October 12, 2024 • 30 mins
Dean helps a caller with structural placement to protect their chickens from Hawks.
Dean gives landscape ideas to a caller who’s seeking a decorated front yard that is ADA friendly.
Dean expresses his love of helping mainstream homeowners and their needs in real world situations.
Plus, talks about mini split air conditioners and pruning of trees (Fall time).
Dean gives landscape ideas to a caller who’s seeking a decorated front yard that is ADA friendly.
Dean expresses his love of helping mainstream homeowners and their needs in real world situations.
Plus, talks about mini split air conditioners and pruning of trees (Fall time).
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
MHI I Am forty and live Screaming and HD Everywhere
on the iHeart Radio app. Hey, welcome to home Where
Every week we help you better understand that place where
you live. I am Dean Sharp, the house whisper here
with you live like I am every weekend satwell, not
the last two weekends, but now back again live. We're
(00:32):
back from vacation. Where was I at?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I like I am? Every weekend Saturday morning six to
eight Pacific time, Sunday mornings nine to noon Pacific time.
By the way, the Big Show Tomorrow, Sunday Show from
nine to noon. We're going to be talking about your bedroom.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I don't know why I said that that way. No,
we're gonna be talking about bedrooms tomorrow. It's been a
while since we've broached that object. You would think bedrooms
are a pretty straightforward thing by way of design to
make them, you know, look great. It turns out not
so much. Really. Honestly, a lot of people struggle with
(01:13):
their bedroom and so we're going to help you solve
those issues tomorrow. That's tomorrow's big show, but today it's
a little bit of everything, plus your calls. I'm right
in the middle of taking calls right now. I'm on
a roll, as I do, and so I want to
go back to the phones. Let's see here but the bump.
Let's just pick one. I want to talk to Nancy. Hey, Nancy,
(01:36):
welcome home.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yes, good morning. I'm lovely to hear you. Yes, I
have a problem with a hawk. I have chickens and
their little chicken yard. It's just a small little yard
that I have metal sensing around. But the problem is
I have an apple tree and a apricot tree, and
(02:01):
so I can't put netting over it all. Is there
any structure coming?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You're kind of breaking up a little bit, Nancy. Let
me ask you this question. What has been the interaction
so far with the hawk and the chickens? Has Has
the hawk picked them off? Picked off a few? Tell
me what's going on there?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Okay, I'm moving to a better spot, so I should
be able to be heard better. Is this better now? Okay?
So what okay? So what has happened is the hawk
has Okay, I have one hen, and I've had to
secure everything because raccoons came and got my other hen,
so I've got one left. So I've got two pullets
(02:51):
right now, and I have them in a large, secure
crate so that they can get accustomed with each other.
And the hawk yesterday came and landed on top of
the crate. Oh yeah, yes, So I went out there
and yelled at him, and he kind of gave me
(03:12):
a glaring look and begrudgingly flew off. I thought, you snark.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Right right, Okay, well all right, and so you've got
a couple of trees in the chicken yard as well,
smaller trees though. Yeah, yes, I don't know if I've
got the universal solution for this, but you know, Tina
and I have chickens, and so we've had to struggle
with the exact same thing. We've got chickens, and we've
(03:38):
got hawk roosts all around us, right, hawks are always
flying overhead, And at first we were concerned maybe we
should just when we were young chicken owners, naive chicken owner,
We're like, just let's cover over, let's net over the
entire yard. Of course, you know that works if you
(03:58):
can do it. But at the same time, uh, you know,
we've also seen a little bit of interaction. We've actually
had a juvenile hawk land in the yard with the chickens.
And uh, strangely enough, though, once a hawk and a chicken,
now you've got pullets and everybody, for who's non chicken language,
that's a it's a smaller chicken, okay. Uh. And they're
(04:22):
they're younger, they're smaller, but strangely enough, full grown chickens.
You know, they're little dinosaurs. And uh, once a hawk
is actually sitting standing on the ground with a chicken. Yes,
their talons are sharper and their beak is a little
bit more sharp than a chicken, but uh, it's not
that uneven of a fight, especially if there's more than
(04:43):
one chicken around when it comes to that. And so
the real danger, uh is uh the hawks swooping down
like they like to, grabbing and going okay. And so
the thing that I tell chicken owners all the time
is you don't necessarily have to cover over the entire
(05:05):
chicken area to protect them, because you know, a hawk
sitting on the ground is a relatively harmless thing. I'm
not saying that they couldn't cause some damage, but it's
just once they're grounded, they're not that kind of a
threat anymore. And in fact, you know, we have a
rooster in our yard who's about four times the size
of your average hawk. And so once a hawk is
(05:27):
sitting on the ground, believe me, they are intimidy. Now
this guy is towering over them, so, which I guess
is one benefit of having a rooster. But my point is,
you see hawks, birds of prey. What they do, Hawks
and eagles and falcons. They love to swoop in, grab
and go right. And so the key is disrupt their
(05:50):
flight path. Okay, if a hawk, a hawk could fly
over your you know now right now the chickens are created.
So now he's like at the zoo where he just
comes down and like is observing them, right, but for
really grabbing them and going a hawk is going to
want to spy out a really good angle that they
can swoop down uninterruptedly, grab a chicken out of the
(06:13):
yard and keep on going. And in our case, we've
got trees around. We have larger trees outside the yard.
We've got a couple of trees inside the chicken yard,
and there's just no clear flight path for a hawk.
