Gary Sullivan 10/19/2025 Hour 1

Your calls and Gary's expert advice.  We also hear from Jeff Wieland.  

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Well, it is the weekend and welcome. You're at home
with Jerry Salvin. This hour is brought to you by
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Our phone number if you'd like to get on board,
and that'd be great. We'll talk about your home project.
It is eight hundred A two three A two five

(01:38):
five and well, I don't know, maybe we start thinking
about it's hard to believe. In fact, it's shocking holidays
like six weeks away, and that'll go real fast, as
you know, And maybe there's some things in the kitchen area,

(02:01):
maybe in the family area you've been kind of putting
it off, kind of haven't really tackled the project. Yesterday
we talked about garage floors and organizing the garage since
so many of our guess go through the garage nowadays,
not not all homes, but certainly in the more modern homes.

(02:21):
That is a way to enter a lot of houses.
I call it the modern day fouryer. But also maybe
we start looking at the kitchen. You know, what could
be done, even if something as simple as cleaning the cabinets.
Maybe it's sprucing it up and changing the knobs on
a cabinet. Maybe if you have a ceramic towel, you're

(02:44):
looking and saying, oh my gosh, I can't take the
groud anymore. So we'll talk a little bit about that
and how you can spruce things up, and of course
we'll also talk a little bit about projects you're working
on again, if you'd like to discuss that. It's eight
hundred eight two three eight two five five at the

(03:05):
bottom of the hour. Jeff Wheeling, he is a custom
home builder in my hometown, which is Cincinnati, Ohio, and
builds beautiful homes. His whole family's been in it four years.
And we're going to have him on and we're just
going to talk about what's going on in the building industry.
I like you, hear a lot of news tariffs and

(03:28):
wood supplies and contractor subs and not enough people working anyway,
all the headaches. I guess we'll talk to Jeff and
then we'll also kind of get into his expertise of
maybe what mistakes folks that are getting ready to build
a home or what misconceptions they have, and anyway, Jeff's

(03:51):
a very knowledgeable person, good personality, and we have a
chat with him at the bottom of the hour. In
the meantime, grab a line again. It's eight hundred eighty
two three, two five five, and Dave you lead us off. Welcome.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Thanks, Gary, really love your show. You got a problem
with the roof on the Florida room at the back
of the house.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Roof has six panels about three feet wide and twelve
feet long, and I think they may be aluminum covered
with some kind of material pebbily maybe, But anyway, at
the joints. There are cracks. Looks like the joints may
have had a calk and then covered by some flexible material.

(04:36):
But there are cracks, and I'm afraid they're going to
be leaks, so I wonder what I should use to
prepare those.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
So this is on the finished side of like a
porcherry or a four seasons room.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, it's uh, yeah, that's right, that's hit exactly.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
And you say the the material is metal.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I think so. I I think it's metal covered with
some kind of pebbly white material maybe. I mean, I
mean it looks like a kind of a rough finish.
I think it's aluminum.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
And but the are they cracks or are they just
the seam from the metal?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, it's well, it's the seams where the two were
the metal panels a butt. So the cracks go all
the way down, you know, from the house to the
to the gutter. And I think it's probably twenty five

(05:52):
years old or something. And I don't think anything has
been done in that.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Is there anything leaked at this point.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Not that I can tell.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, So I guess what you're seeing is kind of
a superficial cosmetic covering of whatever that substrate is beneath it?

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, So I'm assuming and I guess you don't know,
and I don't know, and I can't see it that
beneath that could be just fine.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
I see, uh huh, you know.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
I mean, if it hasn't shown anything, I guess the
one thing that I'm kind of struggling at is if
it's a superficial color covering and it's panels, you know,
to dress up the ceiling area in this four seasons room,
why is there why is there a gap in that scene?
How were they connected originally and what made them become loose?

(06:57):
If it's metal, it should be relatively stable. So I'm
kind of going back to that same thing you said
at one time, it looks like it was filled with
like a cocking or something, and I would probably take
you in that same direction, knowing what I know. You know,
so you know the only problem with the cocking and

(07:20):
something like that is you got to get the old
cocking out. There's a lot of different cock removers. You'll
probably need a little help. It doesn't just remove the cocking.
What it does is it softens the cocking, and then
you can get a cock removing tool, which is really
like about an eight inch knife within usually plastic, and

(07:42):
it has a little hook where you can get behind
that cocking if you put a cock removing gel on
it to soften it up, and you can kind of
pull that stripping free. And once you get that cleaned out,
you can use Since it is the same kind of material,
it's metal on metal, so it's not a mixed substrate.

