Speaker 1 00:00:04 Welcome to the Weekend, warriors Home Improvement Show, built by Par Lumber when it comes to big or small projects around the home. Tony and Corey, you've got the know-how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Here they are, your weekend Warriors, Tony and Corey.
Speaker 2 00:00:24 Hey, welcome to the Weekend,
Speaker 1 00:00:26 Warriors Home Improvement
Speaker 2 00:00:27 Show podcast. I'm Corey Valdez. And I'm Tony Crookston. Thanks for hanging out with us today. We're, uh, back in the recording studio. We've got another great show lined up for you today. We're gonna talk about summer projects because man, oh man, is it getting hot? It is. I'll tell you what, I have noticed a huge change in the weather. And it's weird because in the Pacific Northwest we have this, this winter sort of just kept droning on. Oh my goodness. Yes. And we were in April and still getting snow showers. Oh yeah. I was in April. I was driving over to Bend from Portland, so I was going over the Sanam pass, uh, several times in March, April. And even in May, we were getting pounded with snow. It was crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. But now there has been 180 degree flip. It is hot and it's hot outside.
Speaker 2 00:01:19 It's 90 something degrees out today. And you know, I'll be honest, I I like it. I like the heat. Uh, I'm tired of the cold. I'm ready for this sunny, sunny weather. No, I agree with you. I do like it too because, uh, it, well, obviously it gives us a lot of things. It gives us longer days and the ability to get so much more done with the light provided by the sun. And in one day, you know, when you have to leave a project and then come back to it at five o'clock. Yeah. And, and that's the thing. Whatever time that it is that you have to leave the project, you have to wrap up. And then when you come back to it, you have to roll out mm-hmm. <affirmative> and then you have to wrap up again. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there's so much, um, of that that you avoid.
Speaker 2 00:02:06 If you can get it all done in one block of time, there's nothing more frustrating to me, to me than coming home from work at 5, 5 30 and having it be dark. Right. And then trying to start a project that you've been working on that you just try, you're just trying to finish and it's just so dark and you're getting lights out. It's just annoying and frustrating. Yeah. And then, you know, and then you throw into that rain. Right. <laugh>. Right. Which, which makes trying to do anything outside more difficult. Yeah. Outdoor projects more complicated on pause. Right. As far as I'm concerned. But here, but not anymore. It is summertime, summer, summer, summer, summer, summertime. Summer, summertime, summer. And we can start our projects and take our time and get them done. And the only thing we have to worry about is heat exhaustion and dehydration.
Speaker 2 00:02:53 <laugh>, do you have any summer projects ready or lined up or, or anything that you want to get done or around your house? Um, you know, oddly, um, the projects that I do have lined up are inside <laugh>. So they really should be winter projects. But, um, uh, but I didn't get to them. Uh, you know, we have, we had a lot going on, I guess. And so I do have projects lined up, but um, they're all inside. The big ones are inside. We'll do a little bit outside of course, you know, we have a little water feature in the backyard that, uh, takes a little bit of damage every winter and has to be sort of maintenance. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, uh, you gotta get that little pump and, you know, and work on it a little bit and, uh, clean all the green.
Speaker 2 00:03:39 Yeah. And then, you know, some things that have a tendency to collect on the back patio, under the back patio cover, you know, that you didn't want to be in the rain. And so those things need to get back out to their home, kind of push the grill back out to the edge of the patio cover and not, you know, under the middle because we get sideways rain in the, in the Pacific Northwest. I know, you know, recently I got all my furniture out, uncovered it, I put the umbrella up. It just feels really nice to get that done and Yeah. You know, get the barbecue area cleaned up cuz it gets covered in, you know, just junk all winter long. So Yeah. Getting it all nice and ready for the summers. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice. And we need to, um, we need to get out there and do some weed management as well.
Speaker 2 00:04:26 We have a lot of weeds popping up in places where we don't want them and so we need to go out there and do some weed management. You know, now is the best time. Actually a month ago was the best time to jump on weeds because if you get 'em before they sprout, that's really the key. You wanna s you know, put your, your weed and feed out in the springtime and get it before they pop out of the ground. Cuz once they pop up out of the ground, it's, it's a losing battle. You're always battling the weeds all summer long as they're coming up. But if you prevent them from coming up, you're way ahead. So if you can jump on that earlier in the year, next year, you'll be much happier. You know, put that, like, a lot of people will use preen in their garden beds Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 00:05:12 In areas. So we'll put that, we'll throw that down in our bark dust areas in the spring. So then weeds, they don't stand a chance. They won't even come up all summer long. It's nice. Yeah. It's smart. My, I still have some moss ah, on my, on my driveway. I have a huge driveway. I feel like it's so big. It's not bigger than your forehead takes a lot of maintenance and so we need to deal with some, some driveway moss. Yeah. So I need to get the pressure washer out and uh, do a little driveway maintenance. I gotta fill some cracks. I got some cracks in the driveway. You know, it's about 20 years old and it just, uh, you just have to keep, you gotta keep maintaining those cracks. Well, and if you don't, they just get worse. Oh, get worse. They become caverns.
