KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the house Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Such a privilege and a pleasure to spend time with you on a Sunday morning talking about that most important of spaces in your life, your home, and helping you make your ordinary house a more extraordinary home. By the way, if your home is in need of some personal house Whisper attention.
By personal I mean not here on the air, but with me and the tea just standing there right next to you, staring at the problem, whatever that may be, and helping you change the game for your home, you can book an in home design consult with us. Just go to house Whisperer dot Design, house Whisper dot Design. All Right, it is the top of the center hour, the second hour, which means it is time to go to the phones and find out what's going on with you and your home. Okay, Bruce, I got about half
of your question. Uh, we were having a little trouble with the callboard. Uh, you're thinking about putting in a whole house fan or an attic fan.
Run't buy me one more time, addict fan.
Okay, at Attic Fan but I have about two dozen can lights and I'm concerned about sucking cool air out of the house.
Gotcha, gotcha? Okay, So what kind of insulation is on the floor of the attic right now? That's bats of insulation and your can lights are sticking through, and are the insulate Is the insulation making contact with the can lights or are they just pulled back away from it?
Some yes, some no?
Give me all right. So it's a you know, it's it's a legitimate concern. H It's not.
It's not as severe as you might think, because the idea of an attic fan is that you know, we're blowing the hot air out of the attic and we're not actually, you know, we don't want to be drawing on that internal house air. That's different than a whole house fan. But the attic fan is just in and
of itself. But the thing that you can do, and it's a it's a relatively simple and inexpensive way to deal with this, is you can buy housings these covers, basically, these little heatproof insulation contact covers, and they're designed for recess can lights who that aren't ICEE rated I see, meaning insulation contact rated. Okay, Now it doesn't really matter to me whether yours are rated that way or not.
Your concern is air infiltration through the can into the attic and then losing cool or warm air, you know, as you use your attic fan. So if you want to guarantee that that does not happen, you can simply for the number of attic based recess can that you've got. You you can go online. You can find these on Amazon. You can even find them at the big box stores,
but they in the electrical section. They are these little boxes essentially, and they go over the can light and they sit on the you the top level of the drywall. And if you want to guarantee that you have no air infiltration, you can even put a little line of silicone around the bottom and quick just stick it down there. And now what we've got is we have sealed your ic housing, your your recess can housing in a insulation contact matter to the top of the drywall, and there
is no more air infiltration between the two. Now, there are different ways of doing it as well. Sometimes you can actually just calk around the can lights, but a lot of can lights, especially the older ones, are quote unquote leaky as far as air infiltration goes, So better to put the box over the top and then you're good to go on anything you want to do in you're attic.
Sounds good.
I'll look into it, all right, Bruce, Thank you for your call, buddy, appreciate that. Sorry that we had issues. Let's see if we can actually start up with Jim. Jim, are you there?
Yes, I'm here. How are you doing? Deed?
I am good, Sorry, we had some phone issues. Here are you and I we're going to get started with your question. Then we're going to have to go to break, but let's get started with it anyway.
Okay, Well, my question is I do a lot of fixing up furniture, building furniture, stuff like that, but my style is more mid century modern. But my house was built in nineteen eighty nine, so it's got the plant ledges all that. How how do I mesh these two together? And you know it's an eclectic but how do I mesh these two together to make it look cohesive?
Right? Right? Okay? You know what?
That is such a good question and I have such a good answer for you, but we're going to let everybody dangle on the end.
Of that question. Let me pop you on hold.
We're going to go to traffic, and then when we come back, we're going to answer Jim's questions about how do you mesh two different styles together inside a house, especially since he's living in a house that is not distinctly his preferred style. Great question, Jim, You hang tight, buddy.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
We are talking about finding your style today, and I'm taking calls right now, which means that the topics may be on style or may not be, because you set
the agenda when it comes to calls. But Jim called in and he's trying to figure out how his style of preference, which is a little bit more mid century modern, could possibly work, and how he's going to mesh that with the fact that he lives in a nineteen eighties southern California home complete with plant shelves and all sorts of that bull nosed dry wall and heavy orange peel on the walls and all sorts of fun stuff. Am I hitting it right there?
Jim?
That is absolutely correct.
Okay, all right, So it's a big question, and there are different ways of approaching this answer, I want to do it kind of in phases. First of all, First of all, we should not over estimate the power of a kind of how do I want to put it, I want to put it nicely. We should know overestimate
the power of the effect of attract home interior. Okay, I know it has its own vibe for sure, but usually if we want to, if we want to make the least amount of moves, anybody living inside attract home like a nineteen eighties tract home with all its little distinctives, anybody living inside that home that has a strong sense of.
