July 13, 2025 • 33 mins
Dean takes listener calls about a water line break that caused wood floors to warp, a gopher problem, a dryer that doesn't dry clothes properly, how to build a firepit in the backyard, the rules on smoke detectors, building a retaining wall, how to pick the 'right' white paint, and a kitchen remodel with new appliances.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
KF I am six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp,
The House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app Welcome Home.
I am Dean Sharp, the house Whisper, custom home Builder,
custom home designer, and your guide to better understanding that
place where you live today. On the show, it's all
(00:23):
your calls. The number to reach me eight three three two.
Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two ask Dean.
Let's go back to the phones. Let's talk to Evan. Evan,
Welcome Home.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So my problem is I had a waterline break the
other night in my house. It's flooded the square bedroom
and bathroom and the hallway all the way into where
the dining room and living room is. It warped the floor,
and so my insurance adjuster is telling me they can't
match it. I won't be able to match it, so
(00:58):
they're going to pay to replace the entire floor, the
wood floor area in the house.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
And my my question to you is people are telling
me to go with vinyl laminae, to go with a
hard another hardwood, and I'm asking what your recommendations might be.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, really good question. So Evan, what was the water
line that busted. Is it in the slab? Is it
something overhead? Tell them give me a little more overhead.
It was overhead.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It was overhead line and the joint failed and it
was raining. And my wife woke be have but ten
thirty at night and said, the house is flooding And
it was just literally flooding out of the Yeah, the
overhead fan, the air conditioning vent around, it was just
raining water everywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What a mess. I'm sorry to hear that. Okay, here's
the thing. If you are if you guys wanted hardwood,
if you've always wanted hardwood, if hardwood is the thing,
I know you're feeling gun shy because of this disaster
that just happened. But if we're confident that we've addressed
the problem, addressed the leak, if we're confident with the
(02:09):
rest of the system, then you don't go back with
hardwood again. I am not a big fan of compromising
the design of a house just because we get gun
shy or we're afraid as the result of an accident
that has happened before. You know what I'm saying. It's
(02:29):
kind of like like it's like, you know, the kids
on the skateboard outside, he falls and and he broke
his leg. Okay, we get it. We're riding a skateboard
that can happen. Once the leg heals, the parents who
now wrap that kid up in like six layers of
insulating foam on all the legs and has an oversized
(02:52):
helmet and goggles, and you know, it's kind of like
the kid who wears a helmet in goggles when they
go to chess club because the chance there's there's a
chance one of those pieces could fly off the board
and put an eye out.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So well to make that excuse, I mean, we just
just add new carpet and new wood grain. Ceramic tile
put in the bathroom was two weeks ago, okay, And
so my wife's like, well, do we match the ceramic tile,
And I'm like, well, the.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
People that installed it with the price is.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Going to be like thirty grand to do it, and
I don't think the wood floor isn't replaced bad.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, So you know, you the insurance is going to
pay for and should pay pay out for the replacement
of what you've got. So if it's hardwood, they should
write you a check equivalent to redoing it all in
replacing hardwood. If you want to move up to the
ceramic tile. From a design perspective, that kind of, you know,
(03:54):
kills two birds with one stone, in that a ceramic
plank floor is going to be bombed proof throughout the
whole house and continuous flooring so that there's no change
in between the house proper and the bathrooms. But again
that isn't a necessity. So yeah, if you put in
(04:14):
luxury vinyl plank, that's what we're talking about. If you
put in luxury vinyl plank, yeah, it is now a
waterproof and bomb proof throughout the whole house. And if
there was another accident, then the it's not going to
ruin a luxury vinyl plank floor. However, luxury vinyl plank
is not the same as real hardwood. It is an
(04:37):
emulation of hardwood. It's really good looking stuff. It's also
way cheaper than hardwood. So I think you guys just
have to sit down and make a decision of both
financially and design wise, which way you want to go
with this. I can't really push you one direction or
the other because there's no right answer to it. The
(05:00):
fact of the matter is, if we were always afraid
that a pipe would burst in any house. We'd never
put hardwood in any house ever, right because it's moisture
sensitive and there's just no way around that right now.
We don't have the technology to get around that right now.
So I want you to have confidence in your plumbing system.
(05:20):
I want your plumbing system rechecked, okay, especially if it's
a peck system. Those joints should not be failing. So
if you're confident that, okay, the plumbing issue has been resolved,
then I know, you know it's always natural to feel
gunshy after a big blow, but you know, why not
put hardwood back? If hardwood is what you really want?
