November 16, 2024 • 27 mins
Dean discusses, “It was like this when we bought it,” with part two on the topic that focuses on common issues with poorly planned home additions. He offers advice on the usual response people give when they inherit an issue with a product. He talks about building perspectives of skylights, how to deliver light into the ceiling and about the one thing that homeowners with a skylight dislike about them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app tamp
I AM six forty and live streaming in HD everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome Home. I'm Dean Sharp, the
(00:21):
House Whisper. I design custom homes, I build custom homes,
and I am your guide to better understanding that place
where you live. This morning, on today's show, we're gonna
be taking up part two, Part two of our little
series entitled it was this way when we bought it.
(00:44):
The frustrating phrase that I often hear from design clients
as they tour us through their home and kind of
embarrassingly admit that, yeah, this is a thing that is
a problem with my home, but it wasn't my fault,
and it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. By
the way, no judgment here, no judgment just no judgment
(01:06):
of you, just judgment of the home and solutions how
to fix it, how to get beyond it. Really really
popular topic with y'all, and so we did part one
last Sunday, and we're gonna do part two today, part
three tomorrow. Look at that, Look at that. It's a
full weekend of it, and of course we're going to
(01:29):
take your calls as well. Here's the number to reach me.
The board is open, Yeah, it's open. Eight three three
two Ask Dean. Eight three three the numeral to ask Dean.
Let me introduce you to our awesome team. Sam is
on the board. Good name Dean. How you doing good?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Good?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Good? How are you my friend?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I'm good. This live audience is really getting to me today.
Their hand they are real, They are there wiley today.
They are just they got a lot of energy and
that's driving me crazy. At least they we don't have
that crying baby. Oh I had to put him away.
I had to put him away.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Why put him away? I think crying baby out of here?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Producer Richie h our favorite producer standing by, ready to
take your calls. Uh no, not near my It's fine,
Uh Producer Richie. He's he's just you know what, he's
just doing his job. He's getting the work done. Again.
The number where you can talk to Richie because he's
gonna take your call, tell you everything you need to know,
(02:40):
and pop you into the queue. Eight three three two
Ask Dean eight three three The numeral two at Dean
our buddy Eileen Gonzalez at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen,
good morning.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
How's it going?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
You know it's going, it's going. How's it going with you?
How's it over? Then that little that you're sitting in there?
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Oh, I'm bringing the sunshine. I don't have anyone do
in here, but I'm trying to bring the sunshine to
the room.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
You see what I'm saying. You see what I'm saying.
The morning show. It's the early morning show, you know,
because we all know we got to bring the energy
to it. And so all right, Eileen, thanks for being
with us as always. Sitting across the table from me.
Oh yeah, what a handful. This one is my better
(03:29):
half most days, my design partner, my best friend in
all the world. Tina is here.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Welcome home. Oh wait, you forgot what? Champion of the world.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Oh, here we go. You want to explain why you're
champion of the world. Yes.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So we have some very good friends and we play
cards and I team up with the husband and Dean
teams up with the wife because the two of them
can't play cards together.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
This is true. We can play cards together and can
we tried.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
That dominated and we realized droid.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Them and they almost lost their marriage.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Do we realize why they can't play together?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But it's very sad because I really like playing cards
with you. With you, I mean, I'm being your team.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
But my partner and I often I'm not gonna say
every time, but I would say majority of the time, are.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
The Champion of the world.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Champion of the world. Okay, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
So the reason is we play.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
We play this long multi hand card game Spades. We
like playing spades, so we played Spades, five hundred point
card game, right takes multiple hands.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Takes you know, play till five hundred takes a.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Couple hours, yea, to go through a game, and whoever
wins that's the winner of the real game. And then
afterwards we play one bonus hand, just one single hand
to be Champion of the world, which is basically the
title you give to the people who lost that night.
(04:59):
Well sometimes big time lost big time, but I had
a huge comeback last night. He did.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
That was actually it was yeah, you guys, really, I'm cool.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Can I tell him cool?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Anyways?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
All right, that has nothing to do with anything, all right,
very well, Champion of the World. Tina Sharp sitting here
across from me. All Right, y'all, shall we do the show?
How about that? Uh, let's get some news from my lean,
and then let's talk about more things in your home
that were that way when you bought it, that you
(05:34):
don't want to be that way anymore, can't fine? Dean
sharp the house whisper. Hey, whether home is a condo,
a cottage, or a castle, I'm here to help take
it to the next level. It's just that simple. We're
gonna be taking calls and just a bit, and if
you're interested in calling in, I'm interested in talking to
(05:56):
you about whatever has got you scratching your head about
your home. Eight three three two Ask Dean eight three three.
The numeral two ask Dean is our number. Richie's standing by.
He is ready to tell you everything you need to know.
Poppy into the queue. You can listen to the show
while you wait eight three three to ask Dean. That's
(06:17):
coming up in just a bit. All right, Part two
today of it was this way when we bought it.