Their own style.
When it comes to you selecting furniture and rugs and artwork and all of that, you will overpower the shell that you're living in, and you can transform that and get that vibe going without any big changes whatsoever. Okay, on a general you know, generally speaking, Okay, now, there may be some stark reminders of your homes, you know,
nineteenies construction pass. But I've seen it again and again and again, and we have walked into homes and suggested nothing but interior decor changes and sometimes help out with a little bit of paint. But the fact of the matter is that anybody who's got a strong style presence in any home will in fact make that evident and will not be out done by the house itself, especially
a tracked house. Okay, if you were trying to do this in an eighteen nineties Victorian home, that might be challenge, a bigger challenge, right or or craftsman home, it would be a bigger challenge. A home that knows who it is, has an architectural pedigree. These are homes that have to be massaged in a different way if we're going to change the style. But the fact of the matter is the interior of a nineteen eighties tracked home is not competing with you as much as you think if you
get creative with it. So that's Steed step one, which I hope is an encouragement. The second thing, though, would be to be making minimalist changes to the house, and that would be in terms of not remodeling whole rooms or anything like that, but maybe losing the heavy orange peel texture on the drywall, maybe going for a smooth
finished drywall. Maybe while we're doing that, pulling off those bull nosed corners, those rounded corners and replacing them those outside corners with squared off edge metal corners so that we get more of that geometric, tight, smooth finish.
You may or may.
Not want to fill in the plant shelf. Okay, And by the way, if you don't understand what we're talking about the plant shelf, if you've never been in a nineteen eighties one, quite often they have vaulted ceilings, and I'll tell you what they're actually for there, the builders creative way of running soffets around so that they can run air conditioning ducks and all sorts of funky stuff.
And all of a sudden, right up there, just a few feet above you, there's a shelf, which most of us have called the plant shelf because we're like, I mean, nobody has actually ever called it anything in specific, but I think we all kind of shrug our shoulders and what are we going to put up there?
I guess plants. I don't know.
They're too high, they're too high up to water to take care of, so we don't do anything up there. So the point is this, you want to get creative. It's a nice it's a nice flat shelf. If you've got a some artwork that could go up above it in the space above it. Then that flat shelf makes a wonderful place to put some directional lighting up against the wall, okay, and so we can transport. So you see what I'm saying that the presence of a plant shelf in an eighties home, it's not that hard to
redefine it. And the idea that a wall would ascend upwards in a mid century modern house and then have a niche in it, or take a jaw, get ninety degrees back and then continue up. That's not unheard of in a mid century modern motif, even if the architecture itself was built that way from day one. So the fact is, if it doesn't absolutely go against a mid century style, then work with it to think, okay, well,
maybe that's a preason. Maybe that shelf becomes the presentation of a light bar that shines up against the wall and will highlight.
Some artwork or whatever higher up on the wall.
And now we don't have to worry about the dust, and we don't have to worry about watering plants that we can't reach, and it actually becomes a feature that lifts your head up in the room. So that would be like level one transformation, which is smoothing out the dry wall, squaring off the corners, and yeah, that costs some money, but it doesn't. It's not a major remodel, right, We're just reworking some surfaces in the room and better at tuning it to receive your decor and your furniture,
and then we would kind of proceed on from there. Now, if you wanted to really really just say hey, you know, I'm ready to gut this place and to go full bore, then here is the most important thing I can tell you, Jim, and the thing that I want to tell everybody who's listening. You don't have to tear down your Spanish Mediterranean esque home in order to have a different interior. We learn
this lesson from the Europeans. Okay, I have traveled extensively through Europe looking at architecture, interior and exterior, and of all the people in the world who are leading the charge of contemporary and modern decor inside a home, smooth, organic, clean line surfaces, you know, minimalist detail, all sorts of just really beautiful artistic approaches. It is the Europeans who are doing this. And I here's my theory. On it,
and people are free to disagree with me. But the sense that I get is that if you grow up in a town that is literally eight hundred years old, and all the buildings and the streets are cobblestoned and the stone and all of these facades everywhere you turn, it's all.
Old world, old world, old world.
You get you but you're doing this in the twenty first century, right. You get a little tired of it eventually, and on some level you respect it and appreciate it, and in a lot of ways, you can't do anything about it because it very likely your European city that you live in is like, no, no, no, no, You're not touching that eight hundred year old stone facade on your building that you just bought your apartment or your
flat on. But walk inside the door, and that eight hundred year old building turns into an ultra modern, contemporary, very sleek interior experience. And so that happens so often, so often in European homes these days, and I think it's because they already feel rooted in. They want to move into the future.
