March 1, 2025 • 39 mins
In this episode of the RepcoLite Home Improvement Show, Dan discusses some personal home improvement projects, including ongoing spring cleaning efforts and a repaint project he's been procrastinating on for a LONG time.... He's in the final stretches and sees the error of his procrastinating ways.He also presents a historical overview of glass evolution, from ancient discoveries to modern-day window technologies, and expert tips for solving common window problems like drafts, condensation, and operational difficulties.00:00 Welcome to the RepcoLite Home Improvement Show00:16 Weekend Plans and Spring Cleaning Optimism01:26 The Great Spare Room Cleanup02:46 The Living Room Paint Disaster09:03 A Creative Solution to Peeling Paint13:13 The Benefits of Tackling Indoor Projects Now15:57 The Lesson Learned from Tackling a Daunting Task17:24 Encouragement to Tackle Nagging Projects17:54 Listener Engagement and Giveaway Announcement18:38 Introduction to the History of Glass20:05 The Evolution of Glass Through the Ages29:31 Common Window Issues and Solutions38:59 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Well, good morning everybody. You're listening to the reco Light
Home improvement show is sponsored by Benjamin Moore, and I'm
glad you're here. I'm glad you're starting your weekend off
right in the best possible manner. You're starting by listening
to the show and speaking of mornings, weekend mornings, what
is your plan for today? I'm curious. You know, everybody's
(00:23):
got weekend plans. We always have something in our heads,
whatever we're intending to do for the day. What are
you intending to do today? For me? I'm torn. You know.
There are three things that I want to do, three
different things. And when I say want to do, I
should clarify these are things that I want to have
done to see finished. They're not necessarily terribly exciting things,
(00:46):
but they are things that I want to get done.
And one of them is I want to continue my
spring cleaning. And yeah, I said spring cleaning in March,
in the beginning of March. That's how optimistic I am.
You know, people who know tell me sometimes say I'm
too pessimistic. That is not true. I am the eternal optimist.
I am convinced that spring is coming and that there
(01:09):
will be no more cold weather, no more sadness, no
more despair out there. And I know I probably jinxed
everybody listening. You know, all of us are probably gonna
have a terrible, terrible cold, snowy March because of everything
I just said. But really I'm thinking positive. And I
did start spring cleaning last week, and I tackled a
spare room that we've got a spare bedroom, and we
(01:32):
went to town. In there, let me tell you, let
me just brag a little bit, we went nuts. We
got out the fabuloso or fabulosa, I don't remember. I
don't remember how it's spelled. I know how it smells,
That's what I know about it. And it's the purple stuff.
And I got that out. We went to town. We
washed the walls, we washed the windows, and we washed
(01:54):
both sides. I didn't do the normal you know, wash
the inside of the window, the one part that I
can reach easily. I even folded them in and did
the other side as well, both sides of the windows
with minimal streakage. So I got the windows washed, wash
the walls. We exterminated more dust bunnies than we could
even count. I mean, it was the killing fields in there.
(02:16):
It was great. Now when you walk past the room,
you know, if you go fast enough, the displacement of
air kind of pulls the clean air out of that
room and it kind of hugs you with that fabulosa, fabuloso,
whichever it is. That purple smell kind of wraps around
you and you know, just patsy on the head and
tells you you did a good job. So that's one
(02:38):
thing I would like to do. I would like to
continue that spring cleaning and carry that purple smell into
other rooms of the house. Now, another thing that I'd
kind of like to do is to prime some raised
plaster decorative bands that are around the top of my
walls and the ceiling in my living room. Now, if
you've listened to the show for a while, you know
(02:59):
you kind of been consistent. If you followed it, you
probably know that I've got a living room in the house,
a formal living room, for lack of a better phrase.
That's what the people called it when we went through
the house. What's this room called? You know, is this
a second living room? This is the formal living room? Oh,
we just call it the second living room anyway, The
(03:20):
second living room, the front living room. If you followed
the show, you know that along the top of the
walls and on the ceiling there are some bands of
plaster raised bands that are like four inches wide. Two
of them are side by side on the ceiling and
one on the top of the walls. Really smooth. They've
got paint on them. The paint has peeled in some areas,
(03:40):
and I've got this mess now. The paint peeled. You
know that whole problem that occurred. It actually happened years
and years back when my daughter Hannah exposed all of this.
She's the one who discovered this problem. She's the one
who made the problem. Is probably the best way to
say it. Basically, she spent all of her spare time.
She didn't play with toy when she was grown up.
(04:00):
She was a teacher. That's what she did. We didn't
buy her toys for Christmas or birthdays or anything. We
would buy her teaching supplies. Little fingers on a stick
for like point and at stuff. I mean, it sounds dumb,
but it really is. It's a finger on a stick
and you point out things with it. And she had
a projector, even a cheap o projector, and a chromebook.
(04:22):
She would do spreadsheets with grades and stuff like that.
Hannah taught, and she taught hard, you know, hardcore teaching.
She was laying it on thick for all these invisible
kids that filled the classroom. Anyway, one of the tools,
one of the supplies that we bought her were these
great big poster sized sticky notes, and she would write
all the lesson plans or whatever the kids needed to know,
(04:43):
the spelling list, whatever. She'd write it on these notes
and then stick them all over the wall. Well, eventually,
you know, we'd leave them up for a while and
she covered so much space. She would get a ladder
out of the garage. We didn't endorse this. Sometimes we
just walk into the room and there's Hannah on the
six foot ladder putting stuff all over the walls. And
one of the times she got it all the way
(05:04):
up to that band. You know. So she puts this
poster up there with a sticky note kind of backer
on it, sticks it on one of those painted bands,
and she does her teaching. We didn't think about it
for a while. Well, eventually it comes time to take
that poster down, and when we pull it down, we
find that it removes all the paint along that raised
plaster edge, you know, everywhere where that post it note was.
(05:26):
So we got about a one and a half foot
section where where there's no paint. You know, it's all
the way down to the plaster or a primer. It's
too long of a story. It's just the paint's gone,
that's the main thing. So that's really sad, right, I've
got to touch it up. Well, the whole thing got
sadder because I did the sanding, you know, hoping to
just touch up those spots and move on. And that's
(05:46):
when I found out that all the paint on these
bands wasn't sticking at all. It just kept flaking off
further and further. You know, I never really got to
a point where it wasn't flaking away as I was sanding. Now, normally,
when you've got flaking or appealing paint situation like that,
we would tell you, you know, we'd responsibly tell you
you've got a sand or scrape all the way to
(06:08):
the point where the paint is bonded well, and that
whatever's left. You know, that paint that's on that surface
needs to be bonded well. And when you've got that
then you sand those edges, you know, feather them down
a little bit, and then you do your touch ups.
But in this situation, whatever I hit with the sand
paper would start to come loose. And the saddest thing
was that it didn't come loose to the point where
it just kind of easily came away. That wouldn't have
(06:31):
been so bad. Now, it was still a lot of
work to get it off. I could just see that
the paint wasn't bonding as I would hit it with
the sandpaper. So it was horrible. You know, it was
a big room. I had all this sanding work that
I had to do. It was all over my head,
which is really exhausting to do. And the mess that
the sanding created was monumental. And so I did what
(06:51):
I tell everybody not to do. I skimped on the
prep work. I phoned it in, you know. I sanded
the spot where the paint had peeled, and I touched
it up, hoping for the best. You know, completely ridiculous
that I would think that I'm going to get good
results out of this, but I was hoping for the best.
You know, That's what desperation will do. It will make
you absolutely cling and grasp at straws. That's what I
(07:13):
was doing, and so I did it. I put the
new paint on there, and literally an hour later, as
the paint is drying everywhere that that new paint had
been applied over top of the old existing paint. Everywhere
that the two overlapped, the old paint was peeling, you know,
peeling right off with the new paint. It was literally
curling up on the ceiling in the walls. It was
a huge mess. Unfortunately I had just did a little
(07:36):
bit of painting, but man, what a mess. And that
whole idea, you know, I should clarify a minute, that's
why you can't paint over paint, or one of the
reasons why you can't paint over paint that isn't bonded. Well.
What was happening for me was even the surface tension
of the new paint drying, that surface tension was enough
to completely pull that old paint off and the whole
(07:56):
thing came down. Sometimes people think that the new paint
is some how going to bond the old one to
the surface. Not so, if your foundation, I shouldn't say
not so. There are new paints that claim to do
just that. New peel bonding primers, things like that. In
most instances, a new code of paint over top of
something isn't going to make it bond any better. It's
(08:17):
just gonna all come off, all right. So that's what
I'm dealing with. It was a monumental mess, and I
sat on that for I don't even know how many years.
