Kf I am six forty.
You're listening to Dean Sharp the house Whisper on demand on the iHeart radio app. You know, you can follow us on social media. We're on all the usual suspects, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, x Home with Dean is the same handle for them all. Just go there, press follow and you'll you know, you won't get too much stuff from us, just enough. It's
all uplifting, informative, good kind of social media. Also, if your home is in need of some personal house Whisper attention, you can book an in home design consult with me and the t or just with Tina. If you don't want me a part of it, just go to house Whisper. I always say that, me and the tea. I'm like, well, what if they just want what if they just want to talk to you? Huh No, no, no, no, let's
not exaggerate. Let's let's face the facts. People have often said, Tina's coming right right, and if I say no, They're like, hmm, host poem or cancel.
Yeah.
Anyway, if that is of interesting, you go to house Whisperer dot design for more information. All right, we're talking about organizing today organizing, and I'm leading you through my little system, as it were, the SIPs system SIPs, which stands for sorting, inventory, purge and store. I'm going to explain more of that and keep going as we go. But it is time. That's right, it's time to go to the phones find out what's going on with you today. I want to talk to Susan. Ay, Susan, welcome home.
Hi Dean, thank you so much for your show and taking my call. Would you give me permission to make a very quick comment about the purge? Uh?
Sure, okay.
Just this something that has helped me and continues to help me, because it can be really difficult letting go. Is having someone in mind that I know isn't really in need, who doesn't have much of anything, and knowing that this item or these items are going to make a small difference in someone else's life is very, very gratifying, and it's really helpful for me when I have to decide on letting go. That's all I wanted to say.
You know what, that's really really good advice, Susan. It reminds me of how I've come to feel about books, because if there's anything that I would tend to hold on to its books because I'm a book nerd. And if I lived in a bigger home, if I lived in one of the big homes that I designed for other people, I'd probably have.
A library of my own, just walls and walls of books.
But I'm kind of thankful that I don't, because I've came to the realization a few years back that you know, I could collect all these books and just have them sit on my shelf, or after I've read one and it's really impacted me, I can donate it or give it away and send it on so that more people can enjoy the thing that affected me so significantly. So you're absolutely right. Having other people in mind and just sharing the love of our stuff is such an important thing. So yeah, full process.
By by the way, the rescue mission comes and picks up, it's absolutely amazing.
Yeah, absolutely true. Thank you for that. All right, how can I help you?
My question is I live in a very dark home. I'm repainting. I want bright, bright white. I know how difficult it is to figure out the right white, so I want to buy a few samples. And I question, and it's a two part question. The first part is do you think buying particle board I guess that's what it's called and painting those and then carrying them around is better than just going all around and painting walls. And then the second part of the question is I
can't really afford Benjamin. I think you once suggested decorators white. I know you did. My question is, maybe do you know of a bear b eh or like a very bright, bright, wonderful white that might be similar to decorators white. That those are my two questions.
Okay, so let me ask you the second question.
First, I have no idea about it, even about you know, if you're to asked Tina, she's sitting right here. When it comes to her husband's ability to rename paint colors from any manufacturing, including Benjamin Moore, I know like five of them, five of them that I can remember, Okay, Okay, Yeah, it's not always decorators white that we use.
Yeah, only because sometimes you know, there are may be five different whites that we'll look at, but in one house that looks very different than another house.
Right, which leads to other So, first of all, every you know, I always say this, just you know, no guilt about that use the best paint that you can afford. Of all the major manufact just use the best paint you can afford. They all have a gabillion colors when it comes to tints. And to answer your question, when it comes to you know how to do that, you're
right on target. Get to you know whether it's whether it's a piece of cardboard or whether it's a thin piece of masonite, some inexpensive but the largest piece possible. The easiest way to do samples of color in a room other than just putting it up on the wall is to, you know, make a big board and bring it in the room that way. And I love that idea because that way you can move it from one wall to the next. You can look at the way that the light hits it. Here, light hits it there.
