September 13, 2025 • 40 mins
In this episode of Home in Progress, sponsored by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore, host Dan Hansen tackles projects both practical and inspiring. First, he breaks down affordable and effective DIY methods for removing stubborn tree stumps and roots—covering hands-on techniques, chemical options, and safety tips. Then, he answers a listener’s question about calculating paint for a metal building when there’s no running water on site. Finally, the show shifts gears to explore the life and legacy of William Morris, the visionary behind the Arts and Crafts Movement, and how his ideas on beauty, honesty in materials, and dignity in craft continue to shape the way we design and decorate our homes today.Resources Mentioned
Episode Breakdown00:00 – Introduction and show overview00:28 – Why tree stumps are such a problem01:49 – Hands-on DIY methods for stump removal08:33 – Chemical and alternative removal options12:00 – Answering listener emails12:51 – How to prep and paint a metal building without water on site18:08 – Who was William Morris?18:36 – His early life and influences21:53 – Founding Morris & Co.23:33 – Five ways William Morris changed design23:41 – 1. Rebellion against fakery27:59 – 2. Design as morality30:39 – 3. Transforming wallpaper33:51 – 4. Making beauty accessible36:58 – 5. Sparking a movement38:53 – Morris’s lasting legacy39:34 – Closing remarks
Episode Breakdown00:00 – Introduction and show overview00:28 – Why tree stumps are such a problem01:49 – Hands-on DIY methods for stump removal08:33 – Chemical and alternative removal options12:00 – Answering listener emails12:51 – How to prep and paint a metal building without water on site18:08 – Who was William Morris?18:36 – His early life and influences21:53 – Founding Morris & Co.23:33 – Five ways William Morris changed design23:41 – 1. Rebellion against fakery27:59 – 2. Design as morality30:39 – 3. Transforming wallpaper33:51 – 4. Making beauty accessible36:58 – 5. Sparking a movement38:53 – Morris’s lasting legacy39:34 – Closing remarks
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to Home in Progress, sponsored by repco
Like Paints and Benjamin Moore. Because the paint is the project.
You know, if you're going to put in the work,
make sure it's going to last. Use the good stuff.
All right, here's what we've got coming up on the
show today. At the end, I'm going to be digging
into the world of William Morris, the man behind those
famous wallpapers who ended up reshaping design as we know it.
(00:22):
Before that, I'm going to walk you through how to
prep and paint a metal outbuilding when you don't even
have running water on the job site. But right now,
I want to talk about something that's kind of one
of those frustrations for a lot of homeowners. You know,
not all of us, but there's a good chance that
you're either dealing with this right now or you will
run into it at some point in your career as
a homeowner. Here's the scenario. A tree comes down on
(00:45):
your property, right or you take it down, whatever, But
you don't have somebody come out to grind out the stump. Now,
maybe you couldn't afford it, maybe you didn't think of it,
Maybe you know you just didn't want to drop the
money on it. You could have afforded it, but you'd
rather buy something really fun than to spend that money
getting a stump taken away from your yard. I mean,
(01:05):
it's not a fun way to spend money either way.
You left it, and as time goes by, it just
sits there, right, and it becomes a forever part of
your landscaping. You mow around it, sometimes, you use it
as a base when you're playing baseball. You trip over
it from time to time, and so on, so on
and so on and so on. It's not a good look,
and in most cases, stumps negatively affect the beauty of
(01:28):
our outdoor spaces. But getting rid of them isn't always
so simple. I mean, you could carve a bear into it.
I should have added that to my list of things
you could do with it, because I've seen that people
will carve some kind of animal into it. But it's
probably not for everybody anyway. Getting rid of them isn't
always so simple, all right, but it is doable. So
(01:49):
let's cover and dig into some affordable I love affordable,
one of my favorite words. We'll talk about some affordable,
DIY friendly ways to remove tree stumps and roots without
out calling in a contractor and without renting anything that
requires a trailer and a waiver and all that stuff.
All right, now, first off, do you need to get
rid of a stump and the roots? You know, once
(02:11):
you cut it down? And this is the place to
start really with this conversation, because if you don't hate
how it looks, or it's not in a place that's
really detracting from the look of your yard, is it
really necessary to remove it? Am I just giving you
busy work? Or is this something that you need to
take care of. Well, if you don't hate how it looks,
or it's not in a place that's really detracting from
(02:33):
the look of your yuard, it's probably technically not necessary
to remove it. You know, it's not going to hurt
anything immediately. Now I noticed I did say the word immediately.
That's the word I chose there. It's not going to
hurt anything immediately. There is a little foreshadowing in that,
so we'll get to that in a minute. But you
can leave them in place and eventually they'll just rot
away on their own, right, it'll go the natural way
(02:55):
of everything. You know, we're all doing it right now,
Everything will rot away on its own, So that's good.
The problem is that eventually it could be years, right,
you know, eventually riding away. It could take them years
to do that. And in the meantime they're in the way,
the stumps are, they get covered by grass, all the
things that we talked about, They become trip hazards. You
got to mow around them, blah blah blah. So you
got to deal with that all that time, you know,
(03:17):
Is that really all that fun? Is that something you
want to deal with. That's that's for you to decide.
But there is something that I haven't mentioned, and it's
something that I had not thought about. With stumps that
you leave in the yard, and it's a little thought
that's going to get in your head and kind of
make you want to act on this. They can become
homes for carpenter ants, termites and all their fun little
insect friends, and that could be a problem that you
(03:39):
regret down the road. So you might want to get
them out. You can leave them, but you might want
to get them out all right, So if you do
want to get it out, how do you reasonably and affordably?
One of my favorite words in the English language affordably.
You know, it's just so sweet whenever that's used. You know,
in any situation, how do you affordably and easily get
these things out? I want to talk about what I
(04:01):
think is probably the best overall route for homeowners, and
then I've got a couple other ways that will help you,
and then you know, some last ditch efforts. But this
first one, the work is going to start by just
taking a good look at the problem, right, you just
got to go out there and assess the situation. So
head out after the show, look things over a little bit,
you know, measure the diameter of the stump. If you
(04:21):
can try to get a sense for how deep that
root system might go. You know, that's pretty tricky to do,
but you could get some idea by looking at it.
If the stump is small, you know, maybe eight inches
across or less, and if the roots don't seem to
be too widespread, it's a great candidate for a hands on,
no rental approach. And what most people will do in
this situation is to just start by digging. You know,
(04:43):
you just want to start exposing the base of the stump.
You're looking to gain access to the big support roots.
But before you start all that digging, you've got to
call misdig you know, eight one to one. They're going
to come out. It'll take several days. There's a process.
You want to get on it, but they'll come out
and mark everything. You don't want to hit a gas line.
You don't want to hit a utility line or anything
(05:04):
while you're going after the roots. That's a sad situation
and it can happen kind of quickly. So call eight
one one, call miss dig eight one one before you
start your digging, all right. Now, once you've done that
and everything's marked, a good shovel is really all you
need to get started. But you're probably gonna want a
mattic or a pick axe. These are both fun things
(05:26):
to say and fun things to own, and they're not
going to be expensive. So get one of those or both,
and that's gonna help you cut through the compacted soil.
Now it's a workout, right, there's no way around this.
But you're using a pick axe or maybe a mattic
or both, and that's gonna make you look and feel
pretty cool. You know you'll be sore, but you're gonna
(05:48):
look super cool, all right. So it's an even trade.
On top of that, this works, you know, it takes time,
but it works all right, so dig at it. Once
the roots start revealing themselves, the wrong way to say it,
they're not revealing themselves. It makes it sound like they're
doing the work. You're doing the work. Once you start
revealing the roots, the goal is to cut them right.
I mean not rocket science here, and axe will work,
(06:11):
but a bow saw or a reciprocating saw, something like
a saw's all. Something like that is going to be
way faster. Now. Of course, if you're going to go
the power tool route, you know probably are anything. You know,
you know, you take care of you, but throw on
some safety glasses, gloves, things like that, and also be
careful with the power tool with your blade. You know,
cutting through roots is hard on tools, you know, because
(06:32):
you've got the dirt there. It's just just hard to
get a nice clean approach to it on all of
the different roots that you're going to be cutting off.
So keep a few extra blades on hand. Now. One
of my favorite little tricks is to water that area
the day before you start, you know, not right before.
You don't want mud, you know, or anything like that.
But damp ground is going to be softer than hard
packed earth, of course, and it's going to be easier
(06:53):
on your blades when they hit it. Now, once you've
cut through the major roots, the stump is basically freed.
What you want to do here is to use your
shovel or you're matic as a lever and kind of
just start rocking the stump back and forth, and that's
going to break the last stubborn feeder roots that are
still holding on. Now. For smaller stumps, you know, maybe
under six inches or so in diameter, you can usually
(07:15):
pry and wiggle them out by hand, you know, like
a tooth. Once they're loose enough. It's satisfying work when
it gives way, and you're going to feel like some
kind of he man or he woman or whatever you
want to feel like. It's pretty cool. For bigger stumps,
this is where people often reach for a truck and
a chain, But honestly, that's where things get a little dicey,
(07:36):
a little dangerous. We've all seen social media videos of
really really bad scenarios when people do this. Chains can snap,
trucks can lurch. I've seen the stump shoot out and
hit the back of the truck and take out the
back window, all kinds of terrible things. People get hurt.
