Home Impovment advice and more with Gary Sullivan 11/6/2025

Talking drywall repair and much more with a TRUE home improvement expert.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All right, Gary Sullivan's always taking care of business.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I mean always.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You can hear him on better than two hundred and
seventy five stations nationwide, including our sister station w k
RC on Saturdays and Sundays, but he joins us every Thursday. Gary,
good morning, my friend. How are you?

Speaker 3 (00:23):
I am doing wonderful And by the way, a happy
anniversary twenty five years.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, how long? How long you been at it?

Speaker 4 (00:30):
You know what?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
It's kind of scary, but in uh next month fifty
you're kidding me, No, of course I was only ten.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, that's right, I knew that already. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Congratulations ahead, milestones, aren't they Yeah, it's it's it's and
it's rare, to say the least in this day and age. Congratulations.
That's awesome, Grala, absolutely, thank you. You know you and
I were talking last week about patching drywall. I was
telling the story about our basement. You know, we lot
kids go down there and have that it right, I
mean all kinds of stuff and they got a lot

(01:03):
of fun down there and stayed safe, thank god. And
you had some really good tips. But is there anything
that I always tried to find, as you call it,
the Brenneman curve where it's really simple and something I
could do with this drywall.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
I do, I do.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
And it's a new product that came out about two
years ago. We didn't talk about this. We talked about
patching in different ways to patch it. But this one,
this one plays perfect for you. So it's called Eclipse.
It's made by DAP and it's about the size of
a saucer, so it's like eight to ten inches in diama.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
Okay, and it's very thin.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
It's almost not quite a plastic, almost like a fiberglass.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
But it's it's as thin as a sheet of paper. Okay,
no kidding.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
And it's got some tiny holes in it. And I'll
tell you why. And you you take the Eclipse. It's
got an adhesive on the back.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
You just pull it off. And let's say you have
a hole that's an inch.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
You know, you take this eight to ten inch piece
of thin plastic and you just set it over the hole.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
Okay, okay, now listen to this. You use no patching compound.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Now you're talking. I know, I know talking.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
I was talking to myself because we kept talking about
a Brennanman curve and I'm going, oh my gosh, I
missed the easiest patch in.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
The world, the eclipse. It's as thin as a sheet
of paper. It goes over the hole.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
And no topping compound, no plaster mix, no, no, you
use paint and paint the millage of a paint film
with a half inch roller cover, so.

Speaker 4 (02:53):
You can paint a whole wall. Ye, big deal.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
And you don't have to feather edge anything out. You
put two coats on, You're done. And I'm telling you, Tom,
you can't. You cannot see it. You can not see it.
It's unbelievable. That is unbelieva. All right, it's called it clips.
It clips, So put that in your memory. I'm going
to because I got to get to work down there.
Yeah all right, Look, I was giving the forecast a

(03:17):
little while ago about today is going to be nice,
Tomorrow is gonna be nice, Saturday is gonna be nice.
But then Sunday overnight, I mean, for the first time,
it's back. Yeah, there's talk about a wintry mix. If
you can believe that, highs in the forties, maybe even
the thirties on Sunday. Okay, So what kind of late

(03:37):
fall projects should I start thinking about if I haven't
already before it starts getting really really cool. Oh boy,
I could go on and on and on, so stop
me when we run out of times. Okay, the first
thing I see that a lot of people miss, and
I've heard other people now saying it on newscasts and stuff,
But boy, this is a big problem outdoor foster. Yep,

(03:59):
I got one, two three, and you know what was
it two weeks ago? It was still summertime, right, I
mean it was gorgeous. We're running around in shorts and
t shirts and now bam in the twenties and shutting
the water supply off. The first thing I want everybody
to know, and something everybody should do, regardless of what

(04:19):
type of faucet you have out there, and I'm going
to get into a couple of them, is disconnect the hose.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Of course.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, very very very yeah, very important, because what happens
even if you have a frostproof faucet, and a frostproof
faucet has the faucet handle and then a tube that
goes back into the house and that's where the washer
in the seat is, so you don't even have to
turn the water off to that particular faucet because it's frostproof.

