KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The House Whisper on demand.
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Hey, welcome home. I'm Dean Sharp the House Whisper. I design custom homes and I build some custom homes too, and I am your guide on the weekends to better understand that place where you live. Today on the show a continuation of yesterday. It is an all calls weekend. That means you set the agenda with what's going on in the show today. I love taking calls, love it, and we do it every few weeks. We just clear the decks so that you've got time to talk to
me about whatever's going on with your home. So, whether it is a construction issue, a design issue, whether you want to talk high and lofty architecture or just figure out how to fix your leaky toilet, or anything in between.
I'm here for you to do my best.
So anything that's got you scratching your head about your home, give me a call and we'll figure it out together. I promise the number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two. Ask Dean eight three three two. Ask Dean. It's just that simple. What are we serving up for you today? Follow us on social media. We only do the good kind. We're on all the usual suspects, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, x home
with Dean, same handle for them all. And of course, if your home is in need of some personal house whisper attention, like you're thinking to yourself, Man, I really need to get that guy standing in my kitchen staring out that window telling me what the hell do I do with that thing? That can be done too. You can get a in home design console with me and the tea here. Just go to house Whisperer dot design. All right, let me introduce our awesome team to get us started off.
Elmer, of course, is on the board.
Hello Dan, Hello man, doing good, Happy Sunday. I'm actually excited for an all calls episode. You know, got to hear the listeners.
That's right. Have you got big plans for Saint Patrick's Day tomorrow?
No plans tomorrow, but like today, it's stacked up. I have a bunch of stuff, so maybe tomorrow.
I love it. Got its stacked up. It's stacked up. Uh.
Producer Richie is as always. Oh he's busy taking calls right now. The callboard is open. Richie is gonna take your call. I'll tell you everything you need to know before popping into the queue. Thank you, Richie for always doing an outstanding job.
Cam here you go.
And speaking of outstanding jobs, Eileen Gonzalez is at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning, Dean.
How's it going. Good? Good, Good to be with you on a Sunday. As always, you caught up with the time change yet, know me neither, not at all, me neither. It takes a little while for me. I was looking, I was watching the sunset yesterday and I'm like, it's seven thirty.
What I know.
I'm so confused, and my poor dog is confused. She doesn't know when to eat, and it's just thrown everybody off.
Yeah, I just you know, I mean, I don't want to get into the politics of it, because everybody's got their opinion. But personally, I'm just saying, personally, I have no I have no use for daylight savings. I just wish we just let the seasons change the way they do, let one thing roll into the next.
I would be perfectly happy with that.
Yeah, all right, somebody who's also with me sitting across the table from me. Uh, my better half. I say that every week only only because it's completely true. My design partner, the co owner co founder of House Whismer Wismer Whismer Msmann Business msmeru wismers nothing, my best friend in all the world.
Uh Tina is here?
Wow?
Clear, clear your throat with your mic off. Welcome home, Good day have you.
You and me?
Babe? All right? Dang it, you know we're starting.
I have to talk to Jesus about taking up a little too much time at the top of the hour because we're already up for a break.
Uh.
So we're gonna do that. Will Jesus gets a pass though? No, no, no, no, not on KFI.
Uh we uh, we are going to dive into calls. Let me give you the number real quick. One more time eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three the numeral two.
Ask Dean.
It's an all calls Sunday morning. We will take the first one right after us.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI A M six forty.
We are doing an all calls Sunday morning.
Here.
It's all up to you.
You get to set the agenda for the show, and we've got plenty of room on the board for you've got some calls on the board, there's still more room for you. And I select calls randomly, so it's not like just because there are people who got there ahead of you means that you're gonna be waiting in line. It could be you could be the next call.
You know.
I mean you probably won't be, but you could be. You could be, So why not give me a call? Eight three three two, Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two? Ask Dean eight three three two, Ask Dean. Let's go to the phones. I want to talk to Tim. Hey Tim, welcome.
Home, Hey Dean, how are you?