If you're going to go that route, at least use
(07:57):
a proper toe strap instead of a chain. Go slow
and go steady, no jerking, and really keep everybody back
from the action, right everybody, And this is all on you.
This is not from my recommendation that you're choosing to
do this, but if you do, take whatever steps you
need to to be safe and honestly, really, for something
(08:18):
bigger than a dinner plate, you're probably better off moving
onto other methods entirely. And you've got a couple main
options here. There's still DIY friendly, the patient approach, you
could do that. You could take chemicals and use the
patient approach, or you could rent some serious machinery. Let's
talk about the chemical method first, because sometimes the best
tool is just time. You know, you don't want to
(08:38):
give it all the time to rot itself out of
the ground. That's too much time. But the chemical route,
that might be a better way to go if it's
bigger than a dinner plate. Now I wasn't aware of this,
and I probably should have been, but you can buy
stump remover at most hardware stores. You know, it's usually
potassium nitrates. You could find that, or really you can
just use epsom salts. You basically just drill some holes
(09:00):
into the top of the stump, right an inch wide
or so, a few inches deep, a bunch of holes
spaced across the surface. Then you pour in the salt,
pour in the stump remover. If it's granules, then you'd
add water. Some stump removers are gonna come liquid, most
of them will be granules. But pour in the salt,
pour in the stump remover, add water, and then cover
the stump with a tarp. Now the tarp's going to
(09:21):
help retain moisture, it's going to help retain heat, and
both of those are going to of course speed up
the breakdown. And after a few weeks, sometimes a little
bit longer, it softens enough that you can start chopping
it apart with a shovel or an axe. Now it's
not quick, you know, it's not you know, instantaneously removed
from the yard. But it's low effort and it's super
budget friendly, and it's really not going to take that long.
(09:43):
So if you get on it now, maybe in a
month or so you've got it out of the ground
all right. Now, some people like to burn stumps. That's
another way that the internet will recommend. It's one of
those you know, recommended methods out there, but personally I
skip that one. Skip it between the smoke, the legality questions.
Can you even do this in your area? The smell
(10:04):
of it, you know, burnt stump not really as fun
as it sounds. Plus it rarely gets everything. Yeah, you
end up left with this charred mess and possibly you know,
possibly angry frustrated neighbors who knows I wouldn't burn it out.
Don't do that. Use the stump remover if it's a
big stump, or you know, maybe it's better to just
go and rent a grinder and get it out that way. Now,
(10:25):
renting a grind, you're probably gonna cost around a couple
hundred bucks or so for the day, depending on where
you get it from. But in the right hands, that'll
reduce a great, big, massive stump to mulch in less
than an hour. You still need to do some prep.
You've got to clear the rocks, branches, stuff like that.
Maybe cut the stump down lower with a chainsaw. But
really it's a good compromise between full DIY of digging
(10:49):
it out and hiring a professional. You know, if you've
got a big stump to deal with, this might be
a way to go. Just be aware. Of course, I
don't even need to say this, but it's on the
radio and everybody's listening, so I guess I do have
to say it. Stump grinders aren't toys, of course, so
wear safety glasses, hairing protection gloves, follow the instructions, and
if it looks too intimidating, just call somebody who's done
(11:12):
it before and go that route. All right, However, you've
removed the stump, the last thing that you need to
do is to smooth everything out, of course, and get
your yard back in order. So fill the hole with
a mix of top soil, maybe some of the wood
chips or the dirt that you dug out, pack it
down lightly. You want to lead it slightly mounded to
allow for settling, and then throw some grass seed on it.
(11:32):
You know, water it really well and in a few
weeks you'll never know the tree was even there. And
fall is a really great time to do this and
get that grass growing. So there you go, removing a
stump number of different ways to go, some of them
more affordable than others, but all of them should get
you to the point where you've got a nice, pristine
yard once again. No more tripping, no more mowing around
(11:54):
that thing. All right, that's removing tree stumps. Now, I've
got a little bit of time before segment, so I
want to take a moment to address an email that
I received this week about the show from the week before. Now,
if you remember, last week, we had a car guy
expert on Chris Hardesty. He writes for Auto Trader and
Kelly Bluebook, and we talked about the best colors for
(12:15):
cars in terms of resale value, safety, and so on. Anyway,
I received an email from Kurt who wanted me to
know that he really liked the segment, but he thought
we missed something big when it came to the conversation
on car colors in terms of maintenance. Kurt wrote, gloss
black is by far the easiest color to match for
touch up and repair, which is why for forty years
(12:37):
plus all of my Jeeps have been black. Super easy
to remediate chips and blemishes. End quote. So there you go.
I told Kurt that I'd work that correction into the
show and I managed to do it. Promise is made,
Promises kept. That's my way. All right. How do you measure,
prep and paint a metal building. It's a great question
that I received from a customer and it comes with
(12:57):
a little bit of a twist. We'll get to that
right after. This home in progress is brought to you
by Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore. Top to your paint
expert advice. Your next project is way easier than you
think it's going to be. All right, let's dive into
a paint question that I received this past week, and
before I do, I want to remind you that you
can send your paint and design questions to Radio at
(13:19):
repco Light dot com. I'll answer them via the email.
You know right away you'll get your answer. But if
I end up using your question on the show, like
I'm doing with this one right now, I'll send you
a gift certificate for a free gallon of Benjamin Moore
or Repcolite Paint you choose, And if that sounds like
a good deal, make sure you send your paint and
design questions to Radio at repco Light dot com. All right,
(13:41):
let's get to the question for the week. And it
really seems straightforward and simple right off the bat, until
it wasn't. I'll get to that in a minute. It
started like this, A gentleman emailed me and asked how
to figure out how much paint he needed to paint
and old metal building. All right, super straightforward, and it's
good info to have and to know because this is
(14:01):
going to help you assess how much paint you need
for any paint project. So to figure out how much
paint you'll need, you first need to figure the square
footage of your space. You know, not the floor square footage,
but the wall square footage, and you do that by
taking the length and multiplying it by the height. You
do that for each wall or each surface area, add
them all together, then subtract the square footage of windows
(14:23):
and doors, and once you've got that number, that's the
square footage that you need to cover. Not to figure
out how much paint you need, you generally just assume
that a gallon's going to give you about one coat
on four hundred square feet if it's a sealed surface,
So that should help you get a ballpark for how
much paint the project's going to require. So that's the
first step measuring for the paint. And if you missed
(14:44):
any of that math, I know I went fast. Check
out our blog post on paint measuring. You know, it's
not the most exciting post of all time, but it
will help you figure out how to do that measuring
for pretty much any project you're working on. So you
can find that online at repcolight dot com. Just click
the blog tab on the main header and you're good
to go. All right, once you've got that figured out
(15:06):
for this instance, now you just need to do the
work to get that building painted. So I just rolled
on with my answer and explain that, like most paint projects,
all of this is going to start with the prep work.
You know, in this instance, we're talking about a metal building,
and these buildings get dirty, they get chalky, they get
rusty over time, so you need to really give it
a good cleaning, you know, scrub it with TSP or
(15:26):
a TSP substitute, and then rinse it thoroughly and let
it dry. On a metal building, rust is going to
be a big enemy. You don't want to just paint
over it. You've got to scrape it. You got to
hit it with a wire brush. You've got to get
away all the loose stuff, you know, remove that sand
it smooth, and then hit that area with a rust
inhibiting primer. If you skip that step, the rust is
(15:47):
just going to keep growing under the paint and it's
going to push it off and you're gonna have problems
down the road way quicker than you would like. So
once you've got it all prepped, it's time to paint.
And for the main body of the building, you want
a high qual one hundred percent acrylic water based paint.
Benjamin Moore's Element Guard or Regal Exterior. Those are great options,
so is Repcolites Endura. These products are flexible enough to
(16:10):
expand and contract with the building, and they're going to
hold the color really well through the seasons. So that
was my original answer. You know, that's it in a nutshell.
I sent it off and I felt really good about
it until he replied with that major complication that I
hinted at a little bit earlier. And here's the deal.
He has no water available at the site. So his
(16:31):
follow up question was this, can I just dry brush
the building for the cleaning and call it good. Well,
here's the thing. As much as I hate to say it,
dry brushing alone just isn't going to cut it. You know,
paint in this instance is really going to just be bonding.
You know, it's a surface bond. There's no penetration into metal.
It's not like wood that it can soak into and
get a little bit of a grip. It's metal, there's
(16:52):
no penetration. It's just a surface bond. And if chalk
and dirt are left behind on that surface, the paint
will stick to that layer, that chalk and dirt layer
instead of the actual building. And then when that chalk
let's go, or that dirt let's go, the paint goes
with it, and you'll see peeling way earlier than you should.
So what does he do? You know, what's the solution?
If he doesn't have running water out there, well, he's
(17:13):
got to find a way to bring water to the building.
And some folks do this by hauling five gallon pails
of water or larger totes, you know, something like that.
And then when they've got the water, they're like that,
they scrub the siding using that water, you know, mixed
with TSP or a TSP substitute, scrub it on and
get it cleaned, and then to rinse it. This is
where it gets even trickier. You know, how do you
(17:34):
do that? A lot of times people will pick up,
you know, maybe a larger plastic garbage can clean one
and fill that with the water that they brought in
their five gallon buckets. Then you can drop a submersible
pump into that and run a garden hose off of it.
