[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. Here they are, your weekend warriors, Tony and Corey.
You know, Tony, one of the things about buying a house is maintaining it. Being a weekend warrior, that's what we do. We maintain our houses to keep up the value. But one of the very most important things of keeping up the value of your home is curb appeal. And if you have good curb appeal, then you're going to boost the value of your home. You're going to boost the value of your neighbor's home. Would you agree?
[00:00:48] Speaker B: I would tend to agree, yes. But I want to get some clarification. When you say curb appeal, what do you mean?
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Well, it's the look of your house from the curb. As someone's walking by or driving by, they look up at your house and you immediately like what you see.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Okay. The appeal. The appeal of your home as viewed from the roadside or from the curb. Yes. This is obviously different than what you see inside the house. You can have the most beautiful, gorgeous inside of your home, very well finished, totally remodeled, fresh, up to date and top of the line quality products.
But if the outside of your house looks like a garbage dump, then your curb appeal is poor and people aren't likely to regard your house as highly.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: So this becomes very important for obvious reasons at the time of selling. If you're selling your home, then you need it to look as good as it can look from the curb. But something else that people maybe overlook is that if your home looks really good from the curb, if you have great curb appeal on your home in your neighborhood, you can actually influence other homes in the neighborhood totally, to raise the bar, to try harder to look better, to make their homes more appealing. And you can actually, one or three or five homes in a neighborhood can raise the bar, the value of the homes in that neighborhood, what we call comps, right, comparables. You can raise the value of the homes simply by setting the bar higher. And so it is incumbent on each of us as homeowners to make sure that our home looks as good as is possible from the curbside as well as on the inside.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Yes. So, Miriam, I googled it. Miriam Webster, the definition of curb appeal is the visual attractiveness of a house as seen from the street.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: There it is. It says plain as day. Right. Curb appeal. Curb appeal is very important. Yes, it's important to the resale value of your home. It's important to your quality of life. I mean, if you're walking out of a dumpy looking house every day and people are seeing you walk out, I mean, that's got to work on somebody's conscience, wouldn't you think?
[00:03:36] Speaker A: I think it does.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: I love walking out of my house and looking back and saying, mandy, it's a good looking little piece of equipment there.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: I like that.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And like you said, maintaining your own piece of property, keeping it well manicured, rewarding. It's rewarding, but it also. It helps the neighborhood. Everyone in your neighborhood is going to look at that, and they're going to want to emulate.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Right? So I agree. It's so true.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Anyway, let's talk about some things today that people can do to their houses. Either free or I cost a little bit of money, or cost a lot of money, or cost a lot of money, but they will help you in your curb appeal. If you're looking at your house and say, man, my house is just lame, I don't know what to do.
It's. It's a problem. You know, you see, you. You bought your house, say you bought it, and it has the same paint, has the same landscaping that the previous people had. It doesn't have any of your style.
You know, I'm gonna say something.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: I'm gonna say something. I'm gonna start this off. I'm gonna kick it off with something that's not on the list, something you and I have not already talked about. But I really feel like this, you know, and this could be even controversial. So I need your honest opinion.
My house, as viewed from the curb, has a hip roof.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: So it's a big roof. You look at the house, and the house is big, but the roof is seemingly enormous, because you just see this giant hipped composition roof. I am very tempted to consider the possibility of framing a couple of dormers, maybe three, up on top of the roof. Now, these would not be functional dormers. They'd be non functional.
Put windows in them with, like, curtains in them or tinted glass or something. But, like, three, maybe three dormers spread evenly across the top of the roof just to add some dimension to the roof and cut up that big, you know, asphalt shingle space. What do you think about that?
Well, it would solely curb appeal. There's no other reason for it.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: I mean, I guess I would ask this. Why wouldn't you make them functional? You could.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: You would have to. You would have to dramatically change the structure of your roof, because what you have up there now is trust.
Most dormer applications are hand built. They're hand framed. So you'd see a hand cut roof and then figured in dormers, you would have to probably consult an engineer to make sure that you'd be okay framing those up there.
