You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six fortyf.
I am six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. I am Dean Sharp, the house Whisperer, custom home builder, custom home Designer. It's an all calls weekend. I love these weekends. I love taking your calls, talking with you about what's going on with your home, and you know, hoping out if I can.
So let's do it all right, Let's talk to Tom. Tom. Welcome home, Dean.
Yes, sir, okay. I live on a hillside lot. My house is on the upper portion of the hill with a yard created by retaining the old style retaining wall with concrete about two hundred and forty feet front to back. And I want to get down to that lower pad to build an AD and I got to put in a driveway. If I bulldoze straight down the slope, I'm going to be over twenty percent. And I don't even want to be twenty percent. I'd like to be twelve percent.
And I'm thinking, rather than try to stretch the driveway along the ridge to lengthen it and reduce my slope, is there some way like like an elevated boardwalk a driveway built on piers that somebody does. I mean, obviously it could be done, but you know, it cost a fortune. And I'm just wondering if if anybody does anything prefab like that.
Oh gosh, yeah, you know what if somebody does, I have not heard of them. You know, we've had some tricky driveway grating scenarios before, and you know, it's not uncommon to have to get the structural engineers out and say, okay, we got to bring this driveway in on an estate property across this creek bed or across this gully, or you know, we've got an elevated portion of it and essentially build a bridge or an elevated platform for a
portion of the driveway. But I know of no one out there, and I'm not saying that there isn't, but I personally don't have knowledge of anybody out there who has prefab systems that are just ready to go. And the problem is the problem with the reason is is because it's all site specific, it has to do with
your you know, geological situation, your soil quality. Because it's not so much the structure itself, it's what it's bearing on and how much of a seismic and lateral load it has to withhold as well as the dead load itself. So geological engineer and structural engineer, those are going to be unavoidable in your situation. Doesn't necessarily have to be concrete. I've seen them. We've actually successfully built some some bridges over gullies out of wood, out of you know, kind
of like the old covered wood bridges. We've successfully done it out of wood and steel and or concrete. But it's going to have to be one of those formats, and it's gonna be h it's gonna be site specific, and so you're just gonna, unfortunately have to price that out. Tom, Thanks for the call. It was super interesting question. I wish I could help more on that. I want to talk to Shannon. Hey, Shannon, welcome home.
Hi, thanks for taking my calls. Well, I have a pervasive gopher problem in my yards in my back and my strint, which has prevented me hard planting anything, and mostly weeds are popping up and weeds die, and I have all these hills and mounds and holes, and so I wanted to do a native garden, but I don't know where to begin and how to get rid of the gophers.
Gophers Nature's annoying, adorable rodent. Okay, so Shannon, here's the thing. Here's what I don't want you to do. Please do not poison your gophers with a rat poison blood thinning rat poison, because it is not only doing damage to them, and yes it will, you know, knock out your gophers in general, but it will end up damaging the entire ecosystem around you. I'm not going to get on my soapbox and talk about that. I'm just going to say,
don't do it. Blood thinners end up in all the predators that eat the gophers as well, and it affects everything well beyond the edge of your house. Now, you can live trap gophers, or you can just kill them dead with the mechanical traps, but that doesn't solve the
problem because you know, it's just an ongoing war. So in your situation and for everybody who has a gopher issue, what I'm about to suggest may sound extreme, but in reality it is actually the easiest, most stress free, permanent way to deal with gophers in your yard, and that is simply to not allow them in in the first place. Now, how do you do that? Well, you do that by again having a strong commitment we don't want gophers in
this yard. What it means is this, let's take your lawn, your planterbed areas wherever it is that you are planning on planting and don't want gophers coming up. You're going to remove some soil okay, two, three, sometimes as much as four inches of soil in an area, and you're going to stake down and bury gopher cloth. And what do I mean by gopher cloth? I mean either a nylon cloth that is, and I say cloth, it's actually full of holes.
Okay, it's more like a.
Mesh, but basically think of chicken wire, but on a much much smaller scale opening so that a gopher can't get through a layer of chicken wire essentially, And please forgive me for using it. I just want everybody to picture what it is that I'm saying, a layer of chicken wire buried a couple of inches underneath the soil of everywhere in your yard.
Okay.
The simple truth of the matter is the gophers can tunnel underneath your house all they want and all around, but they're not going to be popping up and they're not going to be doing as much, if any, damage to the roots of everything that's going down. Now, will they occasionally gnaw on a deeper root, sure, but not
to the extent that they're going to destroy anything. So without question, the once and for all solution for gophers is actually to just put a fence in between them and being able to pop up in your yard.