I am well, sir? How can I help you.
Well? Last year, on one of my horizontal patio beans, I noticed a ball, like a water balloon behind the paint and I cut it open. A lot of water came out. The wood was very wet and rotted. I removed all the bad wood, let it draw and I used exterior spackle, sanded prime, and painted sain. Thing happened again this year.
Yeah, so you're wondering what can you do?
Yeah, maybe spackle wasn't the idea or yeah, so okay, fifteen ft beam, it's a.
How long is it? How long is it?
It's fifteen foot and it's ten by six, so replacing it would be kind of hard.
Okay.
Now what are the members that are sitting on top of it?
Also beams?
The vertical beams?
Uh?
Okay, so this is this is a This is the beam out of the front edge of a patio cover.
It goes from the house out Yeah.
Oh, I got you, Okay, got you? Got you?
So those others that are tying into it, okay. That that's the question I have. Did you guys build this or is this just part of the house when you bought it.
Part of the house when we bought it?
Okay, so you really don't know how it was originally constructed. Here's the trick, my friend and I don't want to bring you, you know, more difficult news. But okay, so first of all, first of all, let's just address very quickly the fixing of the rotten wood. I wouldn't use spackle, I wouldn't use anything like that. What I would use and use the same thing that the pros use, use the same thing that a termite company would use. If they came out and found termite ridden areas and dry
rot and so on. You're right. You dig out all the stuff that's rotten, anything that's soft, You dig it down until you hit hardwood again. And then what we do is we rebuild it with Bondo. Okay, not spakle. Spackle is porous spackle will allow water to flow through it. Bondo, like we're bondoing DNSE on a on a car and literally that. And now Bondo in recent years has made their own wood filler, and that's totally fine to use it.
You know, it's an epoxy.
You mix, you take out a glob of it and you mix it with the the activator of the catalyst, and then you've got so much time to get it in there and make it work. But Bondo will replace the missing wood with plastic essentially, and as a result, it's a much much better patch for exterior wood and so and it's standable and you can retexture it and it's paintable and all of those good things. So Bondo that's the key to restoring exterior wood. But here's my concern.
My concern is that perhaps this patio cover was done like so many patio covers are, which is they built it. They put all the raw wood out there, they put that those beams out there, and then they built the other stuff on top of it, those intersecting beams, and then they painted it all, which was the wrong thing to do when something like exterior wood is being built, exterior wood structures.
What we want to do is we want to.
Make sure all of those pieces, all of the individual pieces are primed at least primed, if not painted, before we assemble them together, because what could very well be the case is that right next to that pocket of water that is forming underneath the paint, so moisture is getting underneath the paint and bulging it out. Right next to that pocket of water, you may have some other
wood connecting with that wood. And my guess is I'd say, based on the way that most people build patio covers, there's a ninety percent chance that underneath that connection in that scene, it's just bare wood there, which means that any little crack in the paint, any little you know, any little opening at all, allows water to get in and sit there and then find its way to you know, a lower point and cause a problem, you know, a
few inches away or down below it. So here is the thing bondo first, and if that solves your problem, great, But if you still are encountering this, what you may have to do is disconnect those intersecting pieces of wood from that beam, not not take the whole thing apart, but disconnect each one, lift it slightly and or slide out that piece, and then get both surfaces, the end of the intersecting wood and the beam where where it touches.
Get those surfaces at least primed, if not painted, so that there's paint underneath all the joints, so that moisture just doesn't have an easy way to get past the paint and into the wood.
Does that make sense?
Absolutely?
All right, my friend. That is my best advice for you for that patio cover. And take note everyone who has a wood patio cover, whether you built it or somebody else built it. When we put together and normally we don't pre paint, okay, but we will pre prime everything. And that's a seiler in and of itself, and a level of protection when we put together like a patio cover structure or a pergola or anything like that, would that's going to be painted sitting out exposed to the elements.