I think they would look great if that's. If that's all you're asking.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess they could serve as. There's bedrooms up there, so they could serve as skylights.
Could have two little skylights in each bedroom. It's sort of a dormer that has a window that acts as a skylight.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Yeah, but it was like a vaulted.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: I mean, the thing about it, though, that you would have to consider is would it look weird? You know, whenever you see a dormer, usually it adds its function. It's something. It's there for a reason.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Sure, sure.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: But if you're just putting it up on top of the roof, is it going to visually look weird?
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I drew it out on a piece of paper. You know, you see a lot of homes with functional dormers. I don't know why this would have to look any different than that. Yeah. There certainly is an opportunity for there to be a dormer on this big, hip roof.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: I was visiting my sister in Nashville last week, and in her neighborhood, there's all kinds of houses, new construction houses. They've all been built within the last three to four years, and several of them in her cul de sac have fake dormers.
Interesting.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Look up. They have a dormer there with a black window. It's, you know, like a normal window, and then I spray paint or put a piece of black plywood behind it.
It's interesting, and it looks good. I agree. It looks absolutely phenomenal. But I'm just thinking to myself, like, why wouldn't you just make it functional? I don't know.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I mean, the thing is, in order for a dormer to be properly functional, it would have to be much lower, closer to the floor, because we have windows in the walls all the way up to the eight foot ceiling height. And these would be above that.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah. It would almost be like a third floor.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: It would look like a third floor. But of course, there would be a bunch of infrastructure that would have to be built in order for there to be that third floor. So while they could be open to the inside, that would make them more functional if they added light. But the other option is to frame them right on the roof and not even have them accessible to the inside of the house. Overframed, over framed. Yeah. Anyway, something to think about, you know? But that's, that's something that I wouldn't say is inexpensive. It's definitely curb appeal, only it's merely aesthetics. But I can see why someone would want to do it. I I feel like it adds dimension to a hip roof, and it looks good from the curb.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, uh. I I like it. I like it. I'd have to see it.
Maybe show me your drawing.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll show you my drawing. Absolutely. That's the way to go.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: All right, so let's move on. I've got a list. Like a little, we put a little list together of things that you can do around your house, on the front of your house, to boost your curb appeal. And the number one thing on the list, Tony, is probably the easiest landscaping. If you've got a boring lawn, there's one thing you can do in its landscaping. You can go out, you can buy some flowers, you can buy some new hedges, shrubs, and just fill in, fill in areas. If you just have a square lawn, straight up, just lawn. Dig out some garden beds. Take a string line.
Actually, I had a trick from a guy. I used to work with a guy, and he took an old extension cord, and that's how he would do his beds, his garden beds in lawns. He would take the extension cord and kind of make the outline of where he wanted them.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: I see. Okay.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: And then he would take a down shot, spray can of spray paint. You know, the marking paint.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Inverted paint, inverted tip, upside down paint. And he would follow along his little line that he did with his old extension cord, and it worked perfectly. And then you come back with a shovel, dig up your line, and skim the surface off. And that is a really easy way to create nice flowing garden beds.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great idea.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: And I tell you, I'll give you a tip. When you are doing garden beds, try to make the radiuses large enough so that when you're mowing them.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: You can do it in one sweep. Right. You know, in a round, like on around something.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: You know, you're not having to stop and adjust and stop and adjust and stop and adjust because it's so sharp.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Or come back with your trimmer, you know, your weed whacker. You're hitting those things. It's a, it's a really easy way to make it. Nice sweeping curve, though. But, you know, stuff like that. Plant colorful flowers, mulch decorative stones, flower beds. You know, give it a nice, polished look. I'm going to, of course, pull the weeds.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to throw another little tip out there. If you're, if you're revamping your flower beds, add some height. It's, it's, it's a good practice to, to add some height or some mounding of dirt in the flowerbed to give it a different elevation than the grass.