Speaker 2 00:05:55 You know, you end up with, uh, you end up with ants that are traveling to the center of the earth down underneath your, your driveway. Yeah. You gotta be really careful with that. Ant condos. Yeah. <laugh>, you know, in my backyard I have a big paver patio, big paver patio. And between, over the years, between all each block it gets built up with dirt. You know, you put that paver lock sand in there. Yeah. And it, it kind of creates like a, almost like a heavy grout. It's very hard and it doesn't allow that stuff to build up and create moss. Right. Well, over the years it does wash out and then it fills back in with dirt, which is excellent for moss to grow in. And so I have areas on my patio where is, I mean, ev between every brick is moss, like thick moss.
Speaker 2 00:06:49 So about a month ago I went out with some, I think it's 30 seconds outdoor cleaner. And I got it in a pump sprayer and I sprayed my whole patio down and that worked fantastic. It killed the moss. It killed all the moss and I didn't have to pressure wash it, which is fantastic cuz running the pressure washer on, you know, a 3000 square foot patio is Oh, yeah. Ridiculous. Not to mention all of the changing contours and you end up spraying yourself in the face like 2 million times. Oh yeah. Well, and it actually makes it worse because you're, when you're brushing, washing a patio like that, you're, you know, you're knocking that dirt or the sand lock out there even more. Yeah. So then it's, we have a pretty good sized fan for that. Right? Yeah, exactly. And actually have a patio attachment for my pressure washer.
Speaker 2 00:07:40 It's round. Yeah. Has a, a spinning brush on the inside. It's pretty sweet actually. Yeah. But it doesn't make doing a large area like that easy enough. No, no. It's still a lot of work. Work. Still a lot of work. Right. 30 seconds outdoor cleaner. Yeah. That's a good part. Highly recommend. Yeah. Cool. I like that. Smart. Anyway, so today we're gonna talk about projects that you can be doing in the summertime, some of which Tony and I are gonna be working on this summer. Hopefully you can go, uh, check out our YouTube channel. We'll be putting some of those on there. We'll try and record as much as we can. Yeah. We've got all kinds of projects going up there. If you ever want to check out the YouTube, it's uh, YouTube slash WW home show. Um, we're also on Instagram. We're at WW Home Show.
Speaker 2 00:08:22 You can go find us there. Or if you search Par Lumber, you can go to par p a r r.com and our links are all on there. If you do want to email us, we'd love to hear from you. If you got questions or comments, we are weekend
[email protected]. It's plural Weekend Warriors at par. P a rrr.com. Yeah. All right. The first one on my list, Tony, and this is one that I'm actually going to try and do this summer, is build a patio cover. Yes. I don't have a patio cover over my main patio because it's huge and I do already, I built a barbecue cover, which it's not big, it's probably like four foot by six foot. And recently we were over some friend's house and a friend's house and they have a big patio cover and my wife was like, I want this.
Speaker 2 00:09:12 Yeah. She wants to put a couch outside <laugh>, she wants, you know what I mean? She wants to be able to hang out out there Yeah. For a majority of the year. So I said, okay, so I have to design and build a patio cover and, you know, here's some things that I am, have been thinking about and maybe you can give me some input, Tony, on, because you built one on the back of your house. Yeah. A few years ago. Yeah. And it's amazing. It's a big old chunky fella, isn't it? We built it out a six by 1220s and, uh, six by six posts. Six by six posts with four by 12 beams and yeah, yours is more of a timber frame style right. Is what I would call that. Yeah, yeah. It really is. It's very blocky, chunky, rustic, uh, timber frame.
Speaker 2 00:09:58 Yeah. And it's a gable style. Right. So on the side of your house or on the back of your house, you've two story, you have a lot of room up there. So what you did, and you did it right, you cut back the siding, you put a ledger, you installed a ledger onto the house with flashing, and then when you roofed it, the, the roofers actually flashed it against the house so no water can get behind the patio cover. Right. It's very important when you're considering building one, you don't want to just slap something on the side of the house and nail it up there or bolt it on there because you are creating a water disaster waiting to happen. Sure. Yep. Absolutely. So there's lots of ways to build a patio cover. You know, you can build it free standing, you can build four posts, post it up, beams, roof, joice, trusses, however you wanna do that.
Speaker 2 00:10:49 You do have to consider what they call lateral, uh, stability. So there are different methods. You can either dig a hole, three, four feet down, drop a post in the ground, and that will give you a lot of lateral stability. Um, or you can, you can buy Simpson strong tie. They make a post, it's called an M P B B four or six, A moment base A moment base. It's very tall and it actually adds a lot of that lateral structural support for a patio or a Pergo or anything like that. It's very important because if you were to just build it and set it in a standard little post base that Simpson makes sure it's gonna be, it's gonna hold up a lot of weight, but laterally. And what I mean by that is that sheer load that if you were to push on it side to side, is it gonna rock back and forth?