I've talked about it on the show. For three years,
and I just lived with that mess. It was embarrassing
when people would come over. It was frustrating because I absolutely,
of course hated how it looked. Who likes that, you know,
the peeling paint on the ceiling. I do like this esthetic,
(08:40):
you know, nobody likes that esthetic. So I hated how
it looked. And it was depressing and exhausting in a
way because literally hanging over my head was this ton
of messy work that I eventually had to do, you know,
if I was ever going to get that room fixed,
I had to do this work. And it really weighed
on me. But I still, of course I didn't want
to bite off the mess of all that work, so
I sat on it. Well. Finally, about a month ago,
(09:01):
blah blah blah, long story about a month ago, I
jumped in. I found a solution. You know, it dawned
on me that Hannah had used adhesive to get that
paint off, you know, the post it note, the sticky
note thing. What if I would do that? Brainstorm? You know,
I can't believe it took me four years, eight years,
however long it took me to figure this out. But
I have a brainstorm finally, and I got a hold
(09:24):
of some four inch duct tape and I applied it
all around the plaster strip on the ceiling, the four
inch strip on the upper walls, all of it, and
then I yanked it off, you know, like a band aid,
and it was beautiful. It was like pulling a band
aid off of a hairy leg, you know, all kinds
of little hairs stuck to the adhesive, and then this
bear patch on your shin, right, that was what was
happening on my walls. Paint came off in huge sections,
(09:46):
all stuck to the back of my tape, and it
was great. You know, the mess was minimal. I didn't
have flakes all over the place. Most of it's on
the tape, and I was removing almost eighty five percent
of the paint with that technique. So I did all
of that all the way around the room, and then
I followed up with a sander, and now I've got
about ninety eight percent of all of that off. It
feels so good. You know, the parts that are on,
(10:07):
they're stuck down well. So all of that to say today,
blah blah blah, I might like to wipe that surface
clean and prime it. Repolites. Quicksand is what I'm going
to use. It's a water based primer. And while it's
going to seal the surface and give me a good
foundation for my finished paint, you know, that's of course
what I'm looking for. The other big benefit with Quicksand
(10:28):
is that it's a really really great bonding primer, and
that's kind of interesting. It was a happy discovery when
we first formulated it and tested it. Most of you
probably know Repcollites a manufacture of paint as well as
a paint retailer. We carry full lines of Benjamin Moore
and all of that, but we also make our own
line of paints and we make everything from interior primers
(10:50):
and wall and trim paints all the way to industrial
products and wood coatings, you know, varnishes for floors. We
even make line striping paint for parking lots and so on,
all kinds of stuff. Well, we formulate all these products
in our lab in Holland, and our chemists are always working,
you know, to fine tune and innovate, you know, come
up with new products and make other products better. Well.
(11:10):
Quicksand it was a product that they made to be
a fast drying, easy to sand primer. It's meant to
compare favorably with Sherwin Williams wall and Wood. So if
you're using wall and wood and you'd like another option,
Quicksand from Repcolite is a great choice something to look into.
It's locally made in Michigan. It's a premium product to boot,
so that's kind of cool. Anyway, they're working on quicksand
and it had certain characteristics they were trying to achieve,
(11:33):
and they did that, but one additional trait they were
surprised to discover was its ability to bond with incredible
you know, tenacity. You know, all primers are designed to
bond to a surface really well, that's part of the
point of a primer, but Quicksand kind of takes it
to another level. So for me in my living room.
It's the perfect, you know, kind of silver bullet solution.
I don't want any peeling paint to ever occur again.
(11:56):
And I know that in my situation, the problem was
a bonding problem between the paint that was applied probably
twelve years ago and a previous coating of paint. I
know that that was the issue. It wasn't an issue
with the plaster. That was possible. It could have been
a plaster issue for me. That wasn't the case. So
in my instance, I need to send everything to create
a profile for my primer to bond to, which I've done,
(12:18):
and then I need to make sure the sanding dust
is all removed from the surface, and then I need
to prime with a good bonding primer. So that blah
blah blah is something that i'd like to do today.
That's the second thing. The third thing. Third thing I'd
like to do is just sit and relax and rest.
After telling you all of that, I really want to
sit back and relax and rest. But I'm not going
(12:38):
to do that, at least not entirely. And I don't
think that you should do that either. And I've got
three reasons why, and they're good reasons, you know, impactful reasons,
monetarily beneficial reasons in fact. But I've got to take
a break before I get to them. So hang with
me over the break, and then on the other side,
I'll tell you how you can feel accomplished and make
some money ify tech a project this weekend. That's all
(13:01):
just ahead, stick around, welcome back. You're listening to the
Repcolite Home Improvement Show sponsored by Benjamin Moore. And last segment,
I went on and on. I blathered on and on
about a few projects, a couple projects that I'm considering
(13:25):
tackling this weekend, and I mentioned that I've got three
good reasons for doing this, for jumping into the work,
reasons to work rather than relax. And I also suggested
that these reasons might inspire you to take on a
project or two as well. And as a bonus, one
of these reasons, one of these three even has a
financial payoff. So let's get to that. What are these reasons,
(13:47):
these reasons to work rather than relax. Well, the first
one is this spring is coming, you know it really
is coming, and when it does hit, I'm going to
want to be outside getting the yard cleaned up. I
know myself really well, I'm going to want to be
getting the garden ready, cleaning the garage. You know, that's
how bad I've got the winter blues. You know, I've
got clean the garage on my calendar and I've got
(14:09):
it circled with a heart. I'm that excited to just
get outside and get things done. So done with winter
that cleaning the garage looks fun. It gets a heart
on the calendar. That's sad. Well, I want to do that.
I want to winterize the snowblower another heart, winterize that
thing and put it away. I want to get the
mower ready, all of those things. You know, I'm going
(14:29):
to have outdoor projects coming out of my ears when
the weather turns, and my indoor projects are going to
get put on the back burner. Happens every single year.
So while it's still too early right now to do
those outdoor things, it is the perfect time to finish
up the things on your indoor list. So start your
spring cleaning a little bit early, get a head start
on it. If you've got you know, a rumor too,
(14:50):
maybe that needs paint in the house, do that now.
Tackle those projects now so you've got them crossed off
your list before the weather calls you outside, all right,
that's the first reason. Another reason to get those jobs
done is because the alleviation of the guilt or the
feeling of accomplishment is so powerful. You know, the guilt
or the accomplishment, it's two sides of the same coin.
You know, I've lived with a room that I've hated
(15:12):
for I don't know, I don't know how many years,
eight years, seven years. I've talked about it on the
show for three years. But that room, that mess that
happened in that room with appeeling paint and Hannah pulling
the little poster off the wall and exposing it. All
that happened a long time ago, and I have lived
with it and hated it for all that time. You know,
maybe I'm unique in this, or maybe I think I'm
(15:33):
going to be like a fair amount of you. But
I didn't tackle it. I didn't finish that project for
all those years because it was completely overwhelming to think about.
I knew it was going to be a ton of work,
a ton of mess that I was going to create.
I wasn't sure how I was going to do it.
You know, a lot of reasons led to my procrastination
on that project, but leaving it undone that really weighed
(15:56):
me down. And finally, when I had enough of it
and I tackled it, I learned a huge lesson that
I hope I can remember in the future, a lesson
that I really hope I can pass along to everybody listening.
In fact, if you don't hear anything else that I
say on this show, maybe ever, I don't know, I
haven't thought this through that far, but for sure today,
(16:18):
for sure today, if you don't hear anything else, hear this.
The work wasn't fun, you know that I did, but
it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going
to be. Right, it wasn't great, but it was not
nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.
In fact, the very worst moment, the hardest moment in
that whole project, was the moment when I stood up
out of my chair and I went to the garage
to get the ladder so I could start. You know,
(16:40):
it probably sounds utterly ridiculous and stupid, and maybe it is,
but for me, that was the moment I had to
power through. Once I had the ladder out and I
was up there, starting to apply my tape or starting
to sand or doing whatever I was doing. Once I
was doing that, I was over the hump, you know.
I was warming up to the work. At that point.
I was listening to a book or music, and I
started to gain momentum, and then the feeling of accomplishment
(17:02):
kicks in, and I'm halfway around the room all of
a sudden, then I'm three quarters of the way around,
and then I hit that final section, you know, and
then I'm done. And that job that had hung over
my head for however many years, all of a sudden
I realized, you know, a couple weekends ago, that the
worst part of it, the thing I dreaded forever, was
finally over. And that was an incredible weight lifted. So
(17:24):
a second reason to tackle one of those projects this weekend,
you know, one of those real naggy projects that you
may have at home, is this. I can promise you
the payoff of accomplishing it is worth the work that
you'll put in. You're going to feel so good about
getting that thing crossed off your list. Anyway, those are
two reasons that are compelling me to work. A third
reason is just for you, and it brings me back
(17:45):
to the question that I asked at the start of
the show. What are you planning on tackling today? What's
going to be your big accomplishment this weekend? I want
to know. I want to know what you're working on.
So email me a quick description of your project, and
I'll take all the emails that I get, and then
the first, the fifth, and the tenth we'll all get
a seventy five dollars gift certificate to Repcolite that you
can use on any Repcollite or Benjamin More product or
(18:07):
any of the other things that we carry in our stores.
So tell me what you're working on. Email Radio at
Repcolit dot com. That's radio at Repcolite dot com. R
E P C O L I T E dot com.