Inheriting somebody else's mistakes with your home and how to
fix them. It's a long list, and so I'm just
kinda I'm just gonna throw a dart at the at
the list on the wall here, and that's what we'll
(06:39):
talk about next. Oh, skylights, How about skylights? Skylights are
an interesting subject because they can be great, they can
be terrible, and so there are a number of different
ways to evaluate skylights. Let's talk about the simplest and
most straightforward one, and that is from the building perspective.
(07:01):
Skylights are windows in your roof. And this is maybe
the number one problem that a lot of homeowners have
when they make a decision about a skylight, is they
don't treat it as such. Yeah, I know you're thinking,
what do you what are you talking about? I mean,
you chints out on the skylight? Or somebody did somebody
(07:22):
chintzed out on the skylight. You went and went to
the big box store and you saw a pile of
skylights sitting there over just beyond the window department. And
there they're those acrylic domed skylights. I don't mean the
little domes. I've got a whole set of opinions about those,
but I mean that it's an acrylic skylight, and it's
it's it's bubbled up right. In other words, it arcs
(07:45):
up because it's acrylic. You've got to do it that
way because acrylic is just a weak material, so they
have to use that curvature in order to give it
some and you know, uh such some strength. Right, So
acrylic the other problem is easy to crack, not a
(08:07):
weather insulated skylight, and also starts to yellow and age
as poorly. This is about as cheap as cheap can
get when it comes to a skylight. And the reason
I underscore the fact that a skylight is a window
for your roof is that you would never never buy
(08:31):
something like that and put it on the wall in
your house sticking out from your room from a room, right,
You would never consider taking one of those bode out
acrylic skylights and having it as a window for your home,
all right, because it's cheap and because it's problematic from
(08:55):
day one. And so that's why I draw this point
of emphasis. Skylight is a window for your roof. Treat
it like you're buying yourself a window. Get a decent one.
It should be glass, It should be flat so it
doesn't screw with your roofline appearance from outside. It should
be dual glazed, just like windows are. Because there's an
(09:19):
insulating factor to be taken into consideration. It should have
low E coatings on them so that they filter out
lots of dangerous material, damaging UV sunlight, floors and furniture
and all of that. That is the basic, basic, basic
truth about a skylight. And then of course it needs
(09:41):
to be professionally or at least skillfully installed, because when
people say to me, oh, don't do skylights, don't do it. Skylights. No,
I don't want to do a skylight because they're gonna leak,
Like why why are they going to leak? Well, because
skylights leak. No, they don't. Skylights only leak when they're
(10:04):
installed improperly. And so the key is a good curb.
The curb is the wood platform that we build for
the edge of the skylight up on the roof, and
then that curb is properly flashed with proper metal flashings,
either by the contractor by you if you know what
you're doing, or by the roofer who ties in that
(10:27):
skylight curb to the roof so that it's seamless. And
by the way, that kind of flashing, that's not the
only place that kind of flashing shows up on your roof.
There's anytime we've got a vertical surface intersecting with your roof,
like a fireplace, chimney or the like, we've got the
same kind of vertical flashing needs and it can be done.
(10:48):
It's done all the time. So let me just put
it this way without any additional cost or crazy sort
of Oh well, used spent ten times as much on
that as anybody else. No, no, no, just regular proper
workman like skylight installation. Over the last what thirty five
(11:13):
almost forty years now of installing and skylights never had
a single one leak ever. O. All right, So that's
the basic right there, that you don't need to fear
a skylight because it's going to be something that leaks,
(11:33):
and if it does leak, it was installed improperly. And
if you're having trouble with a skylight, good chance. And
if you hate it, I mean, if you just hate it,
then there's a good chance it's one of those acrylic ones.
It could get cracked, it could start to yellow, which
is never a good thing. All right, that's the skylight
up on the roof itself. Now we need to transition
(11:57):
our discussion to what happened then, what happens below the
skylight as it enters the room or as it passes
through the attic, because this is almost an entirely different
subject that and is probably the source of where most
(12:17):
people who install skylights get it wrong. They get it wrong,
or they simply don't know how to get it right.
We'll talk about all of this and more.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI a M six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
HI and six live streaming in HD everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app Dean Sharp the house whisper. Now Eileen has
given me her frog in her throat. It's now affecting
everyone in the studio. Thanks eileenous I'm sorry about gosh,
(12:55):
hang on a second now, g yeah, thank you. Fill
in with the elephant, all right, I'm try and get
It's just it's everywhere right now? What is going on? Hey,
We're gonna go to the phones in just a bit.
Eight three three two. Ask Dean. That's the number to
(13:16):
reach me. Eight three three two. Ask Dean anything that's
got you scratching your head about your home. I am
ready to help you with it. All right, let's get
back to skylights. We're talking about stuff that was that
way when you bought it. Problems with your home that
you inherited from somebody else. Bad skylights. Bad skylights can
(13:37):
be really bad because they are such a presence in
a room once they're there. So we've discussed how a
skylight needs to get up on the roof. It needs
to be glass, It needs to be treated like a window,
like a window, like any other window in your house.