Speaker 2 00:11:45 Right. Is the wind gonna capture it and start pushing it around? And it might be strong at first because your nails are all in there, or your bolts and you're lagged, it's all together and it's strong, but over the years, is it gonna be right, you know, in a year or two years, are you gonna be able to push that thing wr apart? Yeah. It's gonna rack back and forth mm-hmm. <affirmative> and it won't be structurally sound anymore. So if you're building a patio, co patio cover, especially if it's a larger one, you know, if you've got a 10 by 20 or something like that, that's a pretty significant piece of framing. Right. So you would wanna make sure that, you would wanna make sure whether or not you are expected to have a permit. Right. Is it a permittable project? Here's the facts. Or every jurisdiction's likely to have their own rules.
Speaker 2 00:12:33 Yeah. You be careful there. I'm gonna give, yeah, I'm gonna give you an example of what a jurisdiction might say. It might sound something like this. If you are attaching it to an exterior wall on your home and it's less than 200 square feet, then you don't need to have a permit for that project that, that could say something like that. And if it is over 200 square feet and is not attached to the exterior wall of your home, then a permit is required. You were talking about having a freestanding, whether it's an A frame or a shed style roof. Um, freestanding definitely requires, um, more consideration. Right. My, my, what I intend to build on my house is different than yours. You, you built that a frame, you know, gable style timber frame. I think what I'm going to do is I'm gonna use a product called a patio roof riser, or a sky lift, sky lift.
Speaker 2 00:13:32 They make these, these basically these brackets like a standoff bracket Yeah. Where you cut a hole in your roof and you're roof sheeting, you're roof sheathing, you're roofing in roof sheathing right over your top plate. So you'll see, you know, you have a little overhang on your roof, and then where it goes back and your ex where meet your exterior wall, you would start there and cut a hole in your roof deck to expose through the framing, the roof framing truss, whatever. Let's call that a six inch by six inch square Yeah. Hole. And you look down and you see the top plate of your roof, your exterior wall, or of your, sorry, of your exterior wall through your roof. Right. So you would reach down in there and you would bolt that bracket down to that top plate, which gives you a very sturdy, uh, support.
Speaker 2 00:14:21 Yeah. It's lagged. Yeah. It's lagged down. It's a very sturdy support for your, that right under your exterior wall. And then it comes out of there and it has a little saddle bracket up top, and then you set a beam down inside of that. Right. You do two of those or three of those. Yeah. Depending on how long your run is. Exactly. However, in, in really you could span, you know, you could get a big beam and span it, but the, the more brackets you put in, the more supports you put in the smaller beam you can put in. Right. So you'd want to talk to a professional and get the beams CalEd out, get your roof, CalEd out the truss, whatever you're gonna do there. Um, but that's my idea. I want to use those brackets. I'm gonna come up, I'm gonna put a beam and I'm gonna do a shed style roof down, put a couple posts at the end and I'll probably end up digging holes and putting in sono tube, which is, uh, like a cardboard tube that you fill with concrete mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:15:15 <affirmative> and create a, a nice solid support down on the end. And it's gonna go up, you know, obviously eight feet or so. Yeah. Up to the roof deck, another, you know, and it'll be a couple feet above that. So it'll probably be 12 feet off the ground over there, creating that nice shed style roof. So couple of the considerations there, you know, do I want skylights in it? Is it gonna create too much darkness on the back of my house? Yeah. That is one of the things that, you know, in Oregon <laugh>, we, it's a, it is a, a priceless commodity. Right, right. Sunlight, light. Sunlight is, as soon as you get it, you wanna see it. It's the time. The most precious thing. Yeah. So if you're putting a big patio cover off the back of your house, is it gonna block off all your sunlight?
Speaker 2 00:15:59 So if that's the case, you can add skylights to, to get, you know, to get you some addeds on like, or you can build the roof out of sun. Tough. There's a products made out of polycarbonate, it's clear it comes, or different colors it has, you know, there's a smoke color or you know, just different colors that you can buy that's 100% clear. So you can have the whole thing just almost like, it's not even there. It's more of like a roof or a a, a rain prevents the rain coming out. Yeah. This is, it's like corrugated roofing, just like metal corrugated roofing that you see on a barn or a shop or a shed. Except instead of being metal, it's plastic. It's, yeah, it's plastic, it's polycarbonate, which is a lot stronger than plastic. Right. As a matter of fact, it's virtually unbreakable. That's how they mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:16:45 <affirmative> market the product virtually unbreakable, very strong, durable. Um, but it's clear eight inch polycarbonate will stop at 22. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, so it's strong, it's strong stuff and it's clear. So it lets a lot of light through or you can get it, like you said, smoked, uh, that was let a little bit less light through, but it would be so much more lighted than a solid roof with plywood in composition or something along those lines. Yeah. You know, so there's that, there's, you could build on a sun tough metal com composition roofing, like Tony said, those are the choices you'd have to make, you know, um, some of the other ones are the considerations you want to think about are, are the underside. Right. So I've, I've sold patio covers thousands of them over the years. You know, I've had this conversation with people over and over and over, especially if they're di wires right.