I think that oftentimes we have flat grass and flat flower beds, and everything is very one dimensional. So it's a good idea to add some, some depth or some height to your flowerbeds and give them some dimension.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a, one of the things, when you're choosing plants for your gardens is go to a local store. Sometimes you go to the box store and find some cool stuff. But if you go to a local landscaping shop, you can talk to them. And a lot of times they're more than willing to help you pick out plants that are native. Native plants will work better in your climate. They won't freeze. They won't, you know, they're more hardy. They'll grow, the roots will grow deeper.
You'll have to water them less for them to look lush and beautiful. And make sure that when you're picking out plants for specific areas around your house, you have to keep a few things in mind. I've got a situation in my backyard that I didn't even think about, but we put in a garden bed right behind this huge bank of windows on the back of our house, which is south facing.
Well, we planted the stuff there. It looked absolutely gorgeous in the fall. Went through this amazing winter, spring. All the flowers are blooming. Just looked absolutely incredible. And then July hits and everything died. I could not figure it out.
And what it was was the low e glass in those windows was reflecting light at a direct angle, so it would bounce off the glass and just burn the living crap out of all of my plants.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: Oh, that is not funny at all. That's a major bummer.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: I know, but it's one of those things that I didn't even consider.
So when you're doing things like this and you're talking to the people at this landscape stores and the plant stores, talk to them about things that need full light, sunlight, you know, you really need to look at your lawn and look at where the shady spots are.
When they say partial sun, sometimes plants are tolerant to afternoon sun, and some are only tolerant to morning sun.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: And I've had to learn that the hard way through the years planting something in the wrong spot and having it just get burned to a crisp, like hydrangea. Hydrangeas are beautiful, but you have to be very careful on where you put them. They cannot stand afternoon sun.
[00:14:36] Speaker B: Yeah, they will scorch.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: They get burned to a crisp, but that morning sun, absolutely perfect. And then shade for the rest of the day. In my experience, that's worked out really well. So anyway, it's a good thing to go to your store, your local plant store, talk to them and figure out the best thing to put.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: I'm going to throw one more thing. Maybe a lot of people don't think about this.
Another great thing to add to your flower beds is some rock. Not small rocks, big rock. And you know what? You can throw one big boulder, like a, like a 24 inch round boulder or 36 inch round boulder in your flower bed to add dimension. Looks very, very cool. And you'd be surprised how affordable they are. I recently bought four large boulders for a big corner of my yard in the flowerbed. And, you know, they were. They were $80 apiece.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: You know, so I felt like $80 for a rock sounds like a lot, but what the change that it brought about in my, my flower bed was, I felt epic.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Well, most of what you're paying for, depending on how big they are, is the delivery.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: In those things.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: In this case, I had them. I had them placed onto a flatbed trailer for me at the, at the landscape supply place, and I took them, I backed it up to the spot where I wanted them and rolled it off. Me and my neighbor, we rolled it right off, and we had some wrestling to do to get it where we wanted it. But I didn't have to pay to have them delivered. And it was really. It's nice.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: I've boulders, when boulders get too big, when they fall off the truck, that's where they are.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Yeah. They stay right in that spot.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: You're like, well, that looks pretty good.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: That's including a little bit of chance in your, in your landscaping. Yeah, yeah, it's a good idea.
[00:16:37] Speaker A: So anyway, landscaping, it's definitely one of those things. It's probably the single most important thing you can do for a good curb appeal. Number two on the list is exterior paint. If your house looks nice, old, or maybe it's just got an old color.
Maybe the color is just like one of those things that's, you know, outdated.
[00:17:00] Speaker B: I got a great story. My mom and dad told me that they were ready to have the house repainted, and they had already talked to a painter to come out and get the job done. I said, that's great. I'm so glad. It's long overdue. What color are you going with? And my mom said, oh, the same color.
And I'm like, pea green and off white. You know what I mean?
And she's like, well, I think it's white white, or it was white white and the green. It's just easiest to just go with the same color. And I said, absolutely not. And so I just started googling popular paint schemes 2024. You don't have to be a designer. I mean, these paint companies do it for you. Just Google popular paint scheme 2024, and they'll pop up, and then you just screenshot it and give it to the paint guy and say, I need this for my trim and this for my body and this for my whatever accent.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Yeah. You can walk into Miller paint or Sherwin Williams, and they'll have these books that literally have, like you said, paint schemes.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: Right?