We inevitably will take all of the pieces, get them all pre primed before we start lapping them on top of each other. And that way we know at least we have one layer, at least one layer of protection. And then once those pieces go together, before we paint, we calk all of those seams, calk them all so that there's no opportunity for water to even at that.
After years and years and years, you might have something, some level of intrusion, but that's the way you do it right, and that way your paint holds longest, would last the longest, and so on. I hope that makes sense to y'all. All right, more of your calls when we return your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on KFI.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Dean Sharp, the House Whisper Here at your service, we are doing an all calls Sunday morning, which means you get to set the agenda about what the show is about. You just give me a call and we'll put our heads together and figure out what's going on. What's got you scratch in your head, about your home. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two Ask Dean eight three three two Ask Dean. It's just that simple. Give me a call,
producer Rich. You will tell you everything you need to know. Pop you into the queue, and then we'll figure it out. We will, and we're going to figure it out right now. I want to go to Larry. Hey, Larry, welcome home. Good morning Dean, Good morning, sir. How can I help you?
We just moved into a house here in San Clemente. It was built in about two thousand and two, and the backyard has a concrete patio about nine hundred square feet and it's in pretty good shape. That has some spider cracks and a few bigger cracks, none over a sixteenth of an inch and none are uneven, so I think those are repairable. But the surface is pretty discolored, looks like there's some iron stains from pots, and then it almost looks like a lichen type film that it
gives it sort of a sand color. So I'm looking for your advice on options of how to resurface it or make it look more desirable. And I've heard of overlays and maybe paints, and I just know that you're the guy to give me the advice on what we might do to make it look better.
Ah well, you're very very kind. Okay, So.
A couple of things that a couple approaches that you could take. Now, of course, you know I'm not visually looking at it myself here, so it's not the easiest thing for me to be able to give you.
Precise advice on.
Right.
However, given that I'll give you two strong I think that are strong worthy suggestions, and in fact they might actually combine together into one when it comes to two. You know, rust stains, which can happen, by the way, for a number of different reasons. It could happen simply because of drainage. It can happen because something is rusting somewhere or carrying you know, that oxide with it as water flows off the roof and it settles on the
concrete and then it just kind of soaks in. And the same with what looks like the lichen kind of structures. And the problem is that these things are grabbing on because concrete by nature is porous in it's finish, and because of its porosity, they get a foothold, and they're not just sitting on the surface. They're likely at least a little bit under the surface as well. So that's, you know, a hurdle that has to be overcome. Cracking,
you know, cracking is something that is gonna happen. And if you've got spider cracking, then that's fine, no reason to worry about that. You may not like the look of it. If you've got anything that could be filled at all, then you take a little epoxy crack filler and fill that. But exterior concrete, I'm gonna ward you away from paint just I'm not a big fan of painting concrete period, just because water. It is a porous material and water will get behind the paint and eventually
push the paint off from the backside. So when you paint concrete, and you know there are people out there, like listen, if you do the right things, it'll last for a long time.
Well that's fine, that's fine.
I'm just saying you will be repainting it again, and you're not gonna want to repaint the whole thing just because a few flakes start to happen, which means then you're going to be living with, you know, ugly concrete for a while, until enough of it starts messing up that you just like, all right, let's just redo the whole thing again. Water gets behind surface concrete and will push the paint out from the backside. So here's the thing.
Two things, your conditions with the rust deposits and maybe the lichen like stuff that's more than just like a surface stain. And so I wouldn't waste your time with something like, oh, get some tri sodium phosphate, some TSP, get out there and scrub it down and see if you can't, you know, get that out. I'm thinking no, I think that's probably a lost cause as far as that goes. But here is the thing. Resurfacing that concrete would be probably my first step.
And these days.