Just remember these pumps, these submersible pumps, they're designed to
move water steadily, So forget about using the spray nozzle
(17:55):
at the end of the hose. Instead, just leave the
hose open and use your finger, you know, old school style,
to get a jet going to get the building rinsed.
It's not glamorous, it's not terribly wonderfully easy to pull off,
but it will work all right. Coming up, William Morris
is one of the key voices of the arts and
crafts movement, and his ideas on beauty and craftsmanship still
shape our homes today. We're going to get to that
(18:17):
right after this. This is home in progress where the
to do list is long, and that's all right. We're
not crabbing at you. We're not going to yell at you.
That's how it is. It's how ours is too. It's
probably supported by repcoll like Paints and Benjamin Moore because
home projects are easier when you've got people you can trust.
All Right, it's time to talk about William Morris, you know,
(18:38):
the wallpaper guru, one of the founders of the arts
and crafts movement, William Morris. I want to talk about
him and five ways that he changed how we think
about beauty in our homes, you know, beauty and design.
And before I can jump into all of that, I
do have to give you like an origin story, you know,
some backstory info, because this is going to set up
everything that follows. I'll try to move through it quickly
(19:01):
so we can get to the really, really good stuff.
But you know this stuff, you do need some of
this to really establish the rest of the story. All right.
To begin, we got to go back to the very beginning.
Morris was born in eighteen thirty four, just outside of London,
all right, So eighteen thirty four, William Morris enters the
world and as he grows up, through those early years
(19:22):
of childhood and such, he spends all of his days
you know, outside exploring, you know, and not all of
his days. You know what I'm saying. He's outside a lot.
You know, you can picture him a little kid, running
around in his knickerbockers, his suspenders. You know, he's wandering
through woodsy areas, fields, gardens. He's touching everything. He's finding flowers, birds,
(19:43):
He's probably running through poison. Ivy probably did that once.
He was a good observer. He only had to do
that once before he learned never ever do that again.
He's probably peeking in badger dens. He was curious, you know,
they did. The big bottom line is that he soaked
everything in. He's out in nature, soaking it all in.
You know, the color of the leaves as the different
(20:04):
seasons play out, the way the vines wind around each other,
the way birds are moving through the branches, all of that.
He absorbs all of that. Now, when he gets older
and it's time for college, he heads off to Oxford
with the plan of studying theology. And that's where everything
begins to change from you know, where he thought he
was going to go with his life into it, you know,
(20:25):
a completely different direction. At Oxford he meets Edward Burne
Jones and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the
name or not, Edward Burne Jones. He was a fellow
student who would later go on to become one of
Victorian England's most celebrated painters. Now through Edward Burne Jones,
William Morris is introduced to the pre Raphaelites. Pre Raphaelites
(20:47):
a group of artists. Just think of them as the
long haired proto hippies of the Victorian art world. You know,
that should at least give you a good vision of
who they are. Their vision as artists was to move
dramatically away from the idea, realized forms and the softened
landscapes of the Royal Academy. And what they wanted to
replace them with was, you know, vivid colors, incredibly intricate details,
(21:11):
things like that. They wanted to represent what was truly
there in the world and what the eye was truly seeing.
You know, that's the important thing to take away truth
in art. That's what they were after. And for Morris,
that concept that idea wasn't just interesting, it was completely electric.
It completely captured him. He'd already felt a little bit
(21:31):
of those stirrings as a boy wandering the countryside and
soaking in nature. But with the pre Raphaelites, it all
clicked into place. You know, what had been a feeling
before was now a philosophy. Truth in art, truth in architecture. Truth.
You know, that's what he was after. Now a little
bit later, that philosophy that he's forming runs headfirst into
a practical problem. You know, Morris gets married after college
(21:55):
or after the time at Oxford, and he begins furnishing
his first home. And when he doing that, everything that
he finds to put in the house is hideous. You know,
it's mass produced, it's over ornamented, it's too much. You know,
it's practically exactly what you'd expect to find in the
Victorian era. So he's encountering all of this ugly decor,
(22:17):
you know, for lack of a better word, and what's
he going to do? Well, Rather than tolerate what he
couldn't stand, he decided to go to work designing things
for himself. With help from his wife and his circle
of artist's friends, he spent two years creating furniture, textiles, glass, miurals,
you know, things that matched his ideals. And in eighteen
(22:38):
sixty one, you know, a few years of past, he's
outfitted his home with things that he's designed with his
group of friends. And by eighteen sixty one, that little
experiment grows into a company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company.
And it's a company producing everything from stained glass and
hand painted tiles to simple oak furniture and wallpapers. You know, basically,
(22:58):
the company wasn't interested in cranking out machine made clutter.
That wasn't its purpose. Its goal was to help everyday
people fill their homes with objects that were truly beautiful
and functional. Basically, he wanted to do for others what
he did for himself in his first home. So that
was eighteen sixty one when that company was founded. Years later,
in eighteen seventy five, Morris took full control of the
(23:21):
company and rebranded it Morrison Co. And that's how we
know it today. So there you go, the backdrop, the
childhood in nature, the friendships, the rebellion against the ordinary,
all of that stuff. Now, let's dig into five key
ways that William Morris changed, not just wallpaper, but the
very way we think about beauty and design in our homes.
(23:41):
All right, So the first one that we're going to
cover is he rebelled against fakery. Right rebelled against fakery.
In the Victorian era, fakery was everywhere, you know, absolutely everywhere.
You walk into a fashionable home and you're going to
see wallpapers pretending to be marble. Would you know, even
velvet fireplaces, you know, fireplace is built from you know,
(24:04):
cheap slate. They're painted to look like they're fine stone.
Pine furniture was brushed and wood grained, you know, so
that it looked like mahogany. Even the base boards were
painted to mimic marble. Okay, and the artists who did
this were really good, so it often took a really
close look to figure out, you know, the trick and
to figure out what the material actually was. And to
(24:26):
William Morris, you know, he hated this. It was all deception.
He saw it as all lying. You know, the walls
not velvet, but the wallpaper wants you to believe that
it's velvet. That chair isn't oak, but you're supposed to
think that it's oak. He hated all of that, and
that instinct in him that aversion to that fakery was
already in place years back when he refused to step
(24:47):
foot in the Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one, now
the Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one. It was a
massive world's fare inside the Crystal Palace, which was an
enormous enormous glass and iron in Hyde Park. You know,
this big world's fair is going on eighteen fifty one.
Millions of people are pouring in to marvel at the
latest machine age miracles, you know, steam engines, printing presses,
(25:11):
furniture stamped out by factories. At this point in time,
Morris is sixteen years old. His family buys tickets, you know,
they're going in. They get their hands stamped so they
can go back out and come back in again in
case they need to use the bathroom or something. But
Morris refuses to even go in the first place. And
he refuses on principle. It's not just teenage angst or
(25:31):
something like that. You know, he's not poudy because he's
not hanging with his girlfriend. He's annoyed because everything inside
this place, everything that they're lauding and promoting and displaying,
all of it is gaudy and fake and soulless to
him at sixteen, and he wants no part of it.
So that was early on in his life. Later, his
(25:52):
friendship with the pre Raphaelites that I mentioned earlier. That
friendship deepens those ideas and those ideals, and he develops
this passion that follows him the rest of his life,
This passion to speak truthfully with his art, with his designs,
and with the materials that he uses. You know, that
just becomes ingrained in him, and that conviction shows up
(26:14):
really interestingly in his first home, the Red House. Most
Victorians would choose to cover brick, you know, when they
built a house out of brick, they choose to cover
it with stucco or paint or something like that, anything
to cover that brick up. But Morris and his architect
friend Philip Webb left there as completely bare, deep red
brick plaine, unapologetic. You know. It was all about honest materials.
(26:38):
It was about honest construction, hiding nothing, you know, just
complete honesty. That same principle ends up running through all
of his wallpapers and his textiles. You know, Morris drew
his patterns from super careful observation, you know, sketching roses
in his own garden, watching birds, steel strawberries at his
country home, things like that. But his wallpapers, they weren't
(26:59):
trying to be nature or to fool you into thinking
that your wall was a meadow. You know, that wasn't
his goal. Instead, they celebrated what they actually were, you know,
beautifully crafted patterns inspired by the natural world, but at
the end of the day, still just images on paper.
He wasn't trying to hide that fact. They were honest
about being decoration, and they were honest about their inspiration
(27:19):
and where it came from. And this was just a
huge breath of fresh air in that time period. You know.
By prioritizing honesty, William Morris challenged the Victorian assumption that
beauty required pretense. His ideas sparked the arts and crafts movement,
like we talked about at the very beginning. He influenced
designers across Europe and America all over the place, and
(27:40):
he ended up paving the way for Modernism's idea of
form follows function. You know, even today, when we admire
exposed brick, natural wood, or just simple organic patterns were
still echoing Morris's vision. So that's the first way William
Morris changed how we think about beauty and design in
our homes. He replaced fakery with honesty. Get to the
(28:00):
second way, that Morris changed how we think about design,
and this builds directly on what we just talked about.
For Morris, design wasn't just about taste. It was about morality.
And this might sound a little extreme, but Morris believed
something really really radical, that living surrounded by lies, even
small ones like fake woodgrain, living surrounded by lines, actually
(28:22):
changed who you were. You know. Dishonest, cheap or ugly design,
he argued, didn't just offend the eye. You know, I'm
not just offended, you know, visually or esthetically by this.
It actually damaged people. And on the flip side, good design, useful, beautiful,
honest design could make life better for everybody that it touched.