You can put the two boards next to each other. You can keep the board separated, which is usually the better way to do it. And that's the problem with painting samples on the wall. You'll put one white here and then about four feet away you'll put another white, and actually those two will interact with each other and give you a bias of both of them, because that's
the way light works in transmitting color. So I prefer to have as large of a board as possible and bring it into the room by itself, let it stand alone, and then bring the other one in by itself, let it stand alone. Make your decisions that way. If you need to put them next to each other, just to get a sense of which one has more cream in it, which one has more blue in it, that's all well
and good. But judge them as independently as possible, and putting them on boards, it's a brilliant way to do it, Susan. Just know that the larger the sample, the more accurate you're going to get in regard because the mass of any one color in a room changes the color the way that it reacts with the room. So you know, bringing in a little two by two square and taping it to the wall not going to give you a good representation of what that color is going to do when it's you know, eight by ten.
Fantastic. Thank you, perfect, thank you.
You are so welcome, Susan. Thank you for the question and for the call, and for the great comment and advice on purging, just passing it along, sharing the love with other people.
Such such a good piece of advice.
All right, let's take a quick break and when we come back, more of your calls.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Thanks for joining us on the program today. We are talking about organization, purging, organizing storage. We're going to return to that conversation is just a bit, but right now, middle of the show, it's time to take calls. I'm going to the phones. I want to talk to Rod. Hey, Rod, welcome home.
Hi Honda.
How are you Dean?
I am well, sir, How are you doing?
Pretty good? Okay? I have a question regarding peers or footing, So it's underneath the how My house obviously has has a chrowned cross space, and I was down there doing something else because I had a leak on my refrigerator. And when I was down there, I noticed that one of the footings and the piers they were like moved over to the left and pretty close to I don't know how close to maybe coming off from holding the beam. But then I noticed that it wasn't only that one.
There was three more like that. But it looks like they're all moved in the same direction, almost like it'll almost say the same distance. They're not leaning, they're not you know, they just seemed to be somebody just shifted them to the left. So I called the company to come and look at it, and they said that there's really you know, the house is not going to come down. There's really not much that needs to be done. They said, we have a minimum of three thousand dollars to do
the work and you don't really need it. You know what you need to do. Then you look at me and it says you could probably go underneath the house and do it yourself with just take a car jack lift them and I would recommend you put the footings. You said. So, I don't know if it's something that I should be concerned about or what can I do about this?
All right?
My friends? So who did you call to come out? Who came and looked at it? A foundation company?
Yeah, they do foundation repairs. And he came inside the house and he did a plumbing saying you know that he plumbed the house and he said everything was fine inside the house. I think that in the living room area, he said there was a it was off by like about a quarter inch, and he said that that's fine, he says, a lot of people would would love to have a quarter inch you know, the off under under house.
How old is your hot How old is the house?
It's pretty old. It was really in nineteen thirty eight. Yeah, you know, I've been here with all you know, the earthquakes that we had since since the North Reach earthquake. So I don't know if that happened with the earthquakes. You know, I've never begun underneath the house till recently, and that's when I noticed. So who knows how long that's been like that.
