Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the
Speaker 1: house Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app. You know,
Speaker 1: this very program is also the house Whisperer podcast that
Speaker 1: you can listen to anytime, anywhere on demand, hundreds of episodes,
Speaker 1: all searchable by topic. It is your home improvement reference library.
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking, hey, that's all great, Dean, but
Speaker 1: what we really need is you and Tina in our
Speaker 1: house standing at looking at that you know, whatever that is,
Speaker 1: you know you can do that too. You can book
Speaker 1: an in home design consult with me and t Just
Speaker 1: go to house Whisperer dot design. And yes, we have
Speaker 1: ways of doing it, even if you don't live within
Speaker 1: driving distance of southern California. There's always a way. Just
Speaker 1: did a consult a couple of weeks ago in Albuquerque,
Speaker 1: New Mexico. There's a way. There's a way, where there's
Speaker 1: a will, there's a way. All right, back to our
Speaker 1: conversation about big, big changes that can be made to
Speaker 1: a tracked home during a remodel that yield specific changes
Speaker 1: that yield a disproportionate amount of good and jug and
Speaker 1: sexy and great and awesome for a disproportionate to the
Speaker 1: amount of energy and effort and money put into them.
Speaker 1: I've got a whole list of them for you. You know,
Speaker 1: it's based on the idea that we're addressing the intrinsic
Speaker 1: weaknesses of tracked homes in the first place. So let's
Speaker 1: move up. I've moved up to the top of the
Speaker 1: list based on one of our callers in the last hour.
Speaker 1: This idea of reducing and removing soffits sofits. Some of
Speaker 1: you in other parts of the country know them as bulkheads.
Speaker 1: But a sofit a bulkhead, it's a structure. It's a
Speaker 1: non st ructural build out inside the interior of a
Speaker 1: home that allows space for something a plumbing pipe to
Speaker 1: run through, a drainline to run through, an air conditioning
Speaker 1: duct to run through, that kind of thing. Soffits and
Speaker 1: bulkheads same thing, just a different name. Up in Canada,
Speaker 1: our neighbors to the north, they are referred to almost
Speaker 1: exclusively as bulkheads, and down here most often we call
Speaker 1: them soffits. But they're not just soffits. There are also
Speaker 1: double walls running from the floor to the ceiling areas
Speaker 1: of your home that have been intruded upon an interior
Speaker 1: space for the sake of making room for something. Now,
Speaker 1: I know you're sitting there thinking, well, Dean, that thing
Speaker 1: is making room for a thing. I get it, I
Speaker 1: get it. But I want you to understand this in
Speaker 1: terms of why it's there and its relations ship to
Speaker 1: it being a tracked home. Okay. So a couple of
Speaker 1: things that you got to know about a tract home.
Speaker 1: They are built with the lowest possible cost of a
Speaker 1: construction in mind. Okay. And so when we've got, for instance,
Speaker 1: when we know we've got to get an air conditioning
Speaker 1: duct from point A down the hallway to point B
Speaker 1: out in the living room or something like that, the
Speaker 1: lowest cheap but you know, the lowest cost way, the
Speaker 1: cheapest way of getting a duct from point A to
Speaker 1: point B is often just to drop the ceiling of
Speaker 1: an entire area, like a hallway, drop the whole hallway
Speaker 1: ceiling down below, you know, eight feet or so, you know.
Speaker 1: And and as a result, it was really inexpensive for
Speaker 1: the builders, for the developer to create this space for
Speaker 1: an air conditioning contractor to come through and run a
Speaker 1: traditional flex duct right in that space and boom, you're done.
Speaker 1: They're done. There's the vent in the living room and
Speaker 1: it's coming from you know, wherever the FAU is the
Speaker 1: air handler in the house. But just because that's the
Speaker 1: way they ran, it doesn't mean that's the only way
Speaker 1: that duct could get from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: What you have in your home is the least expensive
Speaker 1: way for the builder for your duct to get from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. That doesn't mean it has
Speaker 1: to be that way. The builder left tons of room
Speaker 1: for the HVAC contractor. I'm just using this as one
Speaker 1: example for a vent contractor to run a traditional inexpensive vent.
Speaker 1: They did not say to themselves, you know what, the
Speaker 1: buyers of our homes deserve the highest ceilings possible and
Speaker 1: the most interior space possible. So we're going to go
Speaker 1: to extra expense to run ducting up a wall in
Speaker 1: between studs. That would be a metal duct specially made
Speaker 1: to fit in a stud wall bay from top to bottom.