Speaker 2 00:17:34 Weekend warriors. They want to do it as cheap as possible. So they buy, you know, framing lumber, and then they buy the cheapest OSB to throw on top of it. And it's like, well now you're gonna see OSB right from the underside, you're gonna look up and see B and here's the thing. You, you might look at bare wood and say, well, it's bare wood, it's fine, I'll paint it or I'll stain it or whatever. Here's the thing. Low grade framing quality, bare wood does not age like high quality, you know, select for appearance, bare wood. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they age differently. Folks. They take finishes differently. Everything about them is different. You can't put standard exterior grade plywood up there and then paint it and expect it to look like an AC grade plywood. Right. There are, there are different grades of plywood that paint better, that stain better, that are, that look better, that are meant to be exposed and, but they're also more expensive.
Speaker 2 00:18:36 Correct. So if you were to throw a product up there and then paint it, you just, you might not be happy with the results. You're likely to not be happy with the results. Right. So there are other things you can do. You know, you can put, instead of say two by material for your roof rafters, you can use four by say four by six or four by eight further apart on center, you know, so maybe not necessarily 16 or 24 on center. You could do maybe four by eights as your roof beans that are say 40 inches on center. And then you can use two by six tongue and groove. What's called select deck for the roofing surface. Right. Which is exposed to the underneath side. Right. And the nice part about that, and it's huge product. Yeah. The nice part about that, in which I didn't talk about just a second ago, but if you use thinner plywood to sheet and you're using that as your finished surface, right.
Speaker 2 00:19:31 You look up, okay, I see plywood, I'm just gonna paint it looks good. Okay. Then you have the roofer come out and if they use the wrong thickness of nails, which they will and yeah, it's very possible those will blow through the bottom side. You know, a lot of this is important. A lot of roofers will tell you this exact thing, Corey, they'll say, you don't want your roofing nail to terminate inside of the plywood because water that runs down the nail and ends inside the plywood will rot your plywood. Interesting. You want water that will run down the nail through the plywood and drip off the end of the nail, which is poking through the sheeting of your roofing. Interesting. So they won't buy nails that terminate inside the plywood. Cheating. Yeah. They will poke through. They will always poke through. Yeah. Staples will always poke through roof, nails will always poke through.
Speaker 2 00:20:25 And I'll tell you right now, that's ugly. It is ugly. You're gonna look up, you're gonna see a bunch of nails, it's just not gonna be looking. And then you're gonna decide that you want to, you know, cover all of the underneath side. Right. And that's what I was getting at. And now you're doubling down on money and material. Yeah. That's what I'm, so what I'm probably gonna do is sheet the whole thing with standard roof sheathing, osb, let's say. And then I'm gonna use on the underside, like a one by six tongue and groove or a plywood, you know, a, a soffit plywood that's going to look nice or a, or an lp. Yeah. You just lp maybe just a soffit material. One of my builders right now has switched to a detail where they're actually doing almost like, I dunno what you would call it, it's not really a board and bat, but they're basically putting plywood up and then they're using battens up there to cover all the seams.
Speaker 2 00:21:18 Right. And all of the nails essentially with a four, a two foot on center baton. So it creates like this grid basically up there. Okay. And it almost painted and it looks fantastic. I can picture that as a matter of fact. Yeah, I can picture that actually. That sounds like it would look good. So if there's a lot to consider there. You know, what I would caution you against is what we just talked about, putting the plywood up there and just trying to use that as a finished grade. And just like the lumber, if you were to buy two by 10 or two by 12 roof rafters, two and better, they're gonna have Wayne on 'em. I'm gonna, Wayne, if you don't know what that is, you can watch our ling lumberyard lingo video, but it's basically the bark of the tree at the edge of the tree.
Speaker 2 00:22:03 You're gonna see that, you're gonna see knots, you're gonna see knot holes. That's pretty standard in framing lumber. I'm gonna take you one step further. Whatever you do. Don't buy green lumber. Ugh. Yeah. You know, lumber yards out there, like Par Lumber, they sell green lumber for framing. It's intended to be used under Sheetrock where it cannot be seen or handled and it's structurally sound. But, um, but it, green lumber will, um, have pitch in it and that pitch will come out and it will be a mess, a disaster. Do not use green lumber. Uh, we sell dry lumber. We sell dry lumber for select for appearance. No free of, free of heart center, no, Wayne. Um, really nice stuff that is still not really a bank breaker. Not really. Right. Yeah. I mean, honestly, most of our at par lumber anyway, we don't even sell green two by anything bigger than two by six anymore.