Yeah, Well, here's the thing. First of all, that's great news. And if a foundation company has looked under your house and has literally said to you, listen, you don't need us, you could fix this yourself, then you know, I would take that as great news. I would not look at a stack in the mouth, you know, And I think I think they're absolutely right if they've looked at the overall footings. You know, it's a post and beam set
up underneath your house, the subfloor. There's beams that are holding up the floor joists, and there are posts going down to concrete piers that are holding up the beams and quite often in an older home, and twenties home and nineteen thirties home, those posts are barely barely attached to the beams that they're holding up, and barely attached to the to the piers that are that they're sitting on, usually with a couple of nails a toenail into each one,
sometimes not at all, or sometimes the nail has rust it out and so over. You know, what are we talking about ninety years of earthquakes, of vibrating that foundation. Sometimes those piers can just literally the vibration of the ground can cause them to shift left, shift right and either take the posts with them or not. So here is the thing that I would say, if you've got concern about it, then they're absolutely right. You could get
under there and switch them out. You can put a little carjack underneath the beam, make sure it's supported, switch out the post, or slide the post over onto the pier better. Or you could replace the piers and the posts with what and this is what I would do with positive connecting hardware. Okay, So in other words, if you go down to like a place like a big box store, like home depot, right now, look in the
building supply department. Right the building materials department, you'll find concrete piers very much like the ones that are underneath your home home, except they've got metal galvanized straps coming out of them, Okay, straps that get positively nailed into
the posts that they support. And then if you go over to the hardware section, you can find that same kind of strapping material in a T form, a T shaped strap that would go the top of the T would get nailed in along the beam that the post is holding up and the bottom of the tee which would stretch down and actually connect the top of the post. That's the kind of hardware that we install by code
these days for post and boom peer connections. And that's going to guarantee that whatever vibration happens in the future earthquakes, that that post, that peer, and that beam are all going to stay together and nothing's going to fall off or shift sideways. That's all I would recommend. My main concern was going to be, hey, have you had a foundation company look at it? Have they put a level
on your floors? And they're absolutely right. You're living in a nineteen thirty eight house, and if you've got one room that might be a quarter of an inch over the course of the room out of level. That's wonderful. Just that, that's wonderful. Just get under there and add some hardware.
Okay, so I just use a regular carjack.
Uh yeah, if it'll rely, if it's got a high enough reach. And here's the thing though, use it if you bring a carjack underneath, because they're pretty easy to manipulate underneath the house. If it's got a high enough reach. What you want to do is you want to bring in a plank of you know, maybe like a two by twelve that's three or four feet long that you
set the carjack in. So what you don't want to do is you put the carjack in the dirt under there and start putting pressure on it, because it's just going to push the wheels down into the dirt. So put the carjack on a plank so that you're kind of sitting on a ski as it were, and then you can jack up and you don't need to crank
it up like lifting up the house. Okay, all you need to do is get it high enough up there so that you hear that little bit of tension form so that when you move the post over or remove it or replace it, that you know that that the beam isn't going to shift down at all.
Great, Okay, well, I'm glad to hear that, and I'm going to see if I could give it a try. If not, maybe have to hire a handyman or something failed me out here.
All right, my friend, good luck with that great question.
You're very very welcome. Ron.
All right, more of your calls when we return. Eileen, excuse me, I just gotta something flew into my throat.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
We're talking an organization, kind of explaining the little system that I've come up with to help you sort of sort and purge and organize your home. We're going to get back to that conversation in just a bit, but it's middle of the show, which means it's time to go back to the phones. I want to talk to Barbara. Hey, Barbara, welcome home.
Hy Jane.
I called yesterday and then week with the effluorescence under the house, and we addressed that, and I did look up those dehumidifiers that you talked about. So I'm gonna look at getting one of those. But we didn't talk about the Well, there's two things. Today. I had a
painters here on Father's Day, and Happy Father's Day. By the way he put the the you know, he used the painting machine and he put it all down the toilet, all the residue of the water, and I started thinking, oh my gosh, this is like this house is fifty five plus years old, and I'm worried that it's going to gum up my pipe. So I started in the toilet and I thought, well, this is cold water, so I have thirty percent vinekar and I did put it in the tank, maybe about three cups, and flustered about
five times. And I'm wondering if that's even the right thing to do. I don't know that makes a difference. And my other questions about the orange mold on the outside. I was talking about that, Yesterdavid. It's like we got so in detailed with the cephalores and tissue. So I'm going to take take you up on everything you said, but I need to find out about those two things.
