Makeover Magic | Hour 1

about this all important place that we call home. Today on the show, we're going to be talking about makeover. Makeover Magic is what we're calling the show. But basically I want to run you through, Oh, just a big old list of House Whisper favorite makeover ideas. And there's a good reason for it. And is times are a little weird right now financially, you know. We'll talk about that a little bit in the next segment. Where housing builds are they're not down, they're just paused a bit.

The rebuilds from the fires here in southern California, some of them are pausing for a bit. A lot of people are pausing right now, not sure what the price of materials are going to be in the next ninety days plus, and so there's hesitation and it's understandable, and so whenever budgets are tight, but there's still things to get done at home, that's when we start looking toward the idea of the makeover. The makeover is just a little bit more intensive than redecorating and a lot less

expensive than renovating or remodeling. So today makeover tips and ideas, and of course we're going to be taking your calls as well. The phone lines are open right now when

it comes to your calls. As you know, anything is on the table, anything that's going on with your home design wise, construction DIY, whether you want to know how to fix that squeaky door hinge or why there's light coming under the threshold of your front door, or you want to talk about a big architectural concept for your home, and anything in between. The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three to three. The numeral two ask Dean, Let me introduce our awesome team.

Elmer is on the board. Good morning, sir murmurmy. Wow, that was like a that was like a hockey goal alert right there. Hi, how you doing, Bud? How you doing? I'm doing good? Thank you for asking. Yeah, good vibes. All right, sweet sweet. Today we've got producer Matt Toffler screening calls for us. Matt is standing by. He has opened up the phone lines. He's not near Mike, but he's letting me know. The lines are wide open. So

give us a call. You'll talk to Matt. He'll tell you everything you need to know, and he'll pop you into the queue and listen to the show while you wait. And of course, my buddy Eileen Gonzalez is at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning, Happy Easter. Yeah, happy Easter to you. What is our Easter tea selection this morning? I've actually I've had a couple cups of green tea and now moving on to gingerberry kombucha. Oh yeah, those mix okay in your stomach. We'll find out, I hope.

So first we're gonna load it up with caffeine and green tea, and then we're gonna hit it with the fermented beverage. Now that you mentioned it, maybe it's.

three types of deviled eggs. I don't think Olivia is listening, but you were the easter Bundy deposited eighteen eggs around yard.

Sounds good. All right, y'all, let's get into it. Let's talk about makeovers. Why this may be the spring and summer of makeovers for you.

need is some personal house whisper attention. We need Dean and Tina sitting in our home looking at the real problems and helping us figure it out. Well, you can do that too. You can book an in home design consult with me and the t You just go to house Whisperer dot Design, house Whisperer dot Design. All right, I'm gonna give the number out one more time because the phone lines are open and we will be going to the phones in a bit. Eight three three to

ask Dean is the number to reach me at? Eight three three to ask Dean? A three three the numeral two. Ask Dean. All right, today we are talking about the magic of makeovers. Whenever we find ourselves in uncertain financial times, belts get tightened, purchases are cautious, and the world of remodeling tends to turn toward the world of makeovers. And fortunately, a great makeover can go a long long way towards

transforming an ordinary house into something truly extraordinary. Now, let me draw some lines for you, because this is always something that I find our listeners benefit from because there are a lot of terms that get thrown around. Right, there's renovation, remodel. I mean, everybody knows what a new build is, right, there wasn't this something there before? And then we build, and I think everybody knows what an addition is. There is the house, and now book there's

something sticking out from it that wasn't there before. So we've got new builds and room editions. Those are pretty easy for everybody to understand. What's the difference between redecorating a makeover, renovation, and a remodel or these just terms that get thrown around and they all mean the same thing. Now not actually they all mean something different. Let's start with the most intense of those four, remodeling. Remodeling literally means that we are changing the shape of a thing.

