Calls & Makeover Magic | Hour 2

the good kind, uplifting, informative, inspiring social media. We're on all the usual suspects Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X you know, on and on and on Home with Dean. That's all you need to know. Home with Dean, same handle for all of them. Find us there. And of course, this very program that you are listening to right now, this broadcast is also the House whisper podcast that you can listen to anytime, anywhere on demand. Just about an hour after we go off the air, this episode will be

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figure it out. Yep, that's what I mean. You can book an in home design consult with us no matter where you are at house Whisperer dot Design, house Whisper dot Design. All right, we're back at it. It is an all Calls Saturday morning, and I was talking to George. George is still on the line. You're still with me, George, Yes, Sam, all right, So George is George is looking to light his house differently, a lot of lamps around, a lot

of cords, lying about. He was thinking about putting in recess can light But he's a longtime listener and so, like so many of you, he fears my opinion about recess canlights. So he wanted to call that he doesn't fear it. He wanted to call and uh and see what I had to say about putting ress can lights in. So here's the thing, my friend, I am not against recess can lights in a home. I'm all about them.

They're great, they're fantastic. But yes, most houses that I walk into are houses that have been abused by recess can lighting, not because of the lights themselves, but because of the way that they've been used improperly. And so, how do you properly use a recess canlight? Well, let's put aside. They're the standard, straightforward use in utility areas like kitchens, laundry rooms, and you know, even bathrooms. Here you just have standard can lights going down onto countertops

without causing shadows in front of them, onto floors. General lighting, it's great, light up, light it up like a stadium, because these are areas where we want as much light as possible. But in romantic areas and you're like romantic when you're talking about boudoir, No, I just mean areas of architectural romance, living rooms, bedrooms, that kind of thing where we're going for max effect and ambiance. Here is how we use a recess canlight. Here's how professional lighting

designers use recess canlights. Are you ready? Everybody, listen to the words I am about to speak. We do not light rooms. We light things. And there you go. There's the rule. If you remember nothing else, remember that we do not light rooms. We like things. Now what does

that mean? It means this. It means that you know, around the perimeter of let's say a living room, there are walls, and those walls have space on them, space where you're going to hang family photos, space where you're going to hang a piece of art, space where you may have bookshelves, or you may have a stone finish on your fireplace, those kinds of things. These are things and I love lighting, and recess can lights are usually the best way to do it, ceiling mount can lights.

The key is this, we don't want a recess can light, just dropping general lighting in the room. Overhead general lighting. It's the worst kind of lighting for human beings. It dissipates all shadows, and shadows are something that we want in a room because shadows bring texture and dimensionality and interest to a space. We want shadows. We don't want to drive all the shadows out of a room. We

want them. But overhead lighting on a human being is ask any photographer, no, no, no, We're not going to light you that. That's like Halloween lighting. Right, big shadows under your eyebrows and so on. It's just the worst kind of general light. Not to mention the fact that the last thing world you want in a room is to gaze towards the ceiling and be staring into essentially what is the headlight of oncoming vehicles. Glare. Glare is a massive, massive enemy of recess can lighting. We don't

want it, So how do you achieve this? When I buy recess can light to inspect it for a house easily, and I'm not exaggerating, well over eighty percent, sometimes well over ninety percent of the recess can lights that we purchase for use in homes are directional. It means that they are what's called a gimbal style recess can light. A gimbal simply means Back in the eighties, when these first came out, we used to call them eyeballs because they kind of there's a big round part that sticks

into the room and you rotate it around. But the point is they're not eyeballs anymore. Gimbal lighting. Gimbal lighting means that you can direct the light, and I don't want to direct the light down onto the floor if there's a section of wall where we're gonna potentially hang

a piece of art. Then I'll put a recess can light about thirty inches or so off of that wall, right in front of that section of wall, and it's a directional light so that I can aim the light at the art, so that I'll put up I'll put lights in front of bookshelves so that i can aim the light at the bookshelves. I'll put lights in front of family photos so i can aim the light at

the photos. And guess what, these aren't lasers. That light bounces around and also fills gently fills up the room with ambient light as well, but the direction of the light is aimed toward the wall, away from your eyes so that you are not staring up into glare. So we've solved the glare problem. And we're not just generally doing overhead lighting. We are lighting things, not the room,

and that's the goal. So think that through as you lay out any room in bedroom, you got a wall, you're gonna put art, you're gonna put photos, you gotta put something attractive there. Light it. Throw a light on to it, not next to it, onto it. Okay, don't make the mistake of putting recess can lights straight down as reading lights over a bed, because as soon as you are laying horizon and look straight up, you will never turn those lights on because glaire glare into your eyes.