Awesome that.
It is simple.
I mean simple for me to say.
It's like, oh yeah, just to dig up all the dirt in your whole backyard and completely cover it over with seamless fencing. It's a it's a task, it's a chore. But honestly, when you think about, well, do we want to do that or do we want to forever have gophers making holes in the backyard. So this way, the gophers don't die, your plans don't die, your yard stays lovely, and you just have a barrier.
So it's a gopher bear.
If you go online, you're gonna find all sorts of options in that regard subterranean buried gopher barriers. You're gonna find them. You can price them out, you can make your own decisions. But they work.
I know they work.
We've seen them work and at the end of the day, boom. You do it once, you do it right, and you don't have to worry about it again. So Shannon, thank you. Good luck on that. Thanks for the call. When we come back, more of your calls. I'm so glad you joined me this morning. Hang tight, so much more to come. You are Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
Kay if I.
Am six forty and live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, you are home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
That's me.
Hey.
We are doing a all weekend here on the program.
Every few weeks. We lay every.
Topic aside so that we can concentrate on just the things that are on your mind regarding your home, be it a design issue, or a construction question, or a DIY concerned whatever, all of the above and anything in between. Anything you want to talk to me about your home today, that's what we're doing. It's time to go back to the phones to do it. I want to talk to Jane. Hey, Jane, welcome home.
Thanks for taking my call.
I have a quick question. We're looking to remodel our house and open.
Up some of the walls and we're not sure if we should get a designer first to work out.
The layout and the design, or if we should.
Speak with a structural engineer to actually let us know which walls we can open up.
Excellent question, a procedural question on how you get started with this kind of thing. The answer is a bit nuanced, Jane.
Number one.
The first call that you always make, that everyone should always make when they're thinking about remodeling or doing something different with their.
House, is you call a designer. All right.
You start with the creativity, you start with the art. You start with somebody who knows what they're doing in order to help you come with the absolute best possible design that works for you, that customizes your home, that expresses you. Because, as I say here on the program all the time, as you know, design matters most. We
start with design. However, sometimes design choices end up leading towards Wow, we're going to move that wall, or we're going to eliminate that wall, and we want to change those windows, or we want to put in a much bigger door. Things that infringe and touch now upon structural issues. So this is why I say it's nuanced. What you want is you want to call the designer first, and
you want to start having that conversation. What you don't want is to pay a designer for a th on, full blown finished design when you don't know what the structural ramifications are. Okay, So you call a designer and you begin to work with them in what we call rough design mode or rough sketch mode, in which we haven't you know, we haven't sold the farm yet for this design.
But we get to the point.
Where now we sense like, wow, we're really liking where this is going. And the big question now looms what about that wall? And that is when you call in a structural engineer for a consultation and it's a couple three hundred dollars, most structural engineers will show up and help you figure out what's going on. Sometimes it's pretty
simple to do expect that they will. In order to make the most of a consult like that, that you're going to want to invest a little of a demo, and by demo, I just mean a forensic opening up. You know, if it's a wall in question, you don't know if it's a bearing wall, or if you don't know if it's a sheer wall, that's critical for the seismic strength of the house, then you.
Want to pull some drywall off.
Drywall is inexpensive to replace, Okay, it's just cost of getting ready for your remodel.
A little bit of forensic analysis. So in other words, if.
We're talking about you know, if we were talking about the house in terms of let's say the metaphor of a patient going in for some surgical procedure and there are some things that we don't quite know about, then we would call this exploratory surgery, in which we open things up just a little bit to take a look around and to verify what it is that we're dealing with there.
So open up a little.
Section of drywall on a wall, open up some drywall on the ceiling right next to the top of that wall, if we want to figure out what direction the ceiling joysts are going, what's bearing on that wall or not, that kind of stuff, and then have the structural engineer come out and give you an evaluation of like okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see this. They might just say listen, hey, thanks for paying for the console. I think you're good to go. That's not a baring wall. That thing can be removed
and you don't have to worry about it. Or they may say, yeah, now some engineering is going to be required here and it's a major deal, or some engineering.
Is required and it's not that big of a deal.
So that's the information you need, you need at that juncture, and then you return to the design process with that information under your arm in order to finish out the design. You may decide to abandon that design because you don't want to touch that wall, or it may be full steam ahead, so it's designer engineer, back to the designer.
