooms with no doors, no walls. I stayed in this Airbnb room as the bed.
[00:51:50] Speaker A: We rented this Airbnb once at the beach that had. The large master bedroom was upstairs and it had a hot tub in the master bedroom, like a jacuzzi tub. And it was like, raised and it had, like, this tile up to it. It was weird, right. And then right next to it was a toilet just in the middle of the room.
No door around it. That's interesting. Curtain.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that is interesting.
[00:52:23] Speaker A: Weird.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's weird.
But, you know, to each his own, I guess.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: Yes, sir.
[00:52:29] Speaker B: Probably not a really good resale value on that one, maybe.
[00:52:33] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:52:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:35] Speaker B: I'd say the majority of people prefer to do that business behind a closed door.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Privately.
[00:52:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:43] Speaker A: Let's move on.
[00:52:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: How about an accent wall? I'll tell you what I also just did this in the new bathroom behind the tub. I put shiplap on one wall from floor to ceiling.
[00:52:56] Speaker A: And you painted it black.
[00:52:57] Speaker B: And I painted it black.
[00:52:58] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:52:58] Speaker B: The walls are white and the ship lap is black. And it is a great accent wall. In addition to that, in the toilet room, that was in the sink room or the tub room, in the toilet room, which is adjacent, we painted one wall.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: They called it the water closet.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: The water closet. We painted one wall black. No ship lap. Just painted the one wall black.
[00:53:20] Speaker C: Got you. Yeah.
[00:53:21] Speaker B: It's very cool. Accent walls are cool. I think as long as the color is the right.
Not pink or. I mean, some people like pink, I suppose.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: You do whatever you want.
[00:53:31] Speaker B: You do whatever you want. Accent walls are amazing.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: I remember back probably in the early 2000s, that was super, super popular, having an accent wall. And it was always like mauve or something or dark burgundy. We're going to paint this wall, this one wall burgundy, and that's going to be our statement wall. You remember that?
[00:53:52] Speaker B: I had a burgundy wall. Of course you were in my house. I had a burgundy wall.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Trading spaces, baby. Yeah.
Here's one that can be inexpensive, and we put it on the list because a standard interior door, if you have something that's old and beat up or damaged and you just are putting it off because you think it's going to be expensive, you can buy a pre hung interior door for what, $95? Yeah, $100. Under $100, get it installed. Comes with the hinges. Just put your old hardware in the brand new door and hang it. It's not a hard project. It's something you could do yourself if you've never done it and learn how to do it.
[00:54:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: You're going to spend another $25, probably on trim.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: Yeah, trim and shims.
[00:54:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: But for $125 a door.
[00:54:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: You can upgrade if you've got stained birch flush doors, maybe that are, or mahogany that are just rich mahogany, really old looking. You could replace those with a panel door, a holocore panel door for $125. I would say with trim. Very easy. Very easy to do.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: Next one on the list is to install some backsplash in your kitchen. And I say this is inexpensive because, tony, you used a product.
It was like peel and stick.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: That's right. Smart tile. Or I can't remember what the name of it was.
[00:55:29] Speaker A: Something.
[00:55:29] Speaker B: Yeah, smart something. Anyways, it was a peel and stick tile adhesive, and you put it on the wall, and then when you touch the tile to it, man, it does not ever want to come off of there ever.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: So it was like a backer. And then you stuck the tile to it?
[00:55:44] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:55:45] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:55:45] Speaker B: You stick it to the wall, to.
[00:55:47] Speaker A: The textured or smooth, whatever, in lieu of adhesive.
[00:55:52] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:55:53] Speaker A: You use that little peel and stick. You stick it on there.
[00:55:56] Speaker B: It worked great. I've never had a tile come off. It's been eight years. I've never had a tile come off.
[00:56:02] Speaker A: It's been one week since I looked at.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: You.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: Grouted it.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: We did. We grouted it after it was. After all the tile was up. We used spacers and tile on that peel and stick paper, but not far away from probably taking it all down and replacing it. Yeah.
[00:56:22] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:56:22] Speaker B: We used glass tile. Oh, that's right.
We used the wrong size spacers, quarter inch spacers. We used a contrasting grout color.
So many of the things that we did did not work out for us. And then what happened later, and I know you don't know about this, but we installed the cabinets before the crown molding had arrived. And then when the crown molding arrived, we realized that the cabinets were not the right distance from the ceiling in order for the crown molding to reach the ceiling. So some of our cabinets were the right height and some of them were not. We had to then, in turn, just recently raise those cabinets up so that the crown molding would reach the ceiling, would have empty them, take the cabinets down, move them up, reinstall the cabinets, which, of course, left an open space above the backsplash.