So if a hawk wants to get at our chickens,
and we have nothing else covering the yard. But if
a hawk wants to get at our chickens, you've got
(06:35):
to come down and land in the yard. And to
this day, and this is with tens of hawks flying
over us just about every day, after years and years
and years and years, we've only had a young, inexperienced
hawk land in the yard one time and they regretted it.
So my advice from my own experience, and maybe there's
(06:58):
some keener chicken out advice from more experienced you know,
chicken owners out there, but my advice is cut off
the flight the glide path. Okay. Uh So as long
as you disrupted the glide path, you shouldn't. They'll be around,
but they shouldn't be a threat. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah? Yeah, okay, okay, Well, thank you so much and
have a delightful.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Day and you too, and thank you for the call.
All right, See we get it all. Crumbling foundations, chickens,
grass cut too short? What will happen next? Who knows?
Can't f kean sharp the house with her at your service.
Good Saturday morning to you. The sun is up, look
(07:41):
at it out there, just look at it. Let's take
a moment. Mm hmmm beautiful. Also, speaking of beautiful, guess
who's up and sitting across the table from me. She's
been here for a little bit, Yes, I have. But
but but you were a little late this morning. I
(08:03):
was very late, a little sleepy. I was dreaming. All right,
you're dreaming of maple syrup now and apples. Yeah, okay, yeah,
I get it. Tina's here, by the way, and she'll
be here tomorrow too, on time, or she'll have her
pay doct all the money, with all the money we
(08:25):
give her to be here in studio with me zero money.
We will dock that pay. We will take away your
zero money. All right, you know what. I want to
take another call, and then I've got some other things
to share with you. So let's talk to Raina. Hey, Reina,
welcome home.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Hi. Thanks Dean, you are such a gift. I have
a question my family and I want to help out
our seventy midst of these parents whose yard is kind
of overgrown and the front yard and just kind of
clean it up, maybe you know, wood chips, native things.
But my stepfather has to pull up the car periodically
because my mom has limited mobility, and so she pulled.
(09:08):
He pulls the car up into the yard to get
her closer to the front door. So he didn't want
us to do the main grass part, which is just
really dead and terrible. And I wondered if there's something
we could do, like di y simple that would allow
him to still pull the car up but clean up
the yard.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Okay, Uh so when you say pull the car, so
he's pulling the car onto the yard.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Now, Yeah, to get it right up by the front door.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
All right. So so I'm trying to I'm trying to
get a picture of this in my head. We've got
kind of a typical suburban house driveway up to the garage, right,
but the front door is off to the side of that,
and there's yard there. There's lawn, let's let's call it lawn.
We've got lawn there. And now, because of mom's situation,
(09:58):
Dad has to pull onto the lawn area in order
to get her as close as possible to the front door.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah, and then he backs out and parks in front
of the house.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Okay, got it, got it? Okay, Well, okay, so first
of all, instead of okay, the first thing that comes
to mind that you can do. And this is a
this is a d i y thing, Okay, a little
bit a little bit of of of you know, sweat
and toil, but it's.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Definitely the Yeah, we have lots of young grandkids to
help and my brother has some construction experience that we
can do some stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Okay, so uh, this is something this is something actually
that that that that we've done with clients who just
don't want any driveway at all in front of their
house because they love green space. And that is have
you considered uh, from the driveway, you know, and marking
the path that that he takes, the arc that is
(11:01):
necessary for him to pull in that from the driveway
over that you put in the you know, a form
of grass paver protection that is partial grass and partial
pavers to support the weight of the car.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Okay, I wondered if we could do something with pavers.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, now these aren't the thing I'm talking about here
is Uh, there's different ways of approaching it. You can
go right now to like a place like the big
box store, like the home depot and find these. They
come in like twenty four by twenty four squares. They're
they're like a little three by three inch concrete nodules
(11:47):
that are all wired together, but they allow either gravel
and or grass to grow in between them. Okay, And
that way it's a it's like it's like a hybrid space, okay,
because once you've leveled it out and supported this, you
can keep that area green, you can water it. And
(12:09):
yet it's actually designed to support the weight of a
vehicle being pulled up onto it, so it is both
lawn and driveway. You can do this in a couple
of different ways. You can use the nodules. I call
them pavers. They're not exactly pavers, but they're these little
semi hybrid pavers that allow grass to grow in between them. Also,
(12:34):
there are and if you look online you can find these.
There are very very high strength like black plastic interlocking
grids that allow a lot of either gravel or grass
to grow in between them. But the grid again sits
there and supports the weight of the vehicle. So the
(12:56):
very first the point of my suggestion is this, I
think sight unseen that I want to embrace the situation.
And you know, you guys obviously don't want to pour
a driveway over there, obviously, but a temporary situation that
will last for years, okay, would be to kind of
(13:16):
hybridize that follow the path that the car has to make,
make a comfortable actual temporary driveway there, and then outside
of that zone, clear everything else out and go like
crazy to uh to you know, replant, rebuild and uh
(13:37):
and beautify the rest of the lawn in in landscaping
and all the normal landscaping rules lawn shrubs, flower color
and anything in front of height. And when I say height,
I don't mean, you know, five or six feet, but uh,
but the shrubs growing up in front of that pull
in driveway area that that obscures the view of it,
(13:59):
so that from the street it's not like, oh, look,
you can see all of that driveway. It's still it's
usable and can be pulled in, but it's behind a backdrop,
as it were. Does that make sense not it?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
It does?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Okay, So it's theatrics. It's it's theater staging, you know,
going out a little bit high in front of it,
lower down towards the sidewalk, greening all of that out
and we don't necessarily have to see that driveway air.