And then as you commit to a remodel, especially assuming that you're going to be pulling permits and doing it the right way, then once the designer is then committing to plans, the engineer is going to get involved again and put in their structural notes and pages in plans that you'll submit to the city. And that's kind of
the hopscotch or leap frogging that happens. So don't pay a designer everything up front to do a complete design when you don't know the ramification structurally on the house.
And just to let you know, just as a little topper, I'll tell you how Tina and I actually do even when we have been hired to do a full design on a home, we will still tell our clients listen, we are going to take you to rough design in which you're thrilled with the way everything's looking, and then we're going to get an engineer involved to spec out rough engineering specifications not even finished yet, but rough specifications, because only then do you have with our drawing down
on the page and the engineering specifications. Only then do you have the information you need to turn around and hand it to two or three contractors to give you what's called a rom a rough order of magnitude or really rough estimate, and so you're not holding them to it, but these are contractors that you're vetting and you're thinking about using, and they give you a rough estimate, so you get an idea like, ah, and this is what our project probably is going to cost in the ballpark.
At that point you may find out m Yeah, all right, that's in our budget, or no, that's too much, and then you go back to the design and tweak it again. So there's this interplay and this collaboration and that's generally how it works.
Does that help, yes, Thank you so much?
All right, Jane good luck on that project. All right, y'all when we come back, let's try and take a couple more before we are done today. Yeah, you are home?
Who is this? Oh yeah, it's Dean Sharp, the House Whisper.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You are Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper. Hey, thanks for joining us on the program this morning. All right to the phones, Eric, Welcome home.
Hello Dean. How are you doing?
I am well, sir. How can I help you?
So?
I'm planning on taking carpet out and putting new wood floors in the room.
I just put these new moldings in like maybe two years ago, so I know there's going to be a gap, and I'm wondering what you think I should do replace the moldings or do like a pillar or something like that.
Okay, So by moldings, you're talking about your baseboards. Okay, baseboards in the room and baseboards. Just so everybody can get caught up to speed here, when we install baseboards, knowing that carpeting is going in a room, the baseboard is actually we leave it off the ground. We leave it up above the floor about yeah, depending on the carpenter you talk to, anywhere from a quarter of an inch all the way up to about three eighths of
an inch. So if Eric is going to yank all the carpet in the pad out of a room and put hardwood down in its place, then it's the chances that the hardwood is going to actually touch the bottom of those baseboards is unlikely. That means we got a little gap underneath. Two ways to handle it, Eric, just straight out you're either well, okah, yeah too realistically. Two ways you could You could try and remove the baseboards carefully and reinstall them, but.
That never works out.
So I'm not even gonna tell you that one because you know you're gonna end up tracking something and messing it up and messing up the wall. So number one, you pull the baseboards. You're just like, well, okay, fine, I'm gonna sacrifice this.
Room full of baseboards.
You pull the baseboards, you leave the walls bare, get the floor installed, and then nicest, best, absolute cleanest looking job. Once the floor is down, you install new baseboards, bump right on top of the hardwood, nice and tight, clean line, clean corner done. The other way to do it, if you really really want to save those baseboards is you simply use a base shoe, which is just a secondary molding. You don't want to fill in underneath the baseboard because
that never ends up looking right. You try and glue it or try and nail it in, you're always going to see the seam. Even if you don't see it right away, you'll end up seeing a seam. So the traditional way, the conventional way is to use a base shoe, which is kind of like a quarter round, kind of like some people actually use cord around a quarter of
a circle. But base shoe actually, if you get the right stuff, is actually taller than it is thick as far as coming out into the room, and so it's a little bit more just slightly more streamline than QRD around. And what you'll do is you'll go ahead and lay the floor, get it underneath the or up to at least the line of the baseboard, and then cover the gap with a piece of bass shoe. Now I prefer as a designer, it says, no, this has nothing to
do with carpentry. I prefer as a designer, that you would paint that base shoe with your molding so that the floor stays the floor and the base shoe just becomes a part of your baseboard. From a design perspective, I think that's a cleaner, better look. Some people like to try and buy a base shoe, a base shoe that's the same material right as the floor. I think that just makes the floor feel like it's creeping up onto the wall, and for us, that's not a good look.
So that's what.
I'm gonna recommend my friend one of the two. If you pull out the baseboards, how tall are they?
By the way, there's like about three inches, So I got all.
Right, they're too short.
They're too short for so no seven seven inches?
Oh wow?
Okay, I know right, I know everybody.
Everybody's jaw drops every time I say that. But I'm just saying, if you've got a traditional house with kind of a traditional motif, don't hesitate to fill that house with taller base boards.