[00:57:20] Speaker C: Got you.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: And so now the backsplash needs to come down, and we're going to do it right this time. And so that's a great project. Replacing your backsplash doesn't have to be tile.
Could also be Shiplap. I'm seeing a lot of shiplap backsplash in kitchens these days.
[00:57:36] Speaker A: Yeah, very common. I wouldn't recommend it. I mean, anything that's made out of wood, that's in a wet zone, you're going to regret it, in my opinion.
[00:57:46] Speaker B: But depends on how well it's painted.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's my opinion.
[00:57:51] Speaker B: The kitchen island, a lot of times is made out of wood. It's in a wet zone.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: Yes. And I tell you what, that's actually the next one on our list, is to build a kitchen island. And you can get this done fairly inexpensively. We built a kitchen island for you, and I feel like we built that ourselves. Fairly inexpensively.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:58:13] Speaker A: We took four posts, we screwed two x sixes around it as an apron or one by, I think actually one by six. And then we built framing on the inside. We built a shelf in there. And then all you did was you went out, you painted it white, and then you went out and got a scrap piece of granite from somebody fairly inexpensively cut it, slapped it right on top. That thing's sweet.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: Absolutely. Still using it eight years later. I love that little island. It's super cute.
[00:58:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: So building that or another option. And this is actually how we built my island. We have a gigantic island. We put this thing in, and we're like, we want the biggest island you could possibly make.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: How big?
[00:58:58] Speaker A: Out of one piece of quartz.
[00:58:59] Speaker B: How big is your island?
[00:59:01] Speaker A: So big you could vote someone off of it.
[00:59:06] Speaker B: Yes. That's a big island. You do have a great big island. Tell me about.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: I stole your joke there.
[00:59:13] Speaker B: Tell me about building that.
[00:59:14] Speaker A: We built it out of just cabinets. We went and bought pre made cabinets. You arrange them on the floor, screw them together, screw them to the floor, and then, bam. Sheet of quartz on top. So it wasn't, like, out of control expensive. We painted it, and it looks great.
[00:59:37] Speaker B: And it looks custom, and it's very user friendly. Shelving on the end. Lots of really good nooks and crannies and places for drawers and doors and sliding drawers. That's great. It is great.
[00:59:50] Speaker A: The only thing about doing an island like that is I think there is something code related to you have to have electrical in it. I think that is a code. Interesting. If you have a permanently installed island like that, yours, you can move around.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: Right. Mine is not affixed to the floor.
[01:00:08] Speaker A: At all, but mine is. So we actually had an electrician came out and wired it and put in an electrical box in the island. So I'm pretty sure he told me that was the case, but I might be wrong.
[01:00:22] Speaker B: Interesting.
How about installing laminate flooring?
[01:00:29] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:00:31] Speaker B: We both done this.
[01:00:32] Speaker A: I know. The old days of pergo laminate flooring, I feel like, are gone.
[01:00:37] Speaker C: Right.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: You don't know too much of that anymore. Right now it is LVP or LVT.
[01:00:43] Speaker B: Luxury vinyl plank or luxury vinyl tile.
[01:00:46] Speaker A: Yes.
It's extremely durable, waterproof. If it gets soaked, it doesn't swell. The old days of that snap click laminate flooring looked great. Went down super easy. Or floating floor. It would just sit there. Never actually fastened it to the floor.
[01:01:06] Speaker B: Right.
[01:01:07] Speaker A: But the problem is it was made with compressed wood fiber and glue, and when water got in there, it would swell up like a marshmallow.
[01:01:18] Speaker B: They would say it's waterproof. It's pre finished and waterproof. And that was absolutely true on the surface.
[01:01:25] Speaker C: Correct.
[01:01:25] Speaker B: But where it came together, where the tongue and the groove came together, that was not finished, and that was susceptible to swelling. And that's exactly what would happen. Water would be sitting on the surface of the floor. It would seep down in between the tongue and the groove, and it would soak into the edges of the floor, and it would cause it to swell and buckle. And there you go. It's all over with the cryon.
[01:01:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:01:50] Speaker A: And a lot of people don't know this, but when you installed it in a kitchen, around your appliances and whatnot, in wet areas, there was different installation instructions for that stuff. You were supposed to glue all of the seams.
[01:02:07] Speaker B: Interesting.
[01:02:08] Speaker A: And a lot of times people didn't. They just snap, click and go.
[01:02:11] Speaker B: But today, people might use the term laminate flooring, or click together flooring. Snap, click flooring. But what they really mean is luxury vinyl plank or luxury vinyl tile, because that is what everyone is buying and using.