You pay the money, invest the money. By the way,
does Dean hate skylights?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
No?
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Love them. Sometimes they are just the bell of the ball.
Sometimes they are the best thing for a room, one
of the best ways to solve ambient light problems in
a room, especially an interior room that somebody else is
screwed up by doing like a bad room edition right,
and so things got too dark. But you have to
(14:20):
treat skylights just right right because number one, they've got
direct access to the sun. So one of the things
that we have to be aware of when we've got
a skylight on the roof is how the sun travels
across the sky and whether that skylight is going to
be receiving i mean direct light beaming through it at
some point during the day, or whether it's on the
(14:42):
side of the roof that's facing away from the sun,
and it's sinse ambient light coming through. Both are okay,
they just have to be treated differently. So there's the
skylight up on the roof, all installed, all flashed, all
sealed in very nicely. The biggest oversight or a stake
or whatever you want to call it that happens at
(15:03):
this point now is not the skylight up on the roof,
but where the skylight enters the room. Okay, Now, yeah,
if you've got a vaulted ceiling, then the skylight on
the roof is in fact the hole that is going
to be in the ceiling, because the bottom side of
the roof is essentially the ceiling for the room. So
(15:25):
there you go. But in most cases, we've added a
skylight to the roof, and we're bringing a shaft down
through the attic space to the surface of the ceiling
of the room, which is a flat ceiling, or at
least lower and separated from the roof. Okay, the shaft,
(15:45):
the skylight shaft is where unfortunately, most design errors occur
in dealing with skylights. And I say unfortunately because it's
the easiest thing to get right. I mean and it's
not a super technical element. A skylight shaft is just
(16:06):
some framing and some dry wall put on it. Now,
do we have to open up the roof? I'm sorry,
they open up the ceiling? Yes, we do. And do
we need to take into considerations some structural elements there
if we're opening up the ceiling, if we're what we
call heading out certain ceiling joists in order to make
a larger hole or a hole the size of the
(16:28):
skylight in the ceiling. Sure, but here's my thing. Here's
what I want you to understand. I want you to
loosen up. Just just shrug your shoulders and relax them,
drug and relax. Now, roll your head around, just loosen up.
Loosen up the way that you think about bringing a
skylight into the room. The biggest mistake that I see
(16:51):
all the time is that there's the skylight up on
the roof and there's a straight shaft coming down boom,
and there's a hole in the ceiling the size of
the skylight up on the roof, and it's right under it.
You're saying, WHOA, isn't that the way it's supposed to be. No,
it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have
to be that way because in the room itself, now
(17:14):
we have a light fixture, a feature in the room,
and a shaft can be built straight down, it can
be built at an angle. It can be delivering light,
you know, at a forty five degree angle somewhere else
in the room, several feet away from the skylight itself.
It can come down and be considerably larger than the
(17:38):
skylight itself as it enters and makes a penetration through
the ceiling of the room. And these are all the
things that everybody needs to loosen up about and figure
out because in a room, once a skylight hole is
down in that ceiling, is it balanced, is it centered?
Is it sending the light exactly where you need it?
(18:00):
Have you got all that skylight up there and you're
just delivering one tight shaft of light, like a beam
of light down in one spot on the room, and
everything else is still kind of dark around it, You
see what I'm saying. So we really need to think
about the shaft, and we need to think about how
we can you know, manipulate it and or create it
(18:21):
in the ceiling. I like to think of it this way.
You're gonna put the skylight on the roof wherever you
can put it as close as possible to where you
want the light entering the room. Okay, I don't want
you to put it on the other side of the house,
just for the heck of it, but as close as possible.
And then you deliver that light into the ceiling by
(18:45):
making a decision about, Okay, well, what's the hole in
the ceiling going to look like and where's it going
to be. Quite often, whenever possible, I will widen the
skylight shaft from the skylight down so if you were
to look at it in the attic, it looks a
little bit more like a pyramid than just a rectangle
of shaft, because I want that light to spread out.
(19:07):
I want it to be not an intense laser beam
down on the floor. I want it to be a
diffused ambient light all the way across the space. If
we're using a skylight for that purpose. The other reason
that we don't hesitate to angle the shaft on a
skylight is that I'm very, very often don't want to
(19:30):
see a skylight on the front elevation of the house.
You're like, well, the living room is on the front
of the house. In other words, you know, my roofline
goes up and then there's a ridge, and then it
goes down, and the front half of the roof that
faces the street, which is all lovely and part of
your curb appeal, I'd prefer not to put a skylight
(19:52):
on that section, even if it's a really nice, attractive one,
still still a thing poking through your roof. So again,
if possible, not always, but if possible, if we can
put that skylight on the backside of the roofline, and
then we bring a shaft at an angle through the
(20:12):
attic into even a room on the front side of
the house, you're feeling me now, you're feeling me. Okay,
you understand what I'm saying there. This is how we
start to handle skylights. Now, I've got two other tips
for you. I understand you got a bad skylight. The
very nature of what I'm talking about should bring you
(20:33):
some relief because it means, without necessarily getting up and
messing with your roof, you can change it. You can
improve it. You can fix it. You can fix it
by rebuilding the shaft. You can fix it by realigning
how it penetrates into a room and There's one more
thing I want to tell you about your skylight. That
(20:55):
is probably the reason why most people avoid using them,
or and or the reason most people hate them is
because you look up and they're dirty, and they're not
as easy to clean as regular windows in the house.