Speaker 2 00:23:02 I think all of our yards, two by eight, two by 10, two by 12 are all dry. Yeah. But it is still framing and it's, it's available though. It's not a finish quality of two by framing material. That being said, we can buy from our vendors premium grade select lumber Right. In stock at those locations. That's what you would've wanted to use if you wanted something exposed. You know, same thing goes for the beams. If you're gonna buy a four by 12 or a six by 12 beam, slap it up there and expect to paint it a, it's probably gonna be green. And when I mean green, like Tony said, it's it's not dried. Yeah. It has a high moisture content. Right. It could have over 20, 23, 20 5% moisture content and it's not gonna take paint very well. It's gonna look like framing lumber. It's gonna dump pitch.
Speaker 2 00:23:55 I mean, if I'm being honest with you, some dry lumber is gonna dump pitch. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's, it's gonna be a lot less, but, uh, you definitely don't wanna put yourself in that spot. Yeah. Pitch Dr. Dripping all over everywhere. Oh yeah. So in that application, you know, I would recommend buying a, a nice, what we would call free of heart center select KD Douglas fur in our area. Anyway, other, other parts of the country would use something different. Right. You know, shoot over in the Midwest you can't even buy six by 12. It's not even a thing. You would have to use like a double or a triple two by 12 gang lamb. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's just like a triple two by 12 is their beam that they nail together. Yeah. But here anyway, you can buy glue lamb, there's lots of different things you can do.
Speaker 2 00:24:42 You can talk to your local lumber yard, go to your local par lumber and talk about caling out a beam that works, that will span. And the same thing goes for the posts out at the end. So the further the span between supports is also will, will determine the beam size. But there's a third part of that calculation and that is the span back to the house. Right. You can imagine your beam sitting out there, say it's 20 foot long and you've got two posts and it's spanning 20 feet. Well if you have that sitting at the house and it's, and it's only a six foot patio or a six foot six foot porch cover, let's say, what do you think is gonna hold more weight or have more weight on that beam? A six foot Or if you move that out 20 feet, right?
Speaker 2 00:25:36 Right. So much more 20 feet out, so much more. It's called tributary loading. Right. So you have to calculate how much the actual roofing surface has and then divide it out and then calculate how much load per square foot is going to land on that beam. And the bigger the patio, the larger the spans, the bigger the wood is going to be needed to support it. Right. And then the bigger your beam becomes, the bigger your posts must become. Right. So lots of things to consider. So if you get out there and you've got capacity to put, say in a 20 foot span, three posts instead of two, which sometimes you don't want because you know, you just don't want that many posts. Right. But if you can, you're gonna save yourself some money. Sure. Cuz you can make that beam quite a bit smaller out there.
Speaker 2 00:26:29 So anyway, the other things to consider might be electrical speakers a fan. Yes. Heating a fan, lights, gutters. Ooh, gutters not electrical really, but it is something to consider. Right. Water management away. You have to think about that. Well, you're suggesting that there's gonna be a rain <laugh>. Well, if you're living in the Pacific Northwest, I'm telling you right now, there's gonna be rain, there's gonna be rain, and you definitely wanna manage that water. Absolutely. Alright, next one on the list, Tony. Okay. We're that's patio covers. That's it. Patio covers. Well, I think so. Well, I mean, we have one on our list actually is almost more about patio cover more so how patio covers <laugh>. You know, it's, uh, you know, when you live in a place where it rains a lot and you want to be outside of the house, a patio cover is invaluable.
Speaker 2 00:27:15 I mean, it's absolutely invaluable. I agree. And if you can't tie your gutters into a rain drain, then maybe consider, this is the last thing I wanna say. If you can't tie your gutters or your downspouts into a rain drain, then consider maybe a dry, what do you call that? A dry Well, oh yeah. A, you know, a two foot by two foot by two foot dry well field. Oh, bio sw, bio sw filled with, um, with large river rock maybe. Um, so because that can, that can hold a lot of water, give the, give the ground a chance to do what it needs to do with the water while it's coming. That's a really popular thing to do in Portland now, is actually, you know, waste management services and clean water services. They want you to take all of the water that's coming off of your property or anything new and run it through a bio sw and essentially all that does is it slows down the amount of water entering into the system to reduce the volume at any one time.
Speaker 2 00:28:20 Right. So yeah. The more hard surfaces we have, the more water diverting we do mm-hmm. <affirmative> the more large amounts at one time we're introducing into the system, which, you know, is problematic. Yeah. You're creating, you know, <laugh> a lot more volume of water. Right. Yeah. And that's probably why most jurisdictions have these codes in these building permits that are required to talk that, that basically determine how much hard surface you can have. Because the more hard surface you have, the less dirt there is. Yeah. You're just, bam, you're throwing it right into the system. Bam. All right. Let's go to the next thing. What else we got? Well, creating an outdoor living space. Ooh. Build a patio cover <laugh> <laugh>. Well, you know, let's say you already have one. Okay. You know, Tony, you already have a ba out, you know, outdoor patio cover.