[00:18:09] Speaker A: And some of them are designed for specific types of houses. You know, they'll have like the farmhouse or the contemporary or the transitional or whatever. And I always. I'm a pretty big stickler on choosing things that fit the design of your house, you know, and going and picking out colors that match the style. You know what I mean? The architectural style of your house, I think, is important. And that's a good way to do it.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So I just googled popular paint scheme, screenshotted it, texted it to my mom, and she was like, oh, that's pretty. I'm like, I know. So I said, so give this to your painter and tell them this is what you want. And she said, I'm going to do it. So, yeah, that's. It's the exterior paint on your house, while a much needed maintenance item also will really improve your curb appeal.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a good tip. Good story. I like it.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Exterior lighting is another really big one. Corey. Installing outdoor lighting to highlight architectural effects on the outside of the house is a great opportunity. All of those things are there, but they can't always be seen. And at night, highlighting those things spotlights up, lights down, lights, you know, light arrays, all of the things that come with exterior lighting. Some very cool stuff. Yeah, landscape lighting. And then, of course, the lighting that belongs on the house.
If you've got a front door with a single lamp on the outside, consider what it would look like if you had a lamp on both sides. If you found a way to sort of synchronize the entry to make it equal on the left and on the right, you know, you can really change the look of an entryway like that.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Evening time and nighttime. Curb appeal, in my opinion, is just as important. And the lighting, the outdoor lighting is so key to that. And another aspect of it too, you know, that a lot of people don't talk about is the safety factor. You pull up to your house and it's nighttime and you're walking up to your house and it's dark, right, tripping over everything or you're getting deliveries, or, you know, God forbid you have an emergency and police are showing up or the ambulance is showing up and they can't even find your house because your lights aren't on, or that, you know, they can't even read your, the numbers on your address. So it's, it's one of those things. Landscape lighting. Yes. Outdoor lighting. It's all important and it really adds to curb appeal.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Agreed. And I feel like, I feel like that exterior lighting on your home, like you said, is a safety thing. But you, you can add photosynthesis or you can add. Not photosynthesis, photo. Photo sens. Yeah, say it.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: You made me forget.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: You can add photocells to your light, your exterior lights, which make them come on at a certain time of night, or you could have motion sensors on them which make them come on when something moves out there. These are the ways that you have lights in the places where you want them, and they come on and go off when you want them to. And you're not trying to do it. You're not leaving the light lights on so that they're on when you come home. They come on when you come home and then they go off when you get in the house. They come on when people, unwanted people, are on your property, and they come on when unwanted animals are on your property. And that's okay too, because they come on and they go off all the time and they just do their thing.
[00:21:57] Speaker A: Well, photocells would go on when it gets dark and then motion detectors would go on when they detect motion.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. Yeah. So both of those things, you know, are good things to have. I have a, I have a street light, a street lamp looking kind of thing in my front yard, at the corner of my front yard. And that's on a photocell. And so that comes on every night at dark and goes off in the morning when the sun comes up.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: And I love that thing. It's very cool. But then I also have motion sensors that come on and light up the entire driveway, the side of the house, the front of the house. And then I have porch lights. Porch lights. So they all serve different needs. But lighting on the exterior of your home is very important.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Well, I keep talking about this. You always keep talking about lighting.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: I know you love lighting. You're kind of a lighting.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: I love lighting.
[00:22:47] Speaker B: Snobby guy.