We are modeling it differently. So we're moving walls, we're opening up walls, we're eliminating walls, we're vaulting ceilings, We're doing a change in the actual form of the structure. That's a remodel, and of course it involves all the finished stuff too, but at the heart, at the beginning, we're changing some big stuff. Therefore you know it has the bigger price tag attached to it. Next two remodel

or one step down from that is renovations. A renovation is technically a refreshing and a renewal of everything that's already there now. Renovation may include things like switching out cabinets one for one, It may include things like switching out fixtures one for one. And I guess a couple of the items on my list might technically straddle over into the renovation cabgory just a little bit, but not completely. So complete renovation is really a full on facelift and

maybe even a lot of finished change out. But we're not changing the bones. Okay, we're not remodeling the house. We're renovating it. And then the extreme of other end of this spectrum is redecorating. It's just literally, hey, you know, I'm gonna buy a new throw for that sofa, maybe some new curtains, maybe you know, some new pillows, maybe a piece of furniture different here or there. We're redecorating. That's the lightest of all in between those two falls

the makeover. The makeover is not a full renovation. We're not doing everything, We're not changing everything. It involves a little bit of renovation, involves some redecorating, but really a makeover is going in and making whatever changes we can that really hush up a place, really change its vibe. And the good news is they're little things. They tend

to be little things, incremental things. That doesn't mean that it's going to cost you zero, But compared to the other approaches to a home, this area the makeover is probably the area that I would center in on and say this area will give you the biggest bang for the least buck the biggest effect for the smallest amount of budget invested. Sometimes big things happen, and sometimes they need to happen. But life isn't really divined by the big is it. It's in the real world. Real lives

are constructed from a million tiny moments. The most beautiful lives, I think, are built in layers, and the most interesting people are built in layers. The strongest relationships are built in layers. Right and following suit, the most wonderful homes, in my opinion, are built in layers. And that's great news for those of us with limited time and limited budgets.

We don't have to save up tens of thousands of dollars to make it different if we learn the lesson of layers for our home design matters most, always, always, always, creativity always has a way of conquering cost. So today's about those little things way to enhance your home's potential without breaking the bank. Many of these makeovers are not

just for the budget challenge. Some of these layers just need to be in every home, whether you only have twenty bucks in your pocket or whether you have twenty thousand dollars in your pocket but still this two hundred dollars makeover needs to be in both of those homes. And makeovers are also great gateway projects for the budding di wire because they're not too intense, but they involve you a little bit and they can get you headed

down that road. And you know, for a lot of you, once you start, oh, you're just gonna love it and you're going to want to keep doing it for the rest of your life because it's so rewarding.

going to rub it in. If you are listening from somewhere other than southern California, I don't want to rub it in. I get it. There's some bad weather rolling across the country right now. But if you ever wonder I do people stay in California with all those high prices and all that craziness, and I'll tell you, anybody here right now just has to look out the window or walk outside, and you know exactly why we are still here. It is good, good, gorgeous outside, beautiful spring day.

We are talking makeovers today, and I want to dive right into our makeover list of ideas. I said we were going to start in the bathroom, and so let's do it now. I hear right off the bat, I'm gonna talk about something that technically might fall in the renovation category, but we're not talking about renovating everything, changing out everything in the bathroom. This is a This is the easiest thing, the easiest thing to change out in a bathroom, and that maybe it's time to update the toilet.

That's it. You can change your life. The toilet is something you visit quite regularly. And the way that a toilet sits in a bathroom, the way that a toilet looks in a bathroom, the way that a toilet functions in a bathroom, can make a big change for a relatively small amount of money. Now, toilets don't cost twenty bucks. They range anywhere from well, I mean, you can buy toilets that are like rolls Royces, but the average toilet these days you can find anywhere from you know, one

hundred and eighty to the high two hundreds. Most of the toilets that we recommend for makeovers fall in the low two hundreds category. And for a couple of hundred bucks and what amounts to I don't know. Even with an inexperienced person doing it for the very first time, maybe an hour, maybe an hour, you can completely switch a toilet out in a bathroom. It's very intimidating for a lot of people because they're like, I don't even know how the thing what. There's those two little caps

down at the bottom. Those little caps are hiding the bolts that mount the toilet to the floor. And the only other thing that's connecting your toilet to the house is the hose that is running the cold water into the toilet tank. So if you shut that off and disconnect that piece and undo those bolts, that toilet can be lifted out, flushed, drained, lifted out, and carried away.