No one likes it. Even if you don't think about it. People shy away from it. Nobody likes it, and so does Dean Hate recess candlights, No, not at all. They have their use. There are only two kinds of lights in the world. There are lights that do the job of lighting something without drawing attention to themselves. It's just

the light that we want out of them. And there are lights that light a thing and also say hey, look at me, So like a chandelier is one of those lights that does lighting but also says, hey look at me, I'm gonna gugi, I'm sexy. A recess candlight, by definition, is meant to go away, not draw attention to itself, and simply provide the light on the object

of its focus. So yeah, taking a living room and laying out eight to ten recess can lights all over the ceiling in an organized grid wrong, absolutely, one hundred percent not good. Wrong. But picking where we have open space, where we have walls, where we have objects that we want to light, and directing a specific light against that wall, against that object, against that thing. We light things, not rooms.

Got it all right? George? There you are, my friend, best advice I can give in the shortest amount of time possible. These are the pearls that you get when you come on the show. Recess can lighting good thing for a home. Don't overuse it. Lamps work way better in most situations. But if you've got stuff on the walls you want people to see, light it up. But turn those lights toward those objects, not towards people's eyes.

It's that simple, all right. When we come back, more of your calls, Thank you, George, appreciate you, appreciate you listening. Good luck on picking those lights for your home. And yes, these things are available, these movable directional they're available at the big box stores and at lighting outlets and at hardware storage. You just got to know what you're looking for and insist on the directional lights. More of your calls when we return. Can't buy Dean sharp the ouse was.

We're at your service. We're doing an all call Saturday morning, just doing what I love to do more than anything, talking directly to you about what's going on with your home. So we've got calls on the board and let's talk to Richard. Hey, Richard, welcome.

over the place. There's gonna be one within driving distance of you. I'm sure there are kits out there that have color matching boards, like colored stucco matching and you, but you don't normally find these at the big box stores. Okay, So you go to a stone yard and you just tell them that he was like, hey, I got brick and here's a particular color. If you can take them a little chip or a little sample, they might be able to color match it right there for you off

of one of their color codes. If you've got used brick and each brick is a different color, then you know you're gonna need a little, tiny, little sample of each one. But it's relatively easy to do, and the color matches are dang close, and so you can just you know, putting knife right into those holes, seal them all up, and the bricks look great after it's all said and done. You just need to find a pro version of a kit. They're not harder to use than

anything else. They're just better. And they are sold specifically at stone yards because that's the kind of stuff that they deal with all the time.

people asking for it. But they're very very easy to use. You know, you'll get a little you know, basically a cup of it, or sometimes they come in little baggies and you mix it to the consistency of pace that you want and you just putty it in and that's pretty much it. It's just that there aren't many homeowners who do it themselves as opposed to it happens in the context of a bigger repair, so the contractors handle it.

So those kinds of materials you find at pro building supply suppliers like stone yards like Thompson, which is a fantastic builder supply for stone and veneers and all of that kind of stuff.

on Amazon. Just don't commit to a color yet. Act ask have them send you a color selection chart first, and then you can match it up to your brick and then you can order the right pigment to repair whatever brickwork you've actually got going on. I've got it all right, more of your calls.

can I help you? My friend?

ask the question one hundred year old home. You know. Foundation, Sometimes foundation are failing, Areas of a foundation are failing. Other times, after a century, they've just settled, they've just settled in a little bit and they've sunk down a little bit. But the foundation is not failing. So you're like, well, wait, what's the difference. If a foundation is out of level,

doesn't that mean it's failing? No, A failing foundation is when when the one of those concrete stem walls or what's going underneath is cracked and is sagging now and is in need of repair. But there are sometimes at one hundred year old house areas have just settled in a little bit more half an inch of settled three courts, sometimes an inch of settling. The foundation is in good shape. It's just a little tipped and so it's holding up the house just fine. But it has settled in crooked

over the number as the decades have passed by. So our first concern as always is there a foundation problem, and for that it is well worth calling a foundation repair company out. They are foundation engineers. There's a number of them in the southern California area. You call a foundation repair company out and you have them do a crawl and do an examination to make sure that we don't have any serious damage. Now, if that's fine, let's

say we're good. We're just settled. Okay, If that's an issue, then that has to be addressed. But let's say we just have settlement. Well, your foundation. Depending on where these rooms are at, it may be possible to jack them up from underneath to actually raise up that corner and then reblock them, repost them because you do have a raised foundation. It may may be possibly has everything to do with where the rooms are at and how they're

sitting on the foundation. But it is quite often possible to do some jacking up of the roof of the sub floor itself. Now, when that's not possible, it may be possible to from to affect the repair from the room side of things, which means a one hundred year old home. Can I assume it it's got hardwood flooring, Bailey? Are you with I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I think we cut you off there. Do we have a hardwood.

strips that were originally built under the hardwood floor. But if we have like plywood or solid sheeting underneath that, okay, then in your case you're leveling those rooms may be as simple as using some some floor self leveling compound, okay, which is on top of that plywood underneath the laminate before you put the lamin it back. This is a mixture. It's like a cement mixture. It's got epoxies and resins in it. You can find it at the big box store, or you can have a company do this for you.