[00:22:47] Speaker A: Well, and you actually just. You sparked an idea in my head about something we've talked about in the show many times. And when we go back to talk about security, we talk about burglary. We talk about burglary. People coming into your neighborhood looking for opportunity. And if your house is lit up like a Christmas tree, people are less apt to come and try and break.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Into your house if they can be seen while they're doing it. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: It's so a lot. You know, they say crime, it's always crimes of opportunity.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: So if your house is dark and it looks like nobody's home, that's an opportunity. That's an opportunity.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Yep. So good tip. Good tip.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Not necessarily curb appeal, but it's another added benefit.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: I kind of alluded to front door upgrade during that whole lighting thing, but at the front patio, the front door is the number one thing, the number one aspect of your home, of your curb appeal that will give you the best return on investment. The amount of money that you spend a upgrading your entry space, your front door and that entry space is the. Is the best money you can spend. It is. You get the highest return on your investment there. Sometimes we see that that is over 100%. You spend $100 and you get $150 back in value on your home. So this is someplace where you should not hesitate to spend a little bit of money to make the home look better. The entryway, the front door, and all that surrounds the front door.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Yeah. You could consider putting in, you know, really nice door with lights, with a dental rail, maybe. Maybe a transom or side lights. There's a lot of things you can do to your entry, and once you've got the entry picked out, you could pick out a really nice color, nice decorative hardware, maybe a little door knocker on it. Lots of things.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: What about a giant lion's head door knocker? Like, you know, twelve inches by twelve inches. Maybe it growls at you when you knock on the door. Something like that.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: That maybe. Maybe for Halloween.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Great.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: All right, next one list, Tony, is window treatments.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: And it's funny because you talk about curb appeal and there's window, there's exterior window treatments and interior window treatments when you talk about exterior, you're talking about shutters, maybe some window boxes, little decorative trim around the window. You know, when you. When you go to reside a house, I saw a lot of house packs a lot of siding. And a lot of times, builders will take extra time and choose nicer trim for the front of the house than they do for the sides and back. It's very common. And if, depending on when your house was built and who built it and the price level, sometimes builders will choose very, very minimal things for window trim on the front of your house. And it's a bit more money, but you could tear off the trim and put in nicer stuff. You have to flash it properly, recall, paint, all that stuff. It's a project. But if you really want to add curb appeal, the windows are. They can be. They can be a huge hit.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: And not only that, you know, we talked about exterior window treatments, but interior window treatments as well. If you look up at a house and you see a bunch of mini blinds that are broken, kind of half cocked at an angle, you know.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: You know, it does detract from the curb appeal. So having nice blinds, nice curtains from the inside will show through to the outside.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: There are a lot of exterior window trim styles out there that are very cool looking, and it's a little bit more money. But I'll tell you what, if you're looking at the exterior of a home and you're looking at an elaborate window trim, a kind of elaborate window trim design.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: It is. It's a very attractive thing. And you'll be thinking, people will be driving by your house saying, I want my windows to look like that from the outside.
You really can. And it's just a little bit further. If you're. If you're residing or retrimming or considering making a change there, Google something that you like and get after that. You don't have to compromise when it comes to exterior window trim. Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Nice, fat, wide trim.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: You know, and again, I think you have to match the architectural style of your house.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: If you get the big sill and the stool and the architrave and all of that stuff on something that it doesn't fit on, it would just look weird.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So, yeah, but, yeah, you can find a style that you like, and then you can pair it back a little bit, make it a little bit smaller, make it a little bit shorter, and still get the same kind of, you know, look. But be creative with it. That's my opinion.
[00:28:00] Speaker A: I agree.