He saw this at both ends of the spectrum, workers
(28:44):
and consumers. So for workers, mass production completely drained in
his idea, in his mindset, completely drained the joy out
of making anything, you know. By the eighteen eighties, he
was speaking out against the industrial system, and not just
because it produced you know, kind of ugly, shoddy products.
He argued that factories instead, or as well, you know,
(29:05):
also robbed craftsmen of their dignity, you know, instead of
creating something beautiful from start to finish, workers you know,
were just reduced to repeating one tiny task all day long.
So no creativity, no pride, no connection to the final product.
You know, those were his ideas. It tore the workers down,
It turned you know, craftsmen into machines. And to Morris,
(29:26):
this wasn't just unfair. It was dehumanizing, stripping away what
made work meaningful, so huge deep thoughts and consumers they
weren't spared either. To Morris, you know, living surrounded by
deceptive objects, you know, pine painted that look like oh,
wallpaper pretending to be silk, things like that, you know,
machine made lace imitating handwork, surrounded by stuff like that
(29:47):
wasn't just settling for cheap substitutes. It was living, you know,
living with lies. That was what he saw in this.
We were living with lies, and day after day he
believed that those lies would all our moral senses. You know,
we get comfortable with falseness, we stop expecting truth. So
for him, ugliness and dishonesty they weren't just surface problems.
(30:09):
They weren't just esthetic issues. They were moral failures. And
by contrast, a chair that's made with care, or wallpaper
printed by hand, it's not just prettier it doesn't just
look better, it's honest. It honored the maker, It honored
the user. And when we talk today about authentic living,
or when we choose quality over quantity, or when we
(30:30):
feel drained by cheap, disposable stuff, you know, that's Morris's
insights still at work, you know, and how we feel
about design and beauty in our homes. All right. The
third way that Morris reshaped design is that he transformed
wallpaper from something that you ignored into something that you studied.
I love this point. Victorian wallpapers. They were incredibly elaborate.
(30:52):
We talked about that, they were ornate, they were incredibly detailed.
But here's the thing. They were designed to impress without
really being examined all that much. You basically think of them,
you know, Victorian wallpapers, think of them like background music,
you know, at a fancy restaurant, you know, rich costly.
It fills every surface, but you're not really supposed to
pay attention to it so much. Now, Morris completely changed that.
(31:15):
He made wallpaper worth contemplating. And to do this he
had to break all the rules. You know, the design
world at that point was split between you know, basically
two camps geometric reformers who wanted rigid stripes and mathematical shapes,
you know, on the wall. And then there was the
French ornate style in wallpaper that tried to look like
(31:35):
you know, carved plaster or silk brocade or whatever. It
tried to make incredibly hyper realistic, you know, visuals. Those
were the two options. Morris really didn't like either one,
so instead he crafted something entirely new. Patterns drawn from nature,
you know, naturalistic patterns, but not literal patterns. You know.
The things he came up with were flat, but they
(31:57):
were still alive. You know. The vines and flowers were
arranged so your eye could follow the rhythm, you know,
kind of trace the curves and feel the truth of
how the plants grew. Critics when they saw this new
work they were, you know, baffled, maybe it's the right word.
They were not immediately impressed. They called the papers peculiar
because they didn't fit into any of the established or
(32:20):
pre existing categories. The architect Richard Norman Shaw, for example,
he dismissed them as just too bold quote wallpaper. He
said should be a background, pure and simple. But that
was exactly Morris's point. He wanted wallpaper that engaged you,
that invited you to look closer. You know, you could
spend time with a Morris design still, can you know.
There's a lot to look at, you know, tracing the
(32:42):
vines with your eyes, just a lot to look at.
And it wasn't just the look, you know, it was
the making as well. You know, at a time when
most wallpapers were churned out by machine, Morris revived handblock printing.
You know, some of the designs that he did require dozens,
you know, of different blocks, weeks of labor, and layer
upon layer of natural pigment. In an industrial age, you know,
(33:02):
when everything is machine made. Morris chose craft over convenience,
and he did it every single time. Artists and aristocrats
immediately embraced his work, even though the critics maybe didn't.
You know, these other folks saw what the critics were missing,
that Morris had taken wallpaper and elevated it from you know,
just just decoration on a wall or background noise to
(33:23):
genuine art. And we still live with that shift today,
you know, every time we choose a statement wallpaper for
an accent wall or stop to really, you know, really
look at a pattern on our walls. We're echoing Morris's revolution.
He taught us that walls don't have to just sit
quietly in the background. They can sit quietly in the background,
and that's not bad either, But they can you know,
(33:45):
be focal points. They can be something that really draws
the eye. They can be canvas. Is worth contemplating, all right.
The fourth way that Morris reshaped design is that he
planted the seeds for making beauty accessible to everybody. Now,
this one's complicated because more Rs carried a contradiction at
the heart of everything he did. You know. On the
one hand, his dream was democratic, I guess is the
(34:07):
way to say it. He believed every single person deserves
beauty in their daily life, not just the wealthy people.
And by choosing wallpapers and textiles as this medium rather
than paintings or sculptures, he was deliberately working, you know,
in materials in forms that could, in theory, you know,
reach ordinary homes. But there's a problem. You know, Morris
was uncompromising about quality. We talked about it a little bit.
(34:30):
He insisted on handprinting, you know, he insisted on natural
dyes and weeks of painstaking labor for every design. Now,
I've got a video linked in the show notes that
shows exactly what the process was like, and it's astonishing.
You know, some Morris papers required fifteen separate woodblocks, each
one pressed carefully into place, and every time you watch
(34:51):
the craftsman press it down, you can hear a cash
registered ding. Just listen for it. You can hear it.
And that's the point I'm getting at. Because of the method,
the papers that he made were crazy expensive, so expensive
that only the wealthy and the upper middle class could
even afford them, you know, exactly the opposite of what
he was trying to do, and he knew this and
(35:12):
it really drove him nuts his entire career. He wanted
to create beautiful things for everybody, while also paying craftsmen
of fair wage and using the finest materials and methods.
But all of that together really ended up just being
art for the elite, you know, That's what he ended
up doing. So what's his real contribution here? I guess
I think it boils down to this. Morris established the
(35:35):
principle that art belonged in everyday spaces. You know, he
started the conversation that, you know, beauty is for everybody
regardless of your class or your income. According to him,
the dining room in my house, my little nondescript house,
that's just as worthy of displaying art and beauty as
a museum gallery. Right, And that's really really radical. He
(35:56):
was treating common homes with the same dignity as a
e lead mansions or institutions. And while he couldn't practically
make that all work out, you know, the way that
he wanted to. He couldn't make that work out himself.
Later designers were able to complete his vision. You know.
They took the esthetic principles that he established and eventually
found a way to adopt them for mass production. And finally,
(36:19):
when that happened, all of us, even the regular folks
like us, I can only speak for myself, the regular
folks like me, could have access to truly beautiful items
for our homes and our lives. You know. So Morris
planted the seeds, others harvested the crops, and maybe, you know,
just thinking about it, maybe his contradiction was necessary. You know,
(36:39):
if he had compromised on quality, his designs might not
have been compelling enough to inspire later generations, you know,
by proving the value of beauty at the highest level.
He kind of made the case for why everybody deserved
access to it. At least that's a way to look
at it, all right. Finally, the fifth way that Morris
changed how we feel about beauty and design. He didn't
just influence products. He sparked a movement. You know, I've
(37:02):
said it up a few times already, but William Morris became
the central figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. His ideas,
you know, honest materials, using honest materials, and using them honestly.
You know, that idea, the idea that beauty belongs in
daily life, that dignity belongs in craft. All of those
ideas formed the foundation for the Arts and Crafts movement.
And for Morris, it wasn't just about style or just
(37:24):
about aesthetics. You know, he was also pushing back against
the dehumanization of both workers and consumers in the industrial age.
You know. He was insisting on human dignity just as
much as visual beauty, you know, and because of that,
his influence spread way beyond wallpaper. You know, it reached
into furniture, into architecture, into the homes that we live in,
into even how we built and crafted those homes and
(37:48):
that furniture, you know, Gustav Stickley's furniture, Frank Lloyd Writ's
organic designs, the Craftsman Bungalow. All of these things and
way more, Carrie Morris's DNA, and all of them traced
back to his rebellion against mass produced ugliness. And what's
really interesting last thing I'll get to is that Morris
didn't just you know, stop with interior stuff. In eighteen
(38:08):
ninety one, just five years or so before he died,
he launched the Keelmscott Press, one of the most famous
private presses in history. You know. He designed typefaces, borders, illustrations,
and he printed on handmade paper. His masterpiece, the Keelmscott Chaucer,
which is definitely worth the look, is still considered one
of the most beautiful books ever created, you know, but
(38:29):
of course you can see it coming from a mile away.
That same contradiction that he struggled with with his wallpaper
and all of that followed him here. The books that
he was making, they were so labor intensive they could
only be afforded by wealthy collectors. Still, he did set
a standard of beauty that others would later adapt and
spread through modern printing technologies. So the guy was just
(38:50):
moving in all kinds of directions all the time. When
he died in eighteen ninety six, other people carried on
the work at Morris and Co. But his influence really
stopped rippling outward. His designs, you know, wallpaper designs, they're
still in print one hundred and fifty years later. You know,
his philosophy echoes every single time we choose fewer but
better objects, every time we value the handmaid over the
(39:13):
mass produced, and every time we insist that functional things
can also be beautiful. Whenever we do that, we're channeling
William Morris. So, yeah, he gave us beautiful wallpaper, but
he also left us with a reminder. You know, don't
just fill your house with stuff. Choose things that matter.
