Home Improvement Show 09-13-25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Good morning and welcome in, my friends. It is time
again the Home Improvement Show of the Midlands, and thanks
for joining us this morning here on one of three
point five FM and five sixty AM WVOC. I'm Gary David.
It's terrific to have you with us. A reminder, our
best game cut coverage is underway at four point thirty
this afternoon. That's seven forty five kickoff over at Willy

(00:38):
b Is. The Vanderbilt Commodore's are coming to town. Christopher
Thompson and his team right there, right there on Bluff
Road and the shadows of WILLIAMS. Brice with the best
game cy coverage before and after the game. Let's hope
it's a seven forty five kick and nothing that cut
nine to twenty one last we But it looks like
the forecast of hold up for us on that one.
All right, coming up, we got a busy hour fixing

(00:58):
it up or get it fixed. Russ Mark Finishing Touch
Team is going to be by. We're going to talk
in some detail about the cabinet re servicing they do
one of their mini specialties over the Finishing Touch Team,
how you can save tens of thousands of dollars and
it's not just by paying them. They can totally with
the folks they work with, redo those cabinets and make
them look brand new and save you a ton of
money in the process. We'll discuss that. Trey Powe will

(01:19):
be by Mosquito Joe. Yeah, we're in the middle of September. Mosquitos, though,
are still an issue. Not at my house. I use
Mosquito Joe, but we'll talk to him about The fix
for that for you is maybe you want to get
outside and watch a college football game or NFL game
this weekend, but the mosquitoes are keeping you from doing that.
Right now, though, we get started with a Jeremy Holliday.

(01:40):
He is mister electric around these parts, and he joins us,
good morning to you, my friend.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Good morning Gary.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Hey, we are good morning. We're middle September. We are
in the height of hurricane season, but things have been
very quiet. Knock on wood and you know, thanks for that, right, Yes,
let's hope it stay that way. But we want to
talk this morning about the things that you guys do.
Now we've talked before, you know, you get it. We

(02:08):
saw it during halleen Uh late last September last year
with all the issues that that caused, and those sorts
of things keep you guys real busy. It's not always
something that's an electrician to fix it. Sometimes usually on
the side of the power company, but not always. There
can be things that you're gonna need electrician like mister
elected to come out and take care of. But we

(02:31):
we this time of the year, people start thinking about generators.
Do I need a generator? Nice to have one, But
they ain't cheap.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
That's right, not the cheapest thing to get. No, but
they're convenient.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
But they are convenient right the the you know, the
regular they sit out and all the time. We're not
about the portable one now, you know. But let's talk
about the portable generators. And now we all know when
it comes to that a lot of safety issues. We
get reminded all the time this time of the year.
You know, don't put them in an enclosed area, you know,
not in the garage, right, put them so far away
from the home and all that. But then you're okay,

(03:07):
So all right, I got this generator out here, and
I got what run extension cords through a window or whatever.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well, we can put in an inlet for you an inlet, okay, yeah,
and connect it directly to your panel inside the house.
And and you know, obviously, like you were talking about before,
you need to have a transfer switch installed, whether it's
manual or automatic, and we do that part. Also. You
want to make sure it's up to code, so we

(03:37):
do those and we do them all the time, so
especially this time of season. I know sometimes people have
a hard time figuring out what sized generator they want
as a portable generator. So there's a few things that
come to mind that you want to factor in. You know,
you want to pick out the essentials because we're talking

(04:00):
about portable generators, not a whole home generator, right, So
you know you want to pick out the essentials and
then add the wattage together. You know, you can find
that on the name plate of those items that are
essential to you to have running, and then figure out
which one has the highest starting amps because you know

(04:24):
run time irregular run time is good, but you also
need to have the capacity to start everything up. So
you add those numbers together, then maybe do a safety
range of twenty to twenty five percent. Add that to it,
and that's the size generator that you want to get.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Okay, And I've never owned a portable generator. Maybe maybe
I should, but typically I'm guessing you look at the
must halves. You're going to start with the refrigerator.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Right, that's a big one.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, freezers, freezers, you don't want to lose all that
all that food. That's one right there.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Somemp pump if you have that, and okay, I have
sump pumps. Furnace, you have a gas furnace. A lot
of times you can run the gas furnace off a
portable uh generator because it's not it's not a heavy load.
You know, microwave for cooking rather than your oven. Everybody
wants their TV, well, yeah, real TVs, some lights maybe

(05:28):
you know, if you have any medical equipment, well, pumps,
you know the essentials that you that you can get
and you can add it all together and you can
go down from there. You know, prioritize off your essentials
if you have to.

Speaker 1 (05:45):
So so in a typical and by the way, let
me leave back over for a second and ask you
this question. I've been told this. I don't know that's
true or not. You nured medical equipment. I've been told
that if you you know, have medical equipment in your
home it's necessary. Uh, and you lose power that you
can contact the utility ahead of time, and you're put

(06:07):
on a kind of some kind of a special list
where they try to get to you or anybody else.
Is that are you aware of this? Is that does
that acting?