Speaker 2 00:29:12 I do. So you could turn that into an outdoor living space. You could put up some, uh, some plants and some comfy furniture. You know, create that cozy atmosphere and shade. What if you've got the sun and it's going down, you know, you could put up curtains and Oh yeah. It's eating. Yeah. Maybe, uh, a, maybe a shade that you roll up. Yes. Right. Yes. And then you just, you just let it down and maybe it just gives you some break from the direct sunlight. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, still lets some light through, still lets some warmth through, but, uh, just knocks the edge off a little bit of that direct sunlight. Absolutely. That's a great idea. I I see those, um, very cool things. You know, they just roll up just like a, just like a shade on a window in the house.
Speaker 2 00:29:55 Yeah, absolutely. Alright. Right. Next one on the list is to install an outdoor water feature. Do you have any one of these, Tony? I not I do. I have a water feature. It's very old. Uh, my father-in-law made it for me a long, long, long time ago. Um, it's looks like, um, it looks like an old gold mine. Right. It's like a minesh shaft, kinda like a mineshaft. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it's got a little pair of, uh, railroad tracks is all made out of wood. The little pair of railroad tracks that roll into the, you know, into the mine shaft. It's got a sign on it that says, you know, gold mine beware. Flooded gold mine. Yeah. And, um, and it's, and it's got a, it's built with a two by 10 sort of, you know, base kind of thing that's lined with plastic and holds, I don't know, probably 30 or so gallons of water.
Speaker 2 00:30:44 And then it has a, one of those, um, wheels that spins. Right. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so the water pump The water wheel, yeah. Water wheel. The water pump pumps the water up out of a hose into the water wheel, which fills up each one of the little things. Spins the water wheel, the water dumps it back in the pool at the bottom. And uh, and that continues. So it's very cool. I like it when it's running. Uh, you know, running water is soothing, of course everyone knows that. But, um, it's a very cool little very, um, antique feeling sort of part of our yard and, and it requires maintenance. Yeah. A couple of the pieces of the mine fall apart or the wheels fall off the mine card or whatever has, it requires maintenance to keep it up and going, but yeah. But, um, I'm always super happy when I get that water running again and, and it's, uh, it, it's very peaceful.
Speaker 2 00:31:37 A coi pond. I feel like a coi pond in itself is a hobby. You know what I mean? It's so much work. I have a, I have a friend who had one, he bought a house and it had one and when they bought it, it was beautiful. It was clean and they have two kids and it always worried 'em, cause this was a big coy pond. I mean it was, I don't even know a gallon wise, but it was probably eight foot wide by 15 foot long, something like that. It was really big. Yeah. In the, the fishing in it were pretty big. And after a few years of having it, they took it out. They sold the fish to somebody or gave 'em to somebody and just filled it in because it was so much work that they didn't have time for it. And they were worried about their kids cuz it didn't have any sort of fence around it.
Speaker 2 00:32:26 It was probably, yeah. You know, a good 18, 20 inches deep. So little toddler walking around back there, it always scared him. But my neighbors have one and it's the same thing. You go over there and they're just constantly working on the COI pond and they have, you know, they're always worried about cranes. Oh really? Yeah. The cranes will come in and just eat the fish right out of 'em. Wow. My friend who had that coi pond fish or coy pond, they actually lost a few fish to cranes. They come down and they just sit there and boo. There goes your coi. Yikes. See ya, you lose some money that way real quick. Absolutely. So then, then he went down this path of trying to cover it and put different netting and all of these crazy things. My neighbor, my neighbor's coy pond, they have that, they have like this, um, very strong vinyl net over the coy pond.
Speaker 2 00:33:24 Interesting. I'm like, that's so dumb. <laugh>. Yeah. You can't, I think it looks dumb. Yeah. Interesting. That's interesting. Got pond people out there mad. My dad, uh, had a big water feature. Uh, he lived up on the hill and had a big, big rock water feature. You know, it was about 30 feet tall. Um, and it went up the back, um, up the hill in the backyard and he had big boulders and, and a big, a big pump that would pump the water all the way up to the top and it would run like a waterfall all the way down. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then down to the bottom it would dump into a pond, a little pond that was about, I don't know, eight by 10, let's say eight by 12 maybe. And, um, it was all framed out a big rock. And he had a rubber mat in there and he had, um, he had some little fish in there, but one time a frog ended up laying some eggs in the air and I think into frogs, sl eggs.