In fact, if you can obscure it all together, then
you could just again isolate that driveway area and maybe
go to gravel pea gravel in there, which is easier
(14:36):
and walkable, or the grids. The pea gravel would be
the least expensive of all, incredibly incredibly inexpensive and drains
really well, maybe with some stiff yes, absolutely absolutely. Now,
if she has a little trouble navigating and walking getting
out of the car, then maybe just a few stepstones
(14:57):
in the pea gravel to just stabilize that area until
she gets onto the front porch. But otherwise a pea
gravel path so that the car isn't destroying lawn, isolated
off as a temporary driveway, and then landscape the heck
out of everything else that's around it. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You are so welcome, Raina. Thanks for the calling. Good luck.
You know what this is real life? You know, this
is the kind of stuff that I love being on
the radio and talking to you about. I gotta tell
you I've spent my entire career designing a state level homes,
you know, I mean, you know, mansions and big fancy
(15:38):
the kind of stuff that you see in fancy magazine
spreads and all of that. And guess what never ends
up in big, open spread magazines. Practical normal life issues
like mom needs to be dropped off right at the porch,
and nobody has the budget to repour a driveway, and
(16:00):
how do you make a home a home beautiful and
functional and accommodate for those kinds of things. That never
makes it into Architectural Digest, by the way, but it
is design, nonetheless, and really really good design is the
solution at the end of the day to problems like that.
(16:21):
This is why I always tell you that design matters most,
and this is why I love sitting here talking to
you about real world problems in real world homes. And
we will do more of it when we return.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
AM six forty live streaming and HD everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You are Home with Dean Sharp, the house Whisper.
Thanks for joining us on the program this morning. What
a stunning, stunning weekend we've got ahead of us. Here
falls in the air. I don't care what the temperature is,
(17:01):
you can smell it. You can just tell the quality
of the air changes this time of year. It is
just different. I don't think we're pushing up past the
seventies today, are we?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
No?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Huh? In most places in southern California, it's just going
to be a beautiful, beautiful weekend, and I hope you've
got plans to get out in it and make it special.
I want to comment very shortly here, very quickly, because
I ran a little along that last segment, and so
this is going to be a shorter one, but I
want to I was very, very touched by Raina's call
(17:36):
about her aging parents because something I alluded to when
I was answering her question is this. You know when
I was first recruited to do this show years and
years ago, Now, what has it been like over eight
(17:56):
years ago when Robin Bertolucci approached me and said, Hey,
I think you should do this show on the weekends
on KFI, and she said, don't say no. Because I
was about to like, why, why are you disrupting my
beautifully planned out life. She's like, I know that you're
(18:18):
gonna love it. It's going to be an adventure. But
I also know that that there's this part of you,
this part of your heart that just kind of longs
to help, you know, normal people, mainstream homeowners. And it's
true because most of my career has been wrapped around
a state level. I say a state level because I
(18:40):
you know, I don't like saying the word mansion, but
that's basically what it comes down to, big, big, big,
beautiful custom homes, and and I don't regret that at all.
I love that. I love that that level of creativity
that you get to pour into that because you know,
people write the checks for it, honestly. But I have
(19:03):
always lived, as you know, if you're a fan of
the show, very very simply, and you know, I just
live a suburban existence, in a regular old suburban neighborhood
and in a smaller than average by far suburban home.
And because I come from a blue collar family, a
lower lower middle class, blue collar family growing up. And
(19:25):
don't regret any of that either. So the point is,
this is where I come from. This is the life
that I'm most comfortable with, even though during the day
I design mansions for the wealthy and it's all good,
it's all great. I love, love, love helping mainstream homeowners
(19:47):
with real issues. And I alluded in my answer to
Raina's call because she's got aging parents now, and her
dad has to drive up onto the lawn in order
to get near the front porch in order to help
mom get directly out of the car and into the house.
That's real world stuff, real life stuff. And you are
never ever ever going to see a front yard like
(20:12):
that displayed in Architectural Digest. You know, those are just
real world situations that you know, hote couture design magazines
have no concern about because it's just not jougie enough.
But design is still the answer to that problem. And
(20:34):
that's what I love about talking to you about your
home every weekend, not just solving the little nuts and
bolts issues, but also encouraging you that design matters most
on every single level. You know, I wrote this last
week for a different reason, but I want you to
hear this. Billions are spent every year on home improvement.
(20:58):
You would think that means most homes would you know, improve,
but they don't. Why because there's a missing piece design
Design matters most Most of us have never been taught
this truth. The wealthy have always had great design at
(21:19):
their disposal, but the rest of us, whose homes, by
the way, mean more to us because we've scraped and
sacrificed more to have them, we are far more likely
to accept that, Yeah, we get what we get right
in the mainstream home. I don't want you to ever
(21:40):
accept that, because design is not about good design is
not about having a massive budget. Good design is just
good design. And when we approach our problems from that perspective,
there's almost always a solution, and it always helps, and
it always makes things beautiful. So in talking to Raina
(22:01):
about here, you know, turf pavers pea, gravel decomposed, granted,
accepting the reality of the situation, Let's make a driveway
right up to even if it's a temporary one. Let's
make a driveway right up to the front porch. And
then let's landscape the heck out of the rest of
the yard to incorporate it, to disguise it somewhat. There's
(22:24):
always a solution. No, it's not going to get in
the spread of a big, fancy magazine, but yes, it's
going to improve the lives of the people who live
in that home. And that is what makes all the difference. Right,
that's why we're here. All right, I've yacked enough. We're
going to get some news from Jackie Ray and then
(22:45):
we come back. I've got a couple of little new
things that i want to share with you. We will
do that right on the other side. Can if I
in chart the house whisper Welcome home, Welcome to home.
