It Was Like This When We Bought it | Hour 2

that's a reality. It's a reality anyway. Welcome to home, where every week we help you better understand that place where you live. I'm Dean Sharp, the House Whisper here with you live like I am every weekend, Saturday morning, six to eight Pacific time, Sunday mornings nine to noon Pacific time. This morning, I am having a discussion with you about was that? Was that? A? Yeah? Somebody, there's

a squirrel on the hammock. I'm having a discussion with you about the stuff in your home that you would say it was this way when we bought it, the mistakes that you've inherited from somebody else when you bought your home, and finally, finally some advice on how to fix them. And we're going to get back to that in just a bit, but as is our custom, it is the top of the hour, which means it's time to go to the phones and talk to you about

your call. So let's stock to Wayne. Hey, Wayne, welcome home.

the floor and it moves through the room. As it as it should, and so on and so forth. So I'm a huge fan. I have a feeling though your question is is geared more specifically towards I mean, can you do it? Should you do it? What kind of break should heat you let me know?

I don't want you to to have to radically change the floor level of the bathroom versus the rest of the bedroom that you're walking into or the hallway that you're walking in from, because you've put radiant heat under there. And and in a lot of situations when you've already got a slab that you're working on, or you've got

an established floor level that you can't change. If you go with a liquid system a hydronic system, then you're going to have to lift that floor considerably because you've got to have the tubes running through there, and it just takes up more space. Electric takes up about an eight of an inch of space, not consider because it's

a pad. It's a very low lying Let me be generous, I'll say the electric system takes up a quarter of an inch because because it's an electric pad that lies out that you would set underneath the tile, embedded in the tile system. So the cool thing about electric radiant heat systems is that they don't significantly raise floor levels, and that's why we think that it's a really good maneuver.

Also in terms of cost, initial cost, laying down electric radiant floor pads in a limited space like a bathroom area is going to be much less expensive than doing a whole hydronic system with pumps and tying it into

a heat source and all of that kind of stuff. Now, ultimately a hydronic system will yield less expensive operating costs, but we usually only find that when it's tied into a larger area, like we're going to do the whole master suite or we're going to do the whole house or this half of the house or whatever, because the electric costs a little bit more to run as it operates on a regular basis. I would make the argument though, if you have solar, it's probably already offset, so no

big deal. And even in a small space like a bathroom, it usually does not make any significant dent because the heating is so efficient an electric radiant heating system or any radiant heating system. Because it's heating you right up through your feet, right up through your legs, right where you are. As it passes by way of convection up to the upper areas of the room, you can get by with running it at a much much lower level than if you have to force air heat a room.

Most of the time those vents overhead anyway really pushing the heat down. So I'm all for it. And the electric systems work really well. They also integrate well depending on what your tile system is, So I would say if you're just looking into it, look into like what a shlooter system has to offer, because schlooter has an integrated electric cabling system that's very customizable, plus the base that you're actually setting it on is already ready to

receive the thin set for the tile. It's a great little system, not the only one out there, but well worth looking into.

a bit. And I'm want to go back to the phones. I want to talk to George. Hey, George, welcome home.

And a test is not an abatement. Okay, it's not like, oh, tens of thousands of dollars to get this stuff. Okay. A test is just a test, So you know, a couple three hundred dollars to have a section tested and sent away just to confirm. But generally speaking, no horse hair plaster fibers in the whole reason that horse hair plaster is what it is. And people are scratching there

like what is horse hair plaster? All right? There was a time before World War two, pre war in which many many plaster walls, lime based plaster walls were mixed with a fiber in order to help them hold together and not crack. And guess what animal hairs? Yes, animal hair. Horse hair was probably most common, but there are other animal hairs that could be mixed into it as well.

And when you tear up that plaster, you end up with these fibers in there, and some people have looked at those and said, oh no, that fiber must be asbestos. So if it's a real yeah, if it's a real horse hair plaster wall, now here I can tell you one thing. If you have a chunk of it in your hand. And this is a relatively safe test because you're not you know, even if there was asbestos there, you wouldn't be disturbing it. Okay, but you got a

little a chunk of it in your hand. If you if you get out a lighter and and hold the lighter near those fibers. Uh, if it's asbestos, nothing will happen. Those fibers won't move, they will just be there. The whole point is asbestos is you know, fire resistant, fire retardant, Okay, so they won't be affected by the heat or the flame. If it's horse hair, just like regular hair, it'll shrivel up and just gone it'll be. It'll shrivel and change it. So you know what I mean. So a little, a

little spot on the spot peace of mind investigation. This is not, however, me saying, oh absolutely you got free rein there. There's no way there can be any asbestos in those walls whatsoever. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, if there's any concern on your part, go ahead and have a little peace tested sent out to a lab for peace of mind. But what I am saying is the likelihood of there being a specied in that wall is very very very low.

so they can be tricky and tough. However, the level of craftsmanship, the level of integrity that goes into a ninth a typical just a typical nineteen twenties I'm not talking about luxurious or an ultra custom or just a typical house built in the twenties. The level of attention and craftsmanship that went into those homes is so high.