What do you do with that? We'll talk about that.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Can't fine?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Dean Sharp the house whisper. Welcome home. You're joining us
on the program. We're going to be going to the
phones right after the next news break. The number to
reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three
three the numeral to ask Dean anything that's on your
mind about your home today. Let's talk about it all right.
(21:35):
I'm going to finish up telling you about skylights here.
Skylight's part of our ongoing series. It was this way
when we bought it, inheriting somebody else's mistakes and how
to fix them. So the great news about skylights is
that you can replace the skylight on the roof if
you need to. If it's an old, crappy one, you
can replace it. You can fix the roofing problems and
(21:58):
the flashing around it relatively easily. It's really not that complex.
It just has to be done right, that's all. Uh.
And as far as the way it enters the room,
the shaft, you can alter the uh, the shape, the size,
the location of how a skylight shaft enters the ceiling below.
(22:19):
And now the final point, and the final point is
this the thing that annoys people, makes them think, well,
I need a skylight for this room. But I hate it.
I hate it. I hate it. Why every time I
look up there, I can just see the dirt, dust
that has collected on it because it's up on the roof.
Who's gonna, you know, I'm not gonna have my son,
my kids go up on the roof and clean, Like
(22:40):
do kids clean windows? You say, I don't even know
what I'm talking about. Uh, whether it's you, whether it's
your house keeper, whether it's somebody who normally washes windows
at your house, You've got not gonna go up on
the roof and wash that maybe once in a blue moon.
(23:00):
So it's dirty, you can see it. Well, not when
I put one in, because I have a secret, a
secret to keep a skylight clean. The secret is you
can't keep a skylight clean, so I don't want to
see it. So this is what we do when we
(23:20):
rework skylights or put them in brand new. A Dean
Sharp a house whisper of skylight has this feature to it.
We install the skylight, we build the shaft, and then
as usually usually as high up in the shaft as possible,
maybe maybe a couple of feet away from the skylight itself,
(23:42):
maybe eighteen to twenty four inches down from the skylight,
but still well above the ceiling line. We will put
in a piece of molding or a jog in the
skylight shaft. A ledge will put in a ledge around
the shaft right at that point, and then measure that out.
(24:02):
And then I go and get a frame and talk
to my glass company and I say, hey, guys, I
think I'd like some crackled glass here, safety glass, of course,
and I need it so big by so big. And
then we get on the ladder and get up in
that skylight shaft after it's all dry walled out, and
(24:26):
we will simply lay that piece of glass across the
skylight shaft so that when you look up you see
skylight shaft and you see glass at the top, and
it's diffused. It's some form of attractive glass. It could
be frosted, or it could have some kind of diffused
(24:48):
pattern to it. It could be wavy, it could be
but you know, but the goal is this not to
have the glass transparent so that you can see the
skylight beyond it. So you look up and you see
the glass and guess what. The glass is always clean
because it's not actually the skylight, and it's several inches
away from the skylight, and the skylight can just keep
(25:08):
on getting dirty up there, and we don't see the
details of that. And this thing never gets dirty because
it's sealed inside the house down below. And if you
ever did need to clean it, then you know, somebody
gets on the ladder and you go up there and
you you remove the frame, clean the backside of it,
put it back up there. But they just don't. They
don't get dirty because they're all sealed in to the
(25:31):
room itself. And problem solved and there you go. Oh
and by the way, while you're at it. While you're
at it, you throw a little bit of led lighting
strip above the ledge where you keep that glass panel
and run a switch to it so you can turn
your skylight on at night. What is happening now? He
(25:53):
is literally messing with the physics of the universe. Yes
I am, and that's part of the magic. And no,
it's not a big deal. Right, it's a little electricity.
It's a switch and led lighting strips are so easy
and inexpensive these days. So there you go. There's hope
for your skylight, all right, but it has to start
(26:14):
with a good skylight and then we take it from there. Now,
this is not everything, Okay, Please don't send me emails.
Here's the thing. When I get on a subject, I
give you as much as I can before we have
to move on to the next one. And then I
always get an email from someone saying, well, you know
you were discussing skylights and you failed to mention this. Yes,
(26:34):
I failed to mention a lot of stuff. I'm not
doing a skylight show. It's just that's what you need
to know. I'm giving you hope and vision about this
problem that you've been living with for so long. Why
because it was that way when you bought it. Look
at that die in All right, let's take a little
break for the news. When we come back, we'll take
(26:56):
some calls. Your Home with Dean Sharp the house Whisper
on KFI.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
You're listening to Home with Dean sharp on demand from
Kfi a M six forty
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app tamp
I AM six forty and live streaming in HD everywhere
on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome Home. I'm Dean Sharp, the
(00:21):
House Whisper. I design custom homes, I build custom homes,
and I am your guide to better understanding that place
where you live. This morning, on today's show, we're gonna
be taking up part two, Part two of our little
series entitled it was this way when we bought it.