Here we are at the end of another Saturday morning show.
By the two hours just fly by, don't they. A
(23:06):
couple of things I want to share with you before
we're done today. First of all, if we left you
on hold today, which we did, This is the case
all the time. By the way, that whenever we don't
get to your call, you get to priority status for
the next show. So if you guys call back tomorrow,
then you get to go right to the front of
(23:26):
the line. It's like a lightning lane pass at Disneyland,
except it doesn't cost you anything extra. So it's a
good thing. Tomorrow on the show, again, just to remind
you that we're going to be talking about bedrooms. Bedrooms
are a tricky thing to design, mostly because people don't
(23:46):
take the right angled perspective in designing. Then we're going
to talk in depth on bedrooms tomorrow on the program.
Plus a little bit more news from Vermont from our
recent two week vacation there, got it, share some things
with you. I know, it's a funny thing with our show.
Some people are like, get to the information and other
people are like, please spend more time talking about your
(24:09):
personal life. And you know what, You're never gonna make
everybody happy, but we try and find a balance there.
So a little bit more of the love of autumn
from our trip to Vermont, plus a few other things.
We've got some great things coming up too. By the way,
can I just hint at this, Yes, we have secured
the date the Sunday before Thanksgiving we are going to
(24:31):
be doing another House Whisper holiday home show live at
the KFI Studios in Burbank, and we will be telling
you when you can apply to you know, put it,
you know, for the contest of who's going to be
with us there live audience on that day plus early December.
(24:52):
I think maybe the first Sunday, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Tina and I I don't exactly know what, but Smart
and Final we're going to be broadcasting from but a
Smart and Final down in Orange County. We're going to
be doing the show live from there, so you can
come out. And that's kind of a prepastathon thing. We
got so much stuff coming up that's really fun and
(25:14):
good that we'll keep you posted on one new thing now.
This literally came as a result of one of the
inns that we stayed at in Vermont, actually in Essex,
New York, when I was visiting my friends on their
farm there. We stayed at the Essex Inn and a
beautiful room and when I walked in, I'm like, look
(25:35):
at that painting over there. It's a nice cool image
of painting hanging on the wall about twenty four by
twenty four inches square. But I noticed it was coming
off the wall a little bit. I walked over and
it's a few inches off the wall, and I'm like, ah,
look at that. This is the first one I've actually
seen installed the art cool art cool, okay, And you
(25:57):
can look this up. It's by LG. Right. And why
is there a beautiful painting here hanging on the wall,
And why is there like three or four inches of
build up behind it hanging it off the wall? You
know why? Because that is the room's many split air
conditioner cassette, Yes, many split air conditioners. As you know,
(26:19):
they're all the rave. They have revolutionized the way that
we can get too hard to heat and air conditioned spaces,
and many split just means that instead of a big
old compressor outside the building, it's a small, little, very
quiet compressor, and instead of duct work, they're ducked less.
You put a cartridge or what we call a cassette
(26:42):
somewhere in the room. Typically the first ones that came
out and still the most popular ones, you know, they're
about three feet long and about ten inches tall, and
they go high up on a wall somewhere and they
handle the whole room. But since those came out, there
are now cassettes that fit in the ceiling right like
a ceiling, but they're not a duct connected to them.
(27:03):
And now things like this. LG has put together this
wall mount cassette and it's about twenty four by twenty
four by I think maybe five inches deep, And because
it sits on the wall a big flat square, it
already has a matte picture frame and frame around it,
(27:24):
and you can slide your favorite artwork into it. Now,
it's not like it's going to fool anybody who walks
up to it. They're like, oh, this is just a
painting on the wall. No, you can see that there's
something behind it there. But as opposed to just a
big old utility device hanging on your wall, why not
put a piece of art hanging off the front of it.
(27:46):
It was actually lovely. It only added to the overall
feel and motif of the room, and so you should
check it out. If you've been thinking about like using
a mini split system to cool or heat a room,
and they can do both, then you should check this out. LG.
You know that appliance manufacturer art Cool the all new
(28:10):
Mini Split cassette from l G. There you go, all right,
one more reminder before we're out of here. It's fall.
It's time to prune your trees. Now. Now is when
we prune trees for two really important reasons. Okay. Number one,
major pruning. Now, if you live in southern California, of course,
you can do maintenance pruning all year round, all right,
(28:31):
But the big pruning, the big pruning, is not not
springtime pruning. Okay, you do it in the fall. And
here are the two reasons why. Number One, you're in
a shock a tree when you prune it big time.
You want to do that right as it's going into
its dormant state. For the winter, so fall is the
time to do the big prune. And secondly, you know
(28:53):
in springtime birds have already started to nest up in
your tree in secret way. If you do a major
pruning there anybody who's ever done that before has bemoaned
the fact that you look down on the ground and
now here's a bird's nest that's been disrupted and destroyed.
We don't want it. We let the birds do their
thing in the spring. Don't touch the trees in the springtime.
(29:16):
If you've got big pruning ahead of you, do it
now before the holidays, and let that tree think about
it all winter long and spring. I guarantee you man,
it will bust out in a health level that you've
never seen before. There you go, all right, y'all. We
will see you right back here tomorrow morning, nine to
noon for the big show talking about bedroom and bedroom design.