Okay, all right, Well, first of all, you know what you bring up one of those what do we call it? One of those gaps in the whole home improvement process, the fact that we often use materials on our home that are that there's excess and the question is what do you do with it? And we're pretty conscientious in California generally. In fact, the regulations are pretty ricked and rigid when it comes to all sorts of certain kind
of construction debris and detritus and leftover things. But this is one of those gaps because here is somebody's paint in your house. Their sprayer needs to be cleared out. The spray has to be cleared, so they blow out the sprayer. They use water to blow out the sprayer, and you end up with wastewater that has paint residue in it.
And what do you do with it? You know?
I know most painters that I know ask permission from a homeowner to pour it down a sink or flush down a toilet, puts it into the sewer system, It puts it into the water system chemicals that aren't necessarily supposed to be there. But here's the thing, there's no place for a painter to go in most localities. There's no place where they've been ordered collect your paint spray or runoff collected in to you know, a tub or a sealed jug and bring it to such and such
a place and deposit it here with us. I mean, there are paint stores technically will take old paint cans full of paint. I suppose I've never actually asked this question. You found a gap in my understanding. I've never asked the question whether paint stores will also take watered down jugs of paint spray or runoff. But I am not familiar in any way, shape or form with a painter who's ever done that kind of thing. And it's just one. It's just one of those things. And I'm sorry to
say I don't have a perfect environmentally friendly solution for that. Otherwise, other than maybe that is something that should happen. Maybe maybe painters should collect that stuff and take it to the paint store along with the other, you know, paint leftover things. I just don't know about that, but I will tell you this, as far or is it going down the drain, whether it was a sink or the toilet, you did the right thing, which is to you know, dilute it, keep.
Putting the thirty percent down and keep plushing it. It's like vinegar.
Yeah you did, fine, you did fine.
Vinegar is is not really a solvent, but it is an acid, and so it does break apart of those things. And the dilution, I mean, it was already diluted when it came out of the sprayer because it was already mixed with water in the sprayer. Plus you went so
far as to dilute it even more. And if it was a regular occurrence, you you potentially have issues with that if it was a regular occurrence down your pipes with you know, painters, painters, fine fine art painters often find their pipes getting clogged at their home because they're constantly washing out their brushes and stuff in their own sewer system. But the one off every once in a while just because you were having your house being painted, not a problem. It's not a problem for your pipes.
Don't worry about it. You did the right thing. You ran a lot of water after the fact, and it's not going to become an issue.
So there you go.
What's the mold issue? Then? What about that? I'm so worried about this whole thing. They look like okay, they look like avocado pits that are that are kind of orangey colored purplish orange and outside and again I have a lot of sand and soil up against the stucco flash foundation. I actually took a shovey the other day and we did put weed stop back there, and I think the weeds stop with the I have what's it called Lake Tahoe gravel. It's like a polished stone in
my backyard. And it's a three level yard, so I have like like areas that are like three level and it goes. I'm the one that has the f inside of the house, so that's the side that gets all the moisture, right. I don't have anywhere else but on the back side of this house, And so I took a shovel pulled some of the sand slash dirt away from the stucco to let that dry. I actually have a really heavy dety tart kind of plastic tarp over it, so it still gets sun. But I don't want any
more moisture because we have fog every single day. And so it's like, is I haven't seen any more of those bulbs come up since I've been doing this. My question is should I keep that dirt away, get rid of it? And well, sand, flash dirt and just get straight dirt and put it up there against the house. So I don't get those kinds of things or do what is it just something that I'm always going to have to do. But I think taking that weed stopped out and then we put the polished stone on top
of it, I think that's adding to the problem. So I thought I would cut part of that, maybe that two feet out or three feet out, that all the way down the back side of the house still dead. At least the dirt flash sand could dry, because I think that's holding in the moisture it's got. Yeah, that has to be the issue. But should I Am I doing the right thing if I bring dirt in and take the weak stopped out.