Speaker 2 (06:13):
I would have that sounds like that sounds like a
good utility company.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Mm, yeah, they do that.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
I would say that that seems reasonable. I mean I
wouldn't know, but I would take it that. Yeah, you
probably would be moved to the top of the list.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Of course, sometimes it's such a widespread power it it
doesn't matter. Yeah right, I mean, although your neighbors could
benefit from that. We gotta go out to this neighborhood first.
But anyway, yeah, so and and help me out here.
And some of you have we've got portable generators and
you know how all this works. But I don't, so
I just play the dumb guy here on this. So
typically most people, if you don't have a power like

(06:50):
you're talking about, you got a portable generator, You're gonna
have to run drop chords into the house, right, that's
the one way of doing it. Yeah, Okay, what are
the what are the options here.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
So aside from that, well, you know you'd have to
either move the equipment outside or yeah, run a cord
to the inside of the home. And you know that
works for certain items. But you know, portable generators only
have so many receptacles on them, so sometimes you might

(07:23):
be looking at using one, you know, powering one thing
up at a time. Okay, you know that type of thing.
And like, like you mentioned before, you don't want to
run your generator in the garage. You want to keep
it for you know, a certain distance away. You know,
six foot is the general rule of thumb from any
openable windows or uh, you don't want to you want

(07:45):
to point the exhaust away from the home, right, you know,
because you can have carbon monoxide issues coming into the home.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
So but if you choose to go out of that way,
there are certain items you just mentioned that you're gonna
be able to to run because you can't plug in
a gas powered US for example, you can't plug in
light switches or whatever. So with what you guys do
explain this now? With the inlet, the power inlet, I

(08:15):
think you said that that like runs right to the
circuit breaker, is that right?

Speaker 2 (08:18):
So what we'll do is we'll run a wire, the
adequate size wire from your breaker box to the exterior
of the home where you're going to most likely you know,
the easy because another thing you got to think about
is how big that portable generator is going to be
and how easily you're going to be able to move it.

(08:39):
A lot of them come with wheels on them, but
you want to put it in a location that's convenient
to where you're not dragging it all the way around
the house. If you don't have to, sure, we can
put that inlet out there. And then the wire that
we run attaches to a breaker inside the panel and
we put an interlock kit if you don't do an
automatic transfer. And what that does is it the only

(09:01):
way you can turn that breaker on to allow power
into that panel is to turn the main breaker off.
And that's for the safety, you know, of our alignment.
So we don't want to hurt those guys that're out
there trying to get our power back on. The last
thing you want to do is feed power back through
and hurt somebody. So you need to have that interlock kit.

(09:22):
What that allows you to do is you can turn
that break, turn the main breaker off, turn your portable
generator breaker on. That allows the inlet. We call it
an inlet because the power is coming from the generator.
When you start that generator up, it's it's coming in
through that inlet and backfeeding that panel. And then you
can mark the breakers that you've selected to run and

(09:45):
turn those on one at a time to allow your
generator to level out and have everything running that you
found essential and that you sized your portable generator to
right right.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
So let's say, for example, and I go this is
you're not a generator salesman. I get that, But let's
say you do want to run that refrigerator, run that TV,
run a couple of lights, a microwave, maybe maybe want
to do a gas partner. Can you all those at
the same time. You get a generator big enough to
handle all that?

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
The portable generators, I mean I've seen them go up
to ten ten kW a ten thousand watts, which is
pretty good. I mean, if you have a gas furnace
and you know, like you said, refrigerator and a microwave,
you should be able to run those items, TV and
a few lights, especially if you have LED.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Lighting you know, okay, and a generator of that size
to handle that, I being ballpark, what'll be talking here?
A portable generator? Would you say? Well, I mean the generator,
You're not generator sales.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
When I get theah, you know, it's kind of hard
to say. You got different brands, you got different sizes,
and it's going to depend on what you find essential
and what the wattage is that you need to run
those items.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
But like the the scenario we just drew up, you know,
to be back a wave gas farness, some lights.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, you I mean, it's hard for me to say.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
I would say, but let me spend on the spot
there with that.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, you know, uh, I'm gonna say a thousand to
two thousand dollars for a portable generator like that, maybe
five thousand WHT six thousand white generator, okay, most common,
I would think.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Well, and again I've never had one, so I've never
really priced wise. I would have thought maybe more expensive
than that, but of course the whole home may be wrong.
You know, buy them where he buys them.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think the last one that I bought
was shoot Man a few years ago that I bought
for myself a lot of times, you know, the customer
already have their portable generator when we go to hook
it up. Sure, and then Generac. We're a dealer for Generak,
so okay, we can go on there and look at them.
But like I said, knowing the different sizes and the

(12:03):
pricing to them, off the top of my head, I
wouldn't be able to do that. But the last one
that I bought from home depot was was a d
Walt generator for a job site and it was nine
hundred and something dollars and I can't remember the wattage
of it, but it was a good one it was.
It was a pretty decent sized one. So I can't

(12:25):
imagine I'm being too much.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
More so for the for this power inlet uh conversion
that you do. I mean, I'm guessing that's pretty standard regardless,
I mean, get into the size of the home, number
of outlets or whatever havevity impact. It was a pretty
standard across the board. As far as far as the installation.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
And what it costs, well, that varies too, you know,
depends on how far away from the panel you want
to run the wire, all right, depends on what size
generator you're gonna install what size? And we have uh
And then we do have coupons and deals online that
you can find us. You know, if you go to
mister Electric dot com forward slash Columbia, we have deals

(13:10):
on their savings things of that. But we do free quotes,
So if you call us out for a quote for
a generator inlet we can come out and take a
look at that, and we'll even do a home safety
check for you and let you know any other ways
we can help you out with your electrical system.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Is it a pretty broad range of price? I mean
between the least to the most it could be. I mean,
is there a ballpark range? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (13:37):
You know, I start fumbling around like I did with
the generator when I start.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Getting in the ballparks, all right.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
And we find that our customers, you know, they really
like to have an accurate quote, sure, because you know,
if I say a small number here and then I
get out there and it's a larger number, yeah, shot
myself in the foot, right, And then if I say
a larger number on here, then people just cancel us
out and say there's no way I'm doing that. So

(14:04):
we find that most customers like it when we come out.
You know, every home is the same, but they're also different,
and we can give you an accurate quote and no
cost to you.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
So we're talking convenience obviously, yeah, of not having to
run drop chords into the house. And we're also about
being able to run more things on that portable generator
at the same time, just not only because of how
much it'll handle or what have you, but just the
ease of you know, you can't run that many drop courts,
you know, you don't have that ability to do that otherwise.