I guarantee you A wall is.
Visually, whether you've never thought of it this where or not. A wall is a column. It's like a column that has been split and laid out flat. So the base of that wall, you can imagine a big, strong column that has no base on it whatsoever, like a Greek column that just kind of runs into the dirt. A base, the base of a column needs a really nice pediment. And I guarantee you the general rule is seven is what we call the seven percent rule, the seven to
ten percent rule. And so that basically means baseboards can afford to be seven percent of the height of a wall. That means in an eight foot ceiling they can be almost seven inches tall. It will look fantastic. So if you decide to replace the baseboards, all I'm saying is think about going taller with them.
You won't regret it.
And then, of course you can blame me for spending more money in the rest of the house, because after you love that room as much as you do, you're like, oh, great, Dean had me change this room. It's now the best looking room in the house, and now I have to replace all the baseba boards everywhere. You are welcome, all right, thanks study for the call. Do I have time to sneak another one in here? Let's do it, Ragnar, Welcome home.
My wife and I just bought a new house in Hawthorne, California. It's built in nineteen fifty two, and we have retaining walls are on the outside of the property and from settling. The soil is clayish, and the settling has created a wall cracks in the retaining walls, and whether they've been made a center block but in institution is sick. How can I stick salibab and replace the walls?
Okay, So when we say retaining walls, do we mean that these walls are actually retaining soil or when we say retaining walls, you just mean like a garden block wall that's dividing you and the neighbors, well.
Garden block wall deviding me and the neighbors.
Okay, Yeah, So just to be clear, if it's not actually holding, if the soil level on the other side of the wall isn't significantly higher than on your side, or vice versa, it's not a retaining wall.
It's it's just a block wall. Okay. So a block wall.
And if it's got it, if it's settled, uh, and you know there's and then that happens, you know, because honestly, a retaining if it were a retaining wall, you probably wouldn't see any cracks in it, because a retaining wall gets solid filled with concrete in all of the cells, in the grouts in between all of that, and there's steel and there's a significant footing.
But a block wall can just be a simple garden wall.
They kind of tend builders tend to minimize the footings under it. So I totally get it that it's settled some. If it has settled, then you've got cracking happening. You can actually you can actually find concrete epoxy patch kits at like a local hardware store, builder supply home depot, that kind of thing. It's not going to and that'll get you patched up so that the cracking doesn't continue,
and it's not hard to use. A lot of it comes into calking tube form where you can put it in a calking gun, squirt it in there, fill up the crack, and then uh and then kind of trial it smooth. Now it's not gonna look pretty on your side, just to say not gonna look pretty. So you may want to consider at some point, once you fix all the cracks, you may want to consider actually painting the
wall so that it all blends in better. Because there's no way, unfortunately, to patch that wall unless the cracking was actually just in the mortar joints. There's no way to actually crack to fix a cracked cinder block wall without the patch showing up unfortunately, just as much if not more visible, once you patch it than the crack was to begin with. So you get some options in
after you've patched it. If you're going to keep the wall like that, you know, maybe paint the wall over, Maybe decide to grow something in front of it, or let something like a creeping fig kind of ivy sort of creeping plant cling to the wall and cover it over, make it more attractive in that sense. Or maybe at some point you say, you know what, we'll patch it for now, but let's replace this. Let's replace it with a fence, a wood fence of our choosing, so that
you get a better architectural look. That's the best I can tell you. Thank you, Ragnar, and thanks Eric for your calls. How about some more of your calls when we return. You are listening to Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper canf i AM six forty and live streaming in HD everywhere on the iHeart Radio app Hey, welcome to home, where every week we help you better
understand that place where you live. I am Dean Sharp, the house whisper, custom home builder, custom home designer, most importantly, today your guide to turning your ordinary house into something truly extraordinary. I tell you what we're doing today. It's an all calls day. It is it you set the agenda. Anything that is going on with your home, whether it be construction issues, DIY questions, design concerns, anything at all. The phone lines are open. I am here to help
you sort it all out. We'll put our heads together and we'll get it sorted. On that note, how about we go to it. Hey, Mary, welcome home.
I have a question about reroofing. I have a small house about fourteen hundred square feet, was built in nineteen eighty eight. But it needs the tile lifted and then the paper lad underneath it. And I'm getting bids on it, and some of the bids bidders are saying two layers of paper and others are saying one.
Okay, So your question is is are two layers necessary? Is that a good idea? Is it too much? Is it?