It's why most of them that have even been marginally cared for are still standing in really good shape today, despite the fact that they don't have modern seismic engineering in them, despite the fact that they don't have any modern engineering in them, the fact that they are still standing loud and proud today has everything to do with the quality of the materials being used and the craftsmanship and the integrity that went into building homes pre World

War Two all across the country. Plus the design elements were pretty dang sexy as well. So we love investing in century homes and reworking them. But there are things you have to be aware of. And by the way, George, if you're still listening, I would be more concerned myself now here you thought you were off the hook, I would be more con I'd be less concerned about finding asbestos in the plaster walls, and I'd be more concerned with lead paint on the surface of the wall kicking

up and disturbing lead based paints. Now, if it's been redone and redone and modernized throughout the years, great, But if it's just been coded over with other things, that would be something to be concerned about disturbing lead based paints, because that was super common in the twenties. In fact, the more lead in the paint, the better. It made a very strong paint, very very strong paint, also very toxic and not something that you would ever want to

encourage a child to lick the wall. Tina's like, Dean, why would you ever encourage a child to lick the wall? I wouldn't, But it happens. It happens. They're gonna, they're going to If you have a toddler in your home, just know this. You see are they are they in sight right now? Are they in can you see them? Are they in your line of sight right now? Good? Because the minute, the minute you lose sight of them, you can know this. They're in their room somewhere. They're

licking a wall. That's what they're doing. So you better be sure that your walls are non toxic. All right, I'm just saying that's the kind of quality advice you get here on the program. All right, when we return, and I'm going to be coming back to calls later in the show, So if you're on the line and you can hold, please hold. When we return, we're going to go back to our list of stuff that was that way when you bought it.

you fix them. We've talked about room editions that destroy light and flow in the first hour of the show. I just want to tack onto that very quickly, very quickly, the subject of house darkening patio covers. Patio covers are tricky. They are way trickier than they seem like they should be. And here's why. Number One, you do a patio cover for one of two reasons, almost always because you're looking

for some shade, okay, looking for shade. Second reason you do a patio cover is you may you may be wanting a a weather proof cover overhead so that you could be out on the patio while it's raining or whatever the case may be, well in inclement weather, and so that you're not getting wet on you. These are the two main reasons for a patio cover in southern California. Mostly it's shade, and secondarily it becomes the whole oh, I want to be outside even if it's raining kind

of thing. Okay, So here the tricky problem with a patio cover is that number one, the shade issue. A lot of people have committed to patio covers, which, by the way, because of that, darken the room that they're attached to. Right, that shade can make a room very very dark. Here's the thing. A patio cover on the south facing side of the house, Okay, south facing sun.

That's where the sun is in the northern hemisphere. It's ever so slightly at the peak of summer, it's still a few degrees in the southern sky, and this time of year it's getting lower and lower in the sky. Okay, And so a lot of patio covers get planned and built without having ever figured out the shade study. In other words, where is the shade actually going to fall?

Because with the sun a few degrees off kilter into the southern sky, the shade from a patio cover does not fall straight down under the footprint of the patio cover. It falls at least a few feet back. So let's say you build a twelve foot fifteen foot deep patio cover on your south facing side of your home. All right,

there you go. Great, where does the shade show up? Well, maybe in the very very heighth of summer July and August, maybe most maybe twelve of that fifteen feet is in the shade this time of year, maybe three or four feet of that footprint is in the shade because of the angle of the sun. But regardless of whether you're getting shade where you wanted it, you're absolutely always going to get shade where you don't want it, which is

more darkness inside the room. Now, some people are like, listen, I need a patio cover just because I don't want southern sun blazing in through my windows and doors on the south side of the house. I get that, and that's a valid concern. Uh, you just got to be very very careful how we're going to plan this out, because the sun moves, you know, I don't know if you've noticed that. Actually, let's let's not be too Copernican

about this. Let's let's say that the earth moves and the sun comes up from our perspective in the east and sets in the west, so that shade is always constantly moving. And that's why patio covers are trickier than they see because what we're trying to do with one rigid structure is achieve something that kind of capture something that's always on the move. And some of them worn't great. A lot of them don't work so great at all, and a lot of them mess up the sightlines and