And a new toilet installed in its place. Yes, there are tiny variations in toilets as far as from brand to brand and model to moutel as far as their offset, but generally speaking, manufacturers have made this easy because they understand that there is kind of a standard twelve inch offset from the back wall to the middle of the drain, and most the vast majority of toilets on the market, from the very high end to the very low, fall within that category and will fit a twelve inch offset.

So the good news is almost every toilet you would go out to see the one sitting on the shelf at the big boxes like Lows and Home Depot, or at the hardware store, or at the plumbing supply place or wherever, you just measure your offset before you go, just to double check. But most of them are there and ready and available to you. And here's the thing.

There was a time when a toilet is a toilet, and you try, and you juz up and thematically direct the rest of the bathroom, and then you get to the toilet and there it is same old toilet that everybody's got. It either has this weird modern look or it's just the old standard two piece toilet. These days, you've got lots of styles to choose from, so you can push the toilet in the direction of the style that you already want your bathroom to be going in.

It can be more integrated in that place. And it's an easy change out. You change out the wax ring. That costs about four dollars, and you reseal that and reset that toilet, even if you have to change out the bolt. Maybe you're talking ten fifteen dollars plus the price of the toilet. It is a great fix. And for those of you who are like, you know what, that's not my problem, Dean. The thing I hate about my toilet is the fact that it's so dang hard

to clean down there, right, Not anymore. Doesn't have to be that way anymore. Yeah, there are some old school toilets that still have the little caps and the little bolt head sticking up and gunk and grint. Yeah, it's just who figured that this is an easy thing to clean? Plus that weird shape off the back of the lower end of the toilet looks like a pair of cartoon legs, a character just sitting there right, skirted toilet. These are

the two words that I have for you. If that's your frustration, skirted toilet when we go to break, feel free. Just just open up your phone or your browser and search for skirted toilets and you'll see what I'm talking about. There is a massive amount of fully skirt toilets. That means that the entire base that it's sitting on smooth, one piece, one surface, all the way to the floor, all the way around. The bolts are still there, but they're behind little doors. They are not in the way.

There's that comic book leg is not there anymore. This is easy to clean, beautiful, smooth, clean, look any style whatsoever, fully skirted toilets. We're in the golden age of skirted toilets. Get on the train, Get on the toilet train. Now that doesn't sound right. All right, We're going to continue with the bathroom when we come back.

are in and protected from it. If you're not here in Southern California or in a place where things are as bright and sunny as they are here today, I just hope that you're having the best Easter Sunday possible. But I am glad that you are with us here. And we're talking about makeovers, the tips and tricks that you can take for your home that yield large results

of effect with minimal amounts of expense. And a lot of people are considering these things right now, simply because economically things are a little up in the air right now, to say the least, and some people have pressed pause on major projects. I said I was going to mention this earlier, and I forgot to, and I apologize. But there's been some articles just in the news, some items in the news just this last week here in southern California. The rebuilding of the Eton area and the Palisades has

kind of sort of begun. And then right in the middle of this, you know, trying to recover from this tragedy and rebuild from the tragedy, you know, we get news that the tariffs are on the way, and because of that, some of these projects have literally been stopped in their tracks. The owners have because you could understand, like you are on a limited budget to rebuild and a contractor is telling you, Okay, it's X amount of dollars and that's the contract that we're going to agree

to sign. All right, I'm ponying that up. I'm ready to go for X amount of dollars. But by the end of the year, every contract that I have ever seen, when it comes to a home building scenario, including any that we would ever issue, always have this disclaimer in it that if materials, you know, skyrocket for some reason, that gets passed on to the owner and unfortunately, you know, are you going to commit to a contract that is