Speaker 1: Or we're gonna run. We're gonna run this duck twice
Speaker 1: as long as it needs to go by jumping up,
Speaker 1: getting into the attic, going over there, running through joists
Speaker 1: in between, and then down. Instead of making this big soffet.
Speaker 1: Those are the considerations that absolutely one hundred percent were
Speaker 1: not taken into consideration when your tracked home was built,
Speaker 1: because it's just cheaper to do it the other way. Now,
Speaker 1: what do you and I do. We move into a house,
Speaker 1: and if we don't understand that that's the way it
Speaker 1: was done, we just accept it as it is, and
Speaker 1: we start making do. To your credit, all right, to
Speaker 1: all of our credit, all of us who live in
Speaker 1: tracked homes. What do we do. We're resilient human beings.
Speaker 1: We move in. It's not perfect, but we make do.
Speaker 1: And if you've been in your home ten years, twenty years,
Speaker 1: thirty years plus, you've been making do for a long time.
Speaker 1: And now it may shock you to realize that it
Speaker 1: never had to be that way. But that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing I'm saying. Sofits are non structural entities in
Speaker 1: your house, which means they can simply be removed. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about calling a structural engineer. You
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about, oh, the house is going
Speaker 1: to fall down if we take that thing off the
Speaker 1: side of you know, And I realize now as I'm
Speaker 1: saying these things to you that there are probably a
Speaker 1: few other items that I want to talk about regarding
Speaker 1: sofits and these empty spaces. So what we're going to
Speaker 1: do is we're up against a break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to finish these thoughts on So I'm stretching
Speaker 1: this one a little longer because it's a biggie and
Speaker 1: you deserve to hear the truth about the soffits and
Speaker 1: the dead spaces in your home that you could reclaim
Speaker 1: if you're planning a remodel, and should reclaim if you're
Speaker 1: planning a remodel, because getting rid of them is super easy.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: So glad you've joined us on the program today if
Speaker 1: you're just dropping in, we're doing part two of a
Speaker 1: two part series this weekend of special very very specific
Speaker 1: remodeling items to include in your remodel if you're working
Speaker 1: with a tracked home. These specific items are the things,
Speaker 1: the kinds of things you can do during a remodel
Speaker 1: of very little cost and time and energy and a
Speaker 1: huge disproportionate payoff. And that's the kind of stuff we're
Speaker 1: all looking for, right because you remodels cost money and
Speaker 1: we want to stretch that dollar and get the biggest
Speaker 1: possible design effect out of everything that we do. So
Speaker 1: before the break I was talking about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a biggie. This is just a biggie. And
Speaker 1: that is the elimination or the reduction at least of
Speaker 1: soffits and empty dead spases around the interior of your
Speaker 1: home to give you more ceiling height, to give you
Speaker 1: more wall space, to give you more square footage in
Speaker 1: a room. The most commonplaces that these soffits occur in
Speaker 1: tracked homes, and I already explained why they're They're there
Speaker 1: because they enable the builder to allow their mechanical people,
Speaker 1: their mechanical subcontractors, plumbers, electricians, HVAC people, these chases, these
Speaker 1: easy ways of getting from point A to point B
Speaker 1: in a house. They're not the only way it could
Speaker 1: have been done. It's just for the builder. For the developer,
Speaker 1: it was the least expensive way to get it done. Okay,
Speaker 1: now some of you, I know I'm interrupting my own
Speaker 1: thought here, but some of you are thinking, well, Dean,
Speaker 1: if the builder did it the least expensive way, why
Speaker 1: are you having me do it a more expensive way. Well,
Speaker 1: two reasons. One because you could gain so much by
Speaker 1: removing these artificially inflated, bloated areas that are intruding on
Speaker 1: the interior of your house. Number one, no question about that.
Speaker 1: Number Two, the cost differential between doing it the way
Speaker 1: it was done in your house and the way it
Speaker 1: should be done for you is going to be shockingly,
Speaker 1: shockingly minimal. You're like, well, if that's true, then why
Speaker 1: didn't the builder do it well? Because, unlike you, the
Speaker 1: builder wasn't just working on your house that cost differential
Speaker 1: that they made the decision about. They took that cost
Speaker 1: differential and multiplied it over the fifteen hundred or three
Speaker 1: thousand homes in your development. That's where it makes a
Speaker 1: significant impact on the bottom line. It was never going
Speaker 1: to be that much more for your home, okay, And
Speaker 1: that's why it's worth doing it this time around, because
Speaker 1: you're only doing it once. Right. Here's a classic example.