Do that, and I'm going to take the first, the fifth,
and the tenth emails and you'll each receive a seventy
five dollars gift certificate. So there's a good reason to
(18:27):
think up some projects and get moving with your day.
Send those emails right now. I'll respond back to you today.
If you win. Radio at repco Light dot com. That's
the address. All right, enough of that, let's take a
quick break, and then when we come back, I want
to talk about the history of glass and how we
got from bubbly opaquebeads all the way up to crystal
clear Triple Paine windows. All of that's coming up next.
(18:50):
Stick around, Welcome back. You're listening to the Repcolite Home
Improvement Show sponsored by Benjamin Moore, and I hope that
after last segment, I hope a lot of you are
thinking about a couple of projects that you can tackle today,
(19:12):
or this weekend or even next week. You know who cares.
Just get some of these things crossed off your list.
It feels great when you do that. And I do
want to say before I move on to the topic
I want to talk about next if any of the
projects that you're thinking about tackling, if they do involve
paint issues that you're not sure how to handle or
work around, by all means, let us help you know.
We're here to make your next job easier than you
(19:34):
think it's going to be, and will help you find
your colors, will help you choose the best products for
whatever you've got cooking, and will also help you troubleshoot
any issues that you're dealing with you know, with my
plaster problems, the first thing I did was run the
situation past some of the people at repcol A. You know,
I had my own ideas about what was going on,
but there are people here with way more experience, they've
(19:56):
been here longer yet, and they help me figure out
the source of the problem. So whatever you've got going on,
if it's paint related, we're here to help and we
can help, so reach out. All right, let's make an
abrupt shift and talk about glass. Now, when I think
about all of the amazing inventions that have happened throughout history,
I can tell you glass isn't going to be on
(20:17):
that list, you know, not initially anyway. I'd think of
the wheel, you know, the steam engine, the computer, the
printing press, you know, quite honestly, the indoor flushing toilet, right,
I mean that would that would be way up on
my charts. Think about what life would be like without
the indoor flushing toilet. It was a cold week last week.
(20:39):
Can you imagine we'd be spending so much time outside,
so much frostbite in so many strange places. So indoor
flushing toilet, that's big. I think about all of those
things before I think about glass, and yet when you
look at it, glass has profoundly shaped civilization and it
doesn't really take much thinking to see all of its contributions.
(21:01):
You know, right off the bat. It's transparency, revolutionized architecture.
You know, now we can allow natural light into buildings
while still providing insulation and protection. So it's huge in
that regard. In science, glass enabled the creation of microscopes
and telescopes. You know, all of a sudden, we can
look out to the universe way out there, thanks to glass,
and we can also look at the universe, you know, microscopically,
(21:24):
you know, look at the tiny little world that's happening,
you know, not just at my house, because it's a
tiny little world at my house too, but the microscopically
tiny little world that happens all around us. Thanks to glass,
we can explore those things. Artists and craftsmen, they've used
glass for centuries, you know, from intricate stained glass windows
and cathedrals to delicate Venetian glass work that symbolizes you know,
(21:46):
luxury and refinement. The things that you'd find at the
Hanson House, you know, luxury, refinement, sheer culture, all thanks
to glass. Now glass has also become essential in communication
and entertainment. You know, forms the screens of our televisions,
our smartphones, our computers. In daily life, it simplifies everything
from preserving food in jars to keeping us comfortable with
(22:08):
energy efficient windows. Really, you know, bottom line, it's one
of the most impactful materials in human history, you know,
blending function with art, it's like the perfect thing. So
glass is a major contender, and it should be a
major contender when we're considering, you know, top inventions of
all time. But is glass really an invention? There's probably
people out there right now saying is glass an invention
(22:32):
or was it a discovery? Maybe it was an innovation. Well,
it turns out really it's all three of those things.
It's a discovery because glass exists in nature. You're right,
when certain conditions cause silica rich materials to melt and
cool rapidly, we get naturally occurring glass, you know, to
some extent. A well known example is obsidian, which is
(22:53):
naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava cools rapidly without crystallizing.
So it is a discovery one invention because there was
a point in time when humans figured out how to
reproduce and control the formation of glass for tools, decorative items,
and so on. So it's an invention too, and it's
also an innovation because, of course, over thousands of years,
(23:15):
glass making has been continuously improved like everything else, to
create everything from super clear window panes to fiber optics
and on and on and on. So it's all three discovery,
invention and innovation. And it all started, according to legend,
around thirty five hundred BC, when some Phoenician merchants they're
cooking on a sandy beach. You know, they've been traveling
(23:38):
around selling their stuff, probably selling paint to people all
over the place, and they got to stop. They got
a rest. They pull up to some beach somewhere and
they start cooking dinner, and they're using these blocks of natron,
which is basically a type of soda ash, using those
blocks to prop up their pots. So they're sitting there
they're cooking. The fire ends up getting hot enough that
(23:59):
the sand and the ash melt together and boom, there
you go. Glass. They've got some kind of glassy substance
that they find. That's one legend. Another supposition is that
around the same time, thirty five hundred BC, glass was
discovered as an accidental byproduct of pottery kilns. Early artisans
discovered that mixing sand so to ash and lime and
(24:20):
then heating it up, really really heating it up. Doing
that resulted in a translucent material. Now, however, glass was
first discovered. We don't know if either one of those
are even remotely accurate, but they're the guesses. However, glass
was first discovered. Throughout the subsequent years, people did figure
out how to create it, so that by two thousand BC,
(24:42):
fifteen hundred years later, yet the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians
were crafting glass beads. By fifteen hundred BC, the first
glass containers were made in Egypt and the Middle East
using a method where glass was wrapped around a clay
core and then the core was scraped away once that
glass hardened. Then later, like fourteen hundred years or so later, yet,
(25:03):
in the first century BC, the big breakthrough came when
the Romans adopted the Syrian art of glass blowing and
turned it into a major industry. You know, previously they
had kind of left glass alone, the Romans had, but
when this comes about, they latch onto it and they
go crazy with it. Glass Blowing allowed the glass to
be shaped really really quickly and in a wide variety
(25:25):
of sizes and styles, and the Romans, like I said,
latched onto that, and they were soon crafting everything from
you know, delicate perfume bottles to heavy storage jars, all
the way up to tableware, you know, all kinds of tableware.
So lots and lots of stuff happens, and there's this
huge explosion of glassware around the first century BC, and
then later about the first century a D we start
(25:47):
to see evidence of the Romans using glass for windows. Now,
initially these glass panes were produced by casting molten glass
onto wooden frames and then placing those frames on sand
or stone surfaces to cool, and then they'd end up
with you know, panes of glass from that. Now, these
Roman windows that they made this way, they were cloudy,
they were thick, they were full of imperfections. They looked
(26:08):
like my windows before I did my spring cleaning. Although
my windows, you know, it could be cleaned off. These
these issues were in the glass. Mine were just on
the glass, you know, squished mosquitoes and things like that.
But anyway, they weren't the best. They weren't the most
crystal clear windows that we would think of, but they
were still revolutionary. You know, for the first time some
(26:29):
structures could have actual windows, glass windows instead of wooden
shutters or cloth coverings. Now, sure it was only the
wealthy people. Wealthy people got all these things to begin with,
but for the first time, bugs, wind rain, all of
that could be kept out while still being able to
see out. You know, they could let light in but
not let the elements her all of God's little creatures
(26:50):
come crawling in. So that's going on first century AD.
By the late third century, the broadsheet or muff process
was introduced for producing windows. And all this means is
glass was blown into a big cylinder and that cylinder
was cut and then flattened into a sheet. That's the
broad sheet or muff process. There were other methods that
(27:11):
developed later, the crown method for creating windows. I'm not
going to go all into all of that. There's just
not enough time. But later in the Middle Ages things
got fancier yet, and that's when we saw the introduction
of intricate stained glass windows in Gothic cathedral. Stained glass
existed before this, but it got crazy intricate in these
cathedrals in the Middle Ages. Now fast forward to the
(27:32):
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and suddenly glasses starting to become
a lot more common. And the reason is the Industrial Revolution.
New production processes allowed for bigger, clearer, more affordable glass panes.
And then by the nineteenth century, we've got glass windows. Everywhere.
Everywhere you look, there's glass windows. And that's when we
start to get a whole big crop of kids who
(27:54):
realized the fun of throwing rocks through those glass windows.
It all started right around that same time. The windows
at this point were single pain so that meant they
were drafty and not terribly great at insulation. A lot
better than an open hole in the house, but still
not great. That problem was solved in the twentieth century
(28:15):
with the birth of double pain windows nineteen thirties. In
nineteen thirty four, i think, is when the patent was
filed or approved, and that's when the first double pain
windows were developed. And this was a big deal because
the double pain windows trapped heat in in the winter
and it kept it out in the summer. Homeowners suddenly had,
you know, quite a bit more comfortable home. And it
(28:37):
also had a tendency to lower energy bills. By the seventies,
gases were being introduced between those double pained windows to
help with efficiency. And then by the nineteen eighties, low
E codings came along in these coatings. If you've never
heard of them, you've probably heard of them. But these
coatings reflected heat, that's the whole point, while still letting
light through. All of that came about in the eighties
(28:59):
or so, the eight eighties into the nineties. We're starting
to see triple paine glass. You know, that's becoming a
growing option. It's more energy efficient and soundproof than double
pain windows, but it's also, of course, you know, kaching pricier.