Your style.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Next one list, Tony, is roof maintenance.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: And I know you've battled this over the years, but making sure that your roof is in good condition, make sure it's not covered in moss. Make sure your gutters don't have flowers and plants growing out of them. Man, I drive through my neighborhood, and it drives me crazy.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: I see so many people with gutters with literal trees coming out of them.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Because they don't do any maintenance on their roof. I can just imagine story houses.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: I can just imagine what's going on at that house in the wintertime when those gutters are full of rainwater.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Oh, well, the water just comes right over the top.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah. It just dumps down on the sidewalk. It's just disaster. I can't imagine living that way. Chaos you're creating.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: When you have gutter problems, you're creating water problems inside of your house. Water's coming in or falling to the ground right next to your foundation and probably undermining it. Might be coming down into your. Your crawl space, if you have one, or your basement. So you want to maintain your gutters for the health of your home, but at the same time maintaining them for curb appeal. It's a big deal. If you see how. I mean, you'll see it if you see a house that's well manicured versus a house that has trees growing out of their gutters.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Right. Absolutely unacceptable.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: All the difference of the world. Next one list. Tony. Fencing.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: And gates.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Fencing and gates again. It's another place where you shouldn't be limited creatively. I mean, if you have a gate and the gate faces the curb, do something fun. Do something that makes it look, you know, like a giant. Kind of like a giant door, maybe. Yeah. Use a couple of six by sixes instead of four by fours. Maybe even wrap them and get a gate on there with a little handle on it. Looks kind of like a door. And paint it up like an entry. I mean, you can make some really cool stuff.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: Of a. Of a gate and doesn't have to just be, you know, a lot of people like to have gates that you can't tell are there. I don't want anybody to know I have a gate. So the fencing on the outside looks exactly the same. It just looks like a fence, unless you look really, really close. But I say celebrate the gate.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree.
It's funny. I have this neighbor, and he put his house on the market recently, and what's funny is he just replaced this fence like it's a corner lot. He replaced the whole fence probably five years ago.
And he put up Doug fir posts. No, just regular Doug fur posts in the ground. Six by six, dug for posts.
And I was like, why on, why on earth would you do that? Dug for rails in the fence. Right. And we put it up. It looked good.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: And I said, I told my wife, I said, that is not gonna last.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: And within three years, four years, the whole thing was rotted and was falling over. And he just rebuilt the entire fence to put it back on the market.
Use the same posts, six by six Doug fir posts.
Bizarre.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, if you're doing something, if you're treating that wood that's going into the ground, like if you're putting a rot block sock or something on the bottom 2ft, and then painting the top and getting a really good solid coat of paint on the top and if the fur is dry, you know, there are some things you could do to make a, a fur fence work, but you can't just throw it up there and spray stain on it, inspect it to last. Yeah. It just won't do it.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: It didn't do it.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Just one more thing on fencing.
Bobby has been telling me how much she wants to consider the possibility of replacing our fencing with horizontal slats.
[00:31:56] Speaker A: Oh, my.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: She really likes the look of horizontal fencing slats.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: That's a cool look.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I've been, I've been thinking about it, maybe.
[00:32:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll tell you. I'm just going to go on a small tangent here. Uh, one of the newest things to hit our market, they've been around forever, but in our market, the Pacific Northwest Portland area, we've gotten the metal posts right.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: It's.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: They've become very popular.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Two and three eighths round.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: Yeah, just round galvanized posts. And then you bury those in the ground and then they have different bracketry that hold the rails and so on and so forth. And then people will wrap the little metal posts or not and have it. So those posts last forever, practically. So I'm surprised that it's taken so long to catch on here, but it, now that it has, it's a pretty good system.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: No, I agree with you. You're right. It's not. They're nothing. They are not priced out of the market at all. They do last for a long time. I can see. I can see that being the way they go.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Twist. Right, man. I installed my fence, probably I don't even know now.
Ten years ago.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: Eight years ago, something like that. And all of my posts just twisted. Yeah, man.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: So I got the same thing going on at my house, which is why we've been talking about fencing so much.
[00:33:23] Speaker A: Recently is what it is. Right.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Front porch or patio enhancements? Maybe even the back. The back patio enhancements. You can't really see the back from the curb, though, can you? No, but front porch or patio enhancements, this is if you've got a front door and you don't have a cover over your front door or over your front patio or over your front porch. I don't know. What's the difference between a porch and a patio? Is there a difference between a porch and a patio?
[00:33:52] Speaker A: I don't know. I need to google it.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Well, if you, sometimes we call the front area the entrance, we call it a porch. Sometimes we call it a patio. I don't really know if there's a difference between a porch and a patio, but if it's not covered, then there's an opportunity. This is not an inexpensive upgrade, but it is an upgrade that will raise the resale value of your home. I guarantee it. Yeah.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: So according to the National association of Realtors, a patio is usually found in the backyard.