Speaker 1: You're gutting a kitchen. You've decided I need new kitchen cabinets,
Speaker 1: I'm done with this old kitchen, and you've got a
Speaker 1: soffit in your kitchen, a soft coming down from and
Speaker 1: let's just say for the sake of argument that because
Speaker 1: this is going to fit most people for the sake
Speaker 1: of argument, you've got eight foot ceilings in your house.
Speaker 1: In other words, you're the majority of tracked homes, older
Speaker 1: built tracked homes, not the new style homes that where
Speaker 1: we now do standard nine foot ceilings, but older style
Speaker 1: where it was eight foot ceilings. An eight foot ceiling.
Speaker 1: So many clients who we do consults for are are
Speaker 1: shocked to realize that they're upper cabinets in their kitchen
Speaker 1: because they're looking for more space. They're like, how can
Speaker 1: I expand the kitchen to get a little bit more
Speaker 1: storage space? And I just say, well, we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: even have to expand the kitchen in square footage. We
Speaker 1: could just get rid of the soft and run new
Speaker 1: upper cabinets to the ceiling. And they're like, well, if
Speaker 1: you get rid of the soffits, then the cabinets are
Speaker 1: just going to sit there with open space over them.
Speaker 1: And I say no, because if you do, you have
Speaker 1: an eight foot ceiling kitchen with a soft it built down,
Speaker 1: your upper cabinets are thirty six inches tall. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can go measure it right now. I'm not a psychic.
Speaker 1: I just know that that's the case. If you've got
Speaker 1: a soft and an eight foot ceiling, you have thirty
Speaker 1: six inch tall upper cabinets. A standard full size upper
Speaker 1: cabinet is forty two inches tall, Okay forty two, not
Speaker 1: thirty six. And as a result, if you remove the soffit,
Speaker 1: a forty two inch tall cabinet goes all the way
Speaker 1: to the ceiling and increases the amount of storage in
Speaker 1: that kitchen automatically just by removing the soffit. And you think, well,
Speaker 1: they put that soffit there for a reason, because I
Speaker 1: know there's an HVAC duct in it. You know what,
Speaker 1: I would be willing to put bet serious money, serious
Speaker 1: money with you that that AC duct just drops in
Speaker 1: in one tiny location and the chances of us finding
Speaker 1: a way to get it in the ceiling itself and
Speaker 1: not in the soffit are amazingly high. In fact, I
Speaker 1: will tell you, in decades of doing this, we've never
Speaker 1: not been able to get the AC duct out of
Speaker 1: the soffit. And the rest of the sofft is there
Speaker 1: so that the builder didn't have to pay for forty
Speaker 1: two inch cabinets, so that they could pay for thirty
Speaker 1: six inch cabinets. That's why it's there. Period. You take
Speaker 1: it out and you reclaim that space. So again, the
Speaker 1: most commonplaces these soffits are found entryway ceilings. Have you
Speaker 1: ever noticed that about your house, that when you walk
Speaker 1: into the entry when people walk in, literally walk in
Speaker 1: the front door, that for some reason, the ceiling there
Speaker 1: is lower than everywhere else. I'll tell you where it's
Speaker 1: most common, because you've got a long haulway off to
Speaker 1: the left or the right, and then the family room
Speaker 1: or the living room is on the other side of
Speaker 1: the entryway right. So again, that ceiling was dropped so
Speaker 1: that a duct could get down the hallway from the
Speaker 1: fau and into the living room. It's not the only
Speaker 1: way it could have happened. Now, if you live in
Speaker 1: a two story house, like, it's a little trickier because
Speaker 1: we don't have the attic to run into. But I
Speaker 1: see these most of the time in single story homes,
Speaker 1: meaning there's an attic overhead, meaning we can run that
Speaker 1: ducked up into the attic and over to the living
Speaker 1: room without having to drop the entryway ceiling. Just saying
Speaker 1: it's not always the case. This is not a hard
Speaker 1: and fast universal law, but it is super super common,
Speaker 1: so common. That's why I'm putting it on this list
Speaker 1: such an important item. So entry ceilings, hallways for the
Speaker 1: same reason kitchen ceilings. We've already talked about that. And
Speaker 1: if you live in nineteen eighties and newer homes, you
Speaker 1: may have entire walls running down your hallway or in
Speaker 1: areas of your house that have been doubled up. In
Speaker 1: that sense that where I say folksphistication, because the vibe
Speaker 1: is that, oh, look at how big and thick this
Speaker 1: wall is. You see the end of this wall. This
Speaker 1: is like a twelve inch thick wall. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not a twelve inch thick wall. There's one real
Speaker 1: wall in there, two by four or two by six wall,
Speaker 1: and then there's another false filler wall in there, and
Speaker 1: the dry wall is bridging between the two to make
Speaker 1: it look like it's twelve inches. Believe me, if you
Speaker 1: had a real twelve inch thick wall, it is holding
Speaker 1: up some massive weight up above it. Massive, not just
Speaker 1: the second floor. Okay, So there are all of these
Speaker 1: opportunities in a home. Now understand they're hidden, they're behind drywall.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, hey, how can I know I don't
Speaker 1: have plans? I may have suspicions, but I don't have
Speaker 1: a set of plans for my house, so how can
Speaker 1: I know without just tearing it all up? Well, tearing
Speaker 1: it all up, that's nobody wants you to do that.