(29:39):
Until then, get out into this beautiful day and get
busy building yourself a beautiful life. We'll see tomorrow. This
has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune
into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every
Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every
Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime
(30:03):
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
MHI I Am forty and live Screaming and HD Everywhere
on the iHeart Radio app. Hey, welcome to home Where
Every week we help you better understand that place where
you live. I am Dean Sharp, the house whisper here
with you live like I am every weekend satwell, not
the last two weekends, but now back again live. We're
(00:32):
back from vacation. Where was I at?
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I like I am? Every weekend Saturday morning six to
eight Pacific time, Sunday mornings nine to noon Pacific time.
By the way, the Big Show Tomorrow, Sunday Show from
nine to noon. We're going to be talking about your bedroom.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
No, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I don't know why I said that that way. No,
we're gonna be talking about bedrooms tomorrow. It's been a
while since we've broached that object. You would think bedrooms
are a pretty straightforward thing by way of design to
make them, you know, look great. It turns out not
so much. Really. Honestly, a lot of people struggle with
(01:13):
their bedroom and so we're going to help you solve
those issues tomorrow. That's tomorrow's big show, but today it's
a little bit of everything, plus your calls. I'm right
in the middle of taking calls right now. I'm on
a roll, as I do, and so I want to
go back to the phones. Let's see here but the bump.
Let's just pick one. I want to talk to Nancy. Hey, Nancy,
(01:36):
welcome home.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Yes, good morning. I'm lovely to hear you. Yes, I
have a problem with a hawk. I have chickens and
their little chicken yard. It's just a small little yard
that I have metal sensing around. But the problem is
I have an apple tree and a apricot tree, and
(02:01):
so I can't put netting over it all. Is there
any structure coming?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You're kind of breaking up a little bit, Nancy. Let
me ask you this question. What has been the interaction
so far with the hawk and the chickens? Has Has
the hawk picked them off? Picked off a few? Tell
me what's going on there?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Okay, I'm moving to a better spot, so I should
be able to be heard better. Is this better now? Okay?
So what okay? So what has happened is the hawk
has Okay, I have one hen, and I've had to
secure everything because raccoons came and got my other hen,
so I've got one left. So I've got two pullets
(02:51):
right now, and I have them in a large, secure
crate so that they can get accustomed with each other.
And the hawk yesterday came and landed on top of
the crate. Oh yeah, yes, So I went out there
and yelled at him, and he kind of gave me
(03:12):
a glaring look and begrudgingly flew off. I thought, you snark.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Right right, Okay, well all right, and so you've got
a couple of trees in the chicken yard as well,
smaller trees though. Yeah, yes, I don't know if I've
got the universal solution for this, but you know, Tina
and I have chickens, and so we've had to struggle
with the exact same thing. We've got chickens, and we've
(03:38):
got hawk roosts all around us, right, hawks are always
flying overhead, And at first we were concerned maybe we
should just when we were young chicken owners, naive chicken owner,
We're like, just let's cover over, let's net over the
entire yard. Of course, you know that works if you
(03:58):
can do it. But at the same time, uh, you know,
we've also seen a little bit of interaction. We've actually
had a juvenile hawk land in the yard with the chickens.
And uh, strangely enough, though, once a hawk and a chicken,
now you've got pullets and everybody, for who's non chicken language,
that's a it's a smaller chicken, okay. Uh. And they're
(04:22):
they're younger, they're smaller, but strangely enough, full grown chickens.
You know, they're little dinosaurs. And uh, once a hawk
is actually sitting standing on the ground with a chicken. Yes,
their talons are sharper and their beak is a little
bit more sharp than a chicken, but uh, it's not
that uneven of a fight, especially if there's more than
(04:43):
one chicken around when it comes to that. And so
the real danger, uh is uh the hawks swooping down
like they like to, grabbing and going okay. And so
the thing that I tell chicken owners all the time
is you don't necessarily have to cover over the entire
(05:05):
chicken area to protect them, because you know, a hawk
sitting on the ground is a relatively harmless thing. I'm
not saying that they couldn't cause some damage, but it's
just once they're grounded, they're not that kind of a
threat anymore. And in fact, you know, we have a
rooster in our yard who's about four times the size
of your average hawk. And so once a hawk is
(05:27):
sitting on the ground, believe me, they are intimidy. Now
this guy is towering over them, so, which I guess
is one benefit of having a rooster. But my point is,
you see hawks, birds of prey. What they do, Hawks
and eagles and falcons. They love to swoop in, grab
and go right. And so the key is disrupt their
(05:50):
flight path. Okay, if a hawk, a hawk could fly
over your you know now right now the chickens are created.
So now he's like at the zoo where he just
comes down and like is observing them, right, but for
really grabbing them and going a hawk is going to
want to spy out a really good angle that they
can swoop down uninterruptedly, grab a chicken out of the
(06:13):
yard and keep on going. And in our case, we've
got trees around. We have larger trees outside the yard.
We've got a couple of trees inside the chicken yard,
and there's just no clear flight path for a hawk.
So if a hawk wants to get at our chickens,
and we have nothing else covering the yard. But if
a hawk wants to get at our chickens, you've got
(06:35):
to come down and land in the yard. And to
this day, and this is with tens of hawks flying
over us just about every day, after years and years
and years and years, we've only had a young, inexperienced
hawk land in the yard one time and they regretted it.