the rooflines of the back of a house. And sometimes, again my previous advice, when it comes to a room edition that's untenable, sometimes the best thing you can do

with the patio cover is just remove it. Now, I'm not a massive fan from a design perspective of contraptions that you put on your house, but I will tell you this, this is one of those areas where I even I would consider a retractable awning that can actually fit in a canister up against the house and only be put out when you need it and can be pulled back in when you don't, so that it doesn't just mess up a lot of stuff. That's not always

going to be the case either. I'm just saying patio covers far far trickier than they would appear to be. I personally, if we want to spend time outside. I personally would rather build a shade structure detached from the house out in the yard than the one that's attached to the edge of the house by way of a

patio cover. Why because further in your yard is a far more pleasant place to be a destination to go to, even in inclement weather, and right next to your house, right next to the stucco walls and all the concrete next to your house. It's used if you were to do an emotional tour of your home, right now, of your backyard, it's probably the least likely place that you would say, oh, yeah, this is my favorite spot, okay, because I love sitting next to a warm stucco wall

on a hot day. No, it's probably out under the shade tree or out in the midst of the garden. So why not push it all out there? Anyway, just saying house darkening patio covers can be just as probablematic for the lightness of a room as a room addition in the wrong place. Well, what about that light I don't want streaming into my house? Get room darkening shades, light filtering shades on the windows, and just drop them

down to accommodate those severe direct sundays. Just because the light is harsh, so diffuse it but eliminating it, you might end up inadvertently causing a room to go way darker than you ever wanted it to be. There, you go, okay, Now we move on to yet another issue that is

a design mistake. I'm not going to mince words, and it quite often results from either a we didn't have the budget to do this right, or be the contractor didn't even mention to me that we could have changed this and done it a different way, or you just inherited this way. But this is how these things happen, and that is severe flooring height transitions inside a house. Flooring height transitions most likely to occur when we walk

into a kitchen or a bathroom. Why because we've decided to tile in there, or to put some kind of surface in there that is much thicker than was originally planned, and the subfloor, the flooring underneath the new surface was never lowered to accommodate the thickness of the new material

going on. This especially shows up as a problem in houses ironically with raised foundations, Because I say that ironically because a raised foundation house is a house that's the easiest to change the level of a floor inside a room because it's not like you're jackhammering up a slab

in order to get to that. The reason why tiling in a bathroom that has a slab on it usually doesn't create massive floor height problems with the rest of the house is because tiles, which you are only three eighths of an inch thick, can be thin set directly to the slab as the base, and as a result, it's hardly you know, higher than the carpeting or the

hardwood outside in the hallway. But if you have a raised floor house, in order to prep it what was originally wood or maybe plywood and linoleum in an older home, now we've got to do a build up. We've got to do a build up to stiffen that floor. We have to put a thick mortar base down in order to get ready for the tile. And the next thing you know, we're up an inch inch and a quarter, sometimes even an inch and a half in order to

get tied on that floor in there. And you know, if it wasn't for that angled little threshold piece, you'd stub your toe walking into that room. It's weird, it's awkward. It didn't need to happen on a raised foundation house because when the floor was completely out and ready to be redone, that was the time to pull the sheathing off and to lower those floor joists in that room by an inch or an inch and a quarter so that after the build up, the tile planes with the

rest of the surfaces on the outside room. Does that make sense. That's a problem, and what's the fix? Well, pretty much just what I said. The fix is. You know, it's a big commitment, but it can make a world of difference your experience of your home. And if you're remodeling that bathroom, then go the extra mile, spend a few more dollars to empty out the bathroom and lower that floor down. Now, it may require a little bit

of engineering, especially if it's a second floor bathroom. We don't want to just shave floor joice and make them smaller and weaker than they were to begin with. It may require a little engineering input, but believe me, trust me when I say this, it can always be done.

We can always do what needs to be done in order to level out flooring conditions, and maybe for the first time in decades of you living in your home, you just glide from one room to the next, which, by the way, in terms of even aging in place, is a really really good idea to not have these transitions. Aesthetically,

from a design perspective, I don't want those transitions. I don't care if you're twenty five years old, but if you're seventy five years old, I don't want those transitions for you there either, because it's just an issue that you shouldn't have to put up with. So it's never right. Okay, sometimes you just have to live with it, but it's never right. There's always a way around it. So consider these things.

