Details Matter | Hour 1

That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. Don't look at me that way.

in your home can make a massive difference. And that's why it's so great because details small things do not by definition break the budget. And so this is an enabling conversation that we're having this morning so that you can make some big changes on some small cash for your home, really really important things. And of course we're going to take some calls as we do. Let me give you the number eight three to three two. Ask Dean A three three the numeral two. Ask Dean eight

three to three two, ask Dean. And as always, when it comes to calls, anything you want to talk about, you set the agenda for the calls. Construction design, DIY, what have you A three three two asked in The phone lines are opened, ye, yes, yes, they are open now and you can call in talk to producer Michelle Cube, who is standing by to take your calls this morning.

in the world. That's why there's an elephant sound in the back. Just to be clear, Tina in no way looks like an elephant at all, But.

Ask Dean eight three three two, Ask Dean A three three the numeral two peep, ask Dean.

You have heard it said, undoubtedly, don't sweat the small stuff. Somebody has said that in your life at some point, and you know that it's probably a really good advice in a lot of areas, but not when it comes to making an ordinary house truly extraordinary. When it comes to that, God is always in the details, as they would say, which is great news because it means you can move the needle quite a bit, even with limited resources.

So this is a massive, massive list, by the way, and we're just going to move through what we can today and hopefully inspire you to figure out your own details as well, even if the ar ones that were not mentioning first thing I want you to understand about details in a home is how to build a room without building walls. And this is just a this is a design truth that not as many people utilize when they're laying out their furniture in their house that as

as should. Okay, we have over the last few years gone open concept open concept. A lot of houses now have been remodeled or built brand new with this open concept, which means that we have at least one kind of supersized room in the house, the combo kitchen, family dining ish living area, and it's nice, big and open, no walls. Some of them have gone too open, but you know, we're not going to get into that today. But the point is this when we've got a larger space like that.

And by the way, this applies even to small spaces that are open concept, like an apartment, okay, because you know, you walk in here, you walk in the door and boom, you're right there in the seating area or the living room, and there's the kitchen, and you know, it's all sort of this one main area other than the bedrooms are all just sort of right there in one open space. So when it comes to this particular detail, it is understanding that walls walls that we think of as the

things that define a room. Walls are really a story of sorts. They are essentially a construct of our imagination. Now I'm not saying that your walls are imaginary. If you've got walls, they're real. But the point is this, a lot of folks think, well, if we're really gonna define a space better, then we got to do construction, and we got to You don't put up wall. No, no, no, not necessarily the case at all, because a wall can be many many things. We do this a lot when

we talk about exterior landscape design. A wall can be so many things. Specifically, in this case, what I'm alluding to is that a wall can be a properly placed piece of furniture. So let's say we have an open space and we've got a sofa or a little sectional l sofa. The backside of that sofa as it stretches out into the room is essentially a wall because you're

on the back side of the sofa. So aligning it in a room along the path of a hallway out of the main hallway, or aligning it with its back or its edge leading edge away from the front door can create.

technical sense. You open up the door and you're standing in a larger room. The reason why that is not the greatest thing in the world is simply because entryways, just like hallways and front porches and back decks, they are transitional spaces. They are kind of emotional airlocks, as it were. They're not quite out, they're not quite in. They give you that moment of pause. You can call

them a punctuation in a sentence. They give you that moment of pause where you can reorient yourself and say, okay, all right, now I'm entering into this situation instead of just being thrown right into it. So instead of walking through the front door and just stepping into your living room, you step into an entryway. And you're like, Okay, I'm I'm not outside anymore, but I'm not actually completely in the house, right.

of a psychological perimeter. Now, if you can emphasize that even more with the line of a sofa floating free floating in a room, not so that it's destroying usable space in the room, but so that it's clan a space unto itself. A sofa and a couple of chairs, or an L shaped sofa connected to a coffee table, all touching one area. Rug that combines those elements together. That's room with walls. There's a clear psychological sense in which you are either in that room or you are

not in that room. You're on the other side of those edges. And because you're on the other side of the edges. You don't have to think of that space as being all a part of the greater, massive space that it finds itself in. You understand what I'm saying, And again I keep saying the word larger space as if I'm alluding to like a super big room. It's absolutely critical in super big rooms, but it's just as critical in smaller spaces like apartments and condos, where there

aren't a lot of defining structural features. There's not oh, a dining room, clearly, that's the dining room. Clearly this is a living room, and there's the kitchen. It's all sort of you know, most apartment in condos, it's all sort of an amorphous one sort of open space, and that puts it upon you to carefully design the details of where the furniture sits so that we get entry away, a free passage to other rooms, other spaces like the kitchen, a place to eat, a place to sit, and so on.