(14:35):
So and this is just all through the circuit breakers.
That's pretty cool thing, right there.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
You got going, Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a good
alternative to a whole home generator.

Speaker 4 (14:44):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Sometimes I'll have talks with my customers and and uh
we'll discuss, you know, how often do you lose power?
How long are you without power? And there's nothing wrong
with a whole home generator. I mean those are awesome too, sure,
but it's a good alternative. So if you're not losing power,
I know here recently it seems like we've been losing

(15:05):
in my opinion anyways.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Losing power a lot more often. Yeah, And so.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
If you're only losing it for a few hours. Maybe
you have lost it once this year. You know, a
portable generator is a good option. Now, if you living
way out rural area and you lose it for three
or four days, you know, four or five times a year,
then that's tough. I would say, yeah, you probably want
that whole house generator, you know, so we can fit

(15:34):
your budget. We can fit you know, based on the
size and uh what you want. We can put in
a whole house generator, or we can put in a
portable generator. But a lot of people don't know that
that inlet generator portable generator is there as an option.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, I've never heard of that before. Yeahah, so I'm
glad you brought that up. So, yeah, have you And
again you say you're up a you handle generator generators. Yes, so,
whether it's the portable or the whole home you couldn't
you can help folks with that. Good to know. Well
other than yeah, you're right, it seems like this past
summer we had a number of even the spring, a
number of occasions where we lost power, sometimes inexplicably. Right, yeah,

(16:11):
sunny day, right, oh, cloud would buy power went out?
That used be the joke about cable, right, you got
clouding everyone out. Hopefully it never gets that bad. But again,
here we are. I mean, it is the height of
the hurricane season. We've been lucky so far, and I
hope we stay that way. But yeah, certainly is that
do I tell you we start thinking about such things? Okay?

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Well, I'm sure you got all the details on your website, right,
that's right, mister Electric dot com Forward Slash Columbia, or
you can call us at eight zero three eight six
eight four to two, four to three.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
All right, Jeremy, good to see it, my friend.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Thank you Gary.

Speaker 5 (16:48):
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(17:34):
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Speaker 1 (17:45):
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(18:06):
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(18:27):
back to the Home Improvement show in the Midlands and
thanks for joining us this morning here on one O
three point five FM and five sixty AMWVOC stepping up
to the microphone. Now there is it's Russ Marchesi from
the finishing Touch. Good morning. Good Yeah, it's great to
be here, always here. You're always great to have you in.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
I just wrapped up another successful project with you guys.
That's right.

Speaker 6 (18:49):
This was a very when you say small, this was
very small. Yeah, yeah, more of a favorite kind of probably.
It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah. Uh, we were glad to help you out there,
k I appreciate that. Intoed that a week or two
back that we were painting our shutters, of all things
to pay the shutters are pretty easy to paint, they are.

Speaker 6 (19:09):
And it's you know, the shutters one of those things
Gary two where uh we we get this all the time,
questions all the time about shows. Should I replace them?
They don't look very good? Should I replace them? Painting
them is always going to be exponentially cheaper than buying
a new you know, because do you think you gotta

(19:29):
Even if you get a new shutter, you have to
remove your old one. Okay, pay somebody most likely to
remove that old one, purchase the new one, and have
the new one installed. Okay, and you know, by the
time you do all that, you could have painted it,
you know, two times in all honesty.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 6 (19:47):
But but some shutters are wood and they need some
repairs and think extra preparation work. But you know, eighty
percent of the time these days, everybody's got the vinyl shot.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah. Yeah, and these aren't the ones that have louvers
at them. We've we've done those before in the past. Right,
that's a pain, but I mean they can be yeah,
easy to paint. But but we had that one set
of shutters over the of the room over the garage,
on that window up there, the high spot. Yeah, and
I looked at that and I thought, you know what,
I'm way too old and way too smart to get

(20:19):
up there and try that one out.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
We actually we were just talking about this but during
the break here. Yeah. Uh, you've had you've had experience with.

Speaker 6 (20:31):
Yes, man, it is part for the course, right, you know,
you do this long enough and things are going to
happen from time to time, but you know you got
to just be as safe as you possibly can, right,
It's uh, whenever you get that feeling of boy, you know,
in the pit of your gut, where you're like, boy,
should I just doesn't look safe? For maybe I should

(20:51):
have somebody else spotting my ladder. Those are the times
that are normally gets you in trouble, right, you ought
to listen to your gut and probably you know, seeks
some help or or go about a different way because
it's probably not safe.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
It's like throw phone three twenty five up on the
bench press without a spot exactly. I could do this. Yeah,
So what's that saying? Hey, y'all watch this right? Watch this? Yeah?
Pro tip though that rush just shared with me. And
if it ever happens to you, ride the ladder, ride down, rise, sir.

Speaker 6 (21:22):
You got to ride the ladder down as best as
you can, right, I mean it's it's you know, but uh,
you know I've had to do it before.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
I mean it.