Speaker 1: I want you to do that, but I do want
Speaker 1: you to understand this. Drywall patches are inexpensive, okay, especially
Speaker 1: if you're planning a remodel ahead of you, So a
Speaker 1: little bit of forensic like most of the time, all
Speaker 1: we need to do is open up in a questionable area,
Speaker 1: maybe a twelve x twelve square of drywall. We cut
Speaker 1: it out, we can stick our head in there, we
Speaker 1: can see what's going on, we can get the lay
Speaker 1: of the land. And sometimes we're like nope, now we're stuck,
Speaker 1: and we put the drywall back on and we patch
Speaker 1: it and we walk away. Okay, that's a few dollars
Speaker 1: to learn something invaluable about your home. And if you
Speaker 1: don't even want to go that far, then here's a tool, literally,
Speaker 1: a physical tool that you should acquire as a homeowner
Speaker 1: planning on investigating their house pre remodel. Get yourself an
Speaker 1: inspection camera. An inspection camera is a camera that is
Speaker 1: mounted on a very thin, flexible neck, maybe twelve sixteen
Speaker 1: feet long, comes in a coil, a high def camera
Speaker 1: with an LED light, and then back at the end
Speaker 1: of that sixteen foot stretch of LED coil tubing or
Speaker 1: flex tubing is an actual camera, five inch screen, full color,
Speaker 1: and you drill a half inch hole into a piece
Speaker 1: of drywall and feed this camera in behind walls, around sinks,
Speaker 1: I mean, down plumbing pipes, down sewer pipes. An inspection
Speaker 1: camera can do many of the things that I was
Speaker 1: just talking about with just a half inch hole in
Speaker 1: a piece of drywall and give you a look inside
Speaker 1: the bones of your home. And you're like, all right, Dean,
Speaker 1: but okay, the expense. Let me tell you. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to tell you right now, and this is not
Speaker 1: an advocation for this particular model or brand, but I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say I own a test long inspection camera. Okay,
Speaker 1: dual lens boroscope camera with light, five inch full color screen,
Speaker 1: sixteen foot snake scope, fully waterproof. It's rated for plumbing
Speaker 1: pipes and indoor wall spaces. On Amazon today one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty nine dollars, Yes, one hundred and fifty nine dollars,
Speaker 1: and you've got a full scale professional inspection camera that you,
Speaker 1: as a homeowner, can use to look anywhere you want
Speaker 1: in your home. These things are possible, and because they
Speaker 1: yield such big results, they're so doable. So doable. All right,
Speaker 1: I got more for you. You hang tight.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1: Live streaming in HD everywhere on the iHeartRadio app Your
Speaker 1: Home with Dean Sharp the house Whisper. So glad you're
Speaker 1: with me on the program today, we're talking about big
Speaker 1: changes that can be made in a tract home if
Speaker 1: we know what we're doing. We're addressing the inherent weaknesses
Speaker 1: of a tract home, big changes that can be made
Speaker 1: that create disproportionately awesome results for a far far lower
Speaker 1: time and money expenditure than you would think. And we're
Speaker 1: going through that list this morning, the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that every homeowner who's thinking about a remodel wants to
Speaker 1: hear and wants to know about. I've got to from
Speaker 1: from now until the end of the show. For the
Speaker 1: next couple of segments, I'm going to share with you
Speaker 1: these changes off my list in pairs, one super relatively
Speaker 1: simple and one that's a little bit more engaged and involved.
