KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
I design custom homes, I build a few custom homes, and I on the weekends, am your guide to better understanding that place where you live. Today on the show, well, you know it's springtime and the weather has been good enough long enough for most of us that we're finally giving up and we're saying, okay, I admit it. Winter's over. I need to get out and get some of this honeydew list finished up. And so I know there's a lot of DIY stuff going on. It happens every year
right about this time. The flowers are blooming, the birds, the bees. We've got all sorts of good shows along those lines planned for you as well. But today, because I know you're dusting off the tools and you're getting get ready to knock down some of that list that you've been writing down, saying yeah, i'll do it in spring.
I'll do it in springtime.
Well, now here we are, so today it's DIY fix it tips.
Now.
My focus here is on the little things, because sometimes it is the little things. For those of you who are good at reading instructions and following directions and doing a little research on YouTube or wherever it is that you are looking for advice for your project. For those of you who do well at that, that's really not your problem. Some of you don't read instructions, that's your problem.
But for everybody these days who hey may or may not have been raised with some hands on DIY tool instructions and those kinds of things, I find that people get frustrated on the little things. Little things, I mean little things like how does this How do you really screw in a screw with a screwdriver the right way? I know that may sound ridiculous, Dean. You just put the head in there and you turn it. And yet, and yet I find so many people frustrated by this
thing is slipping. I don't know what's wrong. Is there something wrong with the screwdriver? Is it the screw?
Is it me?
There is a technique and if you don't understand what that is, well you will by the time we are done today. That and one hundred other little things, because sometimes it's the little things. Successfully handling small problems around the house can make a big difference in the quality of your daily life, and the right fix comes down to understanding those little things. All right, Before we start with the little things, let me show you a couple
of big things. I want to introduce you to our team. Let's say good morning to Elmer. How you doing, bud yeehaw, I'm doing good. I'm a cowboy, you sounded though enthused.
Yeah, ye, there's a snake in my boot.
Elmer is on the board handling pretty much doing all the work. I'm just sitting here talking to the microphone as per usual. Who else is working hard? Of course our golden mic winning producer Richie, who is not near a golden mic. White Well, he might be next to his golden mic, but he's not near excellent mic.
That's right, is in the hand.
He is standing by to take your calls. The phone lines are opened up, and of course we're taking calls today. Here's the number eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two. Ask Dean eight three three two. Ask Dean. Also working hard today. Eileen Gonzalez at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning sunshine. How's it going? Oh, you know you know Sunday morning, it's time to just hang out with y'all and talk home stuff. It's going good, it's going good.
Nice.
How is what's our tea of choice this morning?
We're on Green Tea again. I've needed the extra caffeine this weekend.
Oh, okay, all right? Does green tea have more caffeine than like black tea or just the same?
I have no idea. I know white tea has a lot of caffeine. I found that out the hard way by accident.
One.
Why am I shaking? Oh? Has more caffeine?
All right, all right, good to know. I love tea.
I'm just not a tea officionado. If somebody hands me tea, I'm like, oh, thank you very much. This is lovely. But I don't find myself. I think I'm more. Coffee is on my brain most of the time, and there is caffeine and coffee. By the way, did you know that?
Did you know that? Huh? It's working, it's working. Uh. Who else is working hard today?
Oh? Sitting across the table from me. Let's not forget her. My better half, my design partner, the co owner, co founder of House Whisper, pretty much the person who holds my life together and my best friend in all the world.
Tina is here. Excuse me, Welcome home.
Welcome home to you. We were in Albuquerque earlier this week, Yes, Albuquerque, New Mexico, with some lovely dear clients and working on a home design, and we walked into Old Town. We stayed near Old Town, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, very friendly place by the way, extremely friendly. That was our experience, and we walked in. We had a little extra time on our hands on Wednesday morning, walked into old Town, found a puzzle store in the shops in Old Town and found
a we love. Tina loves wooden puzzles. Wooden puzzles, and because once you make them, first of all, they're very difficult, and then once you build them, some of them are so beautiful you want to just frame them. You just want to mount them and frame them. We found a wooden puzzle from a very reputable wooden puzzle manufacture with
an elephant on it. Sweet adorable lady elephant. She had a big ear ring in one of her ears, and she was trying to balance on some teacups and then you could see there were broken teacups down on the ground. But she was successfully balancing on a tea pot, which I'm not sure that's working either, But the point was she was a big old elephant and she was being lovely and elegant and gracious. And it's an adorable painting and it's in the puzzle and we nabbed it because you and elephants.
I know, right.
Yeah, there is a beautiful puzzle company, puzzle Lab there. I think they originated in British Columbia, but you can look them up and you can probably even see that puzzle there. They're so so pretty.