(05:43):
Luxury vinyl plank is great. So just to be clear,
the insurance company should is obligated to replace everything at
the cost of the hardwood. If you want to turn around,
then and do the luxury vinyl plank and save yourself
some money as you go great, Or take the payout
(06:04):
for the hardwood and then throw a little extra of
yours in and go porcelain plank everywhere. That's a good
way too. Both of those choices would be bomb proof,
and the hardwood choice gets you back to where you
would go. So those are really your three options and
it's ultimately a design decision for you and your wife
to work out. Just try to avoid feeling gun shy
(06:27):
because you just had this disaster. I know that's a
hard thing to do, but do your best with it. Evan,
thanks for the call, buddy. Let's talk to Karen. Karen,
welcome home.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Is there a way to stop cats from jumping on
the roof? Okay, we have a flat roof, and they
climb on the fence and then they jump on the
roof and they're really loud. It sounds like a person
walking up there. And they also have.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Cat cat cat fights on the roof. Yeah, it's a
really good question. I'm not sure that I've encountered that
question before. All I could think of is if there's
somehow that you could put some kind of a barrier
up on the roof that isn't going to be I mean,
(07:15):
when we say a flat roof, do you have a
parapet is there like a parapet wall around the outside
of your roof? Or when you say flat roof, it's
just flat and visible for everybody to see.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
There's like an obstruction. You can't really see it. Totally
just from certain angles is where you can see it better,
like the size and stuff, or it's flat.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The best thing I could think of is, you know,
there are those wires that have the small current in
them that we use to keep other pests outside of
the yard. Maybe there's a way of mounting it one
up there that would keep a cat from having access
to the roof. But of course we don't want to
do something that you know, looks ugly from the street.
(07:55):
So if it's something that you could pull off without
anybody else seeing it, then and you could get creative
in that regard. But if I mean, if this is
a roof that everybody can just kind of clearly see,
I don't know, put a dog up on the roof.
I'm not really sure.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah, it's a condo, so you know.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Oh I got you. I got youa Yeah, I'm not
sure I know how to advise you on that one, Karen. Yeah, No,
that's a good one. I think you stumped me on
that one. Yeah, I'm not sure how to keep cats
off a flat roof? You got me? There you go,
(08:36):
you got me. Okay, let's take a quick break and
then back to the phones. You're listening to Home with
Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Dean Sharp the House Whisper here to remind you that
when it comes to your home, design matters most. Doing
that as always and today taking your calls, let's go
back to the phones. I want to talk to Shannon. Hey, Shannon,
welcome home.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Hi, thanks for taking my calls. Well, I have a
pervasive gofer problem in my yards in my back and
my strint, which has prevented me frow planting anything, and
mostly weeds are popping up and weeds dye. And I
have all these hills and mounds and holes, and so
I wanted to do a named garden, but I don't
(09:32):
know where to begin and how to get rid of
the gopher.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Gophers Nature's annoying, adorable rodent. Okay, So Shannon, here's the thing,
here's what I don't want you to do. Please do
not poison your gophers with a rat poison, blood thinning
rat poison, because it is not only doing damage to them,
and yes it will you know, knock out your gophers
(09:59):
in gener but it will end up damaging the entire
ecosystem around you. I'm not going to get on my
soapbox and talk about that. I'm just going to say,
don't do it. Blood thinners end up in all the
predators that eat the gophers as well, and it affects
everything well beyond the edge of your house. Now, you
can live trap gophers, or you can just kill them
dead with the mechanical traps, but that doesn't solve the
(10:23):
problem because you know, it's just an ongoing war. So
in your situation and for everybody who has a gopher issue,
what I'm about to suggest may sound extreme, but in
reality it is actually the easiest, most stress free, permanent
way to deal with gophers in your yard, and that
(10:44):
is simply to not allow them in in the first place.
Now how do you do that. Well, you do that
by again having a strong commitment, we don't want gophers
in this yard. What it means is this, let's take
your lawn, your planter bed areas wherever it is that
you are planning on planting and don't want gophers coming up.
(11:07):
You're going to remove some soil okay, two, three, sometimes
as much as four inches of soil in an area
and you're going to stake down and bury gopher cloth.
And what do I mean by gopher cloth? I mean
either a nylon cloth that is, and I say cloth,
(11:30):
it's actually full of holes. Okay, it's more like a mesh,
but basically think of chicken wire, but on a much
much smaller scale opening so that a gopher can't get
through a layer of chicken wire. Essentially, Please forgive me
for using it. I just want everybody to picture what
it is that I'm saying, a layer of chicken wire
buried a couple of inches underneath the soil of everywhere
(11:54):
in your yard. Okay. The simple truth of the matter
is the gophers can tunnel underneath your house all they
want and all around, but they're not going to be
popping up, and they're not going to be doing as much,
if any, damage to the roots of everything that's going down.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Will they occasionally gnaw on a deeper root, sure, but
not to the extent that they're going to destroy anything. So,
without question, the once and for all solution for gophers
is actually to just put a fence in between them
and being able to pop up in your yard. Awesome,
(12:34):
it is, it is simple. I mean simple for me
to say. It's like, oh yeah, just to dig up
all the dirt in your whole backyard and completely cover
it over with seamless fencing. It's a it's a task,
it's a chore. But honestly, when you think about, well,
do we want to do that or do we want
to forever have gophers making holes in the backyard. So
this way, the gophers don't die, your plants don't die,
(12:56):
your yard stays lovely, and you just have a bit.
So it's a gopher bear. If you go online, you're
going to find all sorts of options in that regard
subterranean buried gopher barriers. You're going to find them. You
can price them out, you can make your own decisions.
But they work. I know they work. We've seen them work.
And at the end of the day, boom. You do
(13:18):
it once, you do it right and you don't have
to worry about it again. So Shannon, thank you, good
luck on that. Thanks for the call. Let's talk to Gary. Hey, Gary,
welcome home.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
Moved into a new house. And my dryer is not
drying the clothes. Check out, that's all fine.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It goes through the wall.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
Forty five goes up eight feet. Another forty five goes
out ten feet, so that puts me at about twenty
eight feet. And I've read that it should be at
thirty five feet, but it's just not getting enough. I
don't know. I've run a camera garden blower through their
vacuum cleaner, so it's clean. What are your ideas other
(14:01):
than put it in a booster fan.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I have no ideas other than putting in a booster fan,
because putting in a booster fan is what you should do.