(08:07):
I would just use like a regular acrylic siliconized calking,
which would be good adhesion, good flexibility. It is painable
if you wanted to paint it or had to paint
it one or the other. So I'm thinking, based on
the information you gave me, I think that's probably the

(08:29):
direction we want to go to. Cosmically, just kind of
dress it up so it doesn't look like there's you know, gaps.
I since we don't have a leak, I'm guessing that
that's just over a wood substrate and the roof above
it is in good shape and we don't have any
moisture or water. We're just kind of dressing it up
if you will.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Oh, okay, well this is the on the roof part it,
I mean on the outside, so the inside, Yeah, the
inside looks fine, But I was wondering on the calk
on the outside. If I use the cock, would that
siliconized calk stand up to the UV rays.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Or well, it will eventually fail. But yes, it is
an indoor outdoor calking. You should probably get a good
ten years out of it. Now, there are other things
you can use up there that There's a eurethane, which
probably your thing. Calking has the greatest adhesion and the

(09:35):
greatest flexibility, and it is paintable. Silicone has great adhesion,
great flexibility, but it's generally not paintable, and I don't
know if that's important or not. Comes in clear and
white and different colors, so if it's on the outside, yeah,

(09:57):
I guess this seems we do want to fill up
otherwise moisture could get in there and start the process
of whatever that. You know, is it kind of like
a modular four season room or is it a pretty permanent,
you know, stick built four seasons room.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
It's yeah, it's I don't know. It's it's twelve by
eighteen feet approximately approximately, and uh, you know, windows sliding
doors on each side, and a lot of glass, Yeah,
a lot of glass.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, I mean yeah, and a lot of it's constructed
with vinyl or aluminum something like that.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah. And you don't know who the manufacturer that was,
do you?

Speaker 2 (10:48):
No, I don't, I afraid not my folks that are
put up.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
So based on what I know, Yeah, if you want
to go with the euro thane, the the the acruil
exterior calk is used. That's probably used in eighty percent
of the case's exterior, so it would work. If you
wanted to get something a little more better adhesion, better flexibility,

(11:13):
maybe go with your thing. Another thing you might do
is you might call around to people that do four
seasons room or even a roofer. They have him to
take a look at it because they don't know what's
going on underneath. And I don't know if anything's going
on underneath.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Okay, So I hope that helps well, it helps a lot.
Thank you very much, Gary.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
You're quite welcome. Thanks, Dave, take care all right. That
line's open for you if you'd like to grab it.
We're talking a little home improvement and the phone numbers
eight hundred eighty two, three, eight two five five will
continue on You're at home with Gary Salivan weekends.

Speaker 4 (11:49):
I mean a never writing list of things to do
around your home. Get help at one eight hundred eighty
two three talk You're at home with Gary Sullivan.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
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(14:25):
You're at home with Gary Sullen. Another weekend, another opportunity
to get a few things done around the home. By
the way, if you missed yesterday's show, a lot of
good information, especially on garage floors and kind of dressing
up the garage. And you may be asking, why in
the world would I want to do that? Gary, Well,
if you go drive through a you know a builder,

(14:48):
a track builder, you know where, you know building, you know,
two hundred homes in an area kind of all look
the same. You'll notice you see the house and you
see the front of the garage, or if you look
on the side, you probably see the garage. I mean,
it's very prominent. It's part of a big part of
the house. In a lot of cases, I think a

(15:09):
lot of visitors those homes enter through the garage. So
let's get it cleaned up. And we've been talking about
We talked about that at length yesterday. Get it organized,
get it cleaned up. And today I was thinking before
doing the show today, like we're six weeks from the holidays,
which is hard to believe the beginning of them, and

(15:33):
what's kind of bugging you in your kitchen, got ceramic tile?
You got crummy grout? Bathroom? How's the grout? I'm hung
up on grout today. What kind of shape is it in?
And by the way, if there's some grout missing in
a ceramic floor or tiles are cracked, that's not good.

(15:56):
That's kind of telling you there's not a real stable
base for that. Ceramic tile regrows how long it's been there,
and repair can be challenging. And I'm not going to
encourage you to go take on a big project right now.
Let's go replace the whole floor, though you can. And

(16:17):
if you're going to do something like that, I'd recommend
maybe taking a look at some of the LVT and
that can be installed right over an old wood floor
or an old ceramic floor. Don't necessarily have to take
up the old floor. But if everything looks structurally okay,

(16:43):
the tile looks all right, but the ground is terrible,
we can clean that up. And there's you know, all
kinds of ground cleaning products out on the market. It's
a lot of scrubbing. Sometimes it's stained to a point.