Speaker 2 00:34:17 I don't even know how that works. Yeah, of course. And then there ended up being a bunch of tadpoles, and then the tadpoles turned into a whole bunch of frogs. And then he had like an infestation of frogs. He had a frog pond. He had a frog pond. Uh, and then another thing we did, we went fishing down at the, down at the lake, not too far away and caught some, um, some little fi like a bluegill, caught some little bluegill fish and brought them back alive and put them in mm-hmm. <affirmative> his mm-hmm. <affirmative> pond, which, and they, you know, they ended up living in there. He called it flipper. One of, at least one of them flipper. Yeah. I mean, it can be a lot of fun. It doesn't have to be expensive. And if you catch a fish at the lake and you bring it back and put it in there and a crane comes and takes it, well you didn't, you're not out anything <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:35:02 But if you're spending a lot of money on coy fish and you know, then I guess that's a different story. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm not a coy person, but I do know that some coy are ridiculously expensive. Interesting. So, very interesting. Well, on to the next <laugh> anyway. Yeah. So, uh, little outdoor water feature. Next one on the list would be to build a pergola. You know, a pergola is, can be very similar to a patio cover, right. So you could build a pergola, but it's open. Is it, is a perga always open or just a traditional Perla is open? You know, I don't know. I'm gonna Google this and, and I say that because of this. If you bought or built, um, a free standing structure that covered your hot tub, and let's say it was eight by eight mm-hmm. <affirmative> mm-hmm. <affirmative> or 10 by 10 like mine.
Speaker 2 00:36:01 Yeah. Yeah. But, but yours of course is made out of metal and, but if you build one that just covered your, would you call that a pergola? I mean, you wouldn't call it a patio cover. Well, but it's structure. It is. I mean, mine is mine. The one I have over my hot tub. It opens and closes. So it has louvered the loured roof on it. Right. Something it opens up when it's sunny and you can close it down when it's raining. Right. Um, but I don't know, I guess you could call it a perla. You could call it Perla. What about a gazebo? Does that have to be eight sighted to be a gazebo? You know, an actual, an actual terminology? I don't know. Yeah. So yeah, I mean it's interesting. There are a lot of terms for small structures that you use to cover areas.
Speaker 2 00:36:49 You see these gazebos, um, have a tendency to look to me to be square. Artistry says that the main difference between a pergo and a gazebo is the function of the roof. A pavilion, a gazebo, and a pavilion provide full coverage from the sun while a pergola allows for sunlight to shine through its sled roof. Okay. So a gazebo that's not, um, octagonal is a pavilion. Yeah. That's really, so I am seriously considering a pavilion over my hot tub <laugh>, but I might not build it outta wood. I might go and I might go online and buy one made out of aluminum. Yeah. That's 12 by 12 or something and assemble it. What I think of what I'm hearing, assembly report the term pavilion. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think of like those big buildings and campsites. You know, you can rent a pavilion for your Sure, sure.
Speaker 2 00:37:44 I mean, those are kids' birthday party. The difference there, Corey, is that those are big pavilions. You want, you want a micro, I want pav, I want a small pavilion <laugh> just a small pavilion over my hot tub. Yeah. And every time you have people, they're like, oh, nice patio cover. Excuse me, it's a pavilion. <laugh>. It's a pavilion. Don't be, don't be silly. Don't. What are you thinking? <laugh>? Uh, yeah. In, in such pavilion you could hang outdoor curtains and awnings and shades. Sure. You know? Yeah. And in, you know, all that stuff. Put some sh I mean, if you had it, uh, over top of your hot tub, you know, a a little set of shelves or racking or something to hold dry towels and other, um, things that you need for I will hot tub. I'll say, I will say when you're doing hot tubs, there are typically sets of rules in regards to codes and permits when it comes to electrical things around a hot tub.
Speaker 2 00:38:42 Okay. You're not allowed to have anything electrical like lighting within like six feet. Okay. Interesting. Of the hot tub. Interesting. Or over hanging the hot tub even because you are, you can create a situation where you're sitting in a tub of water and you could get electrocuted. Yeah. So you wanna buy a hot tub that has lights in it. That is correct. Or you do some midnight hot tub in just dark, always dark. And you don't, you, you just have to wonder what's in the hot tub with you. Yeah. Probably gonna be, you know, some of those, some dark creatures. Yeah. You never know. <laugh>. All right. Uh, next one on the list in when it's hot outside, you can paint the house. Yes. It's always a good idea to paint your house when it's, especially if it's peeling, if it's old and cracked. One of the ways to keep your siding a long time, whether it's lp, hardy cedar, whatever you have, is to keep a good coat of paint on it through the years before you decide that you need to paint the entire house.
Speaker 2 00:39:50 You will probably have been doing touch up paint for a while. You'll first see the paint starting to thin or starting to peel or starting to flake in, uh, in some areas. And then you will of course go and touch up those areas. You'll do a lot of exterior touch up paint before you decide this is more than touch up. Now it's time to get the entire house repainted. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But if you are going from an entire house repaint to an entire house repaint, you are missing an opportunity to save some money by just touching up the areas that are starting to fade. And caulking very important to look at the caulking around all of your windows and doors every time you, you do that because if you start to see caulking that's cracked, water is getting in and it is creating issues behind your siding, it's gonna happen.
