All Calls Saturday | Hour 1

If you've got an issue, a question, a curiosity, a DIY problem that you've got to solve, an architectural question, a design question, a construction question about your home, I am here to help you take it to the next level. We'll put our heads together and we'll figure it out. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three. The numeral two ask Dean eight three three to ask Dean. Our phone lines are open. Producer Matt is standing by right now ready to take

your call. I know it is Saturday morning. It is a quiet time here in southern California. If you're listening for anywhere across the country. Your morning is a little bit more developed. So any call from anywhere, from anybody, We're just in the mood to talk about your home this morning. Eight three three two ask Dean and we will go to the phones as soon as the calls start rolling in.

a good night's sleep. I had a lovely dinner last night with some dear friends, clients who have become dear friends, as so many any of our most of our clients do actually working on the third project in a row now for this one particular client, little beach house out in Portwaanimi out in the Channel Harbor area, Channel Islands, Harbury and great little beach house built in the seventies and it's been in their family for all these years and not many changes have taken place since the seventies,

so it is just ripe.

surprised them along the way. So it really really good night last night. And then just went out and had some dinner and talked about some really just very personal things and some special things about their family and our life. And anyway, it was great, great evening. The Dodgers won yesterday long game, rain delay in Atlanta long game, and we got right to the eighth inning and we were

just like, all right, let's end this thing. And then the rain started rolling in and we had to wait an hour and a half before we finished off just you know, six strikes and that was it. So anyway, it was a good day. It's going to be a good morning today. Got some work ahead of us today as well, and yeah, we're pretty jazzed. So how is everything right there in the control booth?

we will go to the phones. Kfi, Dean Sharp, the house whisper, Welcome home, Happy Saturday morning to you, my friend. Whether your home is a condo or a cottage or a castle matters not to me. I am here to help you take it to the next level. Like I said, last night, we were having dinner with some dear friends who are also design clients, and we were having a really really interesting discussion just about the whole idea of design.

They were kind of interviewing me. They were saying, I want to get inside your head about your design career, and I was talking about some of the more interesting facets of how I ended up doing what I'm doing, and you were one of the things I had to tell them was, hey, you know, one of the things I realized along the way, Yeah, I broke into the design world through big luxury estates and those are lovely.

I mean they're lovely in the sense that, you know, when you're doing these massive costs and ultra custom luxury projects as an artist, you know, a great client becomes a great patron and just says, you know, here, unleash, unleash your creativity in this area. But the reality is that every space, every space has its constraints, has its challenges, and I don't really care whether we're designing, you know, a small shed for somebody or literally a castle along

the way, because it's all design. It all, you know, pulls out the best in me. And uh, you know, I'm just a you know, I come from a lower middle class, blue collar working family.

the facets of it. And so yeah, it was a really great conversation. And at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is, when I tell you, it doesn't matter to me whether you're living in a condo or a little cottage or a castle. The challenges are there, and good architecture belongs and should belong to everybody, all right. So that's how I feel about that. All right, let's go to the phones. Now I've talked enough that maybe I won't get this whole call in, but let's talk to Carter.

going to be fancier for less cost. It was going to have the contours of what we would normally do in stone stone work, except you just have these hot knife cut foam pieces that have a certain shape and they could be glued on, attached well to the house, and then just stuccoed right over and they have their

own coating of stucco and fibrous. Now what we found as years went on, Like, for instance, today if you find you can actually find these pieces sitting in the big box store, they sell them on the shelf at times. But now they come out of the factory with a fibrous coating on them, pre stucco fibrous coating, so they're a little bit more resilient to begin with, and then a finished coat of stucco gets rolled over them, so they're lasting longer today than they did in the eighties.

But the fact of the matter is that it actually, it actually is an easy thing to repair, simply because even if it's not like, oh, well, does your company have access to this shape, it's not even really that.

A lot of foam stucco installation companies will have blades what we call hot knives, that they can bend into shape in the shape of your foam and then cut a new piece of foam out of a foam block that's just sitting there, Cut a new piece, burn, melt it through to match your foam, and then adhere it on and then restuckle it over. So the good news is, yes, it can be fixed. You need to call a company that kind of it is familiar with and uses foam plantons.

That's the that's the category of what you're talking about, and they'll fix it up for you.

not a rough stucco finish. It could still be stucco, but I want them to be smooth with little lines in them, so that we're actually emulating stone and it's not just more stucco except in a fancy shape.

house production and developments. All right, y'all, when we come back, more of your calls and some tidbits from me too. Your Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper.

to talk to Adam. Hey Adam, welcome home.

where I need some input. I don't know if going from white window frame you know your typical plastics two aluminum uh finish type windows, sliding door, you know, sliding door that leads into the backyard. I have a wife that works for a company who can actually make them for me, or I can just find it from someone else. But my question is, what do you think about a house that you know different from the neighborhood. I think I would be the only one in the neighborhood with

black windows. But going from plastic, the typical plastic white what everybody has, to aluminum black finish windows, which my wife's company sells to They usually sell those two higher end homes, you know Melion, Doar Holmes, Humilia Dollar homes out of that, you know, Court and all that. So that's her clientele, and so I'm able to get them from her at a great at a great deal. But I don't know if it'll fit. What do you think? That's kind of why I'm kind of a little bit

hesitant to pull the trigger. What do you think that would that add value to the home? Would it be a good choice long term going from plastic to dark metal finish?