Now.
Out Here in California, especially in southern California, we have a tendency. I find most people have a tendency to want kind of classic motifs because we want to feel rooted in the past. Everything out here is new and young, and you know, we don't feel we kind of feel rootless. Okay, so we embrace historical design, whereas the Europeans are like, enough,
let's move on and so. But the point is this, very simply, the point is that there's nothing wrong with the exterior of a home telling one story and the interior having a completely different vibe, because it is very, very simply the fact that you can't see them both at the same time. Right Once you're inside the house, you're inside that environment, and when you're outside, you're outside. And so the idea of historical preservation on the outside of a house, just keep it, keep it, roll with it,
make it work. But feel free once you step in the front door to change whatever, however and however much you want, if you want to be embraced, if you want to be embraced in a mid century interior that just happens to exist in a you know, Spanish med esque nineteen eighty shell, you know what, nothing wrong with that, whatsoever? What would be weird is to start putting mid century features on the outside of the house or trying to
share the two on the inside. But if you want to go one way or the other, or one on one side and one on the other, no.
Jim, Well, thank you. That answered a lot of my questions. Gave me a lot of stuff think about.
All right, buddy, good luck with that.
All right, thank you?
All right.
You see, see, this is why we take calls, because we learned some good stuff along the way. We're gonna take more calls.
Right after you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI Am sixty.
Dean Sharp, the house whisper, that's me, Thanks for joining us on the program today on this beautiful spring morning.
Sunday, May eighteenth? Is that the date? Is that? Do I get that right? Look at me? Look at me?
I got the date right. I always know what date it is, by the way, but I rarely know the date. It's just a fact of life around here. Tina is always reminding me of what date it is. She's like, what do you want to do on the seventeenth? I'm like, I don't know. Is this a trick question? Is the same seventeenth already passed us. I have no idea what the number is, and then you show me that. Okay, there it is. Okay, all right, we are taking calls.
We're in the middle hour of our fine program here. Also, we are talking today about finding your style and handing you as much information as I can, as much help as I can for you to start really embracing the idea of finding your own style for your home, because that's we're all about here. We're all about turning your ordinary house into an extraordinary home. And how does that happen when it becomes more you. That's how it happened
along the way. So we're going to return to that discussion, or we may have ben have some callers who want to continue that discussion. But when it comes to calls, you set the agenda and we can talk about anything that's on your mind. I want to talk to guy, Hey, Guy, welcome home.
Hello, Hello Sarah.
How can I help you?
Yeah? I am interested in rebuilding a house and Altadena that would burnt down in fires. Oh thank you. I was wondering if a modular or a stick home. It doesn't make a big difference.
Okay, really good question. A modular or a stick home. So let me explain this so that everybody who's listening is tracking with the conversation.
Here.
Modular home, by the way, different than a manufactured home. These are very confusing terms because they're both manufactured off site. But a manufactured home is what we would call a mobile home that gets built on a chassis, literally on a trailer chassis. Different animal altogether. So just so we know that we're going to set that one aside, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a modular home versus a stick framed home. Now a stick framed home,
and people are like, what is that? That's the home you're living in. More than likely a stick frame home means that it was built piece by piece, stick by stick, okay, stud by stud on site, right there was nothing, and then we poured a foundation, and then the carpenters showed up and they started putting boards together and raising walls and all of that kind of That is a stick framed,
stick built home. The difference between that and a modular home is that a modular home built out of the same materials, by the way, built in the same way, built according to the same codes, built just as well, if not arguably at points better, because a modular home is a preset design that is constructed in a factory,
a factory that has fine tuned its waste materials. It's material usage, the process by which every wall and every roofline is constructed, and then those components, not the whole house itself, but the components of the house, wall, panels, roofs, actions, all of that are shipped out to the building location and then assembled there much quicker. Okay, So now that we've laid that foundation between the two, what is the difference. Well, as I said, construction wise, they can be exactly the same.