(00:44):
The frustrating phrase that I often hear from design clients
as they tour us through their home and kind of
embarrassingly admit that, yeah, this is a thing that is
a problem with my home, but it wasn't my fault,
and it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. By
the way, no judgment here, no judgment just no judgment
(01:06):
of you, just judgment of the home and solutions how
to fix it, how to get beyond it. Really really
popular topic with y'all, and so we did part one
last Sunday, and we're gonna do part two today, part
three tomorrow. Look at that, Look at that. It's a
full weekend of it, and of course we're going to
(01:29):
take your calls as well. Here's the number to reach me.
The board is open, Yeah, it's open. Eight three three
two Ask Dean. Eight three three the numeral to ask Dean.
Let me introduce you to our awesome team. Sam is
on the board. Good name Dean. How you doing good?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Good?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Good? How are you my friend?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I'm good. This live audience is really getting to me today.
Their hand they are real, They are there wiley today.
They are just they got a lot of energy and
that's driving me crazy. At least they we don't have
that crying baby. Oh I had to put him away.
I had to put him away.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Why put him away? I think crying baby out of here?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Producer Richie h our favorite producer standing by, ready to
take your calls. Uh no, not near my It's fine,
Uh Producer Richie. He's he's just you know what, he's
just doing his job. He's getting the work done. Again.
The number where you can talk to Richie because he's
gonna take your call, tell you everything you need to know,
(02:40):
and pop you into the queue. Eight three three two
Ask Dean eight three three The numeral two at Dean
our buddy Eileen Gonzalez at the news desk. Good morning, Eileen,
good morning.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
How's it going?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
You know it's going, it's going. How's it going with you?
How's it over? Then that little that you're sitting in there?
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Oh, I'm bringing the sunshine. I don't have anyone do
in here, but I'm trying to bring the sunshine to
the room.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
You see what I'm saying. You see what I'm saying.
The morning show. It's the early morning show, you know,
because we all know we got to bring the energy
to it. And so all right, Eileen, thanks for being
with us as always. Sitting across the table from me.
Oh yeah, what a handful. This one is my better
(03:29):
half most days, my design partner, my best friend in
all the world. Tina is here.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Welcome home. Oh wait, you forgot what? Champion of the world.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Oh, here we go. You want to explain why you're
champion of the world. Yes.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
So we have some very good friends and we play
cards and I team up with the husband and Dean
teams up with the wife because the two of them
can't play cards together.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
This is true. We can play cards together and can
we tried.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
That dominated and we realized droid.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Them and they almost lost their marriage.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
Do we realize why they can't play together?
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But it's very sad because I really like playing cards
with you. With you, I mean, I'm being your team.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
But my partner and I often I'm not gonna say
every time, but I would say majority of the time, are.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
The Champion of the world.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Champion of the world. Okay, oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
So the reason is we play.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
We play this long multi hand card game Spades. We
like playing spades, so we played Spades, five hundred point
card game, right takes multiple hands.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Takes you know, play till five hundred takes a.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Couple hours, yea, to go through a game, and whoever
wins that's the winner of the real game. And then
afterwards we play one bonus hand, just one single hand
to be Champion of the world, which is basically the
title you give to the people who lost that night.
(04:59):
Well sometimes big time lost big time, but I had
a huge comeback last night. He did.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
That was actually it was yeah, you guys, really, I'm cool.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Can I tell him cool?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Anyways?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
All right, that has nothing to do with anything, all right,
very well, Champion of the World. Tina Sharp sitting here
across from me. All Right, y'all, shall we do the show?
How about that? Uh, let's get some news from my lean,
and then let's talk about more things in your home
that were that way when you bought it, that you
(05:34):
don't want to be that way anymore, can't fine? Dean
sharp the house whisper. Hey, whether home is a condo,
a cottage, or a castle, I'm here to help take
it to the next level. It's just that simple. We're
gonna be taking calls and just a bit, and if
you're interested in calling in, I'm interested in talking to
(05:56):
you about whatever has got you scratching your head about
your home. Eight three three two Ask Dean eight three three.
The numeral two ask Dean is our number. Richie's standing by.
He is ready to tell you everything you need to know.
Poppy into the queue. You can listen to the show
while you wait eight three three to ask Dean. That's
(06:17):
coming up in just a bit. All right, Part two
today of it was this way when we bought it.
Inheriting somebody else's mistakes with your home and how to
fix them. It's a long list, and so I'm just
kinda I'm just gonna throw a dart at the at
the list on the wall here, and that's what we'll
(06:39):
talk about next. Oh, skylights, How about skylights? Skylights are
an interesting subject because they can be great, they can
be terrible, and so there are a number of different
ways to evaluate skylights. Let's talk about the simplest and
most straightforward one, and that is from the building perspective.