Surround yourself with objects that do their job well and
bring you joy, Make it useful, make it beautiful, and
your home is going to be better for it. All right,
(39:34):
that's going to wrap it up for today's episode of
Home in Progress, brought to you by Repcolite Paints and
Benjamin Moore. Thanks so much for hanging out with us
a little bit today. We really appreciate it and if
you did enjoy the show, subscribe, you know that would
be great. You'll never miss another episode. And if you
have a minute, leave a quick rating or review wherever
you're listening, and that will really help us out and
(39:55):
it helps other people find the show all right for
home in progress, I'm Dan Hanson. Thanks, thanks for listening,
have a great week, and I'll see you next time.
Hey, everybody, Welcome to Home in Progress, sponsored by repco
Like Paints and Benjamin Moore. Because the paint is the project.
You know, if you're going to put in the work,
make sure it's going to last. Use the good stuff.
All right, here's what we've got coming up on the
show today. At the end, I'm going to be digging
into the world of William Morris, the man behind those
famous wallpapers who ended up reshaping design as we know it.
(00:22):
Before that, I'm going to walk you through how to
prep and paint a metal outbuilding when you don't even
have running water on the job site. But right now,
I want to talk about something that's kind of one
of those frustrations for a lot of homeowners. You know,
not all of us, but there's a good chance that
you're either dealing with this right now or you will
run into it at some point in your career as
a homeowner. Here's the scenario. A tree comes down on
(00:45):
your property, right or you take it down, whatever, But
you don't have somebody come out to grind out the stump. Now,
maybe you couldn't afford it, maybe you didn't think of it,
Maybe you know you just didn't want to drop the
money on it. You could have afforded it, but you'd
rather buy something really fun than to spend that money
getting a stump taken away from your yard. I mean,
(01:05):
it's not a fun way to spend money either way.
You left it, and as time goes by, it just
sits there, right, and it becomes a forever part of
your landscaping. You mow around it, sometimes, you use it
as a base when you're playing baseball. You trip over
it from time to time, and so on, so on
and so on and so on. It's not a good look,
and in most cases, stumps negatively affect the beauty of
(01:28):
our outdoor spaces. But getting rid of them isn't always
so simple. I mean, you could carve a bear into it.
I should have added that to my list of things
you could do with it, because I've seen that people
will carve some kind of animal into it. But it's
probably not for everybody anyway. Getting rid of them isn't
always so simple, all right, but it is doable. So
(01:49):
let's cover and dig into some affordable I love affordable,
one of my favorite words. We'll talk about some affordable,
DIY friendly ways to remove tree stumps and roots without
out calling in a contractor and without renting anything that
requires a trailer and a waiver and all that stuff.
All right, now, first off, do you need to get
rid of a stump and the roots? You know, once
(02:11):
you cut it down? And this is the place to
start really with this conversation, because if you don't hate
how it looks, or it's not in a place that's
really detracting from the look of your yard, is it
really necessary to remove it? Am I just giving you
busy work? Or is this something that you need to
take care of. Well, if you don't hate how it looks,
or it's not in a place that's really detracting from
(02:33):
the look of your yuard, it's probably technically not necessary
to remove it. You know, it's not going to hurt
anything immediately. Now I noticed I did say the word immediately.
That's the word I chose there. It's not going to
hurt anything immediately. There is a little foreshadowing in that,
so we'll get to that in a minute. But you
can leave them in place and eventually they'll just rot
away on their own, right, it'll go the natural way
(02:55):
of everything. You know, we're all doing it right now,
Everything will rot away on its own, So that's good.
The problem is that eventually it could be years, right,
you know, eventually riding away. It could take them years
to do that. And in the meantime they're in the way,
the stumps are, they get covered by grass, all the
things that we talked about, They become trip hazards. You
got to mow around them, blah blah blah. So you
got to deal with that all that time, you know,
(03:17):
Is that really all that fun? Is that something you
want to deal with. That's that's for you to decide.
But there is something that I haven't mentioned, and it's
something that I had not thought about. With stumps that
you leave in the yard, and it's a little thought
that's going to get in your head and kind of
make you want to act on this. They can become
homes for carpenter ants, termites and all their fun little
insect friends, and that could be a problem that you
(03:39):
regret down the road. So you might want to get
them out. You can leave them, but you might want
to get them out all right, So if you do
want to get it out, how do you reasonably and affordably?
One of my favorite words in the English language affordably.
You know, it's just so sweet whenever that's used. You know,
in any situation, how do you affordably and easily get
these things out? I want to talk about what I
(04:01):
think is probably the best overall route for homeowners, and
then I've got a couple other ways that will help you,
and then you know, some last ditch efforts. But this
first one, the work is going to start by just
taking a good look at the problem, right, you just
got to go out there and assess the situation. So
head out after the show, look things over a little bit,
you know, measure the diameter of the stump. If you
(04:21):
can try to get a sense for how deep that
root system might go. You know, that's pretty tricky to do,
but you could get some idea by looking at it.
If the stump is small, you know, maybe eight inches
across or less, and if the roots don't seem to
be too widespread, it's a great candidate for a hands on,
no rental approach. And what most people will do in
this situation is to just start by digging. You know,
(04:43):
you just want to start exposing the base of the stump.
You're looking to gain access to the big support roots.
But before you start all that digging, you've got to
call misdig you know, eight one to one. They're going
to come out. It'll take several days. There's a process.
You want to get on it, but they'll come out
and mark everything. You don't want to hit a gas line.
You don't want to hit a utility line or anything
(05:04):
while you're going after the roots. That's a sad situation
and it can happen kind of quickly. So call eight
one one, call miss dig eight one one before you
start your digging, all right. Now, once you've done that
and everything's marked, a good shovel is really all you
need to get started. But you're probably gonna want a
mattic or a pick axe. These are both fun things
(05:26):
to say and fun things to own, and they're not
going to be expensive. So get one of those or both,
and that's gonna help you cut through the compacted soil.
Now it's a workout, right, there's no way around this.
But you're using a pick axe or maybe a mattic
or both, and that's gonna make you look and feel
pretty cool. You know you'll be sore, but you're gonna
(05:48):
look super cool, all right. So it's an even trade.
On top of that, this works, you know, it takes time,
but it works all right, so dig at it. Once
the roots start revealing themselves, the wrong way to say it,
they're not revealing themselves. It makes it sound like they're
doing the work. You're doing the work. Once you start
revealing the roots, the goal is to cut them right.
I mean not rocket science here, and axe will work,
(06:11):
but a bow saw or a reciprocating saw, something like
a saw's all. Something like that is going to be
way faster. Now. Of course, if you're going to go
the power tool route, you know probably are anything. You know,
you know, you take care of you, but throw on
some safety glasses, gloves, things like that, and also be
careful with the power tool with your blade. You know,
cutting through roots is hard on tools, you know, because
(06:32):
you've got the dirt there. It's just just hard to
get a nice clean approach to it on all of
the different roots that you're going to be cutting off.
So keep a few extra blades on hand. Now. One
of my favorite little tricks is to water that area
the day before you start, you know, not right before.
You don't want mud, you know, or anything like that.
But damp ground is going to be softer than hard
packed earth, of course, and it's going to be easier
(06:53):
on your blades when they hit it. Now, once you've
cut through the major roots, the stump is basically freed.
What you want to do here is to use your
shovel or you're matic as a lever and kind of
just start rocking the stump back and forth, and that's
going to break the last stubborn feeder roots that are
still holding on. Now. For smaller stumps, you know, maybe
under six inches or so in diameter, you can usually
(07:15):
pry and wiggle them out by hand, you know, like
a tooth. Once they're loose enough. It's satisfying work when
it gives way, and you're going to feel like some
kind of he man or he woman or whatever you
want to feel like. It's pretty cool. For bigger stumps,
this is where people often reach for a truck and
a chain, But honestly, that's where things get a little dicey,
(07:36):
a little dangerous. We've all seen social media videos of
really really bad scenarios when people do this. Chains can snap,
trucks can lurch. I've seen the stump shoot out and
hit the back of the truck and take out the
back window, all kinds of terrible things. People get hurt.
If you're going to go that route, at least use
(07:57):
a proper toe strap instead of a chain. Go slow
and go steady, no jerking, and really keep everybody back
from the action, right everybody, And this is all on you.
This is not from my recommendation that you're choosing to
do this, but if you do, take whatever steps you
need to to be safe and honestly, really, for something
(08:18):
bigger than a dinner plate, you're probably better off moving
onto other methods entirely. And you've got a couple main
options here. There's still DIY friendly, the patient approach, you
could do that. You could take chemicals and use the
patient approach, or you could rent some serious machinery. Let's
talk about the chemical method first, because sometimes the best
tool is just time. You know, you don't want to
(08:38):
give it all the time to rot itself out of
the ground. That's too much time. But the chemical route,
that might be a better way to go if it's
bigger than a dinner plate. Now I wasn't aware of this,
and I probably should have been, but you can buy
stump remover at most hardware stores. You know, it's usually
potassium nitrates. You could find that, or really you can
just use epsom salts. You basically just drill some holes
(09:00):
into the top of the stump, right an inch wide
or so, a few inches deep, a bunch of holes
spaced across the surface. Then you pour in the salt,
pour in the stump remover. If it's granules, then you'd
add water. Some stump removers are gonna come liquid, most
of them will be granules. But pour in the salt,
pour in the stump remover, add water, and then cover
the stump with a tarp. Now the tarp's going to
(09:21):
help retain moisture, it's going to help retain heat, and
both of those are going to of course speed up
the breakdown. And after a few weeks, sometimes a little
bit longer, it softens enough that you can start chopping
it apart with a shovel or an axe. Now it's
not quick, you know, it's not you know, instantaneously removed
from the yard. But it's low effort and it's super
budget friendly, and it's really not going to take that long.