It's often made of poured concrete or stone pavers. On the other hand, porches are usually attached to the front of a house and covered by a roof or awning.
There you go.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: Okay. So a porch. A porch cover.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You wouldn't sit front porch cover. I mean, I, on my old house, we used, I guess we had a back porch, but it was a, we always call the porch something raised up off the ground.
I don't know why.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Our back porch.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Well, front porch. Back porch. We're talking mostly about front because of the curb appeal and front porch cover. Front porch cover is a great addition and there's a lot of ways to do that.
But take a look at that possibility. If you don't have a covered entry on your home, add one. That's a great way to increase the resale value of your home.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: I agree. Next one on this, Tony, is mailbox. If you've got a mailbox at the front of your house, either on, maybe it's attached to your house or you have it on a mailbox.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: Maybe it's out at the curb.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe it's out at the curb. Mine is out at my curb along with two other of my neighbors. And it's the worst looking mailbox setup.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: You have a mailbox bank, you have a bank of a bank of boxes.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: And I hate it because it looks terrible. Well, there's, like, tilting, leaning.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: You kind of have two that are the same and then two that are not the same.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: I want to rebuild the whole thing and make it look nice.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: And that's on my list of things to do as part of my curb appeal upgrade.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good idea. I think.
I think that's the first thing people see. I mean, if there's. If they're driving by or standing at the curb, the mailbox is right there.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Especially the mailman. You think the mailman.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: I can see that you agree with me.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: Do you think that mailman judges people based on their mailbox?
[00:36:24] Speaker B: I absolutely do. Yes. I think. I think there's the potential that some, some male people.
Postal people, postal workers. I believe that there is. Some postal workers may very well be judgmental.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: They go home and they say, you're.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: Not gonna leave the mailbox on this person's home.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: It looked like a giant fish.
[00:36:50] Speaker B: It was absurd.
I'm thinking about removing that home from my route. I'm gonna leave a strongly worded letter for them.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: I am going to not deliver their mail on Mondays.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: If you're a postal worker, we kid, we don't really believe any of that to be true.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: I'll bet you there's postal workers that do that.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: No, they probably don't.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: House numbers and address plaque. We know this is something you changed on your home, made a huge difference. I feel like, in your curb appeal, and this is a great idea, I added house numbers to my house, some really big, contrasting colored, and put them right on the post. The front porch post.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah, theyre right.
[00:37:39] Speaker B: And theyre bold. Big, bold and beautiful. Theres a light on them. Theyre really easy to see. Yours also have a light?
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Yeah. When I first moved into my house, I had on my garage entry, my garage door. There was one light on the left. That was it. Just one light. They chinced out and didn't do it. So I added another light on the other side to balance it out. And then the one on the left, I replaced the light block that was sitting on, and I extended it down because the numbers that they had, the house numbers that they had were like those cheap 79 cent ones you buy at the hardware store and just nail them on with those little nails, you know?
[00:38:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: So I got rid of those. I extended that cedar block down, which was like a two by eight, and then it came down, and I got some modern looking numbers, and it really made a huge difference because my house is kind of a mid century modern looking house. It was built in the seventies. I'm not going to say that it's mid century modern, but it's, it has that feel of a mid century modern house.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: More than, more than any other style, I guess. And it really set it off. It looks really good. I'm happy that I did it.
Next one on the list is to pressure wash. This is one of those things that's very inexpensive. Cost you about $4 right now because you need about a full gallon of gas to do it. But you could, if you, if you've got a gas pressure washer or electric pressure washer, clean the sidewalks, clean your driveway. You know, pressure wash your house.
People don't know how much dirt and junk builds up on their house. If you just got it painted within the last ten years and it's looking dingy. Pressure wash it. Be careful. You know, you don't want to blow the paint right off the side of the house or destroy your siding, depending on what kind of siding you have the pressure setting on your heart, on your pressure washer, you need to be careful. And if you don't know how to use a pressure washer, you probably shouldn't start with your house. But setting it using the proper cleaner, spraying it down, you will be shocked at how well your house will look when you're done.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: I agree. You're absolutely right. Just use caution.