I think you get the point there, all right. So first tip of the day, building a room using the details of furniture and things like area, rugs, lamps, all that to create rooms without building walls, and in that Chiching money saved along the way. All right, so much more when we come back. Let's talk about controlling the size of a room with the detail of color, and integrating some of that old furniture that you inherited then and like but.

to know. Pop you into the queue. You can listen to the show while you wait, and then who knows you and I will put our heads together and we will figure it out. I promise you. Eight three three two ask Dean go into the phones in just a bit, all right, back to it. Right before the break, I alluded to the fact that I would tell you how to control the size of a room with color. This is a detail that you know, some people would say, well, listen, Dean color in a room, painting on the paint on

the walls. That's not a small detail. No, it's not a small detail. But it is a detail, and it's an inexpensive way of radically changing a space. And so I just want you to be aware of this one thing, just this one simple thing. I shared this with the Conway on Thursday night in our normal like six twenty bit that we do. And it's this warm colors. If you're a human being, warm colors meaning anything on the warm side of the spectrum, they tend to come toward us.

And I think you understand what I'm saying when I use that language, that they come toward us. Warm colors embrace us. They kind of approach us and wrap themselves around us. That's that warmth they are cozy, all right. Warmth radiates at us. Maybe that's the tie into nature, right, it comes at us. And therefore a warm color on the walls of a room, and warm color in terms

of furnishings, accents, all of that. These are things that come at us and as a result make a room feel smaller, okay, more comfortable, cozier, more homey in that side. In that sense, cool colors the inverse of that, anything on the cool side of the spectrums, the blues, the greens, and so on. These colors tend to move away from us. They recede from us sort of psychologically, emotionally, the sides of the vastness of the ocean, the blueness of the

sky above us, the height of trees. Cool moves away from us. Warm comes toward us. So in this case, how do you apply this, Well, let's say you've got a small room. You've got a small space, and you don't want it to get any smaller because it's already maybe smaller than you want.

a while. All of the pomp and circumstance of having, you know, big cavernous space doesn't always feel great. In fact, it rarely feels great in terms of making people feel good about being in the space. And so we want warmer colors there in spaces like that that sort of reach out and embrace you, draw you in, and make you feel more comfortable about being in that larger space. So warm colors come at you and shrink the size

of rooms. Cool colors move away from you and expand the size of the room, all of which happens without actually moving walls.

table from great grandma, and you love it. You love the table, and you want to honor her and the heritage.

tables right now. Apply this theory to any piece of furniture that you've got. But you know tables, right below the table top, there's a skirt underneath that table. Unless it's a glass top table, if it's wood, there's a skirt of some sort underneath it. You know, relatively small, you know, three four inch skirt from which the legs

are extending down to the floor. That skirt is not a huge, glaring detail, but it is something that's visible from the room, from other rooms when you're room adjacent to it. And to take that skirt and make the bold, sexy jougi decision, you know what we're gonna do, just the skirt. We're not gonna touch Grandma's table any other way.

Just the skirt underneath the tabletop. We are going to take some paint, the same kind of paint that we used on these other items in this room, or matching the color of some of these accent items in the other room, and we're going to put that accent color on just the skirt or just the legs. Or you're

getting what I'm saying. By putting just that element of color onto that table, you have owned it, You've integrated it into the decor complement of everything else in the room, and suddenly you're doing both the best of both worlds. You're honoring this great piece from your great grandma, and also it now belongs in your space. It's a detail that matters. Tina, and I did it a while back. We have had a grandfather clock. It's not a great grandfather,

great grandma. It's not a super awesome, fancy grandfather clock. It's kind of early nineteen eighties, a grandfather clock that Tina's grandparents bought, and it was always a part of their home and it was always something that she loved seeing,

I mean, just reminds her of them. And we've had it in various places in the house for a number of years, and finally Tina said, you know what, I really really want that clock to be theirs and ours both, and so she decided to paint several of the elements of that clock the exact same color that we used to paint the walls of our dining room, because the clock is not in the dining room, but it is sitting right across a walk path from the dining room.