(17:05):
Maybe you're not going to clean it up all the way.
But there's a couple things if it's really bad and
something that's you know, I am kind of all about
easy if it can become easy, and uh it might
pee time consuming, but there is services that can paint
your grout. There are products out there where you can

(17:30):
paint the grout comes in a little bottle looks like
a liquid shoe polish with a little sponge on the top.
Once you get a little bit cleaner and open up
those pores of that ground, you can run that over
the grout line and literally paint it and seal it
at the same time. There's also a way, when you

(17:54):
think about it, that that's staining in that dirt on
their grout, it probably isn't a sixty fourth of an
inch down into the ground. In other words, it's more surface.
And if you're really trying to clean it with a
ground cleaner and you still can't get it clean, if
you have a little dremal tool and a little cone

(18:16):
shaped stone that fits in it, and there's like two
hundred different types of attachments on that dremal, you can
usual you can usually take that dremal tool almost use
it as a as a pencil and that stone and
just go up and down that grout and sand or
scratch off that surface until you remove that's sixty fourth

(18:42):
of an inch of stained grouled and seal it. Definitely,
definitely seal it, and that's another way to kind of
bring that back to life. Paint it, clean it or
seal it after you've cleaned it with a stone with
like a drumble stone. All right, Jeff Wheeland's gonna join us.

(19:05):
If you're thinking about maybe you hear a lot on
the news all about homebuilders and you know, tariffs on
supplies and lack of contractors. We're going to get the
industry news from Jeff and also what's hot and remodeling
in new homes. He's our man. As we continue, you're

(19:26):
at home with Gary Sullivan.

Speaker 4 (19:36):
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(22:16):
joining me Now we've had this fell on several times
and we're going to talk about new construction home building.
Jeff Wheeling from Wheeling Builders, Jeff.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Welcome, good morning here. How are you.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. So we're talking to
a lot of people across the country right now. But
you are a and your family has been involved in
custom home building for how many years?

Speaker 3 (22:44):
If you dated back to my grandfathers, we're probably talking
more than seventy five years of the homes just here
in southwest Ohio.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
Well, so I don't know where to start, but I
got a lot of questions. You know, home building, and
you see this and we're all hearing stuff on the news.
I just kind of wanted to go right right right
to the horses mouth and get what's what's going on,
what the trials with the tribulations, what's the great things
going on? But home building really does drive our economy

(23:17):
across the United States? Do you agree with that?

Speaker 3 (23:21):
Yeah, I absolutely agree with it. You know, I think
that if you talk to every industry, as you talk
to the truck drivers, if you talk to the food industry,
and then you talk to those people, they all believe
that they probably lead the United States as well. But
as far as jobs, and I don't have the exact
data right more, but you know, when I build a house,

(23:41):
we have data that says that they're probably over three
hundred and fifty people who work on that house and
at given time and then if you take it back
to all the way back to all of the counting officials,
all of the inspectors, all of the truck drivers, all
of the architects, all the people that led it up
to that point, it's even more so it is. It's

(24:03):
a ton of people who work in this industry.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
You get into furniture makers, hardware stores, to supply houses.
I mean, it touches. It touches a lot of people.
It touches a lot of people. And you, you're a
custom home builder, explain the difference between a custom home
builder and a track home builder.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
Favorite question ever, because I think the word custom gets
tossed around a lot, like a lot of other industries
have words that gets lost around and the cattle business
people tossed around the angus word all the time, and
it doesn't really needing. So custom to me is what
we do is start from a blank sheet of paper, design, build,
picking all of the ideas. We're building the house specifically

(24:51):
for somebody. But we don't build market houses, we don't
build neighborhoods. We're not developers. And this is specifically what
we're or for. And and you could say this is
the best house that was ever built because it was
built specifically for those people. Every decision, every dimension, every color,
every every flooring, floor covering next to your walk covering

(25:13):
has made decisions together with the builder and the customer
and that and that's what it means to me. I
think where it gets misconstrued at is where people are saying, hey,
we we're custom and they're making a few modifications to
a standard plan, or they're building on your lot, or
you know, they call them semi custom, which again I
don't understand that word either either. You already aren't. And