[00:39:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
Vinyl siding. Pressure washer. Blow holes right through it.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's the, the order of the day is to use caution. The pressure washers or power washers, some people call them power washers. If you get them, if you turn it up too high or you use the wrong nozzle, you know, a fan nozzle is the way to go. Not one of those, you know, pinpoint. Yeah. Pinpoint needle. Because you can etch your name right in the concrete driveway. Yeah. With one of those things.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: And you think you might be being cute, you're like, oh, write my name in here. But a lot of times you're, you've scored the concrete right. And you can't get that out ever again.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Yeah. That water comes out of there so hard and so fast that you can peel the paint off the car. You can, you can cut the grout right out of the tile, or you can remove the concrete from, from, between the aggregate and, and you won't, you know, you'll be trying to figure out how to repair it after. So be really careful with that.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Stay 16 to 24 inches away from the thing you're spraying. Make sure you use a fan type nozzle and. And make sure that you keep the pressure, you know, not at max, you know, somewhere down lower.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: Some pressure washers are adjustable at the tip. You can rotate them to create the fan or, you know, pull them in and out. Mine has that adjustable tip. Some don't. Some you have to physically take the tip off and put a different one on. So just make sure you know what you're getting into and maybe test it out a little bit before you start cleaning up your house. I've seen posts, social media posts, where people have said, oh, my goodness, I need help. I used the wrong tip and I cleaned my deck and basically ruined it. Ruined an entire deck because they didn't know how to adjust the tip and clean it properly.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: So very important.
So the last item on the list here, Corey, is garden features. And my first thought is gnome.
[00:42:08] Speaker A: Garden gnome.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Garden gnome. Do you have a garden gnome?
[00:42:10] Speaker A: I don't. What do you.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I have like six. How do you not have a gnome in your, in your landscaping somewhere?
[00:42:19] Speaker A: I don't think it fits my architecture.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Gnomes everywhere are saddened to hear this exact thing from you.
They're good luck. You should go out and get a garden gnome to watch over your landscaping. He will keep it safe. I can think of a few things that have happened to your landscaping over the last couple of years. I know you'd have probably been better served if you'd had a gnome.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: Saving, protecting. Yep. Saving and protecting. We actually, I need to show you this.
We actually have, my wife bought a little topiary, fake topiary thing and put it in our front. It's not a gnome, but it looks like a dog.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: It looks like a dog plant.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: It looks like our dog.
[00:43:06] Speaker B: Oh, it really?
[00:43:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's like a fake plasticky.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Ah, interesting.
[00:43:09] Speaker A: But it looks like a plant. Topiary. Stick it in the ground and it looks like a puppy dog. That's pretty funny.
[00:43:15] Speaker B: That is cool. I could. On a serious note, recently we picked up these solar lights, and what it is is it's a single stem, but what comes out of it are like branches. And on these branches are these tiny little bud shaped lamps, little lights, and it comes and sprouts out and you just put it right in the middle of your plants, wherever it is, and it's solar. And so when you look out into your yard, you see the plants and there's just glowing, little, little glowing array of lights just right in the middle of the, of the flowers or whatever. Yeah. They're pretty inexpensive and they work really good. They kind of blow in the wind. It's cool. They look good.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Some other features might be a water fountain, maybe a water feature or a birdbath.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Bird bathe.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: One of the things I want to do in my front yard, and I've talked about this on the show probably too many times, but I want to put in a dry riverbed and I'm excited to do that. So I'm going to need the name of your rock guy.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: And I'm going to get a whole bunch of them delivered.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: Nice. That will be awesome. Then, of course, the last thing is remember to all of the changes that you make. Whatever changes that you make, continue to maintain them regularly and keep them looking as good as they did the day that you installed them. And you will always be happy with how the things look when viewing your home from the curb.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for listening. If you want to send this to a friend, if they need some help with their curb appeal, maybe send it to them. They'll have a listen.
If you got any questions or comments, you can email tony and
[email protected]. that's parr.com. send us a question. We'll try to get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next week.