And man, did it make a massive difference. That clock now belongs with us and it belonged to them, And it's a great way of kind of straddling the historical fence there, So a detail that matters, just a little bit of paint, kind of paint on the right aspect of a piece of furniture can take those older, out of date, used to belong to somebody else things and

make them yours. All right, when we come back, let's talk about not neglecting utilitarian fixtures and how important is that in terms of details and what I mean by that light switches, lamp chords, outlets, even heating and air conditioning vents.

too much other than their beauty. So I hope you turned your clock back last night and got an extra hour of sleep. I'm glad you're here with us now. We're talking about details that matter, and I'm gonna let you know next segment. Right after the next news break, we are going to the phones, and so I will give you our number once again, eight three to three two. Ask dean eight three to three the numeral two. Ask dean eight three three two, Ask dean. Producer Michelle standing

by ready to take your call. She'll tell you everything you need to know. Pop you into the queue, and then we will get to that thing that you've been scratching your head about and we will get it solved. That coming up right after the next news break. All right, back to the deats, the details that matter. Where are we at on our list here? What did I say? We're oh to not neglect extending your design efforts to often overlooked utilitarian fixed Oh that's a mouthful, right, What

do I mean by that? I mean, what is the utilitarian fixture? It's stuff that just got to be there, right, It's got to be there, and we kind of take it for granted, and it's often overlooked. Light switches, outlets, chords coming from lamps, those kinds of things. And so here's the thing. I know somebody's listening right now saying, you know, can we get the major changes that make a difference. And I'm just going to underscore this one

more time. Sure, we talk about the major changes all the time, but today we're talking about details that not in and of themselves just one of these changes. But if you start really kind of obsessing over the details in your home, layer after layer after layer, pretty soon what you've got is something that everywhere somebody turns, they see caring inserted in. And that's really what the details really provide. There's this underscoring of the care with which

you are designing your home. Details matter. You know, we always say when we go to a restaurant, right, oh, the service was wonderful. Detail that matters, you know, in a hotel, you stay in a hotel, hospitality industry in general, whether it's food or overnight stays in places, it's the

little details that matter. Fresh flowers in a room, if you've ever stayed in a room in which after housekeeping has been through they've left behind fresh flowers, or the mint on your pillow, that kind of thing.

It's kind of just tossed and spooled down around the base of the lamp. And in those cases, if you're serious about getting the details right, then you think about, well, what can we do to that cord? What can we do to the chord? And so you start looking and

you suddenly you realize there's a whole world. You look on Amazon and find there's a whole world of lamp replacement cords out there, And if you don't want to wire in a new replacement cord, and by that I mean fabricy chords, velvety chords, chords of every imaginable color, beautiful, lovely chords that nobody is offended by seeing. And is anybody ever going to walk into your home and say, hey, nice chord. Chances are no. But does that mean that

you shouldn't do it? No, not at all, because what they'll see is they'll see a beautiful lamp and nothing will distract them from it, including the whole effect of the chord finding its way over to the plug and so on. If you don't want to rewire a light on what I was about to say, is that a lamp, then there are sheaths, sheaths trying to make that sound

right in my ears. There are cord sheaths that you can purchase for cheap that just slide over, kind of like scrunchies, that slide over an existing cord in order to make it far more attractive. And there are ways and places in a house where you're wanting to plug something in and you just can't avoid the cord. And in those situations, you take the extra effort and you change it out. Okay, the same is true with switches and outlets again, do they matter? Yeah, they do matter.

They're right there on the wall. So you're trying to go for this effect, this vintage, look this old house, look this, whatever the case may be, and then you just got the plane old. There they are the plain old white outlet, the plain old white you know light switch, the plain old plate that everybody else has in the universe. Well, if you want to stand out, if you want to make a difference, then there are a billion plates and switches.

What was that house of antique hardware? There it is and these are like the ones that you would find in one hundred year old home, but they're brand new. They're totally code compliant, brand new, wonderful, gonna last forever. Light switches and they just add that little and do people notice those?

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