And that's kind of where we're at. I mean, there's
there's advancements, there's always advancements, but that gives you a
(29:19):
really good thumbnail sketch of the history of glass. How
we got from you know, beads in the sand somewhere,
you know, glass beads in the sand, all the way
up to windows in our homes. So now let's take
a break, and when we come back, I want to
kind of settle in on windows and talk about some
common issues that occur and how you can deal with them.
That's all just ahead, stick around, Welcome back. You're listening
(29:50):
to the Repcolite home improvement shows sponsored by Benjamin Moore.
And last segment we talked about the history of glass
and how we got two windows in in the first place.
And now in this last segment, I want to talk
about some common issues that can occur with windows and
how you can address them. And I should be extremely
clear here you probably already know this. I'm skimming over these.
(30:13):
I mean it's radio. I'm doing what I can. But
if you do need more info or need to pursue
a fix, of course, you know, contact a windows specialist
and get them out to your home or do a
little googling. Some of these things are things that you
can fix, you know, easily on your own. All right,
some common problems, drafty windows and air leaks. Here are
some things that you can do to try to fix it.
(30:33):
You first need to determine where this is all coming from.
Where's the source of the problem. If it's coming in
around the trim of your window, which is entirely possible,
you can go around and caulk all the edges to
seal the gaps there there are a variety of different
cals that we carry at Repcolite that would work for this,
and in a decent range of colors, to be honest,
(30:54):
everything from whites and clears to grays and browns. So
really you should be able to find something that will
blend away against whatever your window trim looks like. And
if you are going to be repainting that window trim,
you know you want to calck it and then repaint everything.
If you're going to do that, make sure, absolute sure
that you're getting a paintable calck. You know, that's the
first thing. Get a paintable calck and go from there.
(31:16):
And if that is what you're going to be doing
calking and then painting and you're looking for a calck recommendation,
I'd recommend Accelerator calck from Tower Ceilings, or if you're
in the Metro Detroit area shopping at any of the
Repcolite stores out there, ask for Quick to Coat cock.
Accelerator and Quick to Coat basically the same product. They're
just packaged differently depending on where you get it. Either way,
(31:37):
that calt can be applied and then painted over with
a brush or roller in just thirty minutes and that's
pretty much unheard of. So you can paint over it
right away. If you're spraying over it, you can spray
over it immediately after application. So if you're painting contractor
accelerator call quick to Coat, those can be sprayed over immediately.
So think about that. Keep that in mind. Most of
(31:59):
the problems that we see with calling are due to
people painting over it too quickly. Accelerator or quick to
Coat pretty much removes that concern. So if you're calking
around your window trim to seal those gaps and you're
going to be painting over all of that, Accelerator or
quick to Coat that's the perfect call solution. So that's
one fix. Another fix is maybe to install one of
(32:19):
those window insulation kits. You know, it's not permanent, it's
probably not the most convenient thing in the whole wide world.
No probably is about it. It's not the most convenient
thing in the whole wide world, but it will get
you some relief. So think about that. Long term solutions
pretty much. You know, you can consider upgrading to double
or triple paane windows, you know, with advanced sealing technology
(32:40):
stuff like that. Really look into those things. As you're
looking into new windows, let the people know that's one
of your main issues that you need to fix, and
make sure you're selecting windows and installers and all of that.
Who are going to make sure that you achieve those goals?
All right? So that's drafty, drafty windows or windows with
a lot of air leaks, condensation on the windows. Now,
(33:02):
sometimes we get water forming on the windows, you know,
inside the home, and I'm talking about on the glass,
not between the panes. That's different. Sometimes it's just a
little bit of water that we get on the glass,
but sometimes it can be significant, and if there's a
fair amount of water condensing there, it can lead to
the growth of mold and mildew on your trim, on
your blinds, on the window itself. Reality, this really isn't
(33:26):
a window problem per se. The condensation appears when warm,
moist air comes into contact with a cooler surface. And
even though we're in winter and the air in the
home seems pretty dry, condensation can still occur on windows
as long as there's a significant temperature difference between the
warm indoor air and the cold window surface. Now, the
moisture that we've got in our indoor air comes from
(33:49):
pretty much everyday living, you know, cooking, showering, doing the dishes,
pretty much any activity that we do that uses water
adds to it. You know. Right now, a lot of
us this time are running a humidifier in the home
to help with the dry air. But even doing that,
you know, running that humidifier obviously is adding to the
condensation problem on the windows if you're experiencing one. So
(34:12):
some things to try if you've got that problem going
on and you want to limit it or minimize it.
Lower First off, the settings on your humidifier. If you're
running one, see if you can lower it down to
the point where you find the balance, you know, the
butter zone, the Goldilocks number between humidifying the air enough
but not too much, you know, See if you can
(34:33):
do that. Another thing you can do is run your
exhaust fan when you're boiling water while cooking. You can
run the bathroom exhaust fans during and after showering. The
rule of thumb when you're running your bathroom fan, just
to throw this out there, is that you run that
bathroom fan until the mirror is clear. And I'm talking
about you're doing this if you've got a condensation problem
on your windows. If you don't, well, then you're just
(34:55):
sucking the home completely dry and you're going to static
cling yourself into Kingdom. Come. So this is for the
people with the window problems, with the condensation on the windows.
Another trick that you can try or a solution. It's
not a trick. You use the trickle vents on your
windows if you've got them, and trickle events. If you're
unsure of what these are. There essentially slits in the frame.
(35:16):
They're staggered on the inside and the outside, and they've
got to cover that can be opened and closed. If
you've got newer windows and you see these little trickle vents,
make sure they're opened. That can help a lot by
providing continual ventilation. All right, that's condensation on the glass.
What if you've got condensation between the two panes of glass. Now,
if that's where it's happening, the cause for that is
(35:36):
that there's a broken seal in the window, and fixing
this is usually going to need an expert, depending on
the condition in the age of the windows. It's possible
that just the glass unit can be replaced and that
can save you some money. Other times you know, if
it's just not worth doing that, you're probably looking at
replacing the entire window to get things back up to speeds.
(35:58):
You can see through it and in joy the clarity
of the view rather than look at all that condensation
in there. All right, what about windows that won't open
or close properly? This really stinks. Right, you got a window,
you can open it. All you want to do is
just enjoy the fresh air or whatever. And it keeps
lowering itself closed, or it doesn't slide up easily or whatever. Well,
(36:18):
if you've got that going on, there are a complete
huge list of reasons why it could be doing this.
You'll have to do a little research here. It could
be swollen wooden frames, you know, moisture problems or something
like that that has swelled the wooden frames. It could
be warped components. It could be any number of things.
You know, in my double hung replacement windows at home,
there's a component in the track that's called a pivot shoe.
(36:41):
Pretty much most of the windows that we all encounter
are going to have these, not all, but most replacement windows. Well,
there's a pivot shoe. It's called it's something that we
don't usually see when everything's working fine, but I've had
a number of times when the window won't stay open.
It just kind of slides its way down, and then
when I try to close, it won't go all the
way down because there's this small mechanism thing in the
(37:04):
track that seems to be blocking it. Well, if you
see that or have that going on, that's the pivot
shoe right there. It's not in the right place. And
what happens is sometimes that window sash can come loose
from that pivot shoe if the window is tilted incorrectly,
or if it's forced out of alignment. Either way, the
good news is that if this has happened to you,
it's a relatively simple fix. I don't have time to
(37:25):
walk through it here because there are some specifics that
I just it's too much to explain in the time
I've got, But I've got a great video linked in
the show notes. So if this sounds like your issue
and you want to know the simple fix to getting
everything working just fine again on your own, do it
yourself solution probably take you twenty minutes. If that, just
(37:46):
head to repcollite dot com and check out the show
notes for episode three ninety eight. I'll have a link
for the video right there. You can watch it and
he'll walk you through everything you need to know. Now,
for window issues beyond this pivot shoe problem, you really
need to determine whether repairs are possible or if a
full replacement is necessary to maintain functionality and safety. Now,
if your window sticks, you know, all the things we
(38:06):
talked about, It doesn't stay open, won't won't open smoothly,
but you can't see anything obvious. You know, there's no
obvious damage or obstruction. It's possible the issue could be
due to the house settling. You know, over time, a
shifting foundation will cause windows, you know, window frames to
become misaligned, and that can make operation difficult. Now, if
you do suspect that I've got that going on in
(38:28):
a window in my home, it may be worth consulting airs,
basement systems, or a similar foundation specialist to assess whether
the settling is normal. You know, it's just kind of
a it happened, it's a done deal. This is what
you've got. Move on. Or if there's a bigger problem,
the house is sinking, you know, into some kind of sinkhole.