(09:43):
So if you get on it now, maybe in a
month or so you've got it out of the ground
all right. Now, some people like to burn stumps. That's
another way that the internet will recommend. It's one of
those you know, recommended methods out there, but personally I
skip that one. Skip it between the smoke, the legality questions.
Can you even do this in your area? The smell
(10:04):
of it, you know, burnt stump not really as fun
as it sounds. Plus it rarely gets everything. Yeah, you
end up left with this charred mess and possibly you know,
possibly angry frustrated neighbors who knows I wouldn't burn it out.
Don't do that. Use the stump remover if it's a
big stump, or you know, maybe it's better to just
go and rent a grinder and get it out that way. Now,
(10:25):
renting a grind, you're probably gonna cost around a couple
hundred bucks or so for the day, depending on where
you get it from. But in the right hands, that'll
reduce a great, big, massive stump to mulch in less
than an hour. You still need to do some prep.
You've got to clear the rocks, branches, stuff like that.
Maybe cut the stump down lower with a chainsaw. But
really it's a good compromise between full DIY of digging
(10:49):
it out and hiring a professional. You know, if you've
got a big stump to deal with, this might be
a way to go. Just be aware. Of course, I
don't even need to say this, but it's on the
radio and everybody's listening, so I guess I do have
to say it. Stump grinders aren't toys, of course, so
wear safety glasses, hairing protection gloves, follow the instructions, and
if it looks too intimidating, just call somebody who's done
(11:12):
it before and go that route. All right, However, you've
removed the stump, the last thing that you need to
do is to smooth everything out, of course, and get
your yard back in order. So fill the hole with
a mix of top soil, maybe some of the wood
chips or the dirt that you dug out, pack it
down lightly. You want to lead it slightly mounded to
allow for settling, and then throw some grass seed on it.
(11:32):
You know, water it really well and in a few
weeks you'll never know the tree was even there. And
fall is a really great time to do this and
get that grass growing. So there you go, removing a
stump number of different ways to go, some of them
more affordable than others, but all of them should get
you to the point where you've got a nice, pristine
yard once again. No more tripping, no more mowing around
(11:54):
that thing. All right, that's removing tree stumps. Now, I've
got a little bit of time before segment, so I
want to take a moment to address an email that
I received this week about the show from the week before. Now,
if you remember, last week, we had a car guy
expert on Chris Hardesty. He writes for Auto Trader and
Kelly Bluebook, and we talked about the best colors for
(12:15):
cars in terms of resale value, safety, and so on. Anyway,
I received an email from Kurt who wanted me to
know that he really liked the segment, but he thought
we missed something big when it came to the conversation
on car colors in terms of maintenance. Kurt wrote, gloss
black is by far the easiest color to match for
touch up and repair, which is why for forty years
(12:37):
plus all of my Jeeps have been black. Super easy
to remediate chips and blemishes. End quote. So there you go.
I told Kurt that I'd work that correction into the
show and I managed to do it. Promise is made,
Promises kept. That's my way. All right. How do you measure,
prep and paint a metal building. It's a great question
that I received from a customer and it comes with
(12:57):
a little bit of a twist. We'll get to that
right after. This home in progress is brought to you
by Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore. Top to your paint
expert advice. Your next project is way easier than you
think it's going to be. All right, let's dive into
a paint question that I received this past week, and
before I do, I want to remind you that you
can send your paint and design questions to Radio at
(13:19):
repco Light dot com. I'll answer them via the email.
You know right away you'll get your answer. But if
I end up using your question on the show, like
I'm doing with this one right now, I'll send you
a gift certificate for a free gallon of Benjamin Moore
or Repcolite Paint you choose, And if that sounds like
a good deal, make sure you send your paint and
design questions to Radio at repco Light dot com. All right,
(13:41):
let's get to the question for the week. And it
really seems straightforward and simple right off the bat, until
it wasn't. I'll get to that in a minute. It
started like this, A gentleman emailed me and asked how
to figure out how much paint he needed to paint
and old metal building. All right, super straightforward, and it's
good info to have and to know because this is
(14:01):
going to help you assess how much paint you need
for any paint project. So to figure out how much
paint you'll need, you first need to figure the square
footage of your space. You know, not the floor square footage,
but the wall square footage, and you do that by
taking the length and multiplying it by the height. You
do that for each wall or each surface area, add
them all together, then subtract the square footage of windows
(14:23):
and doors, and once you've got that number, that's the
square footage that you need to cover. Not to figure
out how much paint you need, you generally just assume
that a gallon's going to give you about one coat
on four hundred square feet if it's a sealed surface,
So that should help you get a ballpark for how
much paint the project's going to require. So that's the
first step measuring for the paint. And if you missed
(14:44):
any of that math, I know I went fast. Check
out our blog post on paint measuring. You know, it's
not the most exciting post of all time, but it
will help you figure out how to do that measuring
for pretty much any project you're working on. So you
can find that online at repcolight dot com. Just click
the blog tab on the main header and you're good
to go. All right, once you've got that figured out
(15:06):
for this instance, now you just need to do the
work to get that building painted. So I just rolled
on with my answer and explain that, like most paint projects,
all of this is going to start with the prep work.
You know, in this instance, we're talking about a metal building,
and these buildings get dirty, they get chalky, they get
rusty over time, so you need to really give it
a good cleaning, you know, scrub it with TSP or
(15:26):
a TSP substitute, and then rinse it thoroughly and let
it dry. On a metal building, rust is going to
be a big enemy. You don't want to just paint
over it. You've got to scrape it. You got to
hit it with a wire brush. You've got to get
away all the loose stuff, you know, remove that sand
it smooth, and then hit that area with a rust
inhibiting primer. If you skip that step, the rust is
(15:47):
just going to keep growing under the paint and it's
going to push it off and you're gonna have problems
down the road way quicker than you would like. So
once you've got it all prepped, it's time to paint.
And for the main body of the building, you want
a high qual one hundred percent acrylic water based paint.
Benjamin Moore's Element Guard or Regal Exterior. Those are great options,
so is Repcolites Endura. These products are flexible enough to
(16:10):
expand and contract with the building, and they're going to
hold the color really well through the seasons. So that
was my original answer. You know, that's it in a nutshell.
I sent it off and I felt really good about
it until he replied with that major complication that I
hinted at a little bit earlier. And here's the deal.
He has no water available at the site. So his
(16:31):
follow up question was this, can I just dry brush
the building for the cleaning and call it good. Well,
here's the thing. As much as I hate to say it,
dry brushing alone just isn't going to cut it. You know,
paint in this instance is really going to just be bonding.
You know, it's a surface bond. There's no penetration into metal.
It's not like wood that it can soak into and
get a little bit of a grip. It's metal, there's
(16:52):
no penetration. It's just a surface bond. And if chalk
and dirt are left behind on that surface, the paint
will stick to that layer, that chalk and dirt layer
instead of the actual building. And then when that chalk
let's go, or that dirt let's go, the paint goes
with it, and you'll see peeling way earlier than you should.
So what does he do? You know, what's the solution?
If he doesn't have running water out there, well, he's
(17:13):
got to find a way to bring water to the building.
And some folks do this by hauling five gallon pails
of water or larger totes, you know, something like that.
And then when they've got the water, they're like that,
they scrub the siding using that water, you know, mixed
with TSP or a TSP substitute, scrub it on and
get it cleaned, and then to rinse it. This is
where it gets even trickier. You know, how do you
(17:34):
do that? A lot of times people will pick up,
you know, maybe a larger plastic garbage can clean one
and fill that with the water that they brought in
their five gallon buckets. Then you can drop a submersible
pump into that and run a garden hose off of it.
Just remember these pumps, these submersible pumps, they're designed to
move water steadily, So forget about using the spray nozzle
(17:55):
at the end of the hose. Instead, just leave the
hose open and use your finger, you know, old school style,
to get a jet going to get the building rinsed.
It's not glamorous, it's not terribly wonderfully easy to pull off,
but it will work all right. Coming up, William Morris
is one of the key voices of the arts and
crafts movement, and his ideas on beauty and craftsmanship still
shape our homes today. We're going to get to that
(18:17):
right after this. This is home in progress where the
to do list is long, and that's all right. We're
not crabbing at you. We're not going to yell at you.
That's how it is. It's how ours is too. It's
probably supported by repcoll like Paints and Benjamin Moore because
home projects are easier when you've got people you can trust.
All Right, it's time to talk about William Morris, you know,
(18:38):
the wallpaper guru, one of the founders of the arts
and crafts movement, William Morris. I want to talk about
him and five ways that he changed how we think
about beauty in our homes, you know, beauty and design.