I think you're you're I think you're trying to figure it out, and I think that anything that you do that starts being more effective or less effective. I think you just find your way through it, my friend. Honestly, the molds on the outside of a house are not a big concern of mine. Okay, molds. In fact, what you're describing might actually be not so much a slime
mold as it is an orange fungus or fungi. Okay, I don't know for certain, because there are couple of different very orange growths that can occur outside and around in a very moist area. One are in a category called slime molds. The other is in a category of fungi. You know, a kind of mushroom ey kind of thing, but they can take on a very very similar appearance. And so the thing is on the outside of a house.
I mean we address this yesterday, you and I moisture under the house, Moisture that's going to get into the house that can cause those kinds of issues. That is a concern. Molds and fungi on the outside of a house that occur just naturally in nature because there's a lot of moisture. You reduce the moisture and whatever it is that you're shifting around the weeds, stop the soils and so on. Anything that can reduce that great, that's great.
So I would head in the direction of whatever works so that you don't have to keep coming out and knocking those off or bleaching them down or anything like that. But just understand that whatever you do, I just don't want you to panic about it because it's on the outside of the house, and and that is not an area where we're concerned about a health issue unless there's just so much of it and you've got somebody in the home who's got allergies to that kind of a thing.
Apart from that, generally speaking, they don't pose any kind of a problem or a threat to anybody. They're just there. They might be unsightly, but they are what they are.
Should I add more dirt to the little channel that I just dug out the other day? Thinking long and dry this dirt out flash dirt slash stand? Should I add more dirt in that? Or that doesn't make a difference.
Well, I'll tell you what. Dirt holds more moisture than other things. And so if I were you and I was trying to limit it right up against the house, if you've dug a channel out, I'd be more prone to put something like pea gravel there so that moisture isn't retained against the house, so that it finds its way down and out, Because the more dirt that you put up against the house, the more you're basically, you know,
reserving a moisture sponge there to hold onto it. Dirt is full of organic compounds, and it holds moisture much more readily than rock does, even though rock can hold moisture too, So pea gravel up against the house would do I think more effective than dirt. And sand holds a lot of moisture too, not because it absorbs moisture, but because moisture has a very water has a very very high surface tension value to it, and all those particulates of sand being so compact next to each other,
they will hold on to the water. But something like pea gravel, a larger aggregate like that. That's why we use pea gravel as a drainage system around French drains and things like that. Pea gravel might be a much much better solution for you, Barbara, Barbara, thank you so much for the callum up against a break. I'm just telling you, as you start to see results, keep heading in that direction to get rid of it. But don't panic about molds or fungi on the outside perimeter of
the house, because they're outside in nature. We might not want them there, but they're generally not doing any damage to the house or to us being there. All right, y'all, We're gonna take a couple of more calls when we return and then return to our subject of organization of your home.
Right now, you're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Thanks for joining us on the program today. We're talking all things organization. We're going to get back to that topic in just a smidge, but right now I want to finish up taking calls for the day.
Let's talk to Kenneth. Hey, Kenneth, welcome home. H Hello Dean, Hello, sir, how can I help you?
Hiding? We had our house inspected by a plumbing company and they discovered pinhole leaks, leaks in the piping material. There's copper, there's galvanized pipe, and there's a hole in the cast iron drainage which has been leaking for probably quite a while, and it's pulling up underneath the crawl
space underneath the house. And their recommendation is to repipe the whole house and redrain the whole pipe the whole house, And wanted to get your opinion on when when to repipe and when to redrain and when not to.
Yeah, it sounds like it's time, my friend. It sounds like it's time.
For sure. How old is the house?
First of all, the house was built in nineteen fifty six, and we've had copper pipe partially installed in the in the system, we've had abs partially installed in the system. But they took video and pictures and and there's a lot of corrosion, a lot of leaks. And there's one leak that comes down from the washer and the sink, the kitchen sink, and it's when you turn it on, it just flows right out as well to the main drain.
So their recommendation is to repipe and redrain. But you know, north of forty five.