It's not fun to find that out. But it's better
(38:48):
to find it out now than it is to find
it out later. Anyway, those are some common window issues
and some of the solutions dig into it further. If
you've got any of those issues. All right, that's all
the time we've got. We're gonna wrap this one up.
If you want to catch it again, you can find
it online at repco light dot com. Whatever you do
today makes your paints a part of it. Have a
great weekend, everybody, and I'll see you next week. I'm
(39:11):
Dan Hansen. Thanks for listening.
Well, good morning everybody. You're listening to the reco Light
Home improvement show is sponsored by Benjamin Moore, and I'm
glad you're here. I'm glad you're starting your weekend off
right in the best possible manner. You're starting by listening
to the show and speaking of mornings, weekend mornings, what
is your plan for today? I'm curious. You know, everybody's
(00:23):
got weekend plans. We always have something in our heads,
whatever we're intending to do for the day. What are
you intending to do today? For me? I'm torn. You know.
There are three things that I want to do, three
different things. And when I say want to do, I
should clarify these are things that I want to have
done to see finished. They're not necessarily terribly exciting things,
(00:46):
but they are things that I want to get done.
And one of them is I want to continue my
spring cleaning. And yeah, I said spring cleaning in March,
in the beginning of March. That's how optimistic I am.
You know, people who know tell me sometimes say I'm
too pessimistic. That is not true. I am the eternal optimist.
I am convinced that spring is coming and that there
(01:09):
will be no more cold weather, no more sadness, no
more despair out there. And I know I probably jinxed
everybody listening. You know, all of us are probably gonna
have a terrible, terrible cold, snowy March because of everything
I just said. But really I'm thinking positive. And I
did start spring cleaning last week, and I tackled a
spare room that we've got a spare bedroom, and we
(01:32):
went to town. In there, let me tell you, let
me just brag a little bit, we went nuts. We
got out the fabuloso or fabulosa, I don't remember. I
don't remember how it's spelled. I know how it smells,
That's what I know about it. And it's the purple stuff.
And I got that out. We went to town. We
washed the walls, we washed the windows, and we washed
(01:54):
both sides. I didn't do the normal you know, wash
the inside of the window, the one part that I
can reach easily. I even folded them in and did
the other side as well, both sides of the windows
with minimal streakage. So I got the windows washed, wash
the walls. We exterminated more dust bunnies than we could
even count. I mean, it was the killing fields in there.
(02:16):
It was great. Now when you walk past the room,
you know, if you go fast enough, the displacement of
air kind of pulls the clean air out of that
room and it kind of hugs you with that fabulosa, fabuloso,
whichever it is. That purple smell kind of wraps around
you and you know, just patsy on the head and
tells you you did a good job. So that's one
(02:38):
thing I would like to do. I would like to
continue that spring cleaning and carry that purple smell into
other rooms of the house. Now, another thing that I'd
kind of like to do is to prime some raised
plaster decorative bands that are around the top of my
walls and the ceiling in my living room. Now, if
you've listened to the show for a while, you know
(02:59):
you kind of been consistent. If you followed it, you
probably know that I've got a living room in the house,
a formal living room, for lack of a better phrase.
That's what the people called it when we went through
the house. What's this room called? You know, is this
a second living room? This is the formal living room? Oh,
we just call it the second living room anyway, The
(03:20):
second living room, the front living room. If you followed
the show, you know that along the top of the
walls and on the ceiling there are some bands of
plaster raised bands that are like four inches wide. Two
of them are side by side on the ceiling and
one on the top of the walls. Really smooth. They've
got paint on them. The paint has peeled in some areas,
(03:40):
and I've got this mess now. The paint peeled. You
know that whole problem that occurred. It actually happened years
and years back when my daughter Hannah exposed all of this.
She's the one who discovered this problem. She's the one
who made the problem. Is probably the best way to
say it. Basically, she spent all of her spare time.
She didn't play with toy when she was grown up.
(04:00):
She was a teacher. That's what she did. We didn't
buy her toys for Christmas or birthdays or anything. We
would buy her teaching supplies. Little fingers on a stick
for like point and at stuff. I mean, it sounds dumb,
but it really is. It's a finger on a stick
and you point out things with it. And she had
a projector, even a cheap o projector, and a chromebook.
(04:22):
She would do spreadsheets with grades and stuff like that.
Hannah taught, and she taught hard, you know, hardcore teaching.
She was laying it on thick for all these invisible
kids that filled the classroom. Anyway, one of the tools,
one of the supplies that we bought her were these
great big poster sized sticky notes, and she would write
all the lesson plans or whatever the kids needed to know,
(04:43):
the spelling list, whatever. She'd write it on these notes
and then stick them all over the wall. Well, eventually,
you know, we'd leave them up for a while and
she covered so much space. She would get a ladder
out of the garage. We didn't endorse this. Sometimes we
just walk into the room and there's Hannah on the
six foot ladder putting stuff all over the walls. And
one of the times she got it all the way
(05:04):
up to that band. You know. So she puts this
poster up there with a sticky note kind of backer
on it, sticks it on one of those painted bands,
and she does her teaching. We didn't think about it
for a while. Well, eventually it comes time to take
that poster down, and when we pull it down, we
find that it removes all the paint along that raised
plaster edge, you know, everywhere where that post it note was.
(05:26):
So we got about a one and a half foot
section where where there's no paint. You know, it's all
the way down to the plaster or a primer. It's
too long of a story. It's just the paint's gone,
that's the main thing. So that's really sad, right, I've
got to touch it up. Well, the whole thing got
sadder because I did the sanding, you know, hoping to
just touch up those spots and move on. And that's
(05:46):
when I found out that all the paint on these
bands wasn't sticking at all. It just kept flaking off
further and further. You know, I never really got to
a point where it wasn't flaking away as I was sanding. Now, normally,
when you've got flaking or appealing paint situation like that,
we would tell you, you know, we'd responsibly tell you
you've got a sand or scrape all the way to
(06:08):
the point where the paint is bonded well, and that
whatever's left. You know, that paint that's on that surface
needs to be bonded well. And when you've got that
then you sand those edges, you know, feather them down
a little bit, and then you do your touch ups.
But in this situation, whatever I hit with the sand
paper would start to come loose. And the saddest thing
was that it didn't come loose to the point where
it just kind of easily came away. That wouldn't have
(06:31):
been so bad. Now, it was still a lot of
work to get it off. I could just see that
the paint wasn't bonding as I would hit it with
the sandpaper. So it was horrible. You know, it was
a big room. I had all this sanding work that
I had to do. It was all over my head,
which is really exhausting to do. And the mess that
the sanding created was monumental. And so I did what
(06:51):
I tell everybody not to do. I skimped on the
prep work. I phoned it in, you know. I sanded
the spot where the paint had peeled, and I touched
it up, hoping for the best. You know, completely ridiculous
that I would think that I'm going to get good
results out of this, but I was hoping for the best.
You know, That's what desperation will do. It will make
you absolutely cling and grasp at straws. That's what I
(07:13):
was doing, and so I did it. I put the
new paint on there, and literally an hour later, as
the paint is drying everywhere that that new paint had
been applied over top of the old existing paint. Everywhere
that the two overlapped, the old paint was peeling, you know,
peeling right off with the new paint. It was literally
curling up on the ceiling in the walls. It was
a huge mess. Unfortunately I had just did a little
(07:36):
bit of painting, but man, what a mess. And that
whole idea, you know, I should clarify a minute, that's
why you can't paint over paint, or one of the
reasons why you can't paint over paint that isn't bonded. Well.
What was happening for me was even the surface tension
of the new paint drying, that surface tension was enough
to completely pull that old paint off and the whole
(07:56):
thing came down. Sometimes people think that the new paint
is some how going to bond the old one to
the surface. Not so, if your foundation, I shouldn't say
not so. There are new paints that claim to do
just that. New peel bonding primers, things like that. In
most instances, a new code of paint over top of
something isn't going to make it bond any better. It's
(08:17):
just gonna all come off, all right. So that's what
I'm dealing with. It was a monumental mess, and I
sat on that for I don't even know how many years.
