Let's say good morning now to the host of home every weekend right here on KFI, the house whisper Dean Sharp. So Dean, we're taking a look at tracked homes this weekend and how to make them a little more homey.
Huh, yes we are, yes, we.
Are, okay, So start. I think this is interesting because I have a person I know who bought a tract home and one of the options was to make changes before she ever moved in. But after you move in, you can still do some upgrades to make it more like a home and less like a pre fabricated box.
You know, a well over eighty percent of us live in some version or another of a tracked home. And you would think that a custom home designer like myself would be like, you know, looking down our noses at tract homes. But I live in one as well. And the fact of the matter is, you know, the tract home is essentially what has created the middle class homeowner. And so you know, I don't I don't poo poo the idea of living in a tract home. It's simply the thing that has enabled the most of us to
actually own a home. But but you have to understand there are problems that come with tracked homes. There's a very unique set of things that are involved. Craftsmanship, you know, is not always that great in a craft in a tract home, things like lot orientation, uh, the way a home is facing its street, the directions of the compass. There are that same floor plan is laid out so many different ways in attract it appears so many different times as kind of you know, the roll of the dice.
And yet the windows, the doors, they don't change their orientation. It's one fixed plan regardless of its orientation to the compass. And that's one of the things about a tract home that you can change things like turning windows when necessary in two doors. And when you think about that, you're like, oh, that must be a big thing. It's really not. Imagine taking like a sliding glass door and turning it into
a window. Okay, you would take out the door, you would put in a window the same with and then all you would do is build that little wall section up underneath it. It's a pretty simple move in terms of construction. You're not even touching the structure of the house. Well, the opposite of that is exactly how every window and door in a tract home is made. Every window started out as a door, so turning it back into a door is simply removing the window, removing that section of
ball underneath, and adding in a door. And when it comes to a bedroom that doesn't have a lot of light coming into it, or a bedroom like in a ranch style house that has access to the backyard through a door, it could be a huge design game chain. So it's one of those things that you can do in a tract home remodel that is relatively little cost compared to a massive, massive payoff.
Right, Okay, And then here's another one that I wholeheartedly agree with, and because I think they were a thing for a while, not so popular now, and that's soffits getting rid of them.
Yes, soffits are placed in tracked homes in a very very generalized way to leave room for HVAC ducting, you know, air conditioning and heating ducting and things like that, little plumbing things. And the thing about soffits is that whatever space that AC duct needed, uh, it wasn't just confined to that. It was much easier for the builder to just drop the whole ceiling or make the soffit much
much larger than it needs to be. And so if we do a little bit of investigating, we find out exactly where the duct is, and I got to tell you nine times out of ten, we can reroute the duct anyway to get to that same space and get rid of soffits completely. And that can change things like entry ways from seven foot ceilings up to eight or nine foot ceilings. Kitchens are notorious for having softits all around them. Those soffits come out so easily and can make such a big difference.
Okay, and then real quick, you mentioned ceilings, and I love this idea. Maybe get rid of the attic space and put in some vaults.
Yeah, not everywhere in the house. Not every how room in the house needs to have its ceiling vaulted. But there may be, I mean, you're if you're already committing to a remodel, there may be some of those prime rooms rooms like the living room or the kitchen or the family room where if you get in the attic and you actually understand, you know what's up there, there are ways to eliminate the or move the structural elements
in the attic. And just to imagine a ceiling line, vaulting up in some of these rooms that we spend most of our time in volume. Even though you're not changing the square footage, the volume of the room makes all the difference.
Ye. And that's just a couple of the things that you can do to make your tracked home more homie. You're gonna find out a whole lot more this weekend. Dean Sharp has a little show on KFI. It's called Home six to eight am on Saturday, nine to noon on Sunday. You can also follow Dean at Home with Dean. Thank you so much, Dean, We always love talking to you.
Thanks Amy, have a great weekend.