Speaker 6 (21:30):
You survived a forty foot fall, I have, I have, yeah,
Uh my father has as well. He was uh I
remember years ago he came down off of a forty
foot ladder. And see most people, your your first knee
jerk reaction is jump right you jump off or right,
you know, try to try to break your fall like that.
But I mean that's where you're gonna break your your leg,

(21:52):
your ankle, you know, really really get hurt doing something
like that. But if you just try to ride that
ladder down as best as possible, there may be a
point where you have to bail.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Like I had to.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
But it's uh yeah, so not fun. Not fun. So
don't try this at home. Do not try that at home. Disclaimer.
So we're talking about you talk about how much money
you can say by just painting shutters opposed to replace it. Absolutely. Yeah,
well you must have a whole lot of money. That's
we finish those cabinets, the cabinets, replace them.

Speaker 6 (22:22):
It is man, it is we uh so we we
just got done doing a set for a very very
nice lady out in Swansea and she had very you know,
her cabins were outdated. Okay, they just were. They had
the external hinges on them, Gary, they they weren't like
soft clothes. They had different like the older school profile

(22:46):
doors on them. Right now, the boxing, they're great, the
actual wood boxing of the cabinet themselves, right, the cabinet
itself exactly. They don't build them like that anymore, right,
you always hear that, but it's true. I mean, they
use actual real pine poplar to build those those out
back then. So they're perfectly fine unless you just absolutely

(23:07):
hate the design of them, which you can reconfigure as well.
You don't have to buy all brand new cabinets just
to reconfigure a few things, right, And that's kind of
what this lady did. So she had taken an island
out and she had this odd kind of pantry section
of it that she didn't really care for. It just
wasn't useful. So I teamed up with one of the
guys that I work with that does the actual refacing

(23:30):
of the doors and whatnot, right because you know, we're
doing the painting portion of it. Okay, that's what we're doing.
But we've been doing it so long and I've worked
with so many cabinet guys that we have developed great
relationships over the years with these guys, and we work
hand in hand with them, you know, every week, you know,
every day, just about so, So he came over and

(23:51):
revamped all these cabinets for put new cabinet faces on them,
switched out the hinges to the hidden hinges, switched out
the drawers, and all and the hinges to a soft
clothed type and reworked that weird little pantry corner area
that she didn't like.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (24:09):
They also added some trim pieces to it, some crown
molled up top to kind of you know, modernize it,
beef it up a little bit, and then we painted
them okay, and I got to tell you, they just.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Came out so beautiful. Gary.

Speaker 6 (24:21):
So she was tickled to death with them. Huge transformation
and the best part is she saved thousands of dollars
versus ripping all those out and purchasing brand new cabinets
and having them a stump.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
So this was this is one of these examples where
not only did you paint the cabinets, you added the trim,
you changed out the actual style of the door and
the way it opens and everything else, and you even
actually removed something and did a modification job absolutely with
the pantry. Yeah. So this is maybe the extreme example
of this is how much you can do. That is

(24:57):
the extreme. Now, if you don't mind, man, I mean,
just ballpark, sure, because you had all this done here ballpark.
I mean, what what was she spending on a project
like that?

Speaker 6 (25:08):
Between the painting and all the revamping. Gary, I think
the final came to about seven seven hundred dollars total.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Okay, you know, yeah, under eight thousand dollars.

Speaker 6 (25:18):
Under eight grand, but a complete transformation. I mean you
would not even think these were the same cabinets, right,
and these.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Were good cabinets, Oh yeah, said these are the good
old pot You know this is a solid exactly. Yes.
So if she had gone the other route, just ripped
everything out, put in brand new.

Speaker 6 (25:37):
Stuff fifteen to twenty grand, easy, easy, absolutely easy. Yeah, yeah,
without a shadow of doubt, don't get me wrong. There's
you know, in this day and age, Gary, everybody knows
you you can get what you pay for, right. You
can seek out some cheaper quality products and things like that, right,
you know it's out there for just about everything, right,

(25:58):
I mean laptops you can go the high end, or
you can go to the cheap end or whatever. Everything
has price points like that, right. But to get something
halfway decent, that's where you're going to be at price wise,
you just are.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
But you gotta get You don't gonna replace catas front
of twenty grand, basically not for eating, not anything off
of substantial quality. Now you're just not. Yeah, you're just not.
But you know it.

Speaker 6 (26:22):
It was a complete transformation, and it just it looks
so beautiful and it's so satisfying for us. Right, it's
it's contentment for us because we're we're changing the complete
look of this person's kitchen. Now, we did more than
just that with her house. We actually she had popcorn
ceilings in her kitchen and we removed all of that
for her and made them into slick ceilings for her, right,

(26:45):
changed the color on the walls, painted all her trim
into her living room as well. So it was a
complete transformation, without a doubt. And it just looked it
just looked different, you know, it looked great, you looked modernized.
And yeah, she was very pleased, very cool.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah. Now again in this example, that was one of
more extreme makeovers, I'd say, so, so I'm just gonna
guess that in most cases, maybe you're changing out the
doors and you know, hiding the hinges and and this
and that, maybe a little bit of trim work or whatever,
but doing the painting. So in this case, it was,
you know, under eight thousand dollars, you're probably you probably

(27:19):
do a lot of these things. For half of that,
I'm guessing, oh, even less than half of that.

Speaker 6 (27:24):
Yeah, I think I've said it before on this on
the show, but I'd say the average cost to do
a standard set of kitchen cabinets, right, and this would
be either stained previously or painted previously, doesn't really matter.
I'd say you're gonna be in the range of twenty
five hundred dollars to four thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
That's really where you're at with this.