I've talked about it on the show. For three years,
and I just lived with that mess. It was embarrassing
when people would come over. It was frustrating because I absolutely,
of course hated how it looked. Who likes that, you know,
the peeling paint on the ceiling. I do like this esthetic,
(08:40):
you know, nobody likes that esthetic. So I hated how
it looked. And it was depressing and exhausting in a
way because literally hanging over my head was this ton
of messy work that I eventually had to do, you know,
if I was ever going to get that room fixed,
I had to do this work. And it really weighed
on me. But I still, of course I didn't want
to bite off the mess of all that work, so
I sat on it. Well. Finally, about a month ago,
(09:01):
blah blah blah, long story about a month ago, I
jumped in. I found a solution. You know, it dawned
on me that Hannah had used adhesive to get that
paint off, you know, the post it note, the sticky
note thing. What if I would do that? Brainstorm? You know,
I can't believe it took me four years, eight years,
however long it took me to figure this out. But
I have a brainstorm finally, and I got a hold
(09:24):
of some four inch duct tape and I applied it
all around the plaster strip on the ceiling, the four
inch strip on the upper walls, all of it, and
then I yanked it off, you know, like a band aid,
and it was beautiful. It was like pulling a band
aid off of a hairy leg, you know, all kinds
of little hairs stuck to the adhesive, and then this
bear patch on your shin, right, that was what was
happening on my walls. Paint came off in huge sections,
(09:46):
all stuck to the back of my tape, and it
was great. You know, the mess was minimal. I didn't
have flakes all over the place. Most of it's on
the tape, and I was removing almost eighty five percent
of the paint with that technique. So I did all
of that all the way around the room, and then
I followed up with a sander, and now I've got
about ninety eight percent of all of that off. It
feels so good. You know, the parts that are on,
(10:07):
they're stuck down well. So all of that to say today,
blah blah blah, I might like to wipe that surface
clean and prime it. Repolites. Quicksand is what I'm going
to use. It's a water based primer. And while it's
going to seal the surface and give me a good
foundation for my finished paint, you know, that's of course
what I'm looking for. The other big benefit with Quicksand
(10:28):
is that it's a really really great bonding primer, and
that's kind of interesting. It was a happy discovery when
we first formulated it and tested it. Most of you
probably know Repcollites a manufacture of paint as well as
a paint retailer. We carry full lines of Benjamin Moore
and all of that, but we also make our own
line of paints and we make everything from interior primers
(10:50):
and wall and trim paints all the way to industrial
products and wood coatings, you know, varnishes for floors. We
even make line striping paint for parking lots and so on,
all kinds of stuff. Well, we formulate all these products
in our lab in Holland, and our chemists are always working,
you know, to fine tune and innovate, you know, come
up with new products and make other products better. Well.
(11:10):
Quicksand it was a product that they made to be
a fast drying, easy to sand primer. It's meant to
compare favorably with Sherwin Williams wall and Wood. So if
you're using wall and wood and you'd like another option,
Quicksand from Repcolite is a great choice something to look into.
It's locally made in Michigan. It's a premium product to boot,
so that's kind of cool. Anyway, they're working on quicksand
and it had certain characteristics they were trying to achieve,
(11:33):
and they did that, but one additional trait they were
surprised to discover was its ability to bond with incredible
you know, tenacity. You know, all primers are designed to
bond to a surface really well, that's part of the
point of a primer, but Quicksand kind of takes it
to another level. So for me in my living room.
It's the perfect, you know, kind of silver bullet solution.
I don't want any peeling paint to ever occur again.
(11:56):
And I know that in my situation, the problem was
a bonding problem between the paint that was applied probably
twelve years ago and a previous coating of paint. I
know that that was the issue. It wasn't an issue
with the plaster. That was possible. It could have been
a plaster issue for me. That wasn't the case. So
in my instance, I need to send everything to create
a profile for my primer to bond to, which I've done,
(12:18):
and then I need to make sure the sanding dust
is all removed from the surface, and then I need
to prime with a good bonding primer. So that blah
blah blah is something that i'd like to do today.
That's the second thing. The third thing. Third thing I'd
like to do is just sit and relax and rest.
After telling you all of that, I really want to
sit back and relax and rest. But I'm not going
(12:38):
to do that, at least not entirely. And I don't
think that you should do that either. And I've got
three reasons why, and they're good reasons, you know, impactful reasons,
monetarily beneficial reasons in fact. But I've got to take
a break before I get to them. So hang with
me over the break, and then on the other side,
I'll tell you how you can feel accomplished and make
some money ify tech a project this weekend. That's all
(13:01):
just ahead, stick around, welcome back. You're listening to the
Repcolite Home Improvement Show sponsored by Benjamin Moore. And last segment,
I went on and on. I blathered on and on
about a few projects, a couple projects that I'm considering
(13:25):
tackling this weekend, and I mentioned that I've got three
good reasons for doing this, for jumping into the work,
reasons to work rather than relax. And I also suggested
that these reasons might inspire you to take on a
project or two as well. And as a bonus, one
of these reasons, one of these three even has a
financial payoff. So let's get to that. What are these reasons,
(13:47):
these reasons to work rather than relax. Well, the first
one is this spring is coming, you know it really
is coming, and when it does hit, I'm going to
want to be outside getting the yard cleaned up. I
know myself really well, I'm going to want to be
getting the garden ready, cleaning the garage. You know, that's
how bad I've got the winter blues. You know, I've
got clean the garage on my calendar and I've got
(14:09):
it circled with a heart. I'm that excited to just
get outside and get things done. So done with winter
that cleaning the garage looks fun. It gets a heart
on the calendar. That's sad. Well, I want to do that.
I want to winterize the snowblower another heart, winterize that
thing and put it away. I want to get the
mower ready, all of those things. You know, I'm going
(14:29):
to have outdoor projects coming out of my ears when
the weather turns, and my indoor projects are going to
get put on the back burner. Happens every single year.
So while it's still too early right now to do
those outdoor things, it is the perfect time to finish
up the things on your indoor list. So start your
spring cleaning a little bit early, get a head start
on it. If you've got you know, a rumor too,
(14:50):
maybe that needs paint in the house, do that now.
Tackle those projects now so you've got them crossed off
your list before the weather calls you outside, all right,
that's the first reason. Another reason to get those jobs
done is because the alleviation of the guilt or the
feeling of accomplishment is so powerful. You know, the guilt
or the accomplishment, it's two sides of the same coin.
You know, I've lived with a room that I've hated
(15:12):
for I don't know, I don't know how many years,
eight years, seven years. I've talked about it on the
show for three years. But that room, that mess that
happened in that room with appeeling paint and Hannah pulling
the little poster off the wall and exposing it. All
that happened a long time ago, and I have lived
with it and hated it for all that time. You know,
maybe I'm unique in this, or maybe I think I'm
(15:33):
going to be like a fair amount of you. But
I didn't tackle it. I didn't finish that project for
all those years because it was completely overwhelming to think about.
I knew it was going to be a ton of work,
a ton of mess that I was going to create.
I wasn't sure how I was going to do it.
You know, a lot of reasons led to my procrastination
on that project, but leaving it undone that really weighed
(15:56):
me down. And finally, when I had enough of it
and I tackled it, I learned a huge lesson that
I hope I can remember in the future, a lesson
that I really hope I can pass along to everybody listening.
In fact, if you don't hear anything else that I
say on this show, maybe ever, I don't know, I
haven't thought this through that far, but for sure today,
(16:18):
for sure today, if you don't hear anything else, hear this.
The work wasn't fun, you know that I did, but
it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going
to be. Right, it wasn't great, but it was not
nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.
In fact, the very worst moment, the hardest moment in
that whole project, was the moment when I stood up
out of my chair and I went to the garage
to get the ladder so I could start. You know,
(16:40):
it probably sounds utterly ridiculous and stupid, and maybe it is,
but for me, that was the moment I had to
power through. Once I had the ladder out and I
was up there, starting to apply my tape or starting
to sand or doing whatever I was doing. Once I
was doing that, I was over the hump, you know.
I was warming up to the work. At that point.
I was listening to a book or music, and I
started to gain momentum, and then the feeling of accomplishment
(17:02):
kicks in, and I'm halfway around the room all of
a sudden, then I'm three quarters of the way around,
and then I hit that final section, you know, and
then I'm done. And that job that had hung over
my head for however many years, all of a sudden
I realized, you know, a couple weekends ago, that the
worst part of it, the thing I dreaded forever, was
finally over. And that was an incredible weight lifted. So
(17:24):
a second reason to tackle one of those projects this weekend,
you know, one of those real naggy projects that you
may have at home, is this. I can promise you
the payoff of accomplishing it is worth the work that
you'll put in. You're going to feel so good about
getting that thing crossed off your list. Anyway, those are
two reasons that are compelling me to work. A third
reason is just for you, and it brings me back
(17:45):
to the question that I asked at the start of
the show. What are you planning on tackling today? What's
going to be your big accomplishment this weekend? I want
to know. I want to know what you're working on.
So email me a quick description of your project, and
I'll take all the emails that I get, and then
the first, the fifth, and the tenth we'll all get
a seventy five dollars gift certificate to Repcolite that you
can use on any Repcollite or Benjamin More product or
(18:07):
any of the other things that we carry in our stores.
So tell me what you're working on. Email Radio at
Repcolit dot com. That's radio at Repcolite dot com. R
E P C O L I T E dot com.
Do that, and I'm going to take the first, the fifth,
and the tenth emails and you'll each receive a seventy
five dollars gift certificate. So there's a good reason to
(18:27):
think up some projects and get moving with your day.
Send those emails right now. I'll respond back to you today.
If you win. Radio at repco Light dot com. That's
the address. All right, enough of that, let's take a
quick break, and then when we come back, I want
to talk about the history of glass and how we
got from bubbly opaquebeads all the way up to crystal
clear Triple Paine windows. All of that's coming up next.