They're built from the same processes, they are built according to the same codes. They're just as strong, just as safe when they're both built properly. Okay, it could be argued that a modular home has tighter quality control than a stick build home. I don't think that's necessarily true. It's just the question of whether whoever's building the stick build home is you know, a good builder or not, and whether they're doing work with integrity. So in theory
they should have the same. If one is going to fall behind, it would actually be the stick build home Okay, So the advantages and disadvantage is what it really comes down to, Guy, in your situation of rebuilding after the Altadena buyers, it comes down to this. The pros and cons are that a modular home is going to be faster construction. They just build them faster, They assemble them
on site faster. There will be cost savings because they build this home again and again and again, and they've wired in their waste and they've tuned it down to a minimum. So there are cost savings and quite often better quality control because of factory fabrication.
Right.
And so those are the pros of a modular home. Faster construction, less expensive, okay, stick built home, more flexibility in design, and can be customized more as you built. So the real issue is this, As you are selecting between the two, and you're wise to look at both options, the question really comes down if you want to save the most money and rebuild as quickly as possible. The question simply becomes, is there a modular home design that
really fits with you well enough? Off the shelf, because that's really what it is, it's an off the shelf home. Is there a design that fits with you well enough? That you'd be willing to pull the trigger and say, yeah, you know what, that home design right there that works. I mean, that's good, that's good for us. We love that we And if that's the case, then you're probably if you were to build that exact same home in both methods, the modular home is going to go faster, and it's going to be.
Less expensive, and the quality is the same.
And the quality is the same, absolutely the same, because those modular home factories, they are subject to the same inspection and code requirement in factory as the building inspectors who come out to the house.
The last question on that, does it lower the property value?
Not at all, not in any way, shape or form, because it is not, like I said, not to be confused with a manufactured home. Okay, a modular home is a home. Once a modular home is built and installed on site, we could stick frame a home right next to it from the ground up. That's the exact same home. They would be the exact same home with the exact same effect on property value. Okay, So no, there's nothing
about a modular home that lowers the property value. If it's a great home, a great design, and it fits the lot in your life. Well there, and you can find a design that works in that regard, there will be no change long term value, equity, quality of construction, all of it. It's simply about you know, I know, it's it seems that way for us. We raises questions because we're not used to homes being built that way kind of in mass, and they're not really in mass.
But you know, you kind of think of it like, well, would you hesitate to buy a car from a major manufacturer that was produced on an assembly line versus a car that the guy next door who's a automotive expert built from the ground up in his garage. Okay, well, if the guy really knows what he's doing, then no problem. But you know, sure, shooting that guy's car is going to be a lot more expensive than if, you know, you know, buy the Toyota that just rolled off the
line off the factory. Not a quality difference, not a problem, okay, just a difference in manufacturing process and as a result, speed and cost.
I appreciate your answer, Thank you guy.
Good luck with that, my friend. I'm sorry that you lost that home, and good luck and piecing it together. You are you are thinking all the right thoughts, exploring every avenue as we go.
All right, you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six four.
Glad that you are on the program with us. We are talking finding your style today. But we're in the second hour, so I've been taking calls. I want to take at least one more, maybe two, if we can, before returning to that conversation about finding your style. So let's go back to the phones. I'm ready for something, anything tough. Give me a tough one. Let's see. Let's talk to David. I have no idea.
David, Welcome home.
Good morning Dane. My name is David Dyke. Have a wood framed slat frames on the outside a garage.
Built nineteen twenty five in Glendale. The tar paper is gone on the inside or torn. I want to waterproof and insulate and drywall the interior of the garage, and I staple tar paper to the inside of the two by fours. If I do that, should I cock it around the two by fours and would spray on insulation be better?
Okay?
Okay, that was that was a full menu right there, my friend. Yeah, So all right, let's just let's set the scene here. We've got a garage and built in when twenty five, twenty seven?
When'd you say nineteen twenty five?
So we literally have a one hundred year old garage standing on your property in Glendale. And it's obviously a wood framed garage, and it has siding on the outside.
Yeah, okay.
And as we look inside the tar paper, the building paper that was put on the studs first before the siding was put on, the paper that was put on one hundred years ago, it's all messed up and gone or missing or torn away or I mean, is some of it there, some of it not? What's is it?
Generally just it's there and some of it's not.
Okay.
So, and and obviously the the the the question is all geared around the idea that we don't want to touch the siding on the outside.
Yes, sure, okay, unless there's a better suggestion for tearing it all off and doing something different.