That's actually not that tough, especially for exterior patio stuff, because you could run down to your local like a home depot or a rental yard and rent for a day to the tune of about I'm going to say about a little under three hundred dollars a concrete resurfacing machine. It's going to come in its own little trailer and it rolls out and it's about as easy to operate honestly,
as like a floor waxer. It's heavy, but it's sitting on big wheels, and it's got a resurfacing diamond a disc, and you just kind of swish it back and forth, and you can take that top layer of concrete. We use these all the time to resurface, really, I mean grease ridden, messed up, unevenly cracked garage slabs in order to prepare them for epoxy coatings and all this kind
of stuff. So resurfacing your concrete out there could number one, bring all of its texture to uniformity, will very very likely get past the lichen growth and the rust stains, and leave you with now a pretty fresh concrete surface with some cracking in it that you could patch with
some epoxy. Then if you wanted to, and if for some reason they're still modeling and splotching in the concrete, which I wouldn't be surprised if there were, because it's exterior concrete and that tends to happen, then I would suggest that you approach the concrete at least invest the gate. Approaching it from a staining perspective, to stain concrete is essentially to do what the lichen and the rust has already done, which is to introduce it into the porosity
of the concrete. Stains last a lot longer. They are not a surface coating. Therefore, water inside the concrete won't push them out and ruin that finish. It'll be a modeled kind of finish. The concrete will take it unevenly. But that's actually the look that most people who are
staining their concrete are looking for anyway. And the cool thing about that is that it hides the modeling and the stains that are already there, just sort of incorporates it into a general sort of stylistically modeled effect, and it will eventually fade from UV light and you will redo it again at some point, but way way longer down the road than if you paint it. And so that would be that'd be my first guess.
And should I have someone do that? In other words, I'm I'm okay, DYI, but this sounds a little over my head. How do I find someone?
Uh?
You could talk to any concrete restoration company or just a concrete person in general, and uh, and they could give you a price for doing exactly that. And yeah, I wouldn't do the staining myself, unless you're just like gung ho full on into it, because there's a there's a bit of an art form to doing it. But but I think that's an approach that whether you do it yourself or whether you hire somebody, I think you'll be pleased with the way that you'll restore.
That concrete, right, Because if I try to put an overlay, A lot of people are selling that idea that's, you know, another surface of like applied concrete on top and then they stamp it. I don't know, it just doesn't sound like a good idea.
I am not in favor of that, I really and and there are companies I know that swear that, oh we'll do it and it'll last. But uh, I don't like stamp concrete to begin with. And I don't like the idea of overlaying concrete onto concrete. It's what we call a cold joint, meaning that there's a it's a very very difficult bonding process. And in my opinion, because I've seen a lot of overlay patios down the line,
they fail. They just fail. I'm not a favorite. I would rather try and integrate the existing concrete into a color and a style that you find acceptable, then try and put an overlay on top.
I love it, Sean, thank you so much. You saved me tons of ours. Thank you so much again.
Oh my gosh, Larry, thank you for the call and for the praise, my friend. Keep listening and I very much appreciate it.
All right. You see, you see what happens here on the program, give me a call.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Welcome to Home. This is our little program on Sunday mornings. Right here the we are having an all Calls Sunday morning, which is one of my favorite shows to do. No, it's not because I don't have to prepare. No, well, I don't have to prepare, but that's not why it's my favorite show. It's because I love taking calls. I love talking to y'all about what's going on with your homes.
The number to reach me, by the way, callboards are open right now eight three three two Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two ask Dean.
I love it.
Every few weeks we just clear the decks and we're like, we're just taking calls because calls are fun. All right, let's talk to Marco. Hey Marco, welcome home.
Hey dean, longtime listener. Thanks for taking my call.
Thank you so much. How can I help?
Well, I'm curious. I am just back from a trip to the Palisades in Malibu, and our company installs homes out of steel framing, and I just wanted to get your opinion on steel studs versus wood studs as far as a framing material for a home.