Speaker 1: It might. You know, here's here's a good pair to
Speaker 1: start off this pairing with number one. Move the entry chandelier.
Speaker 1: What what are you talking about, Tean? This is just
Speaker 1: something that you know. Honestly, if you had asked me
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, before I had done literally hundreds, maybe
Speaker 1: probably thousands of consults at this point, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: told you that I was aware of how common this is.
Speaker 1: But it's common. In fact, I find it almost in
Speaker 1: every home. If you have an entry that has a
Speaker 1: vaulted ceiling or a higher ceiling, I come in the
Speaker 1: front door, there's likely a chandelier hanging in your entryway.
Speaker 1: It needs to move. I'm guessing in two different ways,
Speaker 1: and if yours doesn't, then good on you. You're good to go. Okay,
Speaker 1: But most entry ways, most houses tracked houses. The lighting
Speaker 1: was not designed by a lighting consultant or a lighting designer.
Speaker 1: The lighting was designed by contractor by the electrician. Electricians
Speaker 1: love simple grids, and electricians, you know, they have a
Speaker 1: certain logic to where they put a thing. Quite often
Speaker 1: that logic does not hold up in the design world.
Speaker 1: And so here is my thing Let's say you've got
Speaker 1: a vaulted ceiling in your tracked home, and when you
Speaker 1: walk in, you have an entry landing area. That's your
Speaker 1: landing Maybe the stairs are out in front of you,
Speaker 1: or maybe this is just here's the entry hall or
Speaker 1: the landing area, okay. And so you look on a
Speaker 1: set of plans and you think, well, my landing area
Speaker 1: is you know, about six maybe eight feet long there,
Speaker 1: and then it transitions into the rest of the room.
Speaker 1: So where would you hang the chandelier. You would hang
Speaker 1: the chandelier right in the center of that. So what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is this, if you walk in. If I
Speaker 1: walk in your front door, okay, and I have to
Speaker 1: walk in by the way far enough for the door
Speaker 1: to close behind me, that's when I'm actually in your entryway,
Speaker 1: not when I'm standing in the threshold of your door,
Speaker 1: but when you invite me in and I walk past
Speaker 1: the swing of the door, okay, so that the door
Speaker 1: can be closed behind me. Now I am standing in
Speaker 1: your entryway. If I am at that point about three
Speaker 1: and a half or four feet into your entryway and
Speaker 1: the chandelier is directly over my head, it is in
Speaker 1: the wrong place because you've got a vaulted ceiling, and
Speaker 1: you want that chandelier to be a part of the
Speaker 1: showiness of that vaulted ceiling and light the path. Right,
Speaker 1: no human being is going to at that point look
Speaker 1: straight up, cock their head backwards and look straight up
Speaker 1: vertically in an uncomfortable position and say, oh, what a
Speaker 1: lovely chandelier you have up there. Nope, it's above my head.
Speaker 1: It's over I didn't even see it coming in. It
Speaker 1: was a waste of a design element. So when you
Speaker 1: were standing in the proper position, having entered your front door,
Speaker 1: clear of the door, I should be able to look
Speaker 1: up just with my eyes, without even calking my neck up,
Speaker 1: and catch the view of this beautiful, shiny, you know,
Speaker 1: blingy chandelier. That's when it's in the right position. So
Speaker 1: most entry chandeliers need to move further away from the
Speaker 1: front door in order to have their effect. Also, most
Speaker 1: entry chandeliers have to move up up into shorten the chain.
Speaker 1: I'm six foot three. It just so happens that when
Speaker 1: I am barefoot and I reach up, I can touch
Speaker 1: with my fingertips an eight foot ceiling. So my reach
Speaker 1: is eight feet For a tall person like me, walking
Speaker 1: in your home. I should not be able to reach
Speaker 1: up and touch the bottom of your chandelier, because that's
Speaker 1: essentially defeating the whole purpose of having a vaulted ceiling
Speaker 1: in the first place. The chandelier needs to be up higher,
Speaker 1: out of at least two feet out of my reach
Speaker 1: so that I feel like, yeah, that's wait, that's up there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, most chandeliers should be hanging a minimum of
Speaker 1: ten feet off the floor of the entryway, and some
Speaker 1: much higher than that. So there you go, and moving
Speaker 1: a chandelier, it's moving one electrical box a few feet
Speaker 1: and changing over the electricity there and patching the old hole.