Yeah? I have a couple of thoughts about it.
Number one is two layers always better than one when it comes to roofing paper, especially because roofing paper will age, it will become brittle eventually over time. And the more protection you have up there underneath the tie ailes, the better off you're going to be. A lot of people don't realize this, but you know, tiles, roofing tiles, any kind of roofing material. The surface material that we all look at and say, look, there's the roof. That is just the top layer, and it is not a guarantee
in and of itself that the roof doesn't leak. What's really doing the true protection of the home is the underlayment, that is the building paper underneath the tiles. So I always tell people, do not shortchange your budget in terms of the underlayment. Get the best stuff possible. But Mary, since we're on that subject and you raise the subject, here is the thing I would prefer. And this is just me, and it's up to you, and you should bring this up to the roofers who are bidding your project.
We don't use builder paper anymore, roofing paper anymore in the homes that we design and specify and in the homes that we actually participate in building because for so long now rubber rized membranes have been proven themselves so far superior to builder of paper. So I would recommend that you actually go back and say, okay, fine, fine, fine, two layers of building paper. That's fine, but let's talk about using a modern membrane underneath my tile. The modern membrane,
they are self sealing. They lap onto each other, they seal. That's something that builder paper does not do unless the builders actually tar it all in which on a normal residential roof rarely happens. So the membrane seal, and as a result, Number One, when they're all done laying it, you have essentially, for all practical purposes, one continuous membrane, not just tiers of paper over the house.
And two other things about them.
Number one, they're rubberized, they're they're bitimus, they have stretch and give that they never actually lose, and so as a result, they do not become brittle and tend to break down as quickly over time. In fact, they last a lot lot longer than builder paper. They even go so far during installation as self ceiling around every single nail that gets punctured through them when the actual tiles are put on. So there is no doubt in my mind, no question in my mind that these new modern membrane
unladed layments are superior to builder paper. Now, do they cost a little more, Yeah, they do do. A lot of builders lead with them when they're bidding a job. No, they don't, because it means that their bid comes in higher, and then they have to sit there and explain to you why it's higher, because you know, we're using a better material, and some homeowners just don't agree or don't
believe them, but you can take it from me. I would zero in on the roofer that you're thinking about using, and then talk to them about a continuous, you know, more advanced underlayment. If you really want this this roof job to last forever, talk to them about a modern underlayment instead of the roofing paper.
And there you go.
And that's just one layer that they put down with that.
That's all you need with that stuff is just one layer because it is thick, and like I said, it's self seals, seals around the nails and it remains pliable throughout the years.
So one layer is.
All you need and that lasts forever.
It's gonna last. Yeah, yeah, I mean this is this is how we do lifetime roofs.
I'll put it that way.
Great.
I really appreciate the help.
You are so welcome, Mary, and I appreciate the call. All right, let's talk to Julie.
Hey, Julie, welcome home.
Hi Deine. We're looking at getting new windows and I love the black frame windows, but they're obviously a lot more expensive. So I was wondering, what are your thoughts. Honestly, just if someone just adjusted black frame windows in the back of the house and kept the traditional white frame ones in.
The front, I have no general problems with that whatsoever. In fact, if you hear me talk on the show quite often, i'll talk about the tech. One of the techniques for upgrading a house without touching its traditional curb appeal is to treat the facade of the house differently than the backside of the house, because from the the facade of the house is something that is viewed from outside the house, standing on the curb in the street
looking at the house. Then you move into the house, you walk in, and once you're past the face of the house. Now we're inside the house looking out through windows into the backyard. It's a completely different experience. And so the idea of using black frame windows for the backside of the house because you love them and because they work with the configuration that you're looking for, in
my thinking, in most cases most cases. Don't quote me on this universally, but in most cases, yeah, your freedom to mix it up, I would even say, depending on decor. There are times when you know there are well, actually you know, I'll tell you this. We just finished designing from the ground up a new house in Studio City. Some of those windows are white traditional framed windows, some
of them are dark bronze and black traditional windows. Just depending on room for room and the effect that we're looking for, and on some of the elevations of the house, you can see both at the same time. It all depends on whether it works with that theme. But as a general rule, you know, it's kind of the mullet approach, right, all business up front and party in the back. So keep your white frame windows facing the street and do back black towards the back of the house and have
a blast. I think you're completely free to do that in most cases. Thanks, Julie for the call. Yes, Yes, it's my mullet theory. My mullet theory.
Applies to lots of things. All the time.
You're listening to Home We Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on KF 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.