(25:36):
so there's a lot of different things, but it has
to be specific for that customer, drawn from scratch. Whereas
in neighborhoods where you have where I call them neighborhood
houses trying to be nice, I call them production houses.
And those are houses where you you go into a
model uh you you choose from a number of floor plans,
you choose from a number of standard options, and they

(25:57):
put your plane together and you know, probably six months
later you have a house. So it's a completely different
process all together.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
I'm gonna say something and correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't know. I was just when you're listening to you.
I was just thinking, maybe a custom home builder is
a little more creative, a little more artistic, a little
more price isn't addressing, isn't driving the sale. I'm not

(26:30):
saying it's not important, but it's not driving the sale.
Maybe a neighborhood housing project price is driving the sale
more so. And yeah, I think the semi custom means
maybe you can have a brown roof instead of a
black roof. Maybe you can't. It depends on what the
HOA says. But do you think that's a good good

(26:53):
way of describing it.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
I think that again, budget gets misconstrued with customs because
even a five million dollar house, we still have a
budget and within the confines of it. And and I
think the same thing for neighborhood houses. They're trying to
hit a specific target to where they are going to
open up the opportunity for as many people to buy
that house in that target market, right. And I remember

(27:16):
when I was president of the Homebuilding Association, we had
data that said every time the price of a house
went up a thousand dollars, there was so many people
that couldn't afford build that house anymore. Those are the
production builders they rely heavily on the market and what
the interest rate is doing, because that affects the person's
payment and whether or not they can afford that house.

(27:37):
Whereas in custom yet you know, it's it's a it's
more of a situation where it's not necessarily budget driven,
but it's what the customer wants driven. There aren't options,
there's there's customer desires, there's not upgrades, it's what it's
just what the people pick. So everything, everything gets driven
on what the customer wants and not necessarily what they
can they can afford. But again you have to you know,

(28:00):
as a builder, we always have to be good stewards
of the people's money and making sure that we're putting
into good use as to whatever they're looking for.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
So that was and that that says it very well.
Thank you you. As a custom home builder, what's the
biggest part of your job you think? I mean, because
if I'm a homeowner and I want to custom build home,
and who doesn't I better get a builder. We're on

(28:30):
the same page. I mean, that sounds very simple. But
what do you feel like the most important role you
play in your business? I know you have seventy I know,
but but but you hit on it.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
I think that the most and that's not necessarily the
most important role that I played, but the relationship between
my company and our customers. And you know, there are
people who are not meant in this world to build
a house, and they need to just go by an
existing house. And that's why market houses are really a
good option. Resale is a really good option for people.

(29:09):
And I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm saying, hey,
this is a lot of decisions and there's a lot
of time and effort. And when I sit down with people,
the first thing I say is they always say, hey,
how long does it take you to build a house
like that? And I say, don't worry about how long
it takes us to build this house. Let's talk about
how much time you have to dedicate to this project,
because we need a ton of time from you, and

(29:30):
not everybody's prepared for that. So people really need to
understand that that dedication, that time commitment in there. But
you know, it's really important that you align with your
builder and that you guys have a really good relationship.
If there's something that's off between you, and it's no
different than any other relationship that you have in your life,
if there's something that's off in that relationship, because it's

(29:52):
a long term relationship, especially in custom building. You know
where you are in the design phase for probably six
seven months, sometimes a couple of years, you're building. We
are building this house together, you know, probably for twelve
to sixteen months, and then you have the warranty period
and then you know, MY goal is always to be
able to still have this friendly relationship with these customers

(30:14):
where we're talking to each other. You know, we've gotten
them too now where we continue to come back and
work for the families over and over again, doing different
things for them. I want to build that relationship and
keep it going. So that's that's another really important part.
But if we don't want our customers, if I'm only
can speak for as wheeland builders, I want my customers
to come in and be transactional and say, hey, what's

(30:36):
your price for square foot?

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Right?