(07:01):
Skylights are windows in your roof. And this is maybe
the number one problem that a lot of homeowners have
when they make a decision about a skylight, is they
don't treat it as such. Yeah, I know you're thinking,
what do you what are you talking about? I mean,
you chints out on the skylight? Or somebody did somebody
(07:22):
chintzed out on the skylight. You went and went to
the big box store and you saw a pile of
skylights sitting there over just beyond the window department. And
there they're those acrylic domed skylights. I don't mean the
little domes. I've got a whole set of opinions about those,
but I mean that it's an acrylic skylight, and it's
it's it's bubbled up right. In other words, it arcs
(07:45):
up because it's acrylic. You've got to do it that
way because acrylic is just a weak material, so they
have to use that curvature in order to give it
some and you know, uh such some strength. Right, So
acrylic the other problem is easy to crack, not a
(08:07):
weather insulated skylight, and also starts to yellow and age
as poorly. This is about as cheap as cheap can
get when it comes to a skylight. And the reason
I underscore the fact that a skylight is a window
for your roof is that you would never never buy
(08:31):
something like that and put it on the wall in
your house sticking out from your room from a room, right,
You would never consider taking one of those bode out
acrylic skylights and having it as a window for your home,
all right, because it's cheap and because it's problematic from
(08:55):
day one. And so that's why I draw this point
of emphasis. Skylight is a window for your roof. Treat
it like you're buying yourself a window. Get a decent one.
It should be glass, It should be flat so it
doesn't screw with your roofline appearance from outside. It should
be dual glazed, just like windows are. Because there's an
(09:19):
insulating factor to be taken into consideration. It should have
low E coatings on them so that they filter out
lots of dangerous material, damaging UV sunlight, floors and furniture
and all of that. That is the basic, basic, basic
truth about a skylight. And then of course it needs
(09:41):
to be professionally or at least skillfully installed, because when
people say to me, oh, don't do skylights, don't do it. Skylights. No,
I don't want to do a skylight because they're gonna leak,
Like why why are they going to leak? Well, because
skylights leak. No, they don't. Skylights only leak when they're
(10:04):
installed improperly. And so the key is a good curb.
The curb is the wood platform that we build for
the edge of the skylight up on the roof, and
then that curb is properly flashed with proper metal flashings,
either by the contractor by you if you know what
you're doing, or by the roofer who ties in that
(10:27):
skylight curb to the roof so that it's seamless. And
by the way, that kind of flashing, that's not the
only place that kind of flashing shows up on your roof.
There's anytime we've got a vertical surface intersecting with your roof,
like a fireplace, chimney or the like, we've got the
same kind of vertical flashing needs and it can be done.
(10:48):
It's done all the time. So let me just put
it this way without any additional cost or crazy sort
of Oh well, used spent ten times as much on
that as anybody else. No, no, no, just regular proper
workman like skylight installation. Over the last what thirty five
(11:13):
almost forty years now of installing and skylights never had
a single one leak ever. O. All right, So that's
the basic right there, that you don't need to fear
a skylight because it's going to be something that leaks,
(11:33):
and if it does leak, it was installed improperly. And
if you're having trouble with a skylight, good chance. And
if you hate it, I mean, if you just hate it,
then there's a good chance it's one of those acrylic ones.
It could get cracked, it could start to yellow, which
is never a good thing. All right, that's the skylight
up on the roof itself. Now we need to transition
(11:57):
our discussion to what happened then, what happens below the
skylight as it enters the room or as it passes
through the attic, because this is almost an entirely different
subject that and is probably the source of where most
(12:17):
people who install skylights get it wrong. They get it wrong,
or they simply don't know how to get it right.
We'll talk about all of this and more.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI a M six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
HI and six live streaming in HD everywhere on the
iHeartRadio app Dean Sharp the house whisper. Now Eileen has
given me her frog in her throat. It's now affecting
everyone in the studio. Thanks eileenous I'm sorry about gosh,
(12:55):
hang on a second now, g yeah, thank you. Fill
in with the elephant, all right, I'm try and get
It's just it's everywhere right now? What is going on? Hey,
We're gonna go to the phones in just a bit.
Eight three three two. Ask Dean. That's the number to
(13:16):
reach me. Eight three three two. Ask Dean anything that's
got you scratching your head about your home. I am
ready to help you with it. All right, let's get
back to skylights. We're talking about stuff that was that
way when you bought it. Problems with your home that
you inherited from somebody else. Bad skylights. Bad skylights can
(13:37):
be really bad because they are such a presence in
a room once they're there. So we've discussed how a
skylight needs to get up on the roof. It needs
to be glass, It needs to be treated like a window,
like a window, like any other window in your house.
You pay the money, invest the money. By the way,
does Dean hate skylights?
Speaker 2 (13:58):
No?