When they give you ratings about how far a dryer
vent can go, you know, you take that, you know,
with a grain of salt, because a dryer is not
a high pressure air blowing scenario. And you got to
think you got all that humidity, all that moist air
(14:26):
in there. And now we're asking it not only to
travel twenty plus feet away from the dryer, which is
enough on some dryers to just shut down their effectiveness
right there, even if it was purely horizontal, but in
addition to that, you're asking it to turn a couple
of corners and go up eight feet vertical all at
the same time. In my opinion, it is absolutely too
(14:49):
far to ask that moist air to go on on
the part of the dryer. But the good news is,
as you are already aware, there are these things that
when we run an extra long dryer vent out of
necessity from design or the access in a laundry room
and or a garage area, there are dryer vent booster fans,
(15:09):
and they are air activated or switch activated along with
the dryer. They turn on when the dryer's on, they
turn on when the dryer's off. And yeah, so what
you need is a mechanical boost to the air flowing
so that you get the moisture out of the dryer.
Bottom line, booster fan is the way to go. Unfortunately,
that's the only proper solution in that situation. But fortunately,
(15:34):
you know, they don't necessarily break the bank to install them,
and they're pretty easy to put in.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
I just didn't want to climb up in the attic biotricity.
I was hoping I could find one that I could
just put right at the bottom.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Of the dryer. Yeah they're best. Yeah, No, they're they're
actually best.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Okay, so you remember hot wheels, you know. I had
a hot wheel set when I was a kid, and
they in order to in order to keep your hot
wheels going on the track. There used to be this
little booster station, which are these two little discs that
spin and they grab the car right as it's starting
to kind of poop out on the energy, and that
throws it forward and you can just keep your hot
(16:16):
wheels going in the loop all day long. The booster
fan is not best at the dryer. It's best somewhere
along the way, like at the halfway point or maybe
a little further along, right as it's all starting to,
you know, to lose its momentum, that's where the fan
is going to be most effective. You're going to have
to get up in the attic and put that booster
(16:39):
fan up there. Thanks for your call, Gary, I appreciate
your spirit. And yeah, booster fan on the dryer vent.
Do not run your dryer event a half mile away
from your dryer and expect it to expect the air,
which is just passive air coming out of the dryer
to blow all the lint and the moist. You're out.
(17:00):
It's not going to work. Okay, A quick break and
then more of your calls. You're listening to home with
Dean Sharp, the house whisper.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Dean Sharp the house whisper here to remind you that
design matters most. We've been taking your calls today. We
still have some more to go. Let's get back to
the phones. Let's talk to Paul. Hey, Paul, welcome home.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
Hey, good morning Dean, thanks for geting my call props.
So I'm building a fire pit in the backyard and
I'd like to run the gas line before I have
a concrete pad port over it. So my question is
what diameter pipe do I.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
Need to use.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
That's a good question. It really all depends on how
big the fire pit is. It's just kind of a
standard little twenty four thirty six diameter fire pit. Then
you could get away with a half inch line, but
since it's all new, I prefer to run a three
quarter inch line. I've got a three quarter inch line
running to my fire pit. Of course, my fire pit,
(18:07):
the rock itself is about eight and a half feet long,
and the actual burners are two four foot a pair
of two four foot linear burners. So there's a lot
of fire there along a line of fire. But as
a general rule, you know, I like fire pits to
be warm. I like the fire at my fire pit,
(18:27):
because the whole point of a fire pit is not
just to sit next to one when it's eighty degrees
outside in the middle of summer, but to be able
to enjoy it when it's cold outside. And when it's
cold outside, you need more than just a little trickle
of flame coming out. So I would say, run the
three quarter inch line. But and here's the important qualifier
(18:50):
to that. You run a three quarter inch line, you're
not going to want to run it most of the
time at full bore. And so the key, the gas
key that you turn your firepit on and off with,
you shouldn't use that to choke down the gas because
if you do, it's so close to where the gas
comes out of the actual burner that you're going to
(19:11):
get a hiss or a whistling sound because of gas
cavitation in the line. So pick you know, wherever the
gas line is coming out of the house away from
the house, or you know, take twenty thirty feet away
from the fire pit, run a three quarter inch line,
and then put a linear valve right there that you
(19:33):
can control the flow of the line and then use
your key at the fire pit to just full on,
full off. If you put a valve, a flow control
valve a twenty feet plus away, then the cavitation by
the time it reaches the fire pit has settled down
and you can set it to any intensity you want
from the very faintest of flame all the way to
(19:55):
the bonfire and you'll get no change in sund whatsoever.
So my suggestion run the three quarter inch line and
give yourself some options. Paul, thanks for your call, buddy.
Let's talk to Antonio. Antonio. Welcome home.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
Oh, thank you, welcome home, Thank you, you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
How can I help you?
Speaker 9 (20:16):
Regallion smoke detectors and carbon monoxide and I wanted to
find out if it's the best place to put them
if I buy it the combination of both, or buy
them separately and put one inside the bedrooms like a
smoke detector, and then the carbon manaxa on the outside
of that of the each bedroom.