They are, They're gorgeous. You should check it out. If you're a fan of puzzle or just artwork, kind of abstracted artwork, you should check out Puzzle Lab. There you go, all right. Not a sponsor of the show.
Not a sponsor today Home sponsored by Puzzle Lab.
Hmm, that doesn't really follow. All right.
Uh, let's get into the little things tips and tricks for your DIY season that lies ahead of you.
We will do it all.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
If your home is in need of some personal house whisper attention. Yeah, I mean, like me and T standing in your family room staring at you know what you consider the problem. Then you can book an in home design consult with us. Just go to house Whisperer house Whisperer dot design. Let's just s some that's our company website, house whisper dot Design. All right, let us dive into Dean's list of fix it tips for you. Just random things, I mean stuff all over the board here, so hopefully
you'll just glean some things. Here is a thing that most, if not all, YouTube instructional videos on plumbing fail to mention.
Are you ready?
How do you properly tighten a threaded pipe? And how many turns is tight enough?
Ah?
That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. It's the little things that unnerve you or bug you or cause you problems. Well, first of all, First of all, first step, whenever you are working with pipes, plumbing pipes in your home, okay, two wrenches, not one. Two two wrenches to support the pipe, the part of the pipe that you are not removing, okay, And the second one to actually hook onto and spin off the fitting of the pipe that you are working with. Now,
why is that? Well, if you just grow up, walk up to a you know, a piece of plumbing, and you slap a pipe wrench onto the fitting that you're trying to remove. A couple of things can happen. Number one, you can cause damage back in the wall by putting too much pressure intention on that pipe that that you're
weren't intending on touching. Okay, that's why you set a pipe wrench in the opposite direction, okay, so that they are uh, so that they are spinning against each other, the pipe wrenches, and then you hold the one and spin the other so that you're supporting the existing pipe. The second thing is, let's say a common example would be you've got a threaded pipe coming out of your wall, maybe on the outside of the house, and there's a
water spigot valve attached to it. Okay, so you've turned the water off, all things are good, and you just grab a pipe wrench and you slap it on that water spiggot valve and you start to turn it, and you realize very quickly that the water spigot itself, that valve is much tighter on that pipe than the pipe
is on the next fitting inside the wall. The whole pipe is now spinning, and you're literally removing the pipe from its fitting or its elbow inside the stucco wall where you can't get to it, and you don't want to do that. You don't want to do it because if you undo it completely, that pipe may shift, it might not be lined up anymore, you might not be able to get it back in there. And number two, there's no reason to take it out of that. You
only want to take the spigot off. And so again, two two wrenches opposing each other in spin direction every time you approach plumbing. So if you're building a toolbox for yourself, a DIY toolbox, and you're like, yeah, you know what, I think it's on every list. I should get a pipe wrench. No, you should get two pipe wrenches. Two Now, how many turns?
Okay?
This is I've asked plumbers this and plumbers apprentices this on job sites and they've scratched their head and they're like, well, I don't know, I don't know. A fitting should cover at least the first half inch of the threads of the pipe that it's being thread onto. Okay, half inch at least. Now you get beyond that and it feels snug you can let it go. You do not have to crank a fitting all the way onto a pipe
to cover all the threads. In fact, most of the time when you attempt to do that, you may crack the fitting or the union or the valve or whatever is that you're trying to put on because it's too much pressure. Half an inch half an inch okay, hand tighten it and then one to two turns more usually
gets the job done. And here's a hint. If you're using pipe tape pipe thread tape as a ceilant, and I recommend it for di I wires because it's so much more efficient and it usually works, you know, all the time, as opposed to pipe dope, which is kind of the sticky, goopy stuff that you can also put on threads for a ceilant. If you're using pipe tape, guess what. Pipe tape is usually half an inch wide.
So if you put the pipe tape on those outside threads and then spin your fitting on so that it covers the thread tape, you are good to go.
How is that? How was that?
Can I get Can I get a all right?
That's fine?
No, I was at We actually have a licensed plumber here, and I wanted to get I wanted to get his thumbs up, but he's busy doing other things.
It's fine, it's fine, trust me. It's good advice.
When we come back, we're going to go a little bit deeper into plumbing and then we're gonna move on to that squeaky door threshold.
How does that sound all right?
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI Am six forty.
Dean Sharp, the house Whisperer talking to you here live this Sunday morning. Is it the thirteenth? Today is the thirteenth of April. Technically tonight the second night of Passover. It is springtime in all its glory. It was sunnier yesterday. Today we're a little overcast where I'm sitting right now, and cooler. I was hoping the sun would break out today.