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Love them. Sometimes they are just the bell of the ball.
Sometimes they are the best thing for a room, one
of the best ways to solve ambient light problems in
a room, especially an interior room that somebody else is
screwed up by doing like a bad room edition right,
and so things got too dark. But you have to
(14:20):
treat skylights just right right because number one, they've got
direct access to the sun. So one of the things
that we have to be aware of when we've got
a skylight on the roof is how the sun travels
across the sky and whether that skylight is going to
be receiving i mean direct light beaming through it at
some point during the day, or whether it's on the
(14:42):
side of the roof that's facing away from the sun,
and it's sinse ambient light coming through. Both are okay,
they just have to be treated differently. So there's the
skylight up on the roof, all installed, all flashed, all
sealed in very nicely. The biggest oversight or a stake
or whatever you want to call it that happens at
(15:03):
this point now is not the skylight up on the roof,
but where the skylight enters the room. Okay, Now, yeah,
if you've got a vaulted ceiling, then the skylight on
the roof is in fact the hole that is going
to be in the ceiling, because the bottom side of
the roof is essentially the ceiling for the room. So
(15:25):
there you go. But in most cases, we've added a
skylight to the roof, and we're bringing a shaft down
through the attic space to the surface of the ceiling
of the room, which is a flat ceiling, or at
least lower and separated from the roof. Okay, the shaft,
(15:45):
the skylight shaft is where unfortunately, most design errors occur
in dealing with skylights. And I say unfortunately because it's
the easiest thing to get right. I mean and it's
not a super technical element. A skylight shaft is just
(16:06):
some framing and some dry wall put on it. Now,
do we have to open up the roof? I'm sorry,
they open up the ceiling? Yes, we do. And do
we need to take into considerations some structural elements there
if we're opening up the ceiling, if we're what we
call heading out certain ceiling joists in order to make
a larger hole or a hole the size of the
(16:28):
skylight in the ceiling. Sure, but here's my thing. Here's
what I want you to understand. I want you to
loosen up. Just just shrug your shoulders and relax them,
drug and relax. Now, roll your head around, just loosen up.
Loosen up the way that you think about bringing a
skylight into the room. The biggest mistake that I see
(16:51):
all the time is that there's the skylight up on
the roof and there's a straight shaft coming down boom,
and there's a hole in the ceiling the size of
the skylight up on the roof, and it's right under it.
You're saying, WHOA, isn't that the way it's supposed to be. No,
it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have
to be that way because in the room itself, now
(17:14):
we have a light fixture, a feature in the room,
and a shaft can be built straight down, it can
be built at an angle. It can be delivering light,
you know, at a forty five degree angle somewhere else
in the room, several feet away from the skylight itself.
It can come down and be considerably larger than the
(17:38):
skylight itself as it enters and makes a penetration through
the ceiling of the room. And these are all the
things that everybody needs to loosen up about and figure
out because in a room, once a skylight hole is
down in that ceiling, is it balanced, is it centered?
Is it sending the light exactly where you need it?
(18:00):
Have you got all that skylight up there and you're
just delivering one tight shaft of light, like a beam
of light down in one spot on the room, and
everything else is still kind of dark around it, You
see what I'm saying. So we really need to think
about the shaft, and we need to think about how
we can you know, manipulate it and or create it
(18:21):
in the ceiling. I like to think of it this way.
You're gonna put the skylight on the roof wherever you
can put it as close as possible to where you
want the light entering the room. Okay, I don't want
you to put it on the other side of the house,
just for the heck of it, but as close as possible.
And then you deliver that light into the ceiling by
(18:45):
making a decision about, Okay, well, what's the hole in
the ceiling going to look like and where's it going
to be. Quite often, whenever possible, I will widen the
skylight shaft from the skylight down so if you were
to look at it in the attic, it looks a
little bit more like a pyramid than just a rectangle
of shaft, because I want that light to spread out.
(19:07):
I want it to be not an intense laser beam
down on the floor. I want it to be a
diffused ambient light all the way across the space. If
we're using a skylight for that purpose. The other reason
that we don't hesitate to angle the shaft on a
skylight is that I'm very, very often don't want to
(19:30):
see a skylight on the front elevation of the house.
You're like, well, the living room is on the front
of the house. In other words, you know, my roofline
goes up and then there's a ridge, and then it
goes down, and the front half of the roof that
faces the street, which is all lovely and part of
your curb appeal, I'd prefer not to put a skylight
(19:52):
on that section, even if it's a really nice, attractive one,
still still a thing poking through your roof. So again,
if possible, not always, but if possible, if we can
put that skylight on the backside of the roofline, and
then we bring a shaft at an angle through the
(20:12):
attic into even a room on the front side of
the house, you're feeling me now, you're feeling me. Okay,
you understand what I'm saying there. This is how we
start to handle skylights. Now, I've got two other tips
for you. I understand you got a bad skylight. The
very nature of what I'm talking about should bring you
(20:33):
some relief because it means, without necessarily getting up and
messing with your roof, you can change it. You can
improve it. You can fix it. You can fix it
by rebuilding the shaft. You can fix it by realigning
how it penetrates into a room and There's one more
thing I want to tell you about your skylight. That
(20:55):
is probably the reason why most people avoid using them,
or and or the reason most people hate them is
because you look up and they're dirty, and they're not
as easy to clean as regular windows in the house.