Speaker 10 (20:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, you don't have to put a carbon monoxide detector
on the outside of each bedroom. That's more than you need. Currently,
in southern California and most municipalities, the code is going
to be a smoke detector inside each bedroom, just inside
the door of each bedroom. A smoke detector in the
(20:57):
hallway leading to the bedrooms. Okay, okay, a carbon monoxide
detector centrally located on each floor of the house. So
typically what people do when they want to just be
most efficient with their cash is they'll buy a regular
smoke detector and put those inside each of the bedrooms.
(21:19):
And then they'll take a smoke detector slash carbon monoxide
combo detector and put that as the hallway smoke detector
on each floor outside the bedroom doors, and that will
get you covered. Oh okay, I appreciate it, herman, welcome home,
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
I got a question.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
I want to build a retaining wall in my backyard
by myself.
Speaker 9 (21:43):
How can I go about that.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Retaining wall in your backyard by yourself? It all depends
on what you want the wall to look like. If
you want it completely straight up and down vertical, you
want it out of cinder block, you want to cover
it with stucco or plaster or something like that. But
I can tell you this. The general rule is this
for most municipalities. And I say this as a qualifier.
(22:09):
I say most municipalities, even though it's pretty much all
there are, depending on the size of your lot, the location,
and the soil conditions. Sometimes there are deviations of this,
but for most municipalities, any retaining quote unquote retaining wall
that is holding back less than three feet of soil
you can do without a permit and without engineering. The
(22:31):
easiest way to go about doing that is to head
on down to the building supply, whether you've got a
stone yard near you, a home depot, a low's, a lumberyard,
and get those interlocking, stacked, racked back retaining wall blocks.
There's several different versions, but they lock into each other
(22:52):
and you can simply line out the bottom. Now, they
do slope back ever so slightly, because every course above
the the previous course sets back just ever so slightly,
and you can build a nice little garden retaining wall
out of that material in an afternoon or a couple
of days, depending on how long obviously the wall is.
(23:15):
But basically, you lay a course, you backfill it with
a little soil up to that course, set the next course,
keep backfilling and setting and backfilling, and legally you can
go in most municipalities up to three feet and that'll
hold just fine, and it'll last long, and you'll get
plant growth out of it, which I really like because
(23:35):
I don't like bare walls when it comes to that
kind of landscaping stuff. So that's the general gist of it, Herman.
If you have special soil conditions on your property and
you know it, then you might need a permit. If
you are going to be retaining more than three feet
of soil surcharging the back of the wall, then you're
(23:56):
going to need a permit, and you're going to need
some engineering. And that engineering is going to be for
the proper sized footing and steal in that footing so
that the pressure of the soil behind the wall doesn't
basically roll the wall over, doesn't knock it down. So
there you go. Okay, let's take a quick break and
then back to the phones. You're listening to Home with
(24:19):
Dean Sharp, the house.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Whisper You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand
from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Dean Sharp, the house Whisperer, here to help you transform
your ordinary house into an extraordinary home. We're doing that
today by taking your calls. Let's get back to the phones.
I want to talk to Susan. Ay, Susan, welcome home, Hi.
Speaker 10 (24:47):
Dean, thank you so much for your show and taking
my call. My question is, I live in a very
dark home. I'm repainting. I want bright, bright white. I
know how difficult it is to figure out the right white.
I want to buy a few samples. And I question,
and it's a two part question. The first part is
do you think buying particle board I guess that's what
(25:08):
it's called and painting those and then carrying them around
is better than just going all around and painting walls.
And then the second part of the question is I
can't really afford Benjamin Moore. I think you once suggested
decorators white. I know you did. My question is, maybe
do you know of a bear b ehr, like a
(25:31):
very bright, bright, wonderful white that might be similar to
decorators white. That those are my two questions.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Okay, so let me ask you the second question. First,
I have no idea about it, even about you know,
if you're to asked Tina, you're sitting round here when
it comes to her husband's ability to rename paint colors
from any manufacturing, including Benjamin Moore, I know like five
of them, five of them that I can remember. Okay, Okay, hey, yeah,
(26:01):
it's not always decorator's white that we use. Yeah, only
because sometimes you know, there are may be five different
whites that we'll look at. But in one house it
looks very different than in another house, right, which leads
to others. So first of all, every you know, I
always say this, just you know, no guilt about that.
Use the best paint that you can afford. Okay, of
(26:22):
all the major man of fact, just use the best
paint you can afford. They all have a gabillion colors
when it comes to tints. And to answer your question,
when it comes to you know how to do that,
you're right on target. Get to you know, whether it's
whether it's a piece of cardboard or whether it's a
thin piece of masonite, some inexpensive but the largest piece possible.
(26:46):
The easiest way to do samples of color in a
room other than just putting it up on the wall
is to, you know, make a make a big board
and bring it in the room that way. And I
love that idea because that way you can move it
from one wall to the next, you can look at
the way that the light hits it here, light hits
it there. You can put the two boards next to
(27:07):
each other. You can keep the board separated, which is
usually the better way to do it. And that's the
problem with painting samples on the wall. You'll put one
white here and then about four feet away you'll put
another white, and actually those two will interact with each
other and give you a bias of both of them,
because that's the way light works in transmitting color. So
(27:29):
I prefer to have as large of a board as
possible and bring it into the room by itself, let
it stand alone, and then bring the other one in
by itself, let it stand alone. Make your decisions that way.