Speaker 2 00:40:52 So it's a good idea to check the caulking, scrape it out and reapply new sealant. Like NP one 50 Master Seal. It's a probably the best one of the market. Uh, quad Max is another good one. You want to use an upgraded new cuing. Cuz some of those old ones like Volcom, remember Vum, Tony, it was state of the art 25 years ago, but they've realized over the years that having a 100% polyurethane base doesn't last very long. Well the problem is it dries and cracks. Yeah. It's got so much so it's got so many VOCs in there. Yeah. That it, uh, it off gasses and when it off gasses, it shrinks, and when it shrinks, it separates. And, um, and then it fails essentially. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that's what's happening. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. A hundred percent. Yeah. We used to think it was phenomenal and, and I think it was, it just didn't have the staying power Right.
Speaker 2 00:41:47 That the product that they're manufacturing today, not to take anything away from them. They weren't trying to cheat anybody. It was the best that could be done at that time. A hundred percent 30 years ago. Yeah. It was, it's super sticky. Yeah. People loved it because it was super, super sticky. Yeah. And it did a really good job for a while. Yeah. You didn't want it on your hands. Right. And, and then, and then it didn't <laugh>. Yeah. All right, next one on the list is to build a garden. Build a either a one in the ground or you can build a raised garden bed. It's a perfect time to do that right now in the hot spring, almost summer. Yeah. It's, I mean, if we're being honest, it's probably a little past the time right now. Is it? I mean, yeah, because you would be planting in April, remember when we were saying, I can't believe it's snowing in April.
Speaker 2 00:42:31 Oh yeah. Yeah. It was too early to, to plant at that time. A lot of people didn't know it. And I think a lot of people got caught, you know, planting their seeds or seedlings and, um, and then having more f frosty nights and, you know, probably had some loss there. Yeah. But, but you've probably planted already in late April, mid to late April. And, uh, probably by now, mid May. There's, uh, some pretty good starts out there, I'm guessing. But you haven't missed the boat entirely. Um, you can certainly be out there planting some seeds now. Sure. But you gotta get the p you gotta get the beds built, right? You gotta get the ground tilled. Yeah. You gotta, well, while it's warm, you gotta fill out the invitations to the, to the garden party. <laugh> to the, uh, gophers. Right. And invite, invite them on over.
Speaker 2 00:43:21 Come on over <laugh>. We're gonna till the ground and you're gonna want to be a part of that <laugh>. Yeah. Uh, alright. Uh, next one on the list is to improve your insulation. You know, in, in the other one is to make sure that you're maintaining your H V A C system. Obviously it's hot out. You've probably already checked your Oh yes. Air, air conditioning unit. Everyone on the planet. Uh, not everyone on the, everyone in the Pacific Northwest probably has <laugh>, but it's a good time to get it cleaned up. Been playing with that. Change your furnace, filter ac, clean out your AC condenser and make sure that it's all running smooth. You want to do that now. And if your air conditioner just can't keep up, then check your insulation. Go open into your attic. You might not have enough insulation up there and it's a good time to check that out and get either more or improved or added insulation.
Speaker 2 00:44:13 Hire a company to do it. It's, uh, it's worth it. I, I agree with you 100%. Absolutely is worth it. Uh, last, last one on my list, Tony. Yes. This is the last one. Tell me, what is it, what is it, what is it? Install A ceiling fan. Oh, a ceiling fan. And that is installing a ceiling fan. Outside. Outside or inside or replace one. I really want a ceiling fan under my patio cover. I feel like, uh, the times, you know, they've got those really cool ultra sort of commercial grade, heavy duty, you know, long Blade fans that you turn that on and you gotta hold onto your hat. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Cause it's like mm-hmm. <affirmative> like a helicopter up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to get myself one of those big things that really moves the air when you're sitting outside on a, you know, on a 95 degree day.
Speaker 2 00:45:03 Yeah, I agree. I think, uh, that's very cool. Yeah, A ceiling fan is a great way to go, especially in the outdoor spaces in, on the inside. If you got one of those old gangster brass ones that just looks terrible from 1981, buy a new one, they're so worth it to get it. The, all the new ones now have like the remote control, so you can just sit there and like, oh yeah. Bluetooth remote control. Yeah. Turn the fan up or down or whatever you want to do. So anyway, I highly recommend it. So that's it. Those are some projects you can do when it's nice and hot outside. And if it's too hot outside, you can do what Tony did and just find some projects on the inside. Yeah. <laugh>. Well, you know, sometimes, sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes you are led by necessity instead of by desire.
Speaker 2 00:45:52 This is also true. So, and that's where you end up. Well thank you so much for tuning in. Uh, I say tuning in. So funny. Thank you so much for listening to, uh, our podcast today. We really appreciate you out there. And if you have ideas, something you'd like us to talk about, you want to test our knowledge or um, or whatever it might be, reach out and let us know. Weekend
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