industry the tail wagging the dog, as it were. And again, I was talking about the dinner we were having with our clients last night. That's one of the things that we were talking about, how how the industry dictates a certain thing for from its own purposes, not because oh, this is the right color of window to put into a home. But there are completely they're usually completely different reasons why a home component in a tract home environment ends up becoming a certain thing, and then you just

kind of design your way around it. You make the best of it. So the question of whether a dark framed window works in a home U is really I mean, it's it's an absolutely, it's it's a viable question, and the only answer is whether you take a look at it in the style of your home and whether there

are other components that will complement it. And a lot of people are under the belief that, oh, well, if you go dark frame metal window, first of all, it's you know, it's that's that's like a contemporary look.

you know what. Here's the thing, Adam, I'm looking at the clock and I'm getting tapped on the shoulder here that I should go to a break. Can you hang tight with me because I want to give this a really full answer so everybody understands us. So I can I pop you on hold and we'll come back right after the break and I'm gonna give my full blown answer to this one. No problem, all right, Adam, you hang tight. We're going to talk about white windows. Where do they even come from?

to get back to Adam. Make sure I didn't hang up on him. Adam, you're still with me?

beach houses and all the like. And so the question is should I replace the white windows on my home with a darker frame, black frame, bronze frame. You know, whatever the window and is it the right vibe? And so I was saying right before the break that for me, the material of the window itself is secondary. It's not irrelevant, obviously, but it's secondary from a design perspective, because I'm just

I'm just looking for the look and uh. And the fact of the matter is, architecturally, a dark frame window looks great and and can look great on just about any imaginable style. I've put them in any I mean, old world, new world. They're not just a contemporary window, regardless of what the interweb tells you. Uh, they can be. They can accommodate just about any look at all. And so two thumbs up. You just evaluate the home and give it a give it a you know, give it

a vibe. Take a take a photo of your home printed out and uh and literally you know, color in with a sharpie, uh, the white frame windows, and stare at. I mean, I'm all for this. I do these perspectives for clients all the time. They're like, what would my house look like if I had this on the outside. I'm like, well, let's take a photograph of it. I'll photo shop in that color or that and we can all take a look at it and you can decide for yourself. But I'm telling you right now, it's a

good look and it's almost always a good move. Now, the reason why most windows are white is because most windows in most tracked homes that have been built in the last thirty years are vinyl. Vinyl is not a strong material. Okay, now, it doesn't mean your windows are falling apart, but that's why the frames on a vinyl window are so thick, because vinyl is a relatively soft material. So vinyl windows by definition have wider sashes, wider frames,

wider divider lights, and mullions because it takes more. Vinyl takes more material to make a strong frame. An aluminum is a much stronger material, and you can get away with a thinner frame, which means you'll have more glass, you'll have more light coming into the house, and so on. Now, the other reason why wind vinyl windows are white is because number one, it's the literally the least expense. You know,

the the vinyl is naturally white. It's the least expensive uh manufacturing process white some vinyl windows, some companies make them tan or beige. You can get and a few a handful produce black or darker bronze windows, but let me tell you they are considerably more expensive than your standard vinyl window. And it's not because of the color. Well, it's because of the color. It's it's it's not the

color that's expensive. The reason why you don't see black vinyl windows is because vinyl is not a strong material. It's a soft material, and a black window attracts heat to itself, and so black vinyl windows soften in bright sunlight more so than a white vinyl window, which reflects that light. That black window absorbs light, it absorbs heat, and then the material starts off and the window breaks down.

So a black vinyl window has to have reinforcement on the inside that a white vinyl window does not have. Therefore it's a more expensive window. So this is why the majority of homes have white windows, not because the god of architecture said white windows are the best look, but simply because the building industry is like, hey, you know what, we can produce these for cheap, So guess

what everybody gets white? And that's pretty much what I call the tail wagging the dog in tracked home development. That's just the way it is okay, and everybody gets used to it and we all make do with it and it's all understandable. So for those of you who are thinking about it, here's the one thing I will tell you, Adam. And it sounds like your wife has a line on a company that produces a higher end aluminum window. I don't want you to go an inexpensive

aluminum window. You know, when we go window, we use Western windows or fleetwoods or things equivalent to that. And so when you when you do an aluminum window, uh, you want a window that is thermally broken. Okay, thermally broken?

That is an unbroken a thermally unbroken window, meaning that there's one frame that continuously goes from the outside to the inside. But a high quality aluminum window is what we call thermally broken, which means the outer frame does not bridge across. There's a break, there's a gap, there's

no bridge across to the inner frame. And therefore, as the outer frame heats up in the sunlight of a warm summer day, it does not transmit that heat and vice versa cold the same way it doesn't transmit that energy to the inside of the house. So a thermally broken aluminum window is a really high quality window. It will last a lifetime. If you decide on your color ahead of time, you can usually get the factory to powder coat the window like an automobile before you even

order them. Even though an aluminum window can be painted on site, you know, we normally customize that color and make sure it comes the color that we want and talk about a low maintenance window for the life of the home. So if it works for you, play around with the style bud, and then you know, if you're leaning that way, go for it. You're in a unique position to be able to buy high quality windows at a low cost.