[01:02:28] Speaker A: And I'll tell you what it is amazing.
[01:02:30] Speaker B: Great product.
[01:02:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:02:31] Speaker B: It's lightweight, it's easy to install. It performs well.
[01:02:34] Speaker A: It's good, and it looks the stuff they're coming out with now. I mean, looks like real wood.
[01:02:39] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[01:02:40] Speaker A: I mean, it even has texture of real wood. You get down, you're like, is this real?
[01:02:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:02:45] Speaker A: And it's very cool.
[01:02:47] Speaker C: It is.
[01:02:47] Speaker B: And it's affordable.
[01:02:48] Speaker A: I agree.
[01:02:49] Speaker B: It's really a good product.
[01:02:50] Speaker A: Next one on the list is to upgrade your kitchen cabinet hardware, which can be.
You can make it expensive as you want, but if you've got old poles, what you could do is take them out, measure the distance between the holes. If they're a grab handle, if they're single pulls, you don't have to worry about that so much.
[01:03:11] Speaker B: One hole.
[01:03:12] Speaker A: One hole. But if you have the handles, grab handles. Usually they're three inch or four inch, six inch. You have to measure the distance. And when you go buy them, you can either take the old one with you and match it up, or if you're buying them on a website, just make sure that you really pay attention to that dimension. Sometimes they're in millimeters, right. A lot of these things are manufactured overseas. It's not going to be your standard four inch hardware, so you really need to make sure that it fits and then order them. But it's so easy. You unscrew the old ones, you screw the new ones in, and it will completely change the look of your kitchen. Absolutely.
[01:03:58] Speaker B: How about building a bookshelf to divide a room? Currently at my house, we have two spare bedrooms, and one of them doubles as a craft room where much crafting is done.
So much crafting. But it's important that the room also double as a room to sleep. So there's a bed and a little dresser and a nightstand and some of those requirements for a room, but it also has a desk, a couple of desks and some workstations. For a craft room, we currently are using two bookshelves that are in the center of the room, directly underneath the one light that's in the room.
You can't run a curtain all the way up to the ceiling because the light would only be on one side. So a bookshelf to separate the room or to divide the room works really well because the light will illuminate both sides of the bookshelf.
[01:05:02] Speaker A: But then you got to go out and buy a bunch of books.
[01:05:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:05:04] Speaker B: You don't have to put books in them in the craft room. One side of that bookshelf is full of craft project type stuff.
[01:05:12] Speaker A: I thought you were going to say something else, but I get what you're saying.
[01:05:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:05:17] Speaker B: I don't read storage stuff.
[01:05:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:05:19] Speaker B: So we just put items there. Action figures and things.
[01:05:24] Speaker C: All right.
[01:05:24] Speaker A: The last one on our list is something that I've done myself over the years a couple of times, and it sounds silly, but if you have a situation in your home where you have like an old light fixture that hangs down, say, above your dining room table and that light fixture goes up into the ceiling and the sheet rock around it has started to crumble over the years. And then you can kind of see past the light fixture into the attic and you see insulation and. You know what I mean? Like, you see the cold air just coming out of there.
[01:05:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:05:58] Speaker A: You could buy what's called a ceiling medallion. They usually sell them at the home centers. You walk in, in the electrical department and they have like a whole pile of them and they kind of look like old style plaster, ornate. You can get them plain or ornate or whatever you want, but you basically take it and you kind of glue it up to the ceiling and then install your light fixture or your chandelier against that. Holds it up and it holds up and it looks pretty cool. You can either leave them white or paint them, whatever you want.
[01:06:33] Speaker B: Seems like something that you would covers it all up. Yeah, it seems like it's something you would commonly see in 100 year old home or something. Maybe in an old building downtown or something like that. Very ornate, very old looking.
[01:06:47] Speaker A: They can look a little fancy. And honestly, we put it in the last house that we lived in, but it looked good. It was in the dining room. It added a little bit of something to the ceiling and covered up all that old nastiness.
[01:07:00] Speaker B: I like it.
[01:07:01] Speaker A: So anyway, that is a pile of projects that we feel is somewhat affordable, little different. We've done this show several times over the years, and it's hard to come up with new ideas.
[01:07:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:07:13] Speaker A: So if you've got any that you want to share with us, send them to us. Email us at
[email protected] or go find our YouTube channel. It's YouTube forward slash wwomeshow. Can follow us on Instagram. Graham, same thing, ww home show. We'd love to hear from you. So we definitely appreciate you checking us out today. If you got any questions, feel free.
[01:07:38] Speaker B: To get a hold of us. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great week.
[01:07:41] Speaker C: See you next time.