Maybe it will at some point. But spring is here, and man, all of the flowers, all the plants in our yards are just screaming out and so thrilled, so thrilled. Spring in southern California. It's a beautiful thing. I hope wherever you are, the weather is treating you well as well well as well. There you go, all right, let's get back to our list of the small things fix it tips that make a difference. We talked about approaching pipes with pipe fittings. How many turns actually of a
pipe fitting? How far onto a pipe on the threaded pipe do you to spin something? And I talked about pipe tape right thread tape for sealing it. There are different kinds of thread tape, by the way, FYI be aware of that. White is for water, yellow is for gas. There's some purple out there, which I think I believe it is universal, but just white and yellow. Be aware of that. How many wraps of pipe thread tape a pipe get and in what direction do you put it on?
I didn't mention that, but I'm going to make sure we cover that so that you know everything. And the answer is between three and five. Between three and five wraps around the thread doesn't take much. You don't have to go crazy on it. And if you find yourself putting on a fitting and all the pipe tape is getting all gummed up and peeling off as you put it on, then you got a lot on there, or you put it on the wrong direction and the right The right direction is clockwise as you stare at the
end of the pipe. You put the pipe thread tape on clockwise. Why because the fitting is going to spin on clockwise as well, and it helps the thread tape to lay down. So if the thread tape is going on the same direction as the fitting, they lay down and meld together. If you put it on counterclockwise and then you put the fitting on clockwise, it'll be trying to unwrap the thread tape as you put the pipe on.
The fitting not good. So just remember three to five wraps clockwise, the same direction that you put the actual fitting on when you start to screw it on. Was in a home earlier. This was no last week. It was in a home last week, and.
The door threshold every time we went out through the front door right at the end, gave it just a nasty squeak. It wasn't really a squeak so much as it was a chirp from metal on metal contact, and the homeowner was concerned, like, what is going on with my front door?
Is it all falling apart? No?
No, no, I look down now it may be a different condition, but I would say the vast majority of front doors are set up this way as far as weather stripping, there's a threshold, be it wood or metal. Quite often a metal threshold on even on top of a wood threshold, but a metal threshold and a smooth metal threshold. And then what you will find on the bottom of the door itself is what we call a door shoe. That is the other the second half of
that weather stripping combo. It is a U shaped channel that is placed up underneath the bottom of the door protects the bottom of the door from direct contact with moisture. There's a little drip edge on the front that takes water running off the door and gets it away from
the threshold. And there is or should be a gasket, a rubberized gasket, a little bulb of gasket that sticks down, goes into a little channel on that door shoe and sticks down and rubs makes contact with just very light contact when it's adjusted properly, makes light contact with that bottom metal threshold and seals off the door. And what do I mean by seals off the door? If you can see light underneath your door that's not sealed off.
And if when you shut the door, that whole bulb gets squished down and deformed in shape, then it is also out of adjustment and too low. Now, in this situation, not only was the bulb gone and there was light underneath the door, but at one end. Because sometimes doors expand sometimes over time the jam may shift. There's a
there's ten different reasons why this can happen. But the door shoe, the metal of the door shoe is actually rubbing at the very end of the swing against the metal of the door threshold itself and causing that grinding, annoying, high pitched metal on metal sound. So what do you do if the door threshold squeaks. Well, first of all, the easiest thing to do is to just re adjust the door shoe. Now, the door shoe, you'll look down and you'll notice on the inside or the outside, it's
actually going to be on the outside. It's going to be on most pieces. On the outside, there should be a series of screws, tiny little screws running across that are holding that shoe on. That's all that's holding that door shoe in place. You undo those screws and you'll find that you can, maybe with a little bump from a rubber mallet, just to knock it loose from the paint or whatever. You'll find that it is fully adjustable, and what you can do is leave the screws out,
shut the door again and adjust it. Now, make sure you put some new gasket in there if the gasket is for any reason worn. And that doorshoe gasket is sitting on the shelf at the hardware store. It's sitting on the shelf at the big box store. It is the most common stuff in the world, and you can
go get some right now for just pennies. So you've got a little section of new doorshoe gasket, slide it in, make sure it's all fixed really nice in there, and then let the put the doorshoe back on, no screws, and let it kind of float as it goes up over the lower metal threshold. And you know, you can nudge it with a screwdriver or with your hand and just get it making nice even contact all around, and pop some screws back in. Now the screw holes may
be in a different location, that's okay. You're readjusting that door threshold to its current conditions, and you will find when you're all done that you can open and close the door. No light underneath, no bugs crawling in, no squeak, no sound ah like new.