Speaker 1: Not a big deal, but a really really efficient and
Speaker 1: effective design tool for a remodel. Now that's that. The
Speaker 1: other pair is something you're going to scratch your head
Speaker 1: and say, all right, now you've lost it, But I
Speaker 1: think most of you will agree. I know this is
Speaker 1: a big move. I know this seems crazy. But for
Speaker 1: a lot of homes out there, the living room and
Speaker 1: or the family room you've been making do with, and
Speaker 1: if you really think about why you're making do in
Speaker 1: that room and why it just never works for you,
Speaker 1: the hard truth is the fireplace is just screwing everything up. Now.
Speaker 1: I love fireplaces. I probably use I think I use
Speaker 1: my fireplace more than anybody else. I know. I love fireplaces.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying get rid of the fireplace. But in
Speaker 1: today's day and age, we can take a masonry fireplace
Speaker 1: and remove it, okay, and improve the room. Just by
Speaker 1: removing the fireplace means that we could put the furniture
Speaker 1: on that wall, we can orient the room in a
Speaker 1: completely different direction, all those kinds of things. That's called
Speaker 1: design by demolition, that's what I call it. And it's
Speaker 1: the least expensive kind of renovation to make because to
Speaker 1: demo out of fireplace it's going to cost you some money.
Speaker 1: But to remove something and once it's gone, to simply
Speaker 1: improve the room or the house because of its absence,
Speaker 1: that is the best use of your remodeling dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily want you to get rid of a
Speaker 1: fireplace in the room, but a house that was designed
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties, nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies, even lace
Speaker 1: and even eighties and nineties, because these were carryovers, kind
Speaker 1: of thoughtless carryovers. But the point is houses that are
Speaker 1: older tracked homes were designed with a completely different lifestyle
Speaker 1: in mind. Right If I walk into a nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: a century house, of course the fireplace is sitting big
Speaker 1: and proud in the middle of a family room because
Speaker 1: nobody was thinking where are we going to put the
Speaker 1: TV in nineteen twenties, No, we're going to put the
Speaker 1: flat screen? How are we going to we do life
Speaker 1: different now? Nor was anybody thinking the nineteen twenties that's
Speaker 1: the wall. I actually want to put the sofa on
Speaker 1: because I want to view of the rest of the house,
Speaker 1: or I want to view out these big windows. Nope,
Speaker 1: that's not how they were thinking either. But that's how
Speaker 1: we're thinking today, and that is not going to change
Speaker 1: because architecture has evolved. It's not just a fad. It's
Speaker 1: simply a greater understanding of how living in our home
Speaker 1: and embrace seeing larger vistas and larger views of the
Speaker 1: outside better than staring at a wall. So with today's
Speaker 1: modular fireplaces, we can move the fireplace to a different
Speaker 1: part of the room. We can move the fireplace up
Speaker 1: a wall, down a wall, put a linear fireplace underneath
Speaker 1: the flask. There are tons of options. If you lived
Speaker 1: outside of California, You've got every imaginable option, including just
Speaker 1: relocating a new wood burning fireplace. In California, we're a
Speaker 1: little more limited, but we still have tons and tons
Speaker 1: of options. And all I'm saying is, all I'm saying
Speaker 1: is think outside the box. Thinking and dreaming is free.
Speaker 1: There's no charge ahead of time. But maybe the key
Speaker 1: to your living room or your family room is removing
Speaker 1: or moving the fireplace. All right, move the entry chandelier easy,
Speaker 1: moving a fireplace. Oh, I know that gets everybody right here.
Speaker 1: But that's a pair of things worth considering. I've got
Speaker 1: another one for you that we'll talk about right after.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
Speaker 2: KFI AM six.
Speaker 1: Forty Welcome home. Okay, here we are. We are in
Speaker 1: the home stretch here, last segment of our show, but
Speaker 1: still lots to cover on our list of key elements
Speaker 1: keyed in specifically, if you're planning on remodeling your tracked home,
Speaker 1: keyed into the intrinsic weaknesses or malleability of your tracked
Speaker 1: home that you should consider including in your remodel because
Speaker 1: they yield a disproportionate amount of effect for the A
Speaker 1: relatively small amount of time and energy to be put
Speaker 1: into them, and they're larger and smaller items on the list.