What do you do with that? We'll talk about that.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Can't fine?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Dean Sharp the house whisper. Welcome home. You're joining us
on the program. We're going to be going to the
phones right after the next news break. The number to
reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean eight three
three the numeral to ask Dean anything that's on your
mind about your home today. Let's talk about it all right.
(21:35):
I'm going to finish up telling you about skylights here.
Skylight's part of our ongoing series. It was this way
when we bought it, inheriting somebody else's mistakes and how
to fix them. So the great news about skylights is
that you can replace the skylight on the roof if
you need to. If it's an old, crappy one, you
can replace it. You can fix the roofing problems and
(21:58):
the flashing around it relatively easily. It's really not that complex.
It just has to be done right, that's all. Uh.
And as far as the way it enters the room,
the shaft, you can alter the uh, the shape, the size,
the location of how a skylight shaft enters the ceiling below.
(22:19):
And now the final point, and the final point is
this the thing that annoys people, makes them think, well,
I need a skylight for this room. But I hate it.
I hate it. I hate it. Why every time I
look up there, I can just see the dirt, dust
that has collected on it because it's up on the roof.
Who's gonna, you know, I'm not gonna have my son,
my kids go up on the roof and clean, Like
(22:40):
do kids clean windows? You say, I don't even know
what I'm talking about. Uh, whether it's you, whether it's
your house keeper, whether it's somebody who normally washes windows
at your house, You've got not gonna go up on
the roof and wash that maybe once in a blue moon.
(23:00):
So it's dirty, you can see it. Well, not when
I put one in, because I have a secret, a
secret to keep a skylight clean. The secret is you
can't keep a skylight clean, so I don't want to
see it. So this is what we do when we
(23:20):
rework skylights or put them in brand new. A Dean
Sharp a house whisper of skylight has this feature to it.
We install the skylight, we build the shaft, and then
as usually usually as high up in the shaft as possible,
maybe maybe a couple of feet away from the skylight itself,
(23:42):
maybe eighteen to twenty four inches down from the skylight,
but still well above the ceiling line. We will put
in a piece of molding or a jog in the
skylight shaft. A ledge will put in a ledge around
the shaft right at that point, and then measure that out.
(24:02):
And then I go and get a frame and talk
to my glass company and I say, hey, guys, I
think I'd like some crackled glass here, safety glass, of course,
and I need it so big by so big. And
then we get on the ladder and get up in
that skylight shaft after it's all dry walled out, and
(24:26):
we will simply lay that piece of glass across the
skylight shaft so that when you look up you see
skylight shaft and you see glass at the top, and
it's diffused. It's some form of attractive glass. It could
be frosted, or it could have some kind of diffused
(24:48):
pattern to it. It could be wavy, it could be
but you know, but the goal is this not to
have the glass transparent so that you can see the
skylight beyond it. So you look up and you see
the glass and guess what. The glass is always clean
because it's not actually the skylight, and it's several inches
away from the skylight, and the skylight can just keep
(25:08):
on getting dirty up there, and we don't see the
details of that. And this thing never gets dirty because
it's sealed inside the house down below. And if you
ever did need to clean it, then you know, somebody
gets on the ladder and you go up there and
you you remove the frame, clean the backside of it,
put it back up there. But they just don't. They
don't get dirty because they're all sealed in to the
(25:31):
room itself. And problem solved and there you go. Oh
and by the way, while you're at it. While you're
at it, you throw a little bit of led lighting
strip above the ledge where you keep that glass panel
and run a switch to it so you can turn
your skylight on at night. What is happening now? He
(25:53):
is literally messing with the physics of the universe. Yes
I am, and that's part of the magic. And no,
it's not a big deal. Right, it's a little electricity.
It's a switch and led lighting strips are so easy
and inexpensive these days. So there you go. There's hope
for your skylight, all right, but it has to start
(26:14):
with a good skylight and then we take it from there. Now,
this is not everything, Okay, Please don't send me emails.
Here's the thing. When I get on a subject, I
give you as much as I can before we have
to move on to the next one. And then I
always get an email from someone saying, well, you know
you were discussing skylights and you failed to mention this. Yes,
(26:34):
I failed to mention a lot of stuff. I'm not
doing a skylight show. It's just that's what you need
to know. I'm giving you hope and vision about this
problem that you've been living with for so long. Why
because it was that way when you bought it. Look
at that die in All right, let's take a little
break for the news. When we come back, we'll take
(26:56):
some calls. Your Home with Dean Sharp the house Whisper
on KFI.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
You're listening to Home with Dean sharp on demand from
Kfi a M six forty
Home with Dean Sharp News
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