(18:50):
Stick around, Welcome back. You're listening to the Repcolite Home
Improvement Show sponsored by Benjamin Moore, and I hope that
after last segment, I hope a lot of you are
thinking about a couple of projects that you can tackle today,
(19:12):
or this weekend or even next week. You know who cares.
Just get some of these things crossed off your list.
It feels great when you do that. And I do
want to say before I move on to the topic
I want to talk about next if any of the
projects that you're thinking about tackling, if they do involve
paint issues that you're not sure how to handle or
work around, by all means, let us help you know.
We're here to make your next job easier than you
(19:34):
think it's going to be, and will help you find
your colors, will help you choose the best products for
whatever you've got cooking, and will also help you troubleshoot
any issues that you're dealing with you know, with my
plaster problems, the first thing I did was run the
situation past some of the people at repcol A. You know,
I had my own ideas about what was going on,
but there are people here with way more experience, they've
(19:56):
been here longer yet, and they help me figure out
the source of the problem. So whatever you've got going on,
if it's paint related, we're here to help and we
can help, so reach out. All right, let's make an
abrupt shift and talk about glass. Now, when I think
about all of the amazing inventions that have happened throughout history,
I can tell you glass isn't going to be on
(20:17):
that list, you know, not initially anyway. I'd think of
the wheel, you know, the steam engine, the computer, the
printing press, you know, quite honestly, the indoor flushing toilet, right,
I mean that would that would be way up on
my charts. Think about what life would be like without
the indoor flushing toilet. It was a cold week last week.
(20:39):
Can you imagine we'd be spending so much time outside,
so much frostbite in so many strange places. So indoor
flushing toilet, that's big. I think about all of those
things before I think about glass, and yet when you
look at it, glass has profoundly shaped civilization and it
doesn't really take much thinking to see all of its contributions.
(21:01):
You know, right off the bat. It's transparency, revolutionized architecture.
You know, now we can allow natural light into buildings
while still providing insulation and protection. So it's huge in
that regard. In science, glass enabled the creation of microscopes
and telescopes. You know, all of a sudden, we can
look out to the universe way out there, thanks to glass,
and we can also look at the universe, you know, microscopically,
(21:24):
you know, look at the tiny little world that's happening,
you know, not just at my house, because it's a
tiny little world at my house too, but the microscopically
tiny little world that happens all around us. Thanks to glass,
we can explore those things. Artists and craftsmen, they've used
glass for centuries, you know, from intricate stained glass windows
and cathedrals to delicate Venetian glass work that symbolizes you know,
(21:46):
luxury and refinement. The things that you'd find at the
Hanson House, you know, luxury, refinement, sheer culture, all thanks
to glass. Now glass has also become essential in communication
and entertainment. You know, forms the screens of our televisions,
our smartphones, our computers. In daily life, it simplifies everything
from preserving food in jars to keeping us comfortable with
(22:08):
energy efficient windows. Really, you know, bottom line, it's one
of the most impactful materials in human history, you know,
blending function with art, it's like the perfect thing. So
glass is a major contender, and it should be a
major contender when we're considering, you know, top inventions of
all time. But is glass really an invention? There's probably
people out there right now saying is glass an invention
(22:32):
or was it a discovery? Maybe it was an innovation. Well,
it turns out really it's all three of those things.
It's a discovery because glass exists in nature. You're right,
when certain conditions cause silica rich materials to melt and
cool rapidly, we get naturally occurring glass, you know, to
some extent. A well known example is obsidian, which is
(22:53):
naturally occurring volcanic glass formed when lava cools rapidly without crystallizing.
So it is a discovery one invention because there was
a point in time when humans figured out how to
reproduce and control the formation of glass for tools, decorative items,
and so on. So it's an invention too, and it's
also an innovation because, of course, over thousands of years,
(23:15):
glass making has been continuously improved like everything else, to
create everything from super clear window panes to fiber optics
and on and on and on. So it's all three discovery,
invention and innovation. And it all started, according to legend,
around thirty five hundred BC, when some Phoenician merchants they're
cooking on a sandy beach. You know, they've been traveling
(23:38):
around selling their stuff, probably selling paint to people all
over the place, and they got to stop. They got
a rest. They pull up to some beach somewhere and
they start cooking dinner, and they're using these blocks of natron,
which is basically a type of soda ash, using those
blocks to prop up their pots. So they're sitting there
they're cooking. The fire ends up getting hot enough that
(23:59):
the sand and the ash melt together and boom, there
you go. Glass. They've got some kind of glassy substance
that they find. That's one legend. Another supposition is that
around the same time, thirty five hundred BC, glass was
discovered as an accidental byproduct of pottery kilns. Early artisans
discovered that mixing sand so to ash and lime and
(24:20):
then heating it up, really really heating it up. Doing
that resulted in a translucent material. Now, however, glass was
first discovered. We don't know if either one of those
are even remotely accurate, but they're the guesses. However, glass
was first discovered. Throughout the subsequent years, people did figure
out how to create it, so that by two thousand BC,
(24:42):
fifteen hundred years later, yet the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians
were crafting glass beads. By fifteen hundred BC, the first
glass containers were made in Egypt and the Middle East
using a method where glass was wrapped around a clay
core and then the core was scraped away once that
glass hardened. Then later, like fourteen hundred years or so later, yet,
(25:03):
in the first century BC, the big breakthrough came when
the Romans adopted the Syrian art of glass blowing and
turned it into a major industry. You know, previously they
had kind of left glass alone, the Romans had, but
when this comes about, they latch onto it and they
go crazy with it. Glass Blowing allowed the glass to
be shaped really really quickly and in a wide variety
(25:25):
of sizes and styles, and the Romans, like I said,
latched onto that, and they were soon crafting everything from
you know, delicate perfume bottles to heavy storage jars, all
the way up to tableware, you know, all kinds of tableware.
So lots and lots of stuff happens, and there's this
huge explosion of glassware around the first century BC, and
then later about the first century a D we start
(25:47):
to see evidence of the Romans using glass for windows. Now,
initially these glass panes were produced by casting molten glass
onto wooden frames and then placing those frames on sand
or stone surfaces to cool, and then they'd end up
with you know, panes of glass from that. Now, these
Roman windows that they made this way, they were cloudy,
they were thick, they were full of imperfections. They looked
(26:08):
like my windows before I did my spring cleaning. Although
my windows, you know, it could be cleaned off. These
these issues were in the glass. Mine were just on
the glass, you know, squished mosquitoes and things like that.
But anyway, they weren't the best. They weren't the most
crystal clear windows that we would think of, but they
were still revolutionary. You know, for the first time some
(26:29):
structures could have actual windows, glass windows instead of wooden
shutters or cloth coverings. Now, sure it was only the
wealthy people. Wealthy people got all these things to begin with,
but for the first time, bugs, wind rain, all of
that could be kept out while still being able to
see out. You know, they could let light in but
not let the elements her all of God's little creatures
(26:50):
come crawling in. So that's going on first century AD.
By the late third century, the broadsheet or muff process
was introduced for producing windows. And all this means is
glass was blown into a big cylinder and that cylinder
was cut and then flattened into a sheet. That's the
broad sheet or muff process. There were other methods that
(27:11):
developed later, the crown method for creating windows. I'm not
going to go all into all of that. There's just
not enough time. But later in the Middle Ages things
got fancier yet, and that's when we saw the introduction
of intricate stained glass windows in Gothic cathedral. Stained glass
existed before this, but it got crazy intricate in these
cathedrals in the Middle Ages. Now fast forward to the
(27:32):
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and suddenly glasses starting to become
a lot more common. And the reason is the Industrial Revolution.
New production processes allowed for bigger, clearer, more affordable glass panes.
And then by the nineteenth century, we've got glass windows. Everywhere.
Everywhere you look, there's glass windows. And that's when we
start to get a whole big crop of kids who
(27:54):
realized the fun of throwing rocks through those glass windows.
It all started right around that same time. The windows
at this point were single pain so that meant they
were drafty and not terribly great at insulation. A lot
better than an open hole in the house, but still
not great. That problem was solved in the twentieth century
(28:15):
with the birth of double pain windows nineteen thirties. In
nineteen thirty four, i think, is when the patent was
filed or approved, and that's when the first double pain
windows were developed. And this was a big deal because
the double pain windows trapped heat in in the winter
and it kept it out in the summer. Homeowners suddenly had,
you know, quite a bit more comfortable home. And it
(28:37):
also had a tendency to lower energy bills. By the seventies,
gases were being introduced between those double pained windows to
help with efficiency. And then by the nineteen eighties, low
E codings came along in these coatings. If you've never
heard of them, you've probably heard of them. But these
coatings reflected heat, that's the whole point, while still letting
light through. All of that came about in the eighties
(28:59):
or so, the eight eighties into the nineties. We're starting
to see triple paine glass. You know, that's becoming a
growing option. It's more energy efficient and soundproof than double
pain windows, but it's also, of course, you know, kaching pricier.