Speaker 6 (27:44):
And yeah, that example was an extra I would call
it an extreme example of, you know, the capabilities of
what you can do with that. But on the reverse
side of that, a lot of times we've gone in
and just resealed revarnished stained cabinets forks right where you know,
it's a beautiful stained job on their cabinets. It's just
that the varnish, the shiny part, right is it started

(28:07):
to wear and dull over the years, okay, and the
use of it with cooking and grease and just all
that good stuff. So I'd say, on the polar opposite
end of that, for the least amount that you could
really do, you know, we'll go in there and sand
everything down, we'll touch up stained areas where maybe certain
doors or drawers that you use constantly, they wear just

(28:28):
a little bit around the knobs. So we can go in,
touch up the stain around those areas, and then we
sand everything down, put two coats of varnish on them,
standing in between coats, and they come out like new money.
They look beautiful once we're done with them. Okay, And
that's that's a pretty easy standard. Uh, you know, redo

(28:49):
on some stained cabinets, same thing with painted We can
come in and if they're already painted, you can change
the color. You can go back with the same color.
That's it's really i'd call that really the majority of
what we see out there and what we're doing. But
there are, you know, cases where we do the extreme,
like I just mentioned as well.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah. If you take your standard job
that you probably your typical average, as you mentioned, between
three four thousand dollars. Now you put that up against well,
you want something halfway DC, you can spend at least
twenty to replace, you really are, and if you want
a really nice you're gonna spend thirty forty to fifty.
It seems like a no brainer.

Speaker 6 (29:28):
Bruh, Yeah, No, it's this guy's the limit with the
possibilities that you can do with these cabinets.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
It really is.

Speaker 6 (29:34):
It's you can add shelving inside, you can add the
pullout drawers, you can revamp those, right, she did one
of those in the bottom of her George for all
her pots and pans. That's what she wanted, Okay, So
it was a nice pullout so she didn't have to
dig in there and get on her knees and dig
in there for a pot and pan out pulls out
real nicely, and we sealed all of that wood for her.

(29:56):
It just you know, it just became a lot more
use her, friendly for her. And she's she enjoys her
kitchen a whole lot more now, you know. And that's
that's the point. We we love doing it.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
I just absolutely love seeing the finished result of something
like that. So aside from you know, doing all the
extreme thing we just talked about. As an example, let's
say you're your average job, what what what kind of
time frame we're talking because anytime you you're doing anything
in a kitchen, there's that inconvenience factor, right, sure, you
gotta versus replacing, which I'm gonna guess could take a

(30:30):
really long time before you're using it again, depending.

Speaker 6 (30:34):
It depends, Gary, Yeah, you know, time wise, you know,
replacing them can take a bit longer. But we're generally
we're generally one week, okay. And the reason that we're
one week is because of curing times, dry times. All right,
So generally speaking, you're.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Going to do in the doors there, you're taking the
doors back, correct, Yeah, that's correct. And why is that?
It's because of the controlled environment.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Right.

Speaker 6 (30:58):
So we spray all of our doors and drawers and
our spray booth, state of the art spray booth in
our shop right here in Irmo, And once we spray
those doors and drawers, Gary, we put them into a
controlled dry room, okay, so there's no dust floating around,
there's no particles and contaminants that settle into that paint
after the fact. Right, That's how you get that baby

(31:19):
grand piano smooth finish. If you're doing them on site
or in somebody's garage or golly, I've seen I've seen
people lay ladders out and put them outside on top
of ladders and spray them.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Okay, sure, you know, think about what's in the air,
all those contamina. I don't even want to tell you
how we spray painted shutters one time, right fluid ones
sure under the deck we had a very high oh yeah, right.

Speaker 6 (31:48):
Yet never mind, right right, I see it all the time.
I've seen it for years. Uh you know, but this
is this is the correct, the very best way of
doing it going about it. This is the correct way
of doing it. And uh, we do it because of
the end result. It comes out absolutely beautiful and baby
grand piano finish. But all that pain has to dry. Okay,

(32:09):
we can't just rush it. And you know, a day
after we spray them, put our hands on them and
go bring them to the house and install them. Right
Uh it, you know it's gonna something's gonna chip or
they're just not cured yet. So that's why I say,
if we pick them up on a Monday, you can
expect to have them reinstall the following Monday.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Right.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Sometimes it can be.

Speaker 6 (32:29):
A day or two quicker. But that's something we don't
necessarily want to rush. But you do have to consider that.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Right. So now you have all the doors off of.

Speaker 6 (32:36):
Your your kitchen. Uh, you know, it may be in
a little bit of a disarray because of that. So
it's kind of funny, what a lot of folks don't
really count on is eating out sometimes during that week. Right,
I've heard that so many times. Wow, you know I
didn't I didn't really factor that. And so you gotta
sometimes if you don't mind, you to cook. But a
lot of times they go out to eat, well, and.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Some people always go out taps right, right, you're good,
you're a reason not to cook, right, right right. But
I just I can't imagine that somebody coming in ripping
out everything that, yeah, you're gonna have to take everything
and put it somewhere. You know, all the pots and pans,
all the cans, all everything that glasses, ripping everything out,

(33:18):
and we all know what a big mess that can become,
right of course, so you're doing this with no mess, okay,
no fuss, oh sure. Uh and and then coming in
and installing new ones and everything. I just I can't
imagine that that that now you're gonna be a couple
of weeks, Yeah, a couple of weeks. A couple of
weeks for sure, you know, not to mention you have
to order them, you have to wait on all that.

(33:38):
You have to wait for somebody to come out there.
And uh, to look at it and measure it. You
know a lot of times.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (33:45):
You know these guys that come out as well, Gary,
they're not giving advice, right, they're just salesmen. They're just
out there to sell you a product. That's it, okay. Uh,
that is a big difference with us as well. We
can give suggestions. We listen to the customer and see
what their needs are, their wants, and we can make
suggestions based on that.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
Right.