But the idea is we mix this up. We mix it up in five gallon buckets, and we can pour it out onto a sub floor condition that's the floor underneath your floor. We can pour it out and we mix it up to the consistency of like runny pancake batter, okay. And the whole idea is that this stuff finds its own level. It pours out across the floor, it finds its own level in the room, and we keep pouring it out until we've leveled out the whole floor. You don't trowl it. You don't. You don't have to work,

you don't have to be a concrete expert. This stuff just pours out into the room, and it's so it's so liquidy liquidity is that a word. It's so liquidy that it finds its own level. You walk away, you come back two hours later, it's walkable and it's level. Okay, Now the room is still tipping, you know, the ceiling is still gonna be but most of the time you don't perceive it up there. It's the floor that you perceive it on. So this is good for out of

level floors. It's good for floors that have wavy, you know, weirdness in them. Self leveling compound and I'm only saying that I'm jumping to the to that point because you've got a laminate floor a floating floor on top of it. We'd treat this differently if you still had your old hardwood, but you've got these laminate floors. So the laminate floor comes out, deconstruct it, stack it off to the side, self level the room, and then you can lay the

laminate floor back perfectly level. Now, perfectly level floor, all of the inequities taken out. But again I got to emphasize first, we got to make sure that the foundation's in good shape. Then we're going to see if any of actual repair meaning jacking up is possible, and if not, then you can approach it from the room side of things for the sake of the feel of your walking across the room and the esthetics inside the room.

tackle it yourself, talk to a floor installation company. They'll be the ones that if you want to hire them for it, they can, you know, deconstruct your laminate floor set it aside self level of the room and then reinstall the laminate for you.

It's the age and life and pressure just makes us all a little at a level. But we can fix it. We just trowl in enough stuff into the cracks. All right, more of your calls, Kyfi Dean Sharp the house.

and makeovers. But in uncertain financial times, you may hold back on the big, big changes, and you still want to make an impact. Now we're in the world of the makeover, and if you do it right, you save a lot of money and you have a lot of change in your home, a lot of money saved, big change made. That's what a makeover is. And we'll be giving you tips and trips, tips and tricks for every room tomorrow, so don't miss the big show. All right,

let's take one more call before we're out of here. Today, I want to talk to Kim. Hey, Kim, welcome home.

shingles in between damaged shingles all around. You know, we can't just pick and choose when it comes to that much damage on the roof. Cost effective thing and the proper way is to pull the roof, recheck, redo all the underlayment, and put all the new roofing material back on. That's number one from a just a logistics standpoint. Number two, the insurance company is responsible for restoring your roof to its original condition. And how old is the roof?

with the repair. So yet another argument. We deal with this with insurance companies inside the house all the time. They'll say, well, the only damage was in the living room hardwood. I'm like, well, okay, this is twenty year old hardwood. It's been bleached by the sun. And this hardwood continues down the hallway into the bedrooms and into that kitchen area. Can you replace this and match exactly

these floors because that was the pre existing condition. And then the insurance adjuster is like, well, no, no, And I get contractors to say, impossible, we can't match it. All the wood in all the rooms has to be replaced, even though they weren't damaged. The fact is they all have to match the damage replacement area as well. And the same holds true with any surface, including your roof.

Even if that roofing material KIM is still available, they have to be able to prove that that color still matches your roof shingles that have been bleached in the sun for the last fifteen years. And the answer to that is going to be no. So the moral of the story is, use those contractors and let them ride up their recommendation, their strong recommendation, not just their recommendation, but the reasons why half of this roof should not

be replaced and half left in the place. And you tell the insurance company this is the way it's going to be. And if you need to get an independent inspector in their public adjuster helping you out, then step up to a public adjuster, pay them a little bit of money in order to force the claim so that you get your roof replaced in its entirety and properly. Kim, thanks for your question, Thanks for hanging on so long. I know you've been on the board there for a

while during the show. Thank you to all of our callers today. It's always great to talk to you about your house. Join me on the Big Show tomorrow nine to noon Pacific time. We'll be talking about makeovers. Until then, get out into this beautiful spring day and get busy building yourself a beautiful life. We'll see you tomorrow. 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.