You are listening to Home with Dean Sharp, the house Whisper here on KFI, and we are having a conversation this morning about your home, as we always do, specifically the stuff that makes you say it was this way when we bought it, in that kind of apologetic, embarrassing way, when you have inherited somebody else's mistakes in your home,

and finally let's get around to fixing them. So we've talked about everything from bad room additions to house darkening, patio covers, of flooring height transitions, which I just covered with you. Now I want to talk briefly about flooring material changes happening too often at too many rooms, just from a design perspective. By the way, there's two things about a flooring material change. Now, I'm not against them

at all. Sometimes they set off a space as very special, but I prefer Tina, and I prefer to have a in Following the theory of hierarchy in design, what does that mean? It means that in every kind of artistic endeavor you set up an order of priorities of and so homes and architecture no different. In fact, it could be argued that homes and architecture are the original source of hierarchy in design. It simply means you walk into

a space, not everything is of equal importance. Some things are more important than others visually speaking, and it's like boom, that's the focal point, and then secondarily this and then third that. Usually have about three hits before you have to let go of it and tell people all right now you can just wander about and look wherever you want. Right, So, hierarchy is important, and when it comes to flooring material, we like to express that hierarchy in choosing a flooring

material for the house in general. Now, maybe it literally goes into every room everywhere. Okay, maybe that can get a little monotonous at times. Usually not though, but it could. And in those cases we can spice it up by creating a different pattern using the same material, creating a different pattern in a room just to distinguish it kind of in texture and in line shape without changing the

material itself. What we will often do is have a majority floor material in a space, and then if you're setting off a special room, quite often a bathroom, then we'll freely change that material up and oh, okay, we got hardwood in the hallway and of course tile in the bathroom, no big deal. A lot of homes, though, have changed the flooring material in every single room, and

that gets to be like a patchwork quilt. And also visually speaking, and you remember earlier in the show I was talking about the importance over space of spacious nests and vista and flow and the vista, the visible view of every room. Having a different flooring material very quickly can shrink down a house and make a you know, the hallway feel small because it's on its own. Every room feels smaller because it's on its own and distinguish from every other room. If you live in a massive house,

this is less of a concern. But generally speaking, much much larger homes have design input in them that kind of keeps us from happening. This we most often see in your average mainstream house where somebody has taken it upon themselves at some point to say every room will be different, every room will be unique, and you know what I'm all for it just not in patchwork quilting the flooring everywhere, So flooring material changes at every room

much rather see something larger and monolithic happen. Now, some of you are saying, Aha, Dean, Nah, you don't understand my house though, because the hallway goes in one direction. I would love to put like a plank flooring throughout my whole house. But the hallway goes in one direction.

The length of the living room is opposed to it, you know, and at ninety degrees another direction you're supposed to lay things, you know, the length of the room the length of the plank, and then I'd have to change direction down the hallway, and I'd have to change direction again, and then it's all broken up. Well, yeah, that's true. That can happen. Sometimes. It can be tricky even in one open space, like, well, the room is technically long in this way, but out here where we're standing,

it's long in that way. What do you do? Which one do you pick? Well? Here is where should I even let the secret out? Tina? I'm not sure because because I'm I'm I'm so used to walking in and being like the sorcerer who just solves the problem, and eyebrows go up and jaws drop, and they're like, I never thought, all right, I'm gonna let it out here. It is here. It is set the flooring at a forty five degree angle, not straight and not ninety At a forty five degree angle, you know what that does.

It renders all directional questions moot because a forty five degree angle in a room for the flooring direction, if you have a linear plank flooring, it works with every room. It flows from one room into the next. It also makes a floor very alive, very dynamic, especially if you run it at the right angle, like you walk into

a house. If a forty five degree angle of the flooring is conveying you because you tend to want to walk along the lines, it conveys you in the in the right direction into a home or into a room, it can be super super dynamic. And no, it's not weird, and no it's not anti traditional, Okay. Really, the flooring pattern has very very little to do with whether we're defining the home as traditional or this or that, you know. I mean, if we're restoring a home, that's one thing,

then we just keep things the way they were. But if we're going with a traditional motif or a contemporary motif, neither one matters when it comes to a forty five degree angle on the flooring, and it solves all problems and it runs right into rooms out of the hallway.

It can be fantastic. And I have just released a design secret that we have used time and time again, and now everybody knows, and I've lost complete control over Now I can no longer amaze people on our next consult because they are, oh, yeah, we already heard that, Dan, Yeah, we already know all right, hand in your pearls. Today, my friends, we're going to return to this conversation, of course, but look at that top of the hour. You know what that means. When we come back from the news,

we are going to the phones. If you're on the line, hold tight. If you haven't called in eight three three two ask Dean eight three to three the numeral two. Ask Dean. Go into your calls. Next, you are Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on k 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.