If you need to put them next to each other
just to get a sense of which one has more
cream in it, which one has more blue in it,
(27:50):
that's all well and good. But judge them as independently
as possible, and putting them on boards it's a brilliant
way to do it. Susan. Just know that the larger
the sample, the more accurate you're going to get in
regard because the mass of any one color in a
room changes the color the way that it reacts with
(28:10):
the room, So, you know, bringing in a little two
by two square and taping it to the wall not
going to give you a good representation of what that
color is going to do when it's you know, eight
by ten.
Speaker 10 (28:22):
Fantastic. Thank you, perfectly, thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
You are so welcome, Susan. Thank you for the question
and for the call, Tony. Welcome home.
Speaker 8 (28:31):
Hi Dan, how are you. We're joining a complete kitchen
remodel with cabinets, floors, and appliances, and my question is
do the cabinets should those sit on the sub floor
or do we install all of the wood floors first?
And the part that seems the most trickiest from what
I've read, is how to handle the dishwasher?
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Ah, yes, okay. So it's a good question, really good question.
And it depends. It depends. And I say that in
all sincerity because I don't know. Maybe I would say
maybe seventy five percent of the time, typically we will
not install on top of the floors, on top of
(29:17):
the hardwood floor or the tile sometimes just purely from
the practicality that you know, why do you want to
run the expense of hardwood all the way underneath cabinet
kicks where it will never be seen again, so simply
to save square footage of cabinets, but there's also another reason,
I'm sorry, save square footage of flooring material. The other
(29:39):
reason is that sometimes, quite often floors are not perfectly level,
and so your cabinet installers will quite possibly have to
shim up the rough cabinet kicks. Now these days, rough
cabinet kicks get shimmed and then there is is a
(30:01):
finished kickplate that goes over it, and then the shims
are hidden and they meet the floor very nicely. So
but that's a consideration as well. But I would say
typically what we're aiming for is to not run material
underneath the cabinet kicks because it's unnecessary. Now, when it
comes to the dishwasher, whatever the flooring is in the
(30:22):
room that we do run into because the dishwasher is
just an area, a void area, So we go ahead
and run that material into the dishwasher area so that
the dishwasher doesn't get trapped behind flooring material down in
the recess there. And I know some people are like, well,
I don't know if I want to run hardwood in there,
because what if the dishwasher leaks. I guarantee you. If
(30:44):
the dishwasher leaks and you've got hardwood in your kitchen,
it's going to go way beyond just the wood that's
directly underneath. It's going to affect wood in the whole
area there. So it's kind of a moot point when
it comes to that argument. I just prefer the idea
that we can easily slide the dishwasher in and out
for installation or service or what have you. So my
(31:07):
recommendation is typically save the money on the extra flooring material. Now,
occasionally there is a situation where it's like, well, I
don't want to put the cabinets in yet because there's
all this other stuff and if we have to set
the cabinets then then they're going to get in the
way and they're going to get beat up. So I'd
rather have the flooring go in without the cabinets. Well,
(31:29):
you can ask your cabinet manufacture or installer to put
in rough kicks, just the kicks themselves, detached from the
cabinet boxes, and that way, once the kicks are in place,
they determine the cabinet set and then your flooring people
can get in there and lay all the flooring in
the kitchen without the cabinets in their way. That's only
(31:52):
something that happens though when it comes to cabinets that
have detachable kicks, where the kicks are separate from the
boxes themselves elves and you have to talk to your
cabinet person about that. But typically, eh, we wouldn't you
recommend wasting material underneath the cabinet, Kate? Does it matter?
Speaker 7 (32:12):
Though?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Not really, it's not really going to change the install much.
Always account for the height of the hardwood floor though,
so don't set yourself up for a thirty six inch
tall countertop. Then put in, you know, five eighths or
three quarters of an inch of hardwood and find yourself
with shorter cabinets, so the kicks have to be taller
if they're going to go in before the hardwood. Thanks
(32:34):
for the question, Tony, all right, more of your calls
right after this your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer.
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
(32:55):
anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app.
KF I am six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp,
The House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app Welcome Home.
I am Dean Sharp, the house Whisper, custom home Builder,
custom home designer, and your guide to better understanding that
place where you live today. On the show, it's all
(00:23):
your calls. The number to reach me eight three three two.
Ask Dean eight three three the numeral two ask Dean.
Let's go back to the phones. Let's talk to Evan. Evan,
Welcome Home.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So my problem is I had a waterline break the
other night in my house. It's flooded the square bedroom
and bathroom and the hallway all the way into where
the dining room and living room is. It warped the floor,
and so my insurance adjuster is telling me they can't
match it. I won't be able to match it, so
(00:58):
they're going to pay to replace the entire floor, the
wood floor area in the house.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
And my my question to you is people are telling
me to go with vinyl laminae, to go with a
hard another hardwood, and I'm asking what your recommendations might be.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Okay, really good question. So Evan, what was the water
line that busted. Is it in the slab? Is it
something overhead? Tell them give me a little more overhead.