Speaker 6 (34:06):
We're not just trying to you know, throw some paint
on there or stain or whatever the case is and
move on. We're we want we want a customer to
be one hundred percent happy with their choices that they're
making at the end of the day. Right, And uh,
you know we give suggestions all the time. The pull
out chor you know, I suggested that to her and

(34:29):
you know, just little things like that that works out well.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
And by the way, we should mention boy, wrap it
up here with you, Russ that if you've never you know,
heard us with us before. On the Home Improvement Show
of the Midlands, we've talked to this whole segment about
refinishing cab was this is not all they do.

Speaker 6 (34:42):
You got you you paint everything, right, we do. If
it doesn't move, you'll paint it exactly. Yeah, we'll paint
an out house.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
That's my saying. All right, how to folks, and you've
painted our out house? Thank you? What we call it that? Anyway?
How to folks reach to us?

Speaker 6 (34:55):
You can give me always give me a call at
eight zero three four sixty seven six seven.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
All right, good to see you buddy. Thanks Gerry, there
was far.

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but you can call mister Electric with priority dispatching. One
of our electricians will be at your door ready to
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It's very annoying.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
So next time you need an electrician, call mister Electric
because life is better with electricity. Services provided by locally
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Speaker 2 (35:32):
Hi there, I'm Jeremy Halliday, local owner of Mister Electric
of Columbia. I've been servicing the Midlands since twenty ten
and I'm happy to answer questions and give you free
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(35:55):
mister Electric dot com Forward slash Columbia.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Hi, this is Gary David. You've heard me talk for
years about Anthony John Construction and the wonderful jobs they
do for folks all across the Midlands. When it comes
to roofing and gutting, well it's the same people doing
the job, but the name has changed. That's right now
it's Beaver Roofing and Beaver Gutters. Leave it to Beaver
for all your roofing and gutter needs. The same great
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(36:20):
just with a new name. Eight oh three nine nine
to one roof and Beaverroofing dot com the gutter roofing work,
Leave it to Beaver Beaver Roofing and Beaver Gutters. And
we welcome you back into the Home Improvement Show of
the Midlands on one O three point five FM and
five sixty am WVOC. Time to talk about written yourself

(36:43):
of those Mosquitoes. Is Trey Powell now from Mosquito, Joe
joins us. Good morning, sir, Good morning to you. You know,
this is that time of year when it's fantastic and boy,
we've had we've had some warmer days and all, but
we've had some just some beautiful weather. And you talk
about you don't want to get out back maybe and
set up a big screen and watch a watch a
college or a pro football game, or just have a

(37:05):
cookout or whatever. I mean, because you can do it
because it's not like one hundred and ten degrees outside.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
That's right. Yeah, it's it's one of the most wonderful
times of the year. It's not so hot that you're
gonna be soaking wet, and uh, it's it's a great
time of the year to get out in the yard,
eat outside, watch football games, I mean, all the things
that we love to do outside when it's just not
so sweltering hot and so yes, great, great time to

(37:34):
be outside.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
But uh, that's if you don't have something else that's
bugging you while you're out there, well.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Yeah, that's that is that still is an issue. And
you know, sometimes people feel a little bit cooler weather
and they're like, oh, thank goodness, you know, and they
they think that you know, maybe mosquitos are going to
slow down, and the fact is is that we are
nowhere near when that time is. You know, we we

(38:05):
need we need temperatures to be consistently, you know, below
fifty degrees. We start seeing temperatures dropping below fifty degrees,
then and only then, you know, will you have a
little bit of a slowdown. Because what happens when the
when the temperatures drop below fifty degrees into the forties,

(38:28):
mosquito eggs will stop hatching, and so the volume of
mosquitos over the course of the next few weeks. When
the mosquito eggs are no longer hatching, well, then the
number of mosquitoes will start to decline. And that's why
latefall you don't have quite as many mosquitoes as you
have in midsummer because the conditions are not ideal, and

(38:53):
so a lot of mosquito eggs has started to incubate
and so the numbers will change. But here in the Midlands,
that's really not going to happen until November, right, right,
So it's gonna be a while all throughout football season.
And this beautiful, you know, more comfortable weather, it's plenty
comfortable for mosquitoes as well. And uh, if you want
to go outside without having to spray yourself down or

(39:17):
or get eaten alive, you know, you need to do
something about that.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
And that's where you come in with that, in that,
in that that incredible barrier spray that just works so well.
And it's a it's a it's what this is a
this is a thing that it's it's really funny. I
swear to you, Trey. It never feels you guys come
out every three weeks and we can always tell it'll
be it almost is always the day before you're scheduled

(39:43):
to come out. My wife Han says, I've bet mosquito
Joe's coming soon. Maybe you get that that one or
something and you're like, and then it almost ever fails
the next day you guys are out there. It's just
it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Yeah, if you know somebody, you know, we do see
that a lot during this time of the year because
we have no contracts whatsoever. It's a reoccurring service and
become automatically. But if a person is done using their yard,
you know. A good example is grandparents watching kids for
the summer. You know, the kids go back to school

(40:18):
and they're not using the yard. They were just having
the yard treated so that they don't have to send
kids home with mosquito bites. And so, you know, they
can stop when the kids go back to school. But
we do have a lot of other customers who do
use their yard, and especially a new customer who's you know,
the kids are going back to school or the weather
changes a little bit like it is now, and they're like, man,

(40:40):
I you know, I haven't seen a mosquito in months,
like this has been fantastic. I think we're good. Summer's over.
And they think the kid, you know, the mosquitos went
back to school or fleu south for the winter, right,
And that couldn't be farther from the truth, because as
soon as they stop, within a very short period of time,
suddenly they're seeing mosquitos again and there's reinfiltrating that property.