And before I can jump into all of that, I
do have to give you like an origin story, you know,
some backstory info, because this is going to set up
everything that follows. I'll try to move through it quickly
(19:01):
so we can get to the really, really good stuff.
But you know this stuff, you do need some of
this to really establish the rest of the story. All right.
To begin, we got to go back to the very beginning.
Morris was born in eighteen thirty four, just outside of London,
all right, So eighteen thirty four, William Morris enters the
world and as he grows up, through those early years
(19:22):
of childhood and such, he spends all of his days
you know, outside exploring, you know, and not all of
his days. You know what I'm saying. He's outside a lot.
You know, you can picture him a little kid, running
around in his knickerbockers, his suspenders. You know, he's wandering
through woodsy areas, fields, gardens. He's touching everything. He's finding flowers, birds,
(19:43):
He's probably running through poison. Ivy probably did that once.
He was a good observer. He only had to do
that once before he learned never ever do that again.
He's probably peeking in badger dens. He was curious, you know,
they did. The big bottom line is that he soaked
everything in. He's out in nature, soaking it all in.
You know, the color of the leaves as the different
(20:04):
seasons play out, the way the vines wind around each other,
the way birds are moving through the branches, all of that.
He absorbs all of that. Now, when he gets older
and it's time for college, he heads off to Oxford
with the plan of studying theology. And that's where everything
begins to change from you know, where he thought he
was going to go with his life into it, you know,
(20:25):
a completely different direction. At Oxford he meets Edward Burne
Jones and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the
name or not, Edward Burne Jones. He was a fellow
student who would later go on to become one of
Victorian England's most celebrated painters. Now through Edward Burne Jones,
William Morris is introduced to the pre Raphaelites. Pre Raphaelites
(20:47):
a group of artists. Just think of them as the
long haired proto hippies of the Victorian art world. You know,
that should at least give you a good vision of
who they are. Their vision as artists was to move
dramatically away from the idea, realized forms and the softened
landscapes of the Royal Academy. And what they wanted to
replace them with was, you know, vivid colors, incredibly intricate details,
(21:11):
things like that. They wanted to represent what was truly
there in the world and what the eye was truly seeing.
You know, that's the important thing to take away truth
in art. That's what they were after. And for Morris,
that concept that idea wasn't just interesting, it was completely electric.
It completely captured him. He'd already felt a little bit
(21:31):
of those stirrings as a boy wandering the countryside and
soaking in nature. But with the pre Raphaelites, it all
clicked into place. You know, what had been a feeling
before was now a philosophy. Truth in art, truth in architecture. Truth.
You know, that's what he was after. Now a little
bit later, that philosophy that he's forming runs headfirst into
a practical problem. You know, Morris gets married after college
(21:55):
or after the time at Oxford, and he begins furnishing
his first home. And when he doing that, everything that
he finds to put in the house is hideous. You know,
it's mass produced, it's over ornamented, it's too much. You know,
it's practically exactly what you'd expect to find in the
Victorian era. So he's encountering all of this ugly decor,
(22:17):
you know, for lack of a better word, and what's
he going to do? Well, Rather than tolerate what he
couldn't stand, he decided to go to work designing things
for himself. With help from his wife and his circle
of artist's friends, he spent two years creating furniture, textiles, glass, miurals,
you know, things that matched his ideals. And in eighteen
(22:38):
sixty one, you know, a few years of past, he's
outfitted his home with things that he's designed with his
group of friends. And by eighteen sixty one, that little
experiment grows into a company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company.
And it's a company producing everything from stained glass and
hand painted tiles to simple oak furniture and wallpapers. You know, basically,
(22:58):
the company wasn't interested in cranking out machine made clutter.
That wasn't its purpose. Its goal was to help everyday
people fill their homes with objects that were truly beautiful
and functional. Basically, he wanted to do for others what
he did for himself in his first home. So that
was eighteen sixty one when that company was founded. Years later,
in eighteen seventy five, Morris took full control of the
(23:21):
company and rebranded it Morrison Co. And that's how we
know it today. So there you go, the backdrop, the
childhood in nature, the friendships, the rebellion against the ordinary,
all of that stuff. Now, let's dig into five key
ways that William Morris changed, not just wallpaper, but the
very way we think about beauty and design in our homes.
(23:41):
All right, So the first one that we're going to
cover is he rebelled against fakery. Right rebelled against fakery.
In the Victorian era, fakery was everywhere, you know, absolutely everywhere.
You walk into a fashionable home and you're going to
see wallpapers pretending to be marble. Would you know, even
velvet fireplaces, you know, fireplace is built from you know,
(24:04):
cheap slate. They're painted to look like they're fine stone.
Pine furniture was brushed and wood grained, you know, so
that it looked like mahogany. Even the base boards were
painted to mimic marble. Okay, and the artists who did
this were really good, so it often took a really
close look to figure out, you know, the trick and
to figure out what the material actually was. And to
(24:26):
William Morris, you know, he hated this. It was all deception.
He saw it as all lying. You know, the walls
not velvet, but the wallpaper wants you to believe that
it's velvet. That chair isn't oak, but you're supposed to
think that it's oak. He hated all of that, and
that instinct in him that aversion to that fakery was
already in place years back when he refused to step
(24:47):
foot in the Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one, now
the Great Exhibition of eighteen fifty one. It was a
massive world's fare inside the Crystal Palace, which was an
enormous enormous glass and iron in Hyde Park. You know,
this big world's fair is going on eighteen fifty one.
Millions of people are pouring in to marvel at the
latest machine age miracles, you know, steam engines, printing presses,
(25:11):
furniture stamped out by factories. At this point in time,
Morris is sixteen years old. His family buys tickets, you know,
they're going in. They get their hands stamped so they
can go back out and come back in again in
case they need to use the bathroom or something. But
Morris refuses to even go in the first place. And
he refuses on principle. It's not just teenage angst or
(25:31):
something like that. You know, he's not poudy because he's
not hanging with his girlfriend. He's annoyed because everything inside
this place, everything that they're lauding and promoting and displaying,
all of it is gaudy and fake and soulless to
him at sixteen, and he wants no part of it.
So that was early on in his life. Later, his
(25:52):
friendship with the pre Raphaelites that I mentioned earlier. That
friendship deepens those ideas and those ideals, and he develops
this passion that follows him the rest of his life,
This passion to speak truthfully with his art, with his designs,
and with the materials that he uses. You know, that
just becomes ingrained in him, and that conviction shows up
(26:14):
really interestingly in his first home, the Red House. Most
Victorians would choose to cover brick, you know, when they
built a house out of brick, they choose to cover
it with stucco or paint or something like that, anything
to cover that brick up. But Morris and his architect
friend Philip Webb left there as completely bare, deep red
brick plaine, unapologetic. You know. It was all about honest materials.
(26:38):
It was about honest construction, hiding nothing, you know, just
complete honesty. That same principle ends up running through all
of his wallpapers and his textiles. You know, Morris drew
his patterns from super careful observation, you know, sketching roses
in his own garden, watching birds, steel strawberries at his
country home, things like that. But his wallpapers, they weren't
(26:59):
trying to be nature or to fool you into thinking
that your wall was a meadow. You know, that wasn't
his goal. Instead, they celebrated what they actually were, you know,
beautifully crafted patterns inspired by the natural world, but at
the end of the day, still just images on paper.
He wasn't trying to hide that fact. They were honest
about being decoration, and they were honest about their inspiration
(27:19):
and where it came from. And this was just a
huge breath of fresh air in that time period. You know.
By prioritizing honesty, William Morris challenged the Victorian assumption that
beauty required pretense. His ideas sparked the arts and crafts movement,
like we talked about at the very beginning. He influenced
designers across Europe and America all over the place, and
(27:40):
he ended up paving the way for Modernism's idea of
form follows function. You know, even today, when we admire
exposed brick, natural wood, or just simple organic patterns were
still echoing Morris's vision. So that's the first way William
Morris changed how we think about beauty and design in
our homes. He replaced fakery with honesty. Get to the
(28:00):
second way, that Morris changed how we think about design,
and this builds directly on what we just talked about.
For Morris, design wasn't just about taste. It was about morality.
And this might sound a little extreme, but Morris believed
something really really radical, that living surrounded by lies, even
small ones like fake woodgrain, living surrounded by lines, actually
(28:22):
changed who you were. You know. Dishonest, cheap or ugly design,
he argued, didn't just offend the eye. You know, I'm
not just offended, you know, visually or esthetically by this.
It actually damaged people. And on the flip side, good design, useful, beautiful,
honest design could make life better for everybody that it touched.
He saw this at both ends of the spectrum, workers
(28:44):
and consumers. So for workers, mass production completely drained in
his idea, in his mindset, completely drained the joy out
of making anything, you know. By the eighteen eighties, he
was speaking out against the industrial system, and not just
because it produced you know, kind of ugly, shoddy products.
He argued that factories instead, or as well, you know,
(29:05):
also robbed craftsmen of their dignity, you know, instead of
creating something beautiful from start to finish, workers you know,
were just reduced to repeating one tiny task all day long.
So no creativity, no pride, no connection to the final product.
You know, those were his ideas. It tore the workers down,
It turned you know, craftsmen into machines. And to Morris,
(29:26):
this wasn't just unfair. It was dehumanizing, stripping away what
made work meaningful, so huge deep thoughts and consumers they
weren't spared either. To Morris, you know, living surrounded by
deceptive objects, you know, pine painted that look like oh,
wallpaper pretending to be silk, things like that, you know,
machine made lace imitating handwork, surrounded by stuff like that
(29:47):
wasn't just settling for cheap substitutes. It was living, you know,
living with lies. That was what he saw in this.