It was overhead.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
It was overhead line and the joint failed and it
was raining. And my wife woke be have but ten
thirty at night and said, the house is flooding And
it was just literally flooding out of the Yeah, the
overhead fan, the air conditioning vent around, it was just
raining water everywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
What a mess. I'm sorry to hear that. Okay, here's
the thing. If you are if you guys wanted hardwood,
if you've always wanted hardwood, if hardwood is the thing,
I know you're feeling gun shy because of this disaster
that just happened. But if we're confident that we've addressed
the problem, addressed the leak, if we're confident with the
(02:09):
rest of the system, then you don't go back with
hardwood again. I am not a big fan of compromising
the design of a house just because we get gun
shy or we're afraid as the result of an accident
that has happened before. You know what I'm saying. It's
(02:29):
kind of like like it's like, you know, the kids
on the skateboard outside, he falls and and he broke
his leg. Okay, we get it. We're riding a skateboard
that can happen. Once the leg heals, the parents who
now wrap that kid up in like six layers of
insulating foam on all the legs and has an oversized
(02:52):
helmet and goggles, and you know, it's kind of like
the kid who wears a helmet in goggles when they
go to chess club because the chance there's there's a
chance one of those pieces could fly off the board
and put an eye out.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
So well to make that excuse, I mean, we just
just add new carpet and new wood grain. Ceramic tile
put in the bathroom was two weeks ago, okay, And
so my wife's like, well, do we match the ceramic tile,
And I'm like, well, the.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
People that installed it with the price is.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Going to be like thirty grand to do it, and
I don't think the wood floor isn't replaced bad.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, So you know, you the insurance is going to
pay for and should pay pay out for the replacement
of what you've got. So if it's hardwood, they should
write you a check equivalent to redoing it all in
replacing hardwood. If you want to move up to the
ceramic tile. From a design perspective, that kind of, you know,
(03:54):
kills two birds with one stone, in that a ceramic
plank floor is going to be bombed proof throughout the
whole house and continuous flooring so that there's no change
in between the house proper and the bathrooms. But again
that isn't a necessity. So yeah, if you put in
(04:14):
luxury vinyl plank, that's what we're talking about. If you
put in luxury vinyl plank, yeah, it is now a
waterproof and bomb proof throughout the whole house. And if
there was another accident, then the it's not going to
ruin a luxury vinyl plank floor. However, luxury vinyl plank
is not the same as real hardwood. It is an
(04:37):
emulation of hardwood. It's really good looking stuff. It's also
way cheaper than hardwood. So I think you guys just
have to sit down and make a decision of both
financially and design wise, which way you want to go
with this. I can't really push you one direction or
the other because there's no right answer to it. The
(05:00):
fact of the matter is, if we were always afraid
that a pipe would burst in any house. We'd never
put hardwood in any house ever, right because it's moisture
sensitive and there's just no way around that right now.
We don't have the technology to get around that right now.
So I want you to have confidence in your plumbing system.
(05:20):
I want your plumbing system rechecked, okay, especially if it's
a peck system. Those joints should not be failing. So
if you're confident that, okay, the plumbing issue has been resolved,
then I know, you know it's always natural to feel
gunshy after a big blow, but you know, why not
put hardwood back? If hardwood is what you really want?
(05:43):
Luxury vinyl plank is great. So just to be clear,
the insurance company should is obligated to replace everything at
the cost of the hardwood. If you want to turn around,
then and do the luxury vinyl plank and save yourself
some money as you go great, Or take the payout
(06:04):
for the hardwood and then throw a little extra of
yours in and go porcelain plank everywhere. That's a good
way too. Both of those choices would be bomb proof,
and the hardwood choice gets you back to where you
would go. So those are really your three options and
it's ultimately a design decision for you and your wife
to work out. Just try to avoid feeling gun shy
(06:27):
because you just had this disaster. I know that's a
hard thing to do, but do your best with it. Evan,
thanks for the call, buddy. Let's talk to Karen. Karen,
welcome home.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Is there a way to stop cats from jumping on
the roof? Okay, we have a flat roof, and they
climb on the fence and then they jump on the
roof and they're really loud. It sounds like a person
walking up there. And they also have.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Cat cat cat fights on the roof. Yeah, it's a
really good question. I'm not sure that I've encountered that
question before. All I could think of is if there's
somehow that you could put some kind of a barrier
up on the roof that isn't going to be I mean,
(07:15):
when we say a flat roof, do you have a
parapet is there like a parapet wall around the outside
of your roof? Or when you say flat roof, it's
just flat and visible for everybody to see.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
There's like an obstruction. You can't really see it. Totally
just from certain angles is where you can see it better,
like the size and stuff, or it's flat.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The best thing I could think of is, you know,
there are those wires that have the small current in
them that we use to keep other pests outside of
the yard. Maybe there's a way of mounting it one
up there that would keep a cat from having access
to the roof. But of course we don't want to
do something that you know, looks ugly from the street.
(07:55):
So if it's something that you could pull off without
anybody else seeing it, then and you could get creative
in that regard. But if I mean, if this is
a roof that everybody can just kind of clearly see,
I don't know, put a dog up on the roof.