Speaker 1: I've been pairing them up here, a cheap, easy one
Speaker 1: with a more involved one so you can get the
Speaker 1: full spectrum of it. So we're into the lightning round side.
Speaker 1: I've got four items that I need to finish up
Speaker 1: to finish this essential list with you, and I'm just
Speaker 1: going to blow through them the best I can. Uh So, first,
Speaker 1: for this segment, it should go without saying. We already
Speaker 1: talked about soffits and relocating HVAC, ducting and all of that.
Speaker 1: If you happen to have an h what's called a
Speaker 1: vertical HVAC air handler in furnace, like it's in a
Speaker 1: closet in your hallway, and you're thinking about remodeling and
Speaker 1: the time and it's also time to replace or upgrade
Speaker 1: the HVAC system, then you have to have at least
Speaker 1: the conversation about getting that air handler and furnace unit
Speaker 1: up vertical in an attic space. Now, if you got
Speaker 1: a two story home, you know in the in the
Speaker 1: air handlers downstairs, you know there are always considerations, but
Speaker 1: chances are uh if you've got a two story home,
Speaker 1: the air handler is actually out in the garage and
Speaker 1: or an exterior cabinet. If you've got a traditional single
Speaker 1: story tracked home, there's a really good chance that there's
Speaker 1: a vertical air handler in a closet in a hallway.
Speaker 1: And of course, I know you always want more closet space.
Speaker 1: We always want to take advantage of more space in
Speaker 1: the usable areas of the house. So if you have
Speaker 1: any decent kind of attic whatsoever, even a smallish er
Speaker 1: kind of attic, chances of getting a horizontal unit hanging
Speaker 1: up there and getting it out of your living space,
Speaker 1: it's just better. You can have more room. You could
Speaker 1: just make that a closet, more storage, you can expand
Speaker 1: another room into that little niche area. It's quieter up
Speaker 1: in the attic than it is down in your hallway.
Speaker 1: All of these things move the ac air handler into
Speaker 1: the attic if possible, and while you're doing it, dual
Speaker 1: zone the HVAC. If it so happens that your house
Speaker 1: has an issue with uneven heating and cooling, like a
Speaker 1: two story house tracked home often does upstairs, it gets
Speaker 1: so hot downstairs we're freezing, dual zone the HVA systems
Speaker 1: so that it handles each floor or area zone separately.
Speaker 1: More on that when we do our next air conditioning show.
Speaker 1: Here is another one rethinking interior doors in your home.
Speaker 1: This is something that just gets skipped over all the time.
Speaker 1: We just spent two hundred thousand dollars remodeling our house,
Speaker 1: Dean and I said, great, how did the interior doors go?
Speaker 1: And you're like, what about the interior doors? Oh, so
Speaker 1: you didn't take the few extra dollars to change out
Speaker 1: those hollow core interior doors to solid core doors and
Speaker 1: to make them sexier looking as well and more in
Speaker 1: line with your new look. People just tend not to
Speaker 1: think about the interior doors going into their bedrooms and
Speaker 1: so on, but they're there, and in most tracked homes
Speaker 1: they're hollow, which means, okay, they provide visual privacy because
Speaker 1: when you close the door you can't see through it,
Speaker 1: but that's about it. As far as their sound privacy
Speaker 1: into those rooms. Uh, you know, you do just about
Speaker 1: as well hanging a blanket across the room. And the
Speaker 1: fact is those interior doors at the time that they
Speaker 1: were purchased by the builder and put in blankets were
Speaker 1: more expensive than those doors, which is why that they're there.
Speaker 1: And you know, I can imagine your home right now.
Speaker 1: It has a white interior doors. They're kind of molded,
Speaker 1: two or three paneled. I've seen them. I've seen them
Speaker 1: a billion times. There are so many door options, and
Speaker 1: so many people think about the big moves on a
Speaker 1: house without thinking, Hey, you know what if we change
Speaker 1: the character or the look of every door in the house,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of changed character. Plus we privatize each room.
Speaker 1: Plus it's just better, just better rethink the interior doors.