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Well, yeah, there's so many other factors.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah, but you say some people maybe it's not cut
out for, but there's probably other people that really get
into it.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
Passion, it's time, passion and money is what I talk
to people about all the time, and that time. Commitment
is what we just talk about, passion being one of
the most important parts because I want you involved, I
want you making decisions. I want you looking up things
and bringing them to us and saying, hey, what if
we did this, or what if we did this, and
and coming up with ideas and and just really invested

(31:11):
into it. And that's what makes the project really cool,
you know, and uh and making it exciting and making
it theirs.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Well, Jeff, I've known you for many years and your
family doing custom home building and stuff. I'm sure you've
got more than a couple of families that you build
a house for and turn around and build a house again.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
We do and and and it's really I love that
part of it because it's a there's nothing that you
can hang your hat on better than than somebody coming
back to you and wanting to work with you again.
But then there's you know, in our line of work,
it's it's kind of crazy, but we build on these
larger acre sites, so there's opportunity for other buildings to
be built on the site. And now we're and come
back and we're building another detached for os, We're building

(31:57):
another poolhouse, we're building another. Uh, right now own our
homeromanhouse from twenty twenty four. Are building an in law
suite on the back of it. It's attached to the house,
so there's other opportunities and may continue to want us
to come back and do those things. And I really
take a lot of pride in that.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Sure. Jeff Wheeling, he's my guess. He's with Wheeland Builders. Uh,
let's take a little break and if I can keep
you about another ten minutes, I want to get you
to give us your take on the status of the
building industry, the demand, workforce and sound good to you. Absolutely,
all right, very good, Jeff, thank you. We'll take that break.

(32:33):
You're at home with Gary Sullivan.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
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I hope you're enjoying our conversation. Jeff Wheeling is m

(35:11):
I guess he's with Wheeling Custom Builders and he builds
custom homes and boy, uh, Jeff, I guess this is
a wide open question, but your take on the state
of the building industry I know that's a huge question,
but where where is everything at?

Speaker 3 (35:33):
You know, I think it's been a good shitting. I mean,
I one of my mentors forever only told me you
pay attention to your own economy and don't pay attention
to anybody else's. And Wheeling builders weren't really busy and that,
and I think that that's just a method of the
way we do things and the opportunity that we've opened
ourselves up to to be in a market at southwest Ohio,

(35:56):
not just in a certain neighborhood or something. I think
that if I look around, you know, where we live
in Lebanon, and if I look around Lebanon and see
I have constant conversations with our superintendent there and he
gets a report of how many different developments are going
in in the city limits, in the townships that affect

(36:16):
the school. And if I look at that list, the
building industry is on fire. I mean, it's amazing how
much stuff is happening and going on, even though the
woes that are faced with it. When you think about pricing,
when you think about interest rate, things are still happening
on a daily basis. So I think it's in a
I think it's in a space there where it fits

(36:36):
in between. It's it's riding along, you know, it's not
failing and it's not going crazy. So it's something that
I think Bill would would dream of to keep a
consistent line on that market.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, were our country is in a lot of spaces
and a lot of different economies. I love your mentor's
take on us. Worry about your economy. My daughter lives
in Sharp. Every time I go down there, there's like
fifteen more huge, massive high rise condo developments, and where
I'm in Integrator Cincinnati area, there's condo developments, but they're same.

(37:14):
There's all kinds of land that's being built on residential areas, homes,
and so I kind of agree with you. I mean,
we hear maybe you know, nothing's ever perfect, not everybody
can get what we want. But it seems like the
building industry is on fire.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
That condo apartment building thing. I think that that really
comes from a couple of different factors. One is, you know,
when you look back at the recession where people were
losing everything, every everything they had, including their house, they
didn't want to get into a situation like that, so
they were starting to rent and then the other part
of it is is that these parents want to live

(37:55):
next to or close to their grand baby. And you
think that they're moving to they want to have another
place that they can go to as a vacation destination,
and they want to have a place that they can
live close to their kids. And I think that that
is something that people are really caught ontore. And then
and then this whole walkability deal that people talk about,

(38:16):
you know where they tried it in Cincinnati and and
but you know they sprawl out and go to Liberty
Town Center and you go to different areas where you
can live in a condo, you can walk downstairs and
walk down and go to restaurants, go to bars, ice cream,
whatever you want, entertainment, and it's it's all walkable. So
I think all of those things play into that big

(38:37):
condo apartment complex building.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, yeah, well there's nothing wrong. Cultures and things change, right,
But I don't see the residential buildings slowing down any either.
So maybe if we're just you know, grabbing more cultural
things at different segments and different generations, and that's been
going on for a long time.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
I think. So as any business owner, you have to
watch the economy. You have to watch what's happening around
you in which direction it's going, and trying to see
if it see if something like that adapts to your numbers.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
We've all heard for the last ten years in a
workforce workforce, a lot of people retiring. We're getting a
lot of companies working, bringing in new people into the workforce,
and we hear people grumbling there's not enough workforce in construction.
Is that beginning to change?