We were living with lies, and day after day he
believed that those lies would all our moral senses. You know,
we get comfortable with falseness, we stop expecting truth. So
for him, ugliness and dishonesty they weren't just surface problems.
(30:09):
They weren't just esthetic issues. They were moral failures. And
by contrast, a chair that's made with care, or wallpaper
printed by hand, it's not just prettier it doesn't just
look better, it's honest. It honored the maker, It honored
the user. And when we talk today about authentic living,
or when we choose quality over quantity, or when we
(30:30):
feel drained by cheap, disposable stuff, you know, that's Morris's
insights still at work, you know, and how we feel
about design and beauty in our homes. All right. The
third way that Morris reshaped design is that he transformed
wallpaper from something that you ignored into something that you studied.
I love this point. Victorian wallpapers. They were incredibly elaborate.
(30:52):
We talked about that, they were ornate, they were incredibly detailed.
But here's the thing. They were designed to impress without
really being examined all that much. You basically think of them,
you know, Victorian wallpapers, think of them like background music,
you know, at a fancy restaurant, you know, rich costly.
It fills every surface, but you're not really supposed to
pay attention to it so much. Now, Morris completely changed that.
(31:15):
He made wallpaper worth contemplating. And to do this he
had to break all the rules. You know, the design
world at that point was split between you know, basically
two camps geometric reformers who wanted rigid stripes and mathematical shapes,
you know, on the wall. And then there was the
French ornate style in wallpaper that tried to look like
(31:35):
you know, carved plaster or silk brocade or whatever. It
tried to make incredibly hyper realistic, you know, visuals. Those
were the two options. Morris really didn't like either one,
so instead he crafted something entirely new. Patterns drawn from nature,
you know, naturalistic patterns, but not literal patterns. You know.
The things he came up with were flat, but they
(31:57):
were still alive. You know. The vines and flowers were
arranged so your eye could follow the rhythm, you know,
kind of trace the curves and feel the truth of
how the plants grew. Critics when they saw this new
work they were, you know, baffled, maybe it's the right word.
They were not immediately impressed. They called the papers peculiar
because they didn't fit into any of the established or
(32:20):
pre existing categories. The architect Richard Norman Shaw, for example,
he dismissed them as just too bold quote wallpaper. He
said should be a background, pure and simple. But that
was exactly Morris's point. He wanted wallpaper that engaged you,
that invited you to look closer. You know, you could
spend time with a Morris design still, can you know.
There's a lot to look at, you know, tracing the
(32:42):
vines with your eyes, just a lot to look at.
And it wasn't just the look, you know, it was
the making as well. You know, at a time when
most wallpapers were churned out by machine, Morris revived handblock printing.
You know, some of the designs that he did require dozens,
you know, of different blocks, weeks of labor, and layer
upon layer of natural pigment. In an industrial age, you know,
(33:02):
when everything is machine made. Morris chose craft over convenience,
and he did it every single time. Artists and aristocrats
immediately embraced his work, even though the critics maybe didn't.
You know, these other folks saw what the critics were missing,
that Morris had taken wallpaper and elevated it from you know,
just just decoration on a wall or background noise to
(33:23):
genuine art. And we still live with that shift today,
you know, every time we choose a statement wallpaper for
an accent wall or stop to really, you know, really
look at a pattern on our walls. We're echoing Morris's revolution.
He taught us that walls don't have to just sit
quietly in the background. They can sit quietly in the background,
and that's not bad either, But they can you know,
(33:45):
be focal points. They can be something that really draws
the eye. They can be canvas. Is worth contemplating, all right.
The fourth way that Morris reshaped design is that he
planted the seeds for making beauty accessible to everybody. Now,
this one's complicated because more Rs carried a contradiction at
the heart of everything he did. You know. On the
one hand, his dream was democratic, I guess is the
(34:07):
way to say it. He believed every single person deserves
beauty in their daily life, not just the wealthy people.
And by choosing wallpapers and textiles as this medium rather
than paintings or sculptures, he was deliberately working, you know,
in materials in forms that could, in theory, you know,
reach ordinary homes. But there's a problem. You know, Morris
was uncompromising about quality. We talked about it a little bit.
(34:30):
He insisted on handprinting, you know, he insisted on natural
dyes and weeks of painstaking labor for every design. Now,
I've got a video linked in the show notes that
shows exactly what the process was like, and it's astonishing.
You know, some Morris papers required fifteen separate woodblocks, each
one pressed carefully into place, and every time you watch
(34:51):
the craftsman press it down, you can hear a cash
registered ding. Just listen for it. You can hear it.
And that's the point I'm getting at. Because of the method,
the papers that he made were crazy expensive, so expensive
that only the wealthy and the upper middle class could
even afford them, you know, exactly the opposite of what
he was trying to do, and he knew this and
(35:12):
it really drove him nuts his entire career. He wanted
to create beautiful things for everybody, while also paying craftsmen
of fair wage and using the finest materials and methods.
But all of that together really ended up just being
art for the elite, you know, That's what he ended
up doing. So what's his real contribution here? I guess
I think it boils down to this. Morris established the
(35:35):
principle that art belonged in everyday spaces. You know, he
started the conversation that, you know, beauty is for everybody
regardless of your class or your income. According to him,
the dining room in my house, my little nondescript house,
that's just as worthy of displaying art and beauty as
a museum gallery. Right, And that's really really radical. He
(35:56):
was treating common homes with the same dignity as a
e lead mansions or institutions. And while he couldn't practically
make that all work out, you know, the way that
he wanted to. He couldn't make that work out himself.
Later designers were able to complete his vision. You know.
They took the esthetic principles that he established and eventually
found a way to adopt them for mass production. And finally,
(36:19):
when that happened, all of us, even the regular folks
like us, I can only speak for myself, the regular
folks like me, could have access to truly beautiful items
for our homes and our lives. You know. So Morris
planted the seeds, others harvested the crops, and maybe, you know,
just thinking about it, maybe his contradiction was necessary. You know,
(36:39):
if he had compromised on quality, his designs might not
have been compelling enough to inspire later generations, you know,
by proving the value of beauty at the highest level.
He kind of made the case for why everybody deserved
access to it. At least that's a way to look
at it, all right. Finally, the fifth way that Morris
changed how we feel about beauty and design. He didn't
just influence products. He sparked a movement. You know, I've
(37:02):
said it up a few times already, but William Morris became
the central figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. His ideas,
you know, honest materials, using honest materials, and using them honestly.
You know, that idea, the idea that beauty belongs in
daily life, that dignity belongs in craft. All of those
ideas formed the foundation for the Arts and Crafts movement.
And for Morris, it wasn't just about style or just
(37:24):
about aesthetics. You know, he was also pushing back against
the dehumanization of both workers and consumers in the industrial age.
You know. He was insisting on human dignity just as
much as visual beauty, you know, and because of that,
his influence spread way beyond wallpaper. You know, it reached
into furniture, into architecture, into the homes that we live in,
into even how we built and crafted those homes and
(37:48):
that furniture, you know, Gustav Stickley's furniture, Frank Lloyd Writ's
organic designs, the Craftsman Bungalow. All of these things and
way more, Carrie Morris's DNA, and all of them traced
back to his rebellion against mass produced ugliness. And what's
really interesting last thing I'll get to is that Morris
didn't just you know, stop with interior stuff. In eighteen
(38:08):
ninety one, just five years or so before he died,
he launched the Keelmscott Press, one of the most famous
private presses in history. You know. He designed typefaces, borders, illustrations,
and he printed on handmade paper. His masterpiece, the Keelmscott Chaucer,
which is definitely worth the look, is still considered one
of the most beautiful books ever created, you know, but
(38:29):
of course you can see it coming from a mile away.
That same contradiction that he struggled with with his wallpaper
and all of that followed him here. The books that
he was making, they were so labor intensive they could
only be afforded by wealthy collectors. Still, he did set
a standard of beauty that others would later adapt and
spread through modern printing technologies. So the guy was just
(38:50):
moving in all kinds of directions all the time. When
he died in eighteen ninety six, other people carried on
the work at Morris and Co. But his influence really
stopped rippling outward. His designs, you know, wallpaper designs, they're
still in print one hundred and fifty years later. You know,
his philosophy echoes every single time we choose fewer but
better objects, every time we value the handmaid over the
(39:13):
mass produced, and every time we insist that functional things
can also be beautiful. Whenever we do that, we're channeling
William Morris. So, yeah, he gave us beautiful wallpaper, but
he also left us with a reminder. You know, don't
just fill your house with stuff. Choose things that matter.
Surround yourself with objects that do their job well and
bring you joy, Make it useful, make it beautiful, and
your home is going to be better for it. All right,
(39:34):
that's going to wrap it up for today's episode of
Home in Progress, brought to you by Repcolite Paints and
Benjamin Moore. Thanks so much for hanging out with us
a little bit today. We really appreciate it and if
you did enjoy the show, subscribe, you know that would
be great. You'll never miss another episode. And if you
have a minute, leave a quick rating or review wherever
you're listening, and that will really help us out and
(39:55):
it helps other people find the show all right for
home in progress, I'm Dan Hanson. Thanks, thanks for listening,
have a great week, and I'll see you next time.
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