Speaker 1: That's a simple move. And then the last one that
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave you with today is again in
Speaker 1: kind of the same line as getting rid of empty
Speaker 1: dead spaces and removing sowfits. There are some special rooms
Speaker 1: in your home, the most important rooms. Maybe it's the kitchen,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the living room or the family room area,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's the the master suite, the primary bedroom,
Speaker 1: where you may have the opportunity, if you've got attic
Speaker 1: up above you to vault the ceilings in those rooms,
Speaker 1: vaulted ceilings. You're like, well, Dean, why are you so
Speaker 1: obsessed with vaulted ceilings. Well, I'm not obsessed with them.
Speaker 1: But I know this as a designer who works with
Speaker 1: the fundamentals of human architectural design. We can expand the
Speaker 1: space of your house. Okay, by making room additions. Room
Speaker 1: additions are incredibly expensive expanding the square footage space of
Speaker 1: your house. But quite often, I'm going to say eight
Speaker 1: out of ten ten times when I'm been posed with
Speaker 1: that issue by a client, we will find ways of
Speaker 1: expanding the spacious ness, not the space, but the spacious
Speaker 1: ness of a home, and shockingly it satisfies them in
Speaker 1: a way they didn't expect. So without enlarging your family room,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying it doesn't have to get it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to get bigger, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: But without enlarging the family room or the primary bedroom
Speaker 1: or whatever room we're talking about, without enlarging its square footage,
Speaker 1: which means moving walls and doing all sorts of other
Speaker 1: stuff that's gonna get expensive. We need to take a
Speaker 1: look in the attic and the space above and see
Speaker 1: if there isn't and there usually is a pathway to
Speaker 1: raising the ceiling or at least vaulting the ceiling in
Speaker 1: an angular way to get more volume in the room,
Speaker 1: because guess what volume equals spaciousness. It doesn't increase the
Speaker 1: square footage of the space, but increases the spaciousness. And
Speaker 1: that's actually what you really want. Nine times out of ten,
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking for. All right. I made it
Speaker 1: through the list. I'm shocked that I made it through
Speaker 1: the list, and I know that was a bit of
Speaker 1: a lightning round. But the moral of the story is
Speaker 1: very simple. We live in tracked homes and we're not
Speaker 1: going to you know, pooh pooh that and look down
Speaker 1: upon that, because it's what has enabled most of us
Speaker 1: to live in a home, period, to own a home period.
Speaker 1: All Right. The inexpensive cost, you know, that's crazy to
Speaker 1: say these days, but the relative expense of buying a
Speaker 1: tracked home in a development versus building a custom a
Speaker 1: home from the ground up, there's no question about A
Speaker 1: mass produced item is cheaper than a one off, get it.
Speaker 1: That's why you're there. I don't look down on your
Speaker 1: tracked home, nor do I get discouraged by it, because
Speaker 1: if you see it for what it is, right, if
Speaker 1: you see it as the blank canvas longing for what
Speaker 1: it never had a real identity, then the advantage of
Speaker 1: working with a tracked home is you can probably make
Speaker 1: it just about anything you want it to be. There
Speaker 1: are really only two kinds of houses in the world.
Speaker 1: There are houses that have this strong architectural pedigree. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't take a Victorian gingerbread house and turn it
Speaker 1: into a mid century modern house. It's just not going
Speaker 1: to happen. A Victorian house if you're remodeling it, it
Speaker 1: gives you the playbook. It says, hey, you got to
Speaker 1: remodel me like a Victorian house, and there aren't a
Speaker 1: lot of questions as to how we go about doing that.
Speaker 1: There's a playbook there. But the typical tract home is
Speaker 1: a more amorphous thing. It's blurrier. It doesn't have a
Speaker 1: strong architectural pedigree. You can either bemoan that or you
Speaker 1: can celebrate it and say this is a blank canvas
Speaker 1: to paint as we please. And what that means. Every
Speaker 1: house has a path forward, Every house has hope. I
Speaker 1: always say this most renovations, they don't need a bigger budget,
Speaker 1: they just need a better story. And when that story
Speaker 1: merges with your story, that's when your ordinary tracked home
Speaker 1: becomes an extraordinary home. That's all I got for you today.
Speaker 1: I hope that you make the most of this beautiful Sunday,
Speaker 1: the first weekend of spring. Whatever you've got planned to
Speaker 1: do this, make sure you get busy building yourself a
Speaker 1: beautiful life, and we will see you right back here
Speaker 1: next week. After this has been Home with Dean Sharp,
Speaker 1: the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI
Speaker 1: AM six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight
Speaker 1: Pacific time and every Sunday morning from nine to noon
Speaker 1: Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.