So my advice from my own experience, and maybe there's
(06:58):
some keener chicken out advice from more experienced you know,
chicken owners out there, but my advice is cut off
the flight the glide path. Okay. Uh So as long
as you disrupted the glide path, you shouldn't. They'll be around,
but they shouldn't be a threat. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah? Yeah, okay, okay, Well, thank you so much and
have a delightful.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Day and you too, and thank you for the call.
All right, See we get it all. Crumbling foundations, chickens,
grass cut too short? What will happen next? Who knows?
Can't f kean sharp the house with her at your service.
Good Saturday morning to you. The sun is up, look
(07:41):
at it out there, just look at it. Let's take
a moment. Mm hmmm beautiful. Also, speaking of beautiful, guess
who's up and sitting across the table from me. She's
been here for a little bit, Yes, I have. But
but but you were a little late this morning. I
(08:03):
was very late, a little sleepy. I was dreaming. All right,
you're dreaming of maple syrup now and apples. Yeah, okay, yeah,
I get it. Tina's here, by the way, and she'll
be here tomorrow too, on time, or she'll have her
pay doct all the money, with all the money we
(08:25):
give her to be here in studio with me zero money.
We will dock that pay. We will take away your
zero money. All right, you know what. I want to
take another call, and then I've got some other things
to share with you. So let's talk to Raina. Hey, Reina,
welcome home.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Hi. Thanks Dean, you are such a gift. I have
a question my family and I want to help out
our seventy midst of these parents whose yard is kind
of overgrown and the front yard and just kind of
clean it up, maybe you know, wood chips, native things.
But my stepfather has to pull up the car periodically
because my mom has limited mobility, and so she pulled.
(09:08):
He pulls the car up into the yard to get
her closer to the front door. So he didn't want
us to do the main grass part, which is just
really dead and terrible. And I wondered if there's something
we could do, like di y simple that would allow
him to still pull the car up but clean up
the yard.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Okay, Uh so when you say pull the car, so
he's pulling the car onto the yard.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Now, Yeah, to get it right up by the front door.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
All right. So so I'm trying to I'm trying to
get a picture of this in my head. We've got
kind of a typical suburban house driveway up to the garage, right,
but the front door is off to the side of that,
and there's yard there. There's lawn, let's let's call it lawn.
We've got lawn there. And now, because of mom's situation,
(09:58):
Dad has to pull onto the lawn area in order
to get her as close as possible to the front door.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Yeah, and then he backs out and parks in front
of the house.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Okay, got it, got it? Okay, Well, okay, so first
of all, instead of okay, the first thing that comes
to mind that you can do. And this is a
this is a d i y thing, Okay, a little
bit a little bit of of of you know, sweat
and toil, but it's.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Definitely the Yeah, we have lots of young grandkids to
help and my brother has some construction experience that we
can do some stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Okay, so uh, this is something this is something actually
that that that that we've done with clients who just
don't want any driveway at all in front of their
house because they love green space. And that is have
you considered uh, from the driveway, you know, and marking
the path that that he takes, the arc that is
(11:01):
necessary for him to pull in that from the driveway
over that you put in the you know, a form
of grass paver protection that is partial grass and partial
pavers to support the weight of the car.
Speaker 4 (11:23):
Okay, I wondered if we could do something with pavers.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Yeah, now these aren't the thing I'm talking about here
is Uh, there's different ways of approaching it. You can
go right now to like a place like the big
box store, like the home depot and find these. They
come in like twenty four by twenty four squares. They're
they're like a little three by three inch concrete nodules
(11:47):
that are all wired together, but they allow either gravel
and or grass to grow in between them. Okay, And
that way it's a it's like it's like a hybrid space, okay,
because once you've leveled it out and supported this, you
can keep that area green, you can water it. And
(12:09):
yet it's actually designed to support the weight of a
vehicle being pulled up onto it, so it is both
lawn and driveway. You can do this in a couple
of different ways. You can use the nodules. I call
them pavers. They're not exactly pavers, but they're these little
semi hybrid pavers that allow grass to grow in between them. Also,
(12:34):
there are and if you look online you can find these.
There are very very high strength like black plastic interlocking
grids that allow a lot of either gravel or grass
to grow in between them. But the grid again sits
there and supports the weight of the vehicle. So the
(12:56):
very first the point of my suggestion is this, I
think sight unseen that I want to embrace the situation.
And you know, you guys obviously don't want to pour
a driveway over there, obviously, but a temporary situation that
will last for years, okay, would be to kind of
(13:16):
hybridize that follow the path that the car has to make,
make a comfortable actual temporary driveway there, and then outside
of that zone, clear everything else out and go like
crazy to uh to you know, replant, rebuild and uh
(13:37):
and beautify the rest of the lawn in in landscaping
and all the normal landscaping rules lawn shrubs, flower color
and anything in front of height. And when I say height,
I don't mean, you know, five or six feet, but uh,
but the shrubs growing up in front of that pull
in driveway area that that obscures the view of it,
(13:59):
so that from the street it's not like, oh, look,
you can see all of that driveway. It's still it's
usable and can be pulled in, but it's behind a backdrop,
as it were. Does that make sense not it?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
It does?
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Okay, So it's theatrics. It's it's theater staging, you know,
going out a little bit high in front of it,
lower down towards the sidewalk, greening all of that out
and we don't necessarily have to see that driveway air.