I'm not really sure.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah, it's a condo, so you know.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Oh I got you. I got youa Yeah, I'm not
sure I know how to advise you on that one, Karen. Yeah, No,
that's a good one. I think you stumped me on
that one. Yeah, I'm not sure how to keep cats
off a flat roof? You got me? There you go,
(08:36):
you got me. Okay, let's take a quick break and
then back to the phones. You're listening to Home with
Dean Sharp the House Whisper.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Dean Sharp the House Whisper here to remind you that
when it comes to your home, design matters most. Doing
that as always and today taking your calls, let's go
back to the phones. I want to talk to Shannon. Hey, Shannon,
welcome home.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Hi, thanks for taking my calls. Well, I have a
pervasive gofer problem in my yards in my back and
my strint, which has prevented me frow planting anything, and
mostly weeds are popping up and weeds dye. And I
have all these hills and mounds and holes, and so
I wanted to do a named garden, but I don't
(09:32):
know where to begin and how to get rid of
the gopher.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Gophers Nature's annoying, adorable rodent. Okay, So Shannon, here's the thing,
here's what I don't want you to do. Please do
not poison your gophers with a rat poison, blood thinning
rat poison, because it is not only doing damage to them,
and yes it will you know, knock out your gophers
(09:59):
in gener but it will end up damaging the entire
ecosystem around you. I'm not going to get on my
soapbox and talk about that. I'm just going to say,
don't do it. Blood thinners end up in all the
predators that eat the gophers as well, and it affects
everything well beyond the edge of your house. Now, you
can live trap gophers, or you can just kill them
dead with the mechanical traps, but that doesn't solve the
(10:23):
problem because you know, it's just an ongoing war. So
in your situation and for everybody who has a gopher issue,
what I'm about to suggest may sound extreme, but in
reality it is actually the easiest, most stress free, permanent
way to deal with gophers in your yard, and that
(10:44):
is simply to not allow them in in the first place.
Now how do you do that. Well, you do that
by again having a strong commitment, we don't want gophers
in this yard. What it means is this, let's take
your lawn, your planter bed areas wherever it is that
you are planning on planting and don't want gophers coming up.
(11:07):
You're going to remove some soil okay, two, three, sometimes
as much as four inches of soil in an area
and you're going to stake down and bury gopher cloth.
And what do I mean by gopher cloth? I mean
either a nylon cloth that is, and I say cloth,
(11:30):
it's actually full of holes. Okay, it's more like a mesh,
but basically think of chicken wire, but on a much
much smaller scale opening so that a gopher can't get
through a layer of chicken wire. Essentially, Please forgive me
for using it. I just want everybody to picture what
it is that I'm saying, a layer of chicken wire
buried a couple of inches underneath the soil of everywhere
(11:54):
in your yard. Okay. The simple truth of the matter
is the gophers can tunnel underneath your house all they
want and all around, but they're not going to be
popping up, and they're not going to be doing as much,
if any, damage to the roots of everything that's going down.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Now.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Will they occasionally gnaw on a deeper root, sure, but
not to the extent that they're going to destroy anything. So,
without question, the once and for all solution for gophers
is actually to just put a fence in between them
and being able to pop up in your yard. Awesome,
(12:34):
it is, it is simple. I mean simple for me
to say. It's like, oh yeah, just to dig up
all the dirt in your whole backyard and completely cover
it over with seamless fencing. It's a it's a task,
it's a chore. But honestly, when you think about, well,
do we want to do that or do we want
to forever have gophers making holes in the backyard. So
this way, the gophers don't die, your plants don't die,
(12:56):
your yard stays lovely, and you just have a bit.
So it's a gopher bear. If you go online, you're
going to find all sorts of options in that regard
subterranean buried gopher barriers. You're going to find them. You
can price them out, you can make your own decisions.
But they work. I know they work. We've seen them work.
And at the end of the day, boom. You do
(13:18):
it once, you do it right and you don't have
to worry about it again. So Shannon, thank you, good
luck on that. Thanks for the call. Let's talk to Gary. Hey, Gary,
welcome home.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
Moved into a new house. And my dryer is not
drying the clothes. Check out, that's all fine.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It goes through the wall.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
Forty five goes up eight feet. Another forty five goes
out ten feet, so that puts me at about twenty
eight feet. And I've read that it should be at
thirty five feet, but it's just not getting enough. I
don't know. I've run a camera garden blower through their
vacuum cleaner, so it's clean. What are your ideas other
(14:01):
than put it in a booster fan.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I have no ideas other than putting in a booster fan,
because putting in a booster fan is what you should do.
When they give you ratings about how far a dryer
vent can go, you know, you take that, you know,
with a grain of salt, because a dryer is not
a high pressure air blowing scenario. And you got to
think you got all that humidity, all that moist air
(14:26):
in there. And now we're asking it not only to
travel twenty plus feet away from the dryer, which is
enough on some dryers to just shut down their effectiveness
right there, even if it was purely horizontal, but in
addition to that, you're asking it to turn a couple
of corners and go up eight feet vertical all at
the same time. In my opinion, it is absolutely too
(14:49):
far to ask that moist air to go on on
the part of the dryer. But the good news is,
as you are already aware, there are these things that
when we run an extra long dryer vent out of
necessity from design or the access in a laundry room
and or a garage area, there are dryer vent booster fans,
(15:09):
and they are air activated or switch activated along with
the dryer. They turn on when the dryer's on, they
turn on when the dryer's off. And yeah, so what
you need is a mechanical boost to the air flowing
so that you get the moisture out of the dryer.