(41:02):
And then they go, oh, why did we stop? We
should have never stopped that. So we do we do
see that.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah, and once once you stop and they start back
up again, then you know, don't put yourself behind the
eight ball, man, and I'll stay stay ahead of them things.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
It's a lot simple, yeah, you know, you know, that
they are breeding on your property if you are getting fit,
because they you know, they have not only become an
adult mosquito, but now they've bred with another mosquito and
they they're trying to lay eggs, is why they're biting.
It's only female mosquitos that bite. And when they're producing eggs,

(41:40):
they have to get a protein meal, which is blood.
And so they're searching for a dog or a cat
or a human or a bird or a rabbit or
anything that they can get a blood meal off so
they can lay those eggs, so they can instantly start
producing more eggs. And so they're constantly biting and laying
eggs and biting and laying more eggs. And that's just

(42:03):
what they do.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
That's all they do, right, I mean, that's it. That
is I saw an article a couple of days ago
about West nole virus cases in this country ye which
have according to CDC, have serves like forty percent this year,
about forty percent higher than normal. That's if we're going

(42:25):
to get something here when it comes to some sort
of something from a mosquit If I'm not mistake, it
is West nole virus, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Yeah? West Nile virus would be probably the most likely.
You know, zecovirus is possible that it's also carried by
the same mosquitos that we have. It's different species of
mosquitoes will carry different diseases. I mean, we had a
case of malaria and we haven't had a case of
that in the United States for a long time, and

(42:53):
that popped up as well. We do actually have the
mosquito that could transmit that virus as well. We just
don't have the volume of mosquitoes that they have in
third world countries where all these things kill thousands and
thousands of people a year. You know, we don't have
the volume of mosquitoes that they have. But it doesn't

(43:16):
mean that having a picnic out back in the yard
is is pleasant because you're still getting multiple bites. You're
not getting hundreds of bytes, you know, which is the
situation where mosquito born illness is very prevalent. It's people
are getting you know, they have to sleep under bednets

(43:36):
because they're getting hundreds of bites in their sleep. Yeah,
and I didn't know this is that's where mosquito born
illness gets really bad. And that's you know, we have
municipalities that treat widespread for mosquitoes to reduce the population,
so that our likelihood of getting something like that is
very very low, but it's always a possibility.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, And I didn't know this until I was reading
that article that uh uh they say perhaps tens of
thousands people every year are infected by West N virus
and don't even know it, uh, had no symptoms.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
And there's something about a lot of these these viruses
is that maybe one in five people actually show any
symptoms whatsoever. Oh wow, But yeah, they could have it
and not show symptoms. I mean, there's that's that's kind
of I don't I'm not a medicine person or whatever,
but that that happens with a lot of different you know,

(44:32):
illnesses and things like that. I mean that I believe
that was one of the things with COVID is some
people had COVID and never showed symptoms.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah. Right, that was me, you know, they told me
I had really Yeah, there you go, my wife was
really sick. We took her in a get tests. They say,
while you're here to get tested. Two turns out I
had it and she didn't. Go figure yeah uh yeah.
But anyway, but but it's all it's all the usual
culprits that when you do see higher rates of this,
I guess it's because areas have seen more rain, they've
seen you know, higher temperature. There's maybe unicipalities weren't doing

(45:02):
a good job spraying, and then all factors in right, yep.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Okay, now, yeah, it's it's definitely not something you want
to play around with. When they when they get cases
of West Nile virus, uh, they really go to work
because that's a major health I mean, it's one of
the worst health things that can happen around the world.
I mean, if you think of some of the most
devastating things that have happened in human population, it's vector diseases.

(45:30):
You know, the plagues were started by were he came
from fleas that were on rats. Yeah, you know, got
into beds and you know, just spread like wildfire that
was a vector born disease that came from an insect
like a flea. You know, in these same things like
malaria and stuff like this, it's it can be it
can be very very dangerous.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
So now while again as you mentioned that these are
for us remote possibilities here, but yeah, just just to
not be able to enjoy your backyard. That's that's a
real issue right there.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Man.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
So let's talk about Yeah, this this treatment you use,
how does this thing work?

Speaker 6 (46:11):
Well?

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Give us give us the four one one on what
you do in Mosquito.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Joe sure. I mean, you know, if you want to know, like, hey,
what's what differentiates us? I mean, one of the things
is that we are definitely I mean US News and
World Report named us the most eco friendly test control
company in the country, and that is because there's a
part of every single treatment that we do that's eco friendly.
Not everything that we do necessarily is eco friendly, but

(46:37):
any opportunity that we have to do things in an
eco friendly way that are effective and we can guarantee it,
that's the path that we're going to take. And one
of those things is larva siding. When we come out
to your property, we're not just putting down a barrier spray.
We're not doing what we would call the spray and
pray method. We are going out out and we are

(47:00):
going to try and find the source of where those
mosquitoes are coming from. Because, as we talked about earlier,
if we can stop them from being born, they're never
going to bite you. If we can find the water
that they are breeding in and treat that, then they're
never born. The volume of mosquitos on that property goes

(47:22):
down significantly, and that's before we've ever sprayed it all.
And that's probably fifty percent of our time is spent
finding standing water, treating standing is standing water, and stopping
mosquitos before they're ever even born. And so that's a
really big part of what we do. It's expensive, it
takes time, takes a lot of skill and effort to