There you go.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Hey, just in just a bit, we're going to be going to the phones and you can ask your question of me about your house. Anything at all that you want to talk about regarding your home. We can talk design, we can get all froofy and talk design. We can talk like architects, we can talk like builders, we can talk like di wires. Anything at all that you are curious and scratching your head about your home, give me a call. I'll help you figure it out. I promise
the number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three the numeral two. Ask Dean eight three three two ask Dean. It's just that simple. And we'll be.
Doing that right after the next news breaks. So phone lines are open. Producer Richie standing by. He'll tell you everything you need to know. Pop you into the queue, we'll put our heads together, we'll figure it out all right. Back to our list of cool little important DIY fix it tips. That's all we're doing today all through the show. Just lots of pearls of wisdom, because sometimes it's the little things that get in the way of you successfully
completing that DIY project. Not necessarily the big concepts. Not necessarily you not following instructions. It's sometimes the little skill sets that the instruction manual or the YouTube video or wear it that it just failed to mention that ends up becoming the big frustration. So we've talked about some plumbing stuff. We've talked about door threshold squeaking. Here's one in the world of gluing. Gluing is a thing that
is a big part a lot of projects. Some of you are doing sprinkler work on your irrigation system, some of you are putting in drains, some of you are gluing together pieces of wood or trying to repair something. So let's stick with the wood for the moment. How much would glue do you need on a piece of wood? So let me just give you this perspective. Almost in
all cases, less is more, all right. The idea of gunking up something with a lot of glue so that you're like, hey, we're just gonna smush that glue in. It's going to be coming out the sides like too much peanut butter and jelly on a sandwich. Right, you know, you're just wasting a lot of glue. You're wasting a lot because the best bond, almost always, in almost all circumstances, the best bond happens with a very very thin layer of glue in between the two surfaces that are being
glued together. That is just a general rule of gluing when it comes to wood glue. Thoo, though, there is a first step along the way. Wood glue has a good amount of water in it, and wood is a very absorbent material. So when we're taking two pieces of wood and we're going to glue them together and we want them to hold forever, what we're gonna do first is we're going to put a thin coat of wood glue on both surfaces, and we're gonna let it dry. And what I mean a thin coat, I mean a
thin coat. And you're not going to put some glue on and rub it off with a rag. But you could put some glue on and take a putty knife or a blade of a knife, or even just a small scrap of wood and just scrape off most of the excess there. Just want a thin coat, Now, what's that going to do? That thin coat is going to absorb into the wood somewhat. Whatever absorption the wood is
going to do, it's going to grab on. It's not going to take it all down, but it's going to take a good amount of it down, seal up the pores of the wood, and leave an optimal gluing surface
left over. If we've just put some glue on two pieces of in between two pieces of wood and smash them together, and I'm not saying that it won't stick, but i am saying that the wood both pieces are going to absorb a lot of the glue into the grain and not leave enough on the surface to bond the two surfaces together as well as they could be. Maybe you get a twenty percent strength bond instead of one hundred percent strength bond. So the key is very
very simple. You just put a thin coat on both surfaces, You let it dry for a couple of minutes, and then you can apply a second good bead and push those pieces together and clamp them. Clamping them together is always key when you're using wood glue for wood, because it gives again, puts the pressure on the bind, puts the pressure on the seam, makes the thinnest possible layer of adhesive between the two and the best possible bond. So you're gonna clamp them together, walk away, let it
do its magic. You will not regret it. And of course when you clamp it together, you might get a little excess coming out the sides. And take a damp not wet damp rag because we don't want to add moisture. Do you know the difference between damp and wet. By the way, there is a technical difference, especially.
In the trail. Okay.
A wet rag is anything that you can pick up and when I squeeze it, I can get water out of it.
Okay, the water still comes out. That's wet. Okay.
Damp is when let's say we've taken a dish towel or something like that. It's been wet and I've wrung it out and I can't get any more water to come out of it. But when you feel it in your hand, you know there's water there.
It's damp. That is damp.
A damp rag is what you use to wipe off the excess glue that comes out of the seam so it doesn't try and get all yucky and mess up the wood on the outside of the seam damp damp rag. The guarantee of using a damp rag is that you know that you're not adding moisture to the seam and diluting the glue. Water is not coming out of the rag, but there's enough water there to act as a kind of a lubricant and to allow the rag to clean the surface adequately. It's very simple. Damp and wet. You
learned it right here. Okay, we got so many more to share with you. We'll do it. But when we come back, it's top of the hour, which means time to go to the phones. We got some calls on the board. There's also room for you. Eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two. Ask Dean your calls. When we return. 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 iHeartRadio app.