X dollars today? And once we commit and we're rolling three months into the project suddenly turns into X times one hundred and twenty five percent more. It can just really really terrify you. And so some of these projects are just have literally ground to a halt as we're waiting. And that's just the most extreme example of this right now. The fact of the matter is a lot of people are just unsure how much savings they've got, how much cash they'll have on hand, and yet people still want

to make changes at the home. And that is why we're talking makeovers today. So we're in the bathroom, we already talked about toilets, and hit you up with a couple of other items on my list. Maybe you've got that big old you know, still got the nineteen sixties or nineteen seventies giant to wall of mirror and you're just sort of over it. It just doesn't feel, you know, it feels dated to you, it feels out of style,

doesn't feel you know, too refined. And yeah, I agree for a lot of bathrooms unless you're going for that look that it does. Mirrors aren't that tough, and mirrors aren't that expensive either. Some of those mirrors can be removed successfully. Some of them are not masticked on quite as well as we think they are, and they can be kind of, you know, carefully cut away from the wall. Some of those mirrors are being held on by external clips.

And in that case, man, it's easy to pull that mirror down and then take that mirror to a glass shop, have it cut down to size so that it is a smaller mirror that could take a frame put around it, a frame made out of framing material, a frame made out of moldings and trim from the you know, the molding and trim aisle at the big box store. A frame made out of crown molding. And suddenly what we now have is what looks like a mirror that has been hung on the wall. It's a refit and an

upcycling of the mirror that you've got. And even if you try to move the mirror off the wall and it breaks and you lose its functionality, the fact of the matter is the big scheme of things, mirrors are not that expensive. Go to your local glass shop and say, hey, this is what I really want. I don't want a six foot wide mirror in my home. I just want a mirror that reflects my body back to me when I'm standing in front of the sink, and that only needs to be you know, maybe thirty inches wide and

maybe three feet tall or something like that. You will find it to be eminently affordable to upcycle the mirror situation. How about this for a simple thing in a bathroom, change out the shower head. Change out the shower head, you've got some old, crappy shower head. It's underperforming. Maybe you inherited it from the previous owner. Maybe it's some old plastic thing. The only thing I'm going to tell you is, if you can change out the showerhead, do

it right. And when I say do it right, I mean go find a really nice shower head, something that isn't full of plastics, something that isn't going to And my recommendation is always this, and this is just my personal taste, but also I've seen this prove out. You know, I would keep you away from the shower heads that have the eighty seven different functions to them. It's all seems glitzy and wonderful when you're staring at it the store.

But let's face it, those of us who have ever used a shower head like that, you just dial it around until where do I find the actual, just real water coming out. That's what I want. So yeah, in general, I stay away from that. If you want an adjustable shower head, I like a Speakman style shower head. Speakman style. It's not a dial that you turn. There aren't eighty seven different settings. It's just a actually a lever on the side of the shower head. It's all metal construction,

no little pin holes to get clogged up. It's a lever on the side and it moves the head nodules slightly in and out, and it moves them from like a wider spray into a more direct stream forward. That's it for me. That's all the adjustability a shower head ever needs to have. And it's lovely and luxurious, but at the end of the day, whatever your taste in shower head is. All it takes is an adjustable end wrench,

a flat end wrench. Don't use something with teeth. Don't maar it up to put on the end of the shower head that you've got, you'll notice that the chances of there being two flat sides to that shower head where it connects to the pipe coming out of the wall, it's almost universal. Put a red there, spin it off. It'll take you just a few seconds to spin off

that existing shower head. Those sizes are universally standard. Take it on down to the hardware store, get yourself a new shower head, and change the way your bathroom looks and feels. All right, we got other things that are more decororiented we will return to this list, but you know what, we're approaching the top of the hour, which means when we come back, I'm going to the phones. Your Home with 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.