(47:43):
figure out where they're coming from, and we do a
lot of training on our with our technicians on that,
and then yes, we go and go, and then we
spray the yard, all the bushes and shrubs around the yard,
trees at this time of year and so forth, to
eliminate adult mosquitoes that are there that will stick to
whatever we spray it on. And so if any mosquitoes

(48:05):
try and jump the fence from your neighbor's yard, they're
going to hit that barrier and they're going to be
eliminated as well. And all of that lasts for about
three weeks, and then three weeks later, like clockwork, we're
right back finding more standing water, treating it again, respraying
the yard, and just handling things and taking care of it.
So it's kind of out of sight, out of mind,

(48:26):
you know. For you as a customer, you can just
go outside anytime you want, as if mosquitoes didn't even exist,
and it's just not something you have to worry about.
You don't have to have a can of bug spray
by every door and dress a special way, and you know,
make all these precautions, you know, because you don't want
to get bits.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Talking to Trey Pale from Mosquita Joe, I'm going to
guess Trey that one of the I'm guessing this is
the case this time of the year. Again, maybe as
you allude to earlier, maybe grandparents had kids able for
the summer they don't have now. They kind of cut
off the treatment. Now they aren't really out back that often.
But the longer you go, and you guys go up

(49:06):
until about Thanksgiving typically with the spray, I'm guessing that
if you were to cut off, if you were currently
somebody using your service, cut off right now, that by
the time you know, spring rolls back around, your mosquito
population is going to be a lot worse than it
would be if you went ahead and you know, kept
treating all the way through about Thanksgiving, you guys normally

(49:27):
cut it off.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah, we encourage everyone to do that so that we
never have a situation where mosquito eggs are being laid
and that population of eggs is just building and building,
Because when the spring comes around and the temperatures start
climbing back above fifty degrees, which is usually mid February,
and those eggs start hatching, the significance of the problem

(49:53):
is going to be based on how many eggs are
on the property that have been in incubation. And so, yes,
you know, what you're saying is absolutely correct. If if
they stop too early and allow eggs to be accumulating
on the property, even if they're not using the yard,
you know, and they're they're not getting bit but they're
biting squirrels and rabbits and dogs and cats and anything

(50:16):
else they can find birds and still laying those eggs.
Those eggs aren't going to be born until the following year,
and it's just you're going to start the year with
a much more significant, you know problem than we do
the same thing. We get started as soon as we
you know, as soon as February rolls around and the
temperature start raising, we want to be out in those
yards and start doing you know, larva siding and uh

(50:38):
and getting ahead of it so that we want you
to be able to go out anytime of year and
not get bit.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
For so long you and I have talked about controlling
that mosquito population, eliminating and making outside fun again. But
but now you guys can take care of all the
pasts too, right, we do.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
We are really a full service pest control company. We
want to you know, work with our customers to bundle
services and and just handle everything, every issue that they
have from inside to out. We're going to do it
in the most eco friendly way that we can. Whether
it's treating your yard for termite or treating around the
house for termites, we can handle that.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
That And that's that's somewhat new because last time we
talked to me, you guys were kind of ramping that up.
But you do do termites, now, okay, all right? Good?

Speaker 2 (51:26):
We do.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
We are we do. We'll do termite bait stations, but
we also do pre construction you know work as well,
and so we can handle from a brand new house
to a house that's been around, you know, with termites.
We do home pest defense, keeping the roaches and ants
out of the house, keeping rodents out of the house,

(51:47):
like mice, and wrap anything. It's gonna it's gonna help
you enjoy your home, your property inside and out and uh,
and make it fun. It's much more fun without those
unwanted guests.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Ay, editor, Then I guess you can probably bundle all
that together and save some dough. Huh.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
That's the idea. Yeah. Most people want to, I think,
want to want to just pay one company and just
have it all taken care of. And so we put
it put these customers on a on a low monthly
payment and we just we handle it all. And so
they pick and choose which services they want. They can
have one or two services, they can have all of
the services, and so we just pick which ones they

(52:26):
they want and we bundle that together for them, beautiful.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
And for folks who've never tried you before. When it
comes to taking care of them skeeters out there, you
still run that thirty nine dollars first time special.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Yeah, we'll do that first service for only thirty nine
dollars if they've never used this before. It's you know,
we want to earn their business the right way. It's
not that's below cost, you know. And then uh, and
then we'll start them on the on the routine. But
there's no contract ever. We want to earn your business
the right way, and we want to earn it every
single time, all right, So never going to be a
contract with Mosquito.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
Joey go against signed up. Where do folks need to go,
my friend.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
They go to eighty five to five, asked Joe eight
five to five, asked Joe or Mosquitojoe dot Com?

Speaker 1 (53:12):
All right, Trey pal Muscina, Joe, have yourself a terrific weekend,
my friend.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Thank you too.

Speaker 6 (53:19):
I'm James Carwell, local owner and operator of Freedom Plumbing
right here in the Midlands. After working as a plumber
for nearly a decade, I decided to open my own
business and Freedom Plumbing was born.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Because of my love for this country and the great
respect I have for the men and women of our
armed forces and our first responders. I named my company
Freedom Plumbing. What sets us apart from other companies is
our customer service. We have a five star rating on Google,
a five star rating.

Speaker 6 (53:46):
On Facebook, an A plus rating on Angie's List, and
an A plus rating with a Better Business Bureau. I'm
James Carwell, local owner of Freedom Plumbing, and we look
forward to servicing you for all of your plumbing needs.
Get fifty percent off your new service call when you
mentioned you heard us on WVOC.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
Learn more at Freedom dash Plumbing dot com. That's Freedom
dash Plumbing dot com.