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Well, there's there's always been a workforce, but it's the
skilled workforce that we need. It's the people who understand
specific methods of construction that we need. Into your turn carpenters,
we need painters, we need you know, people who can
operate equipment. You know that those specific skill sets need
to be there or you know, what I always tell

(39:55):
people is you need to have the drive to be
able to want to learn to do it. And and
if you have the drive, you know, a hungry, humble
and smart if you have if you're hungry to figure
this out, then you're going to be able to do
just about anything you want to do. And so that's
really what we're We have plenty of workforce, but we
need the people who are who have a desire to
learn and a desire to want to continue to work

(40:17):
in the construction industry. And once again, you know, if
you look back at the recession, and I know this
was a long time ago, but you know, Colorado State
University was one of the people who said it best
and said, hey, we used to have nine hundred kids
in our in our construction program. Now we have forty.
Because they saw what people went through and their businesses,
and they saw what their parents went through or whoever

(40:39):
it was. And it was tough to get people back
into the construction industry because it took such a fall
and hurt a lot of people, and so that that
was a struggle. Now we're getting back to the point
where we have a ton of people back in the
school trying to learn about the construction business. And I
think that trade schools and you know, if you're if
you have any inkling to work with your haymns right now,

(41:00):
you could go be a plumber and electrician heating their
conditioning contractor and equipment operator and you're going to be
so super successful in life. It's gonna it's gonna be amazing.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, Yeah, I with you there tariffs, we hear about that.
How yeah, I know, but how's that working for you?
You're lumber. It's all over the place, it seems like,
I mean, is it's kind of go with the flow.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
I think. I think President Trump has a desire to
to make sure that people quit messing with the United
States and that the United States is in charge. And
so in order to be that, you have a business
method and and you know, you don't have to agree
with it, but you have to see the long term
goals of it. And and so that's one part of it.
But then these tariffs, it doesn't if you don't wake

(41:51):
up on warning and go we're gonna put a tariff
on this. It's the threat of the terraff right, and
then you have to be aware of it. So the
only the only time, the only thing I can say
is any we get up against something like this where
there's severe threat of price increases or something's going to happen,
you have to bounce back the question. So so my
stone guy can't call me up and say, hey, we
got a price increase on our stone and it's going

(42:14):
to be thirty percent. Well, let's let's hold on a minute.
What does that increase consist of? Is that only on
that stone material. It's not on your mortar, it's not
on your nails, it's not on your labor, it's not
on your profit. And let's understand what that looks like.
And the same thing with an electrician, and the same
thing with So one day we got a call from
from our plumbing supply house and Kohler said, hey, we're

(42:35):
getting these tariffs and you have to buy all of
your pictures today. Well for us, that's a couple hundred
thousand dollars. And I said, well, wait a minute, I
want to see a letter from President Trump that told
it tells us that the tariff is in enacted today
and it's going to be this much money on this
particular faucet. And of course I'm the pain in the
butt and they don't like that, but it's it's true.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
So where we've got to go with the flow.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
So three days later, lo and behold, yeah here and
and well it's going to be coming. It's going to
be coming, and we haven't seen it yet. So I
think that it's it's definitely something that is in his program,
that's that's setting America up to operate in a different manner,
but we're going to have to take some hits to
get there. I haven't felt it just yet. You know,

(43:18):
there's a couple of people who say it and then
we go back and start investigating it, and then you
don't really see it too much. But I definitely think
the threat is there, but we haven't felt it just yet.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Great answer, Jeff, Thank you so much for your time today.
I certainly appreciate And if you don't mind, I'd like
to touch base a few times. As winner comes in
and maybe things slow a little bit, maybe we can
have a little segment and we kind of touch base
every now and then.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Absolutely, anytime you want, Gary, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Thank you all right, Jeff, Thanks, thanks a bunch. It's
Jeff Wheeling with Wheeling Builders out of the Greater Cincinnati area.
If you ever want to touch base and talk to
a true builder, a custom home builder, Whaling Holmes, certain
things would highly recommend. Jeff's a great guy. All right,
let me give you the phone number. Let's chat about

(44:05):
your home. It's eight hundred eight two three eight two
five five and you're at home with Gary Sullivan.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
No time to get your hands Dirty with Gary Sullivan.
Give him a call at one eight hundred eighty two
three Talk. You're at home with Gary cellibate