Yeah, Well, I'm okay, okay, So I'm going to be completely honest with you. All Right, the absolute guarantee of of getting it right for the long term, considering that the building paper is torn, screwed up, missing all over the place. Uh, the absolute guarantee would be to remove the siding from the outside. I'm at one hundred year
old siding. I'm not saying that it's gonna survive, okay, but to remove it do everything as if we were approaching this project with fresh framing, meaning that we strip down to the studs, and that we wrap the outside of the of the stud the outside of the garage walls in vapor barrier and you know, fresh waterproofing materials,
and then we put new siding back on. Of course, the new siding could be designed and ordered in such a way that it looks like the old stuff, and so when we put it back together, even though it's brand new, we're maintaining that hundred year old story. If that's the important thing. So the fact of the matter is, David, that if we want an absolute guarantee that we've got everything buttoned up from day one, you got to take the old siding off and treat it new. Because here's
the trouble. The trouble is we can do a lot, okay, And I'm not saying that that's what I would do either. I'm just saying that that that's the one hundred percent guarantee that we get it right. We can do a lot from the inside. Okay, It's just that if there are leaks or any water intrusion through the siding whatsoever, onto the outside faces of those studs, then there's no way to stop that. If the building paper is still there,
that's fine. If it's been torn away and pulled out from you know, behind the face of the stud as it gets torn away, which is often the case, there are elements of you know, portions of those studs that are bare between them and the siding and then the siding, and a good paint job is the only thing that's keeping that stud from being you know, having moisture intrusion, but well maintained siding and a good paint job will, in fact should handle the vast majority of that, and
that saves you from yanking all that siding off. So let's just we're gonna go with Plan B, which is the sidings in decent shape, and we're gonna give it a really good and we're gonna caulk it on the outside on every lap. We're going to give it a really great exterior paint job so that it is shedding water and not absorbing and we're gonna get all that
tuned up and from the inside. Yes, we're gonna then start with running calking down the sides of the studs where it connects to the siding, so that we seal up those channels as best we can, and then we're gonna run new vapor barrier. We can call it vapor barrier. You can use building paper, you could use a waterproof roofing membrane that's self ceiling. There are all sorts of different varia. You could even apply a wet compound like Redguard or a roller applied waterproofing membrane to.
The back side.
There are a number of different ways you could approach it, but to just assent, wrap down the side of the stud, attach it to the side of the stud, and wrap into the bay so that it's backing is pushed up against the siding. And then that'll give you the freedom once that's all done and calked in to insulate and to dry wall the inside. Now, if you were to ask me to evaluate that, I would take a look
at the outside siding. If the outside siding seems like it's in good shape still and that we can bring it back caulk it, paint it, seal it up really really well. If there isn't any indication currently of major water intrusion, and that's the thing we should be able to see on the inside, since we're just looking at the backside of siding now and studs. If we don't see any major leaks or water intrusion coming through, then
that's a really encouraging sign. And I would probably go with Plan B because it's a lot more inexpensive than replacing all the siding on the outside. You just give it all of that, and I would add one more thing, just to make sure that we've got no moisture getting into those bays from the outside. We might take some pecks.
This is kind of an unorthodox but a really good idea, some PEX tubing, which is you know, plumbing pipe PEX piping which is flexible, And I might drill a half inch hole in the top plate of each stud bay and run a little PEX tubing up through that bay and then just up into the attic space as basically a snorkel or a vent, a place where air that might get humid or moisture ridden trapped inside that for any reason whatsoever, has a chance to bleed off into
the attic space or the roof rafter area above. But you could approach it with that multi layered approach. It'd be faster, it'd be cheaper, and you know, depending on how good the sighting is on the outside, you know, you might pull it off and have you know, decades of good performance there. The only absolute guarantee would be to pull the siding them.
And so if I pull the siving or is our other wood that like on a tough shed that would work good for that? Or should I just stuckle it? I stuckled the house at already. Oh I didn't want to spend that much more money.
On it, right, I mean if you went that way then yeah, match you know, stuck of the house, stuck of the garage. Match the house with the garage, and uh yeah, then then you wouldn't. Then we've set all of that aside.
Yeah, okay, I appreciate your wisdom on this.
Thing, David good Luck.
Just just know, whichever way you go, you know, you just want to be as thorough as possible to make sure that what you're doing is not compounding the problem but solving as many along the way. You don't always have to solve every single problem or every single weakness. If you solve ninety eight percent of them, chances are
you know you've resolved it. But if you've already changed the style of the house, then if it's in your budget, the safest way to go for the garage long term would be to strip the siding off, wrap it, stucco it. You'll have a brand you know, for all intents and purposes, you'll have a brand new garage that will last decades, and you know it'll last another one hundred years on you.
All right, y'all when we return, let us return to this topic of finding your style, the very interesting discussion. You don't want to miss it. There is more hope than you think. You're 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 iHeart Radio app.