In fact, if you can obscure it all together, then
you could just again isolate that driveway area and maybe
go to gravel pea gravel in there, which is easier
(14:36):
and walkable, or the grids. The pea gravel would be
the least expensive of all, incredibly incredibly inexpensive and drains
really well, maybe with some stiff yes, absolutely absolutely. Now,
if she has a little trouble navigating and walking getting
out of the car, then maybe just a few stepstones
(14:57):
in the pea gravel to just stabilize that area until
she gets onto the front porch. But otherwise a pea
gravel path so that the car isn't destroying lawn, isolated
off as a temporary driveway, and then landscape the heck
out of everything else that's around it. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
You are so welcome, Raina. Thanks for the calling. Good luck.
You know what this is real life? You know, this
is the kind of stuff that I love being on
the radio and talking to you about. I gotta tell
you I've spent my entire career designing a state level homes,
you know, I mean, you know, mansions and big fancy
(15:38):
the kind of stuff that you see in fancy magazine
spreads and all of that. And guess what never ends
up in big, open spread magazines. Practical normal life issues
like mom needs to be dropped off right at the porch,
and nobody has the budget to repour a driveway, and
(16:00):
how do you make a home a home beautiful and
functional and accommodate for those kinds of things. That never
makes it into Architectural Digest, by the way, but it
is design, nonetheless, and really really good design is the
solution at the end of the day to problems like that.
(16:21):
This is why I always tell you that design matters most,
and this is why I love sitting here talking to
you about real world problems in real world homes. And
we will do more of it when we return.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
AM six forty live streaming and HD everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app. You are Home with Dean Sharp, the house Whisper.
Thanks for joining us on the program this morning. What
a stunning, stunning weekend we've got ahead of us. Here
falls in the air. I don't care what the temperature is,
(17:01):
you can smell it. You can just tell the quality
of the air changes this time of year. It is
just different. I don't think we're pushing up past the
seventies today, are we?
Speaker 3 (17:11):
No?
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Huh? In most places in southern California, it's just going
to be a beautiful, beautiful weekend, and I hope you've
got plans to get out in it and make it special.
I want to comment very shortly here, very quickly, because
I ran a little along that last segment, and so
this is going to be a shorter one, but I
want to I was very, very touched by Raina's call
(17:36):
about her aging parents because something I alluded to when
I was answering her question is this. You know when
I was first recruited to do this show years and
years ago, Now, what has it been like over eight
(17:56):
years ago when Robin Bertolucci approached me and said, Hey,
I think you should do this show on the weekends
on KFI, and she said, don't say no. Because I
was about to like, why, why are you disrupting my
beautifully planned out life. She's like, I know that you're
(18:18):
gonna love it. It's going to be an adventure. But
I also know that that there's this part of you,
this part of your heart that just kind of longs
to help, you know, normal people, mainstream homeowners. And it's
true because most of my career has been wrapped around
a state level. I say a state level because I
(18:40):
you know, I don't like saying the word mansion, but
that's basically what it comes down to, big, big, big,
beautiful custom homes, and and I don't regret that at all.
I love that. I love that that level of creativity
that you get to pour into that because you know,
people write the checks for it, honestly. But I have
(19:03):
always lived, as you know, if you're a fan of
the show, very very simply, and you know, I just
live a suburban existence, in a regular old suburban neighborhood
and in a smaller than average by far suburban home.
And because I come from a blue collar family, a
lower lower middle class, blue collar family growing up. And
(19:25):
don't regret any of that either. So the point is,
this is where I come from. This is the life
that I'm most comfortable with, even though during the day
I design mansions for the wealthy and it's all good,
it's all great. I love, love, love helping mainstream homeowners
(19:47):
with real issues. And I alluded in my answer to
Raina's call because she's got aging parents now, and her
dad has to drive up onto the lawn in order
to get near the front porch in order to help
mom get directly out of the car and into the house.
That's real world stuff, real life stuff. And you are
never ever ever going to see a front yard like
(20:12):
that displayed in Architectural Digest. You know, those are just
real world situations that you know, hote couture design magazines
have no concern about because it's just not jougie enough.
But design is still the answer to that problem. And
(20:34):
that's what I love about talking to you about your
home every weekend, not just solving the little nuts and
bolts issues, but also encouraging you that design matters most
on every single level. You know, I wrote this last
week for a different reason, but I want you to
hear this. Billions are spent every year on home improvement.
(20:58):
You would think that means most homes would you know, improve,
but they don't. Why because there's a missing piece design
Design matters most Most of us have never been taught
this truth. The wealthy have always had great design at
(21:19):
their disposal, but the rest of us, whose homes, by
the way, mean more to us because we've scraped and
sacrificed more to have them, we are far more likely
to accept that, Yeah, we get what we get right
in the mainstream home. I don't want you to ever
(21:40):
accept that, because design is not about good design is
not about having a massive budget. Good design is just
good design. And when we approach our problems from that perspective,
there's almost always a solution, and it always helps, and
it always makes things beautiful. So in talking to Raina
(22:01):
about here, you know, turf pavers pea, gravel decomposed, granted,
accepting the reality of the situation, Let's make a driveway
right up to even if it's a temporary one. Let's
make a driveway right up to the front porch. And
then let's landscape the heck out of the rest of
the yard to incorporate it, to disguise it somewhat. There's
(22:24):
always a solution. No, it's not going to get in
the spread of a big, fancy magazine, but yes, it's
going to improve the lives of the people who live
in that home. And that is what makes all the difference. Right,
that's why we're here. All right, I've yacked enough. We're
going to get some news from Jackie Ray and then
(22:45):
we come back. I've got a couple of little new
things that i want to share with you. We will
do that right on the other side. Can if I
in chart the house whisper Welcome home, Welcome to home.