And that's kind of where we're at. I mean, there's
there's advancements, there's always advancements, but that gives you a
(29:19):
really good thumbnail sketch of the history of glass. How
we got from you know, beads in the sand somewhere,
you know, glass beads in the sand, all the way
up to windows in our homes. So now let's take
a break, and when we come back, I want to
kind of settle in on windows and talk about some
common issues that occur and how you can deal with them.
That's all just ahead, stick around, Welcome back. You're listening
(29:50):
to the Repcolite home improvement shows sponsored by Benjamin Moore.
And last segment we talked about the history of glass
and how we got two windows in in the first place.
And now in this last segment, I want to talk
about some common issues that can occur with windows and
how you can address them. And I should be extremely
clear here you probably already know this. I'm skimming over these.
(30:13):
I mean it's radio. I'm doing what I can. But
if you do need more info or need to pursue
a fix, of course, you know, contact a windows specialist
and get them out to your home or do a
little googling. Some of these things are things that you
can fix, you know, easily on your own. All right,
some common problems, drafty windows and air leaks. Here are
some things that you can do to try to fix it.
(30:33):
You first need to determine where this is all coming from.
Where's the source of the problem. If it's coming in
around the trim of your window, which is entirely possible,
you can go around and caulk all the edges to
seal the gaps there there are a variety of different
cals that we carry at Repcolite that would work for this,
and in a decent range of colors, to be honest,
(30:54):
everything from whites and clears to grays and browns. So
really you should be able to find something that will
blend away against whatever your window trim looks like. And
if you are going to be repainting that window trim,
you know you want to calck it and then repaint everything.
If you're going to do that, make sure, absolute sure
that you're getting a paintable calck. You know, that's the
first thing. Get a paintable calck and go from there.
(31:16):
And if that is what you're going to be doing
calking and then painting and you're looking for a calck recommendation,
I'd recommend Accelerator calck from Tower Ceilings, or if you're
in the Metro Detroit area shopping at any of the
Repcolite stores out there, ask for Quick to Coat cock.
Accelerator and Quick to Coat basically the same product. They're
just packaged differently depending on where you get it. Either way,
(31:37):
that calt can be applied and then painted over with
a brush or roller in just thirty minutes and that's
pretty much unheard of. So you can paint over it
right away. If you're spraying over it, you can spray
over it immediately after application. So if you're painting contractor
accelerator call quick to Coat, those can be sprayed over immediately.
So think about that. Keep that in mind. Most of
(31:59):
the problems that we see with calling are due to
people painting over it too quickly. Accelerator or quick to
Coat pretty much removes that concern. So if you're calking
around your window trim to seal those gaps and you're
going to be painting over all of that, Accelerator or
quick to Coat that's the perfect call solution. So that's
one fix. Another fix is maybe to install one of
(32:19):
those window insulation kits. You know, it's not permanent, it's
probably not the most convenient thing in the whole wide world.
No probably is about it. It's not the most convenient
thing in the whole wide world, but it will get
you some relief. So think about that. Long term solutions
pretty much. You know, you can consider upgrading to double
or triple paane windows, you know, with advanced sealing technology
(32:40):
stuff like that. Really look into those things. As you're
looking into new windows, let the people know that's one
of your main issues that you need to fix, and
make sure you're selecting windows and installers and all of that.
Who are going to make sure that you achieve those goals?
All right? So that's drafty, drafty windows or windows with
a lot of air leaks, condensation on the windows. Now,
(33:02):
sometimes we get water forming on the windows, you know,
inside the home, and I'm talking about on the glass,
not between the panes. That's different. Sometimes it's just a
little bit of water that we get on the glass,
but sometimes it can be significant, and if there's a
fair amount of water condensing there, it can lead to
the growth of mold and mildew on your trim, on
your blinds, on the window itself. Reality, this really isn't
(33:26):
a window problem per se. The condensation appears when warm,
moist air comes into contact with a cooler surface. And
even though we're in winter and the air in the
home seems pretty dry, condensation can still occur on windows
as long as there's a significant temperature difference between the
warm indoor air and the cold window surface. Now, the
moisture that we've got in our indoor air comes from
(33:49):
pretty much everyday living, you know, cooking, showering, doing the dishes,
pretty much any activity that we do that uses water
adds to it. You know. Right now, a lot of
us this time are running a humidifier in the home
to help with the dry air. But even doing that,
you know, running that humidifier obviously is adding to the
condensation problem on the windows if you're experiencing one. So
(34:12):
some things to try if you've got that problem going
on and you want to limit it or minimize it.
Lower First off, the settings on your humidifier. If you're
running one, see if you can lower it down to
the point where you find the balance, you know, the
butter zone, the Goldilocks number between humidifying the air enough
but not too much, you know, See if you can
(34:33):
do that. Another thing you can do is run your
exhaust fan when you're boiling water while cooking. You can
run the bathroom exhaust fans during and after showering. The
rule of thumb when you're running your bathroom fan, just
to throw this out there, is that you run that
bathroom fan until the mirror is clear. And I'm talking
about you're doing this if you've got a condensation problem
on your windows. If you don't, well, then you're just
(34:55):
sucking the home completely dry and you're going to static
cling yourself into Kingdom. Come. So this is for the
people with the window problems, with the condensation on the windows.
Another trick that you can try or a solution. It's
not a trick. You use the trickle vents on your
windows if you've got them, and trickle events. If you're
unsure of what these are. There essentially slits in the frame.
(35:16):
They're staggered on the inside and the outside, and they've
got to cover that can be opened and closed. If
you've got newer windows and you see these little trickle vents,
make sure they're opened. That can help a lot by
providing continual ventilation. All right, that's condensation on the glass.
What if you've got condensation between the two panes of glass. Now,
if that's where it's happening, the cause for that is
(35:36):
that there's a broken seal in the window, and fixing
this is usually going to need an expert, depending on
the condition in the age of the windows. It's possible
that just the glass unit can be replaced and that
can save you some money. Other times you know, if
it's just not worth doing that, you're probably looking at
replacing the entire window to get things back up to speeds.
(35:58):
You can see through it and in joy the clarity
of the view rather than look at all that condensation
in there. All right, what about windows that won't open
or close properly? This really stinks. Right, you got a window,
you can open it. All you want to do is
just enjoy the fresh air or whatever. And it keeps
lowering itself closed, or it doesn't slide up easily or whatever. Well,
(36:18):
if you've got that going on, there are a complete
huge list of reasons why it could be doing this.
You'll have to do a little research here. It could
be swollen wooden frames, you know, moisture problems or something
like that that has swelled the wooden frames. It could
be warped components. It could be any number of things.
You know, in my double hung replacement windows at home,
there's a component in the track that's called a pivot shoe.
(36:41):
Pretty much most of the windows that we all encounter
are going to have these, not all, but most replacement windows. Well,
there's a pivot shoe. It's called it's something that we
don't usually see when everything's working fine, but I've had
a number of times when the window won't stay open.
It just kind of slides its way down, and then
when I try to close, it won't go all the
way down because there's this small mechanism thing in the
(37:04):
track that seems to be blocking it. Well, if you
see that or have that going on, that's the pivot
shoe right there. It's not in the right place. And
what happens is sometimes that window sash can come loose
from that pivot shoe if the window is tilted incorrectly,
or if it's forced out of alignment. Either way, the
good news is that if this has happened to you,
it's a relatively simple fix. I don't have time to
(37:25):
walk through it here because there are some specifics that
I just it's too much to explain in the time
I've got, But I've got a great video linked in
the show notes. So if this sounds like your issue
and you want to know the simple fix to getting
everything working just fine again on your own, do it
yourself solution probably take you twenty minutes. If that, just
(37:46):
head to repcollite dot com and check out the show
notes for episode three ninety eight. I'll have a link
for the video right there. You can watch it and
he'll walk you through everything you need to know. Now,
for window issues beyond this pivot shoe problem, you really
need to determine whether repairs are possible or if a
full replacement is necessary to maintain functionality and safety. Now,
if your window sticks, you know, all the things we
(38:06):
talked about, It doesn't stay open, won't won't open smoothly,
but you can't see anything obvious. You know, there's no
obvious damage or obstruction. It's possible the issue could be
due to the house settling. You know, over time, a
shifting foundation will cause windows, you know, window frames to
become misaligned, and that can make operation difficult. Now, if
you do suspect that I've got that going on in
(38:28):
a window in my home, it may be worth consulting airs,
basement systems, or a similar foundation specialist to assess whether
the settling is normal. You know, it's just kind of
a it happened, it's a done deal. This is what
you've got. Move on. Or if there's a bigger problem,
the house is sinking, you know, into some kind of sinkhole.
It's not fun to find that out. But it's better
(38:48):
to find it out now than it is to find
it out later. Anyway, those are some common window issues
and some of the solutions dig into it further. If
you've got any of those issues. All right, that's all
the time we've got. We're gonna wrap this one up.
If you want to catch it again, you can find
it online at repco light dot com. Whatever you do
today makes your paints a part of it. Have a
great weekend, everybody, and I'll see you next week. I'm
(39:11):
Dan Hansen. Thanks for listening.
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