Bottom line, booster fan is the way to go. Unfortunately,
that's the only proper solution in that situation. But fortunately,
(15:34):
you know, they don't necessarily break the bank to install them,
and they're pretty easy to put in.
Speaker 6 (15:39):
I just didn't want to climb up in the attic biotricity.
I was hoping I could find one that I could
just put right at the bottom.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Of the dryer. Yeah they're best. Yeah, No, they're they're
actually best.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Okay, so you remember hot wheels, you know. I had
a hot wheel set when I was a kid, and
they in order to in order to keep your hot
wheels going on the track. There used to be this
little booster station, which are these two little discs that
spin and they grab the car right as it's starting
to kind of poop out on the energy, and that
throws it forward and you can just keep your hot
(16:16):
wheels going in the loop all day long. The booster
fan is not best at the dryer. It's best somewhere
along the way, like at the halfway point or maybe
a little further along, right as it's all starting to,
you know, to lose its momentum, that's where the fan
is going to be most effective. You're going to have
to get up in the attic and put that booster
(16:39):
fan up there. Thanks for your call, Gary, I appreciate
your spirit. And yeah, booster fan on the dryer vent.
Do not run your dryer event a half mile away
from your dryer and expect it to expect the air,
which is just passive air coming out of the dryer
to blow all the lint and the moist. You're out.
(17:00):
It's not going to work. Okay, A quick break and
then more of your calls. You're listening to home with
Dean Sharp, the house whisper.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Dean Sharp the house whisper here to remind you that
design matters most. We've been taking your calls today. We
still have some more to go. Let's get back to
the phones. Let's talk to Paul. Hey, Paul, welcome home.
Speaker 7 (17:28):
Hey, good morning Dean, thanks for geting my call props.
So I'm building a fire pit in the backyard and
I'd like to run the gas line before I have
a concrete pad port over it. So my question is
what diameter pipe do I.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
Need to use.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
That's a good question. It really all depends on how
big the fire pit is. It's just kind of a
standard little twenty four thirty six diameter fire pit. Then
you could get away with a half inch line, but
since it's all new, I prefer to run a three
quarter inch line. I've got a three quarter inch line
running to my fire pit. Of course, my fire pit,
(18:07):
the rock itself is about eight and a half feet long,
and the actual burners are two four foot a pair
of two four foot linear burners. So there's a lot
of fire there along a line of fire. But as
a general rule, you know, I like fire pits to
be warm. I like the fire at my fire pit,
(18:27):
because the whole point of a fire pit is not
just to sit next to one when it's eighty degrees
outside in the middle of summer, but to be able
to enjoy it when it's cold outside. And when it's
cold outside, you need more than just a little trickle
of flame coming out. So I would say, run the
three quarter inch line. But and here's the important qualifier
(18:50):
to that. You run a three quarter inch line, you're
not going to want to run it most of the
time at full bore. And so the key, the gas
key that you turn your firepit on and off with,
you shouldn't use that to choke down the gas because
if you do, it's so close to where the gas
comes out of the actual burner that you're going to
(19:11):
get a hiss or a whistling sound because of gas
cavitation in the line. So pick you know, wherever the
gas line is coming out of the house away from
the house, or you know, take twenty thirty feet away
from the fire pit, run a three quarter inch line,
and then put a linear valve right there that you
(19:33):
can control the flow of the line and then use
your key at the fire pit to just full on,
full off. If you put a valve, a flow control
valve a twenty feet plus away, then the cavitation by
the time it reaches the fire pit has settled down
and you can set it to any intensity you want
from the very faintest of flame all the way to
(19:55):
the bonfire and you'll get no change in sund whatsoever.
So my suggestion run the three quarter inch line and
give yourself some options. Paul, thanks for your call, buddy.
Let's talk to Antonio. Antonio. Welcome home.
Speaker 9 (20:12):
Oh, thank you, welcome home, Thank you, you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
How can I help you?
Speaker 9 (20:16):
Regallion smoke detectors and carbon monoxide and I wanted to
find out if it's the best place to put them
if I buy it the combination of both, or buy
them separately and put one inside the bedrooms like a
smoke detector, and then the carbon manaxa on the outside
of that of the each bedroom.
Speaker 10 (20:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, you don't have to put a carbon monoxide detector
on the outside of each bedroom. That's more than you need. Currently,
in southern California and most municipalities, the code is going
to be a smoke detector inside each bedroom, just inside
the door of each bedroom. A smoke detector in the
(20:57):
hallway leading to the bedrooms. Okay, okay, a carbon monoxide
detector centrally located on each floor of the house. So
typically what people do when they want to just be
most efficient with their cash is they'll buy a regular
smoke detector and put those inside each of the bedrooms.
(21:19):
And then they'll take a smoke detector slash carbon monoxide
combo detector and put that as the hallway smoke detector
on each floor outside the bedroom doors, and that will
get you covered. Oh okay, I appreciate it, herman, welcome home,
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
I got a question.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
I want to build a retaining wall in my backyard
by myself.
Speaker 9 (21:43):
How can I go about that.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Retaining wall in your backyard by yourself? It all depends
on what you want the wall to look like. If
you want it completely straight up and down vertical, you
want it out of cinder block, you want to cover
it with stucco or plaster or something like that. But
I can tell you this. The general rule is this
for most municipalities. And I say this as a qualifier.
(22:09):