Grand, that's a lot.
That's that's an awful lot. So here's here's my advice to you, my friend. First of all, it sounds as though the conditions are present that would warrant repiping the house, no question about that. It's just it's time. It sounds like it's time. If there's pitting, if the copper is starting to fail, if you have galvuys, that's a given that I want you to repipe the house. Okay, that's one thing. That's one thing. The drainage system, this is
a different subject. Now you may still have cast iron lead lines coming up through and vents coming up through the house, you might have cast iron in the ground. When it comes to the drains, part of the expense that plumbers sometimes want to charge is they want to dig up all the old drains all the way out to the curb and replace it all with abs piping, which is fine and noble if you've got the budget
for that kind of thing. But when it comes to cast iron drain lines, if they are not occluded, of course there's going to be corrosion in an old cast iron, But if they're not occluded, they came like an artery with a lot of cholesterol in it. Right, If they're not occluded, right, if they could be rooted out and cleaned out for the most part, But there is a
hole or a crack in them that is leaking. If it's not that the pipe, If the pipe has just fractured, but it isn't displaced one side from the other, you know what I mean, If it's still in line, then as opposed to digging out all of that cast iron all the way down out of the house and replacing it with abs, you should also look into the idea of blowing an epoxy liner into that pipe. Inside the pipe, which is basically a pipe inside a pipe and makes it brand new on the inside. Okay, as opposed to
digging it all out. But the moral of the story, my friend, is this, explore all those options. I appreciate that a plumbing company has come out and given you a quote and done a thorough inspection, but you don't owe them anything past that. At this point, I want you to get two or three more estimates from reputable plumbers on the situation. I want to hear what they all have to say and get pricing from everybody, because
forty five thousand dollars for a repie. I don't know how big the house is, but forty five thousand dollars for a repipe is a pretty sizable number. And so just because they're the first one who found the treasure does not mean they need they to claim the treasure from you. So I just want you to know. The only way you're going to know the only way I would know. Okay, I can't walk through your house, look at it all and say, okay, it's going to cost
this much. The only way I will know whether or not you're getting a good price for your home is if you hand me four estimates from four different plumbing companies, and I get to see basically where the ven diagram where they all over overlap, and we get a general sense of who the outlier is price wise that and we realized, wow, three or four of these guys are all coming in, you know, relatively close to each other. I think this is reasonable to assume this is the price for repiping this house.
Mm hmmm, we're we're talking about three three bathrooms, one hundred and uh well about two thousand square feet.
And yeah, that's a lot of money for a two thousand square foot house, My friend, that's a lot of money.
Okay, that's good to know.
Good.
Yeah, that's why I called you because we're we're at a point we have to do it because water has been pulling up under one of the rooms when the when we wash use a washer, and the sink of the kitchen sink. So I so anyway, that's that's where we're at. Thanks for the advice, really appreciate it. Now, are there any kind of remediation we need to do in terms of that water sitting under the house for quite a while now?
Well, I mean, if if it has caused any kind of of a mold issue. That may be a concern, but I think at this point just let's just a dress getting those pipes sealed up so that we don't keep adding moisture to it. And my assumption is that the moisture will dry itself out and go away. But if there's a visible mold issue, you get under there with some bleach bleach and water mixture and knock that all down and maybe, you know, put a little of drawing element into the soil. But that's really it's a
secondary concern at this point. The main concern is stop the leaks, stop the water intrusion. Deal with the rest of it later. Don't worry about that stuff right now. Just focus on the reed pipe and the redoing of the drain lines that are necessary, and get it done for the right price. My friend, good luck with that. I'm up against a break. I wish you well, and I'm sure now if you're on the right track, right you get those multiple bids, you'll get it figured out.
All right, everybody, when we return, let's get back into organization mode, shall we. I will finish telling you about storing inventory purging and or sorting inventory purging and storing my SIPs. Method for getting your life a little bit more organized. At home, 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