(04:46):
But if you have the hose connected, all the water's
in the hose and it's filling up that tube and
it can freeze and a split and you may not
have a leak right now that you know, maybe you
are really small leak, but next spring you will have
a massively when you turn that on. Number One, disconnect
the hose. If you do not have a frostproof faucet

(05:09):
and you just have a regular lawn faucet, and we
see a lot of those in older homes, you know,
maybe built the sixties, fifties, forties. That has to be
turned off on the inside of the house. So you
go down in the basement cross space, see where that
fawcett is connected. If you've got a regular piece of
copper pipe coming up to it and there's a valve there,
that valve needs to be turned off and there's a

(05:32):
little tiny cap on it. Undo that cap and back
drain it in your set. But Gosh makes you for sure.
The biggest problem is people leave those on and it's
filled with water. It's a frostproof faucet, and the spring
they turned the faucet on, they go.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
Like, well, I thought this wasn't going to freeze. Well
it wouldn't, but you left a hose on.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
I've got it, giltest George lord Lesson. All right, what
else are we thinking about?

Speaker 4 (05:56):
Well, another thing is a lot of folks have.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Humidifiers and do humidifiers, and we've made that transition.

Speaker 4 (06:04):
Now.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
If you have humidity in your home, you probably ran
a do umidifier. But in the winter time it gets
very dry. Colder air can't hold as much moisture, so
the air gets very dry outside becomes dry in the
house and a lot of people have, you know, humidifiers.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
Well, now's the time to make that transition. So the.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Humidifiers usually on the duckwork of a furnace. If you
have one, you probably know it, but it's time to
turn that on now. So there's two things. There's a
water valve above it you turn that on. There's a
sellnoid that's calling for water to bring it over this
pad which the blows that moisture in your home. So
two things you got to do if you have a humidifier,

(06:47):
turn the water supply on above that humidifier and open
the duckwork right on the duck work.

Speaker 4 (06:53):
There's just a little lever. It'll say summer, it'll say winter.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Pretty easy to do. Flip it the wind, turn on
the water, and humidification will start in your home. You
want to keep your humidity inside your home in the
wintertime around thirty five percent.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
So that's something to certainly get on.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Make sure those gutters are clean too. We beat that
like a dead horse. But I got a big old
ash tree in my front yard and the leaves have
pretty much gone with the wind we had yesterday.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
Now, of course they're all on the ground.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (07:26):
Gotta work.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
But you know one thing that I've been contemplating, and
I don't have a big, long driveway, so it's not
like I need to do it. But I've been told
by so many doctors that when you get to be
roughly our age, and especially when it's cold, the doctors
in emergency rooms find that the overwhelming majority of people
that come in with heart attacks are men our age.

(07:49):
Even if you're in great shape to go out there
and shovel snow. Right, So a snowblower is that a
good investment?

Speaker 3 (07:57):
I think it's a great investment. You know, you'll go
I've had one twenty seven years. Okay, same one, take
care of it. There's been several years. I mean we
live in Cincinnati. Ready was summertime two weeks ago, and
now we're talking about wintery mixes.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
So it's up yo yo.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
So some winners, I may never ever even use it.
Other years, I'll use it six and seven eight times.
So I think it's a wonderful investment. It sure beats.
I have a little bit of a long driveway. I
don't know how long it is, but it's longer than
our first and second house, sure, and I don't want

(08:37):
to shovel that thing at this point. No, I'll use
my snowblower, or I'd hire somebody to do it. I mean,
you'd be out there for a couple hours.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Well, it's a serious thing, man, I mean, I'm telling you,
I live next door to two doctors. When we first
moved back to town and O seven and my father in
law tell the story all the time. This guy was
an iron man triathlon into his sixties, credible shape, and
he's out there shoveling the snow off the driveway. We
were literally coming in that day in a big snowstorm.

(09:07):
It hit we were moving in that day and the
neighbor came racing out and said, hey, sir, I know
you don't know me. I don't know you, but just listen.
Here's the deal. So I've been curious about that ever since.
There are a couple of things. I want to stay
on this for next week, though, because I do want
to get to two other areas that I wonder about
as we're getting ready for winter, gutters at, furnace filters right,

(09:33):
and then programming the thermostat. I want to get to
all three of those if you don't mind when we
get together again next week.

Speaker 4 (09:41):
That sounds like a planned.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Okay, Deil. You don't even have to send me an
email this time.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Gary, Hey, buddy, I hope you have a great weekend
and take care of yourself, and we're looking forward to
being able to officially wish you a happy fiftieth here.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
In another month. There you go, plan to be here

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Alright, take care of yourself here, great talking to you
as always,