Steel studs are great. I love steel studs, you know. I mean they're more expensive than wood studs, generally speaking, and a lot of people have misconceptions about steel studs. They'll see them, they're like, what do you mean more expensive? I saw them stacked up at home depot and they seemed pretty reasonable. Those steel studs there, as you know, Marco, are non structural partition studs. They're the kind of studs that go into a tenant improvement in a commercial building
or when there's no weight bearing on them. So a steel stud home that is actually weight bearing, that's a whole different animal of stud much thicker, more expensive. But as a general rule, I mean, especially for a new build, I mean, if you can afford it, I think steel
studs are great. I am in favor of them, probably not for the reason that people might think since you mentioned the palisades and the fire, I'm not really concerned about building a home out of steel studs as a way to protect it against fire.
And that may.
Shock some people and like, what do you mean. Well, here's what I mean. Number One, if you're going to invest extra money in your home to make it fire hardened, you do that on the surface, not at the bone level. You do it on the skin level, so that fire doesn't get into the home to start with. If you've done that right, if you've protected the outer surface of your home in a way that keeps fire from getting in.
For instance, the thing I talk about every single week, which is ember PROOFVNS so that embers don't get into the attic one hour fire rated materials on the out outside of the home, which are code in southern California anyway, And there are better and more resilient versions of that,
and weaker and less resilient versions of that. But if you've really taken the care to protect the shell of the house, and new builds in California I require fire sprinklers on the inside, then you have taken the effort to protect the interior of the house as well, then the bones of the house in terms of fire not my primary concern. But that being said, let's just put
fire aside. So yeah, Dean just said, it doesn't really matter to me whether you build out a wood or steel in terms of fire protecting your home, because fires don't burn from the studs out. They burn from the outside in and from the bottom up. Okay, So protect the outside from a bones perspective though as a builder, Okay, as an old framer, which is what I am. Then here's why I love steel studs, same reason I love laminated wood studs, new engineered wood studs. They're perfectly straight.
I mean there's no bows, there's no bends, there's no warps. I like steel studs from the perspective of termite invasion because there's nothing there for bugs to eat in your walls. I like steel studs because they're perfectly straight, and they make everything else installed, from dry wall to moldings to
everything else just fly in perfectly. Now, they're not the easiest thing to remodel down the road, but we're talking about a new build, so hopefully you know you get your design right, and you're not planning on remodeling anytime soon. So yeah, I mean, they have a wonderful, wonderful place Marco in the world of residential home construction, and people should seriously consider it if it's within their budget price point.
And in the Palisades, I have no doubt that there are people who have plenty of people who have the budget for steel studs. I just don't worry about it from the fire threat perspective. I think of it about the overall quality of the home for everything from termites to just beautifully straight finishes.
How's that for an answer.
Well, that's a great answer. I would like to make one comment where you said if you take care of the exterior, there's no problem with the interior. What I did notice while I was at the Malibu and the Palisades, a lot of the fires blew out the windows, went in the window and lit not only the interior on fire, but also the roof. I saw one building that was actually built completely out of steel, but they had a would osb roof with a standing scene metal roof on top,
so people would go, oh and protect it. I've got a standing seam metal roof on the top. Unfortunately, when the fire blew through the window, it went up totally burned the OSB plywood un left the standard seam roof where it completely slid down and was laying in the backyard.
Yeah, they would so absolutely, I absolutely agree with you on that. There's no question about that whatsoever. But again you mentioned the windows. See for me, part of the ensuring spending the extra money on the shell of the house includes the windows, in other words, fully tempered fire rated windows, because yeah, that's one of the areas I don't want anything penetrating through the windows and getting inside
the house. And in a new build with fire sprinklers inside the house, if anything were to get through one way or the other, then it would be doused as well and not have that same opportunity. So I'm still holding to my same position that for fire safety, steel studs aren't the most important thing. Certainly they could help, but they're not the most important spend. But I love metal studs in terms of all the other benefits they bring to the building aspect. Marco, thank you for your
call and for your comments. I appreciate you, my friend, and keep listening to the show. Really appreciate it, all right, y'all when we come back more of your calls. You are listening to Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on KFI. This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI Am six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app