Here we are at the end of another Saturday morning show.
By the two hours just fly by, don't they. A
(23:06):
couple of things I want to share with you before
we're done today. First of all, if we left you
on hold today, which we did, This is the case
all the time. By the way, that whenever we don't
get to your call, you get to priority status for
the next show. So if you guys call back tomorrow,
then you get to go right to the front of
(23:26):
the line. It's like a lightning lane pass at Disneyland,
except it doesn't cost you anything extra. So it's a
good thing. Tomorrow on the show, again, just to remind
you that we're going to be talking about bedrooms. Bedrooms
are a tricky thing to design, mostly because people don't
(23:46):
take the right angled perspective in designing. Then we're going
to talk in depth on bedrooms tomorrow on the program.
Plus a little bit more news from Vermont from our
recent two week vacation there, got it, share some things
with you. I know, it's a funny thing with our show.
Some people are like, get to the information and other
people are like, please spend more time talking about your
(24:09):
personal life. And you know what, You're never gonna make
everybody happy, but we try and find a balance there.
So a little bit more of the love of autumn
from our trip to Vermont, plus a few other things.
We've got some great things coming up too. By the way,
can I just hint at this, Yes, we have secured
the date the Sunday before Thanksgiving we are going to
(24:31):
be doing another House Whisper holiday home show live at
the KFI Studios in Burbank, and we will be telling
you when you can apply to you know, put it,
you know, for the contest of who's going to be
with us there live audience on that day plus early December.
(24:52):
I think maybe the first Sunday, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
Tina and I I don't exactly know what, but Smart
and Final we're going to be broadcasting from but a
Smart and Final down in Orange County. We're going to
be doing the show live from there, so you can
come out. And that's kind of a prepastathon thing. We
got so much stuff coming up that's really fun and
(25:14):
good that we'll keep you posted on one new thing now.
This literally came as a result of one of the
inns that we stayed at in Vermont, actually in Essex,
New York, when I was visiting my friends on their
farm there. We stayed at the Essex Inn and a
beautiful room and when I walked in, I'm like, look
(25:35):
at that painting over there. It's a nice cool image
of painting hanging on the wall about twenty four by
twenty four inches square. But I noticed it was coming
off the wall a little bit. I walked over and
it's a few inches off the wall, and I'm like, ah,
look at that. This is the first one I've actually
seen installed the art cool art cool, okay, And you
(25:57):
can look this up. It's by LG. Right. And why
is there a beautiful painting here hanging on the wall,
And why is there like three or four inches of
build up behind it hanging it off the wall? You
know why? Because that is the room's many split air
conditioner cassette, Yes, many split air conditioners. As you know,
(26:19):
they're all the rave. They have revolutionized the way that
we can get too hard to heat and air conditioned spaces,
and many split just means that instead of a big
old compressor outside the building, it's a small, little, very
quiet compressor, and instead of duct work, they're ducked less.
You put a cartridge or what we call a cassette
(26:42):
somewhere in the room. Typically the first ones that came
out and still the most popular ones, you know, they're
about three feet long and about ten inches tall, and
they go high up on a wall somewhere and they
handle the whole room. But since those came out, there
are now cassettes that fit in the ceiling right like
a ceiling, but they're not a duct connected to them.
(27:03):
And now things like this. LG has put together this
wall mount cassette and it's about twenty four by twenty
four by I think maybe five inches deep, And because
it sits on the wall a big flat square, it
already has a matte picture frame and frame around it,
(27:24):
and you can slide your favorite artwork into it. Now,
it's not like it's going to fool anybody who walks
up to it. They're like, oh, this is just a
painting on the wall. No, you can see that there's
something behind it there. But as opposed to just a
big old utility device hanging on your wall, why not
put a piece of art hanging off the front of it.
(27:46):
It was actually lovely. It only added to the overall
feel and motif of the room, and so you should
check it out. If you've been thinking about like using
a mini split system to cool or heat a room,
and they can do both, then you should check this out. LG.
You know that appliance manufacturer art Cool the all new
(28:10):
Mini Split cassette from l G. There you go, all right,
one more reminder before we're out of here. It's fall.
It's time to prune your trees. Now. Now is when
we prune trees for two really important reasons. Okay. Number one,
major pruning. Now, if you live in southern California, of course,
you can do maintenance pruning all year round, all right,
(28:31):
But the big pruning, the big pruning, is not not
springtime pruning. Okay, you do it in the fall. And
here are the two reasons why. Number One, you're in
a shock a tree when you prune it big time.
You want to do that right as it's going into
its dormant state. For the winter, so fall is the
time to do the big prune. And secondly, you know
(28:53):
in springtime birds have already started to nest up in
your tree in secret way. If you do a major
pruning there anybody who's ever done that before has bemoaned
the fact that you look down on the ground and
now here's a bird's nest that's been disrupted and destroyed.
We don't want it. We let the birds do their
thing in the spring. Don't touch the trees in the springtime.
(29:16):
If you've got big pruning ahead of you, do it
now before the holidays, and let that tree think about
it all winter long and spring. I guarantee you man,
it will bust out in a health level that you've
never seen before. There you go, all right, y'all. We
will see you right back here tomorrow morning, nine to
noon for the big show talking about bedroom and bedroom design.
(29:39):
Until then, get out into this beautiful day and get
busy building yourself a beautiful life. We'll see tomorrow. This
has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune
into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every
Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time, and every
Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime
(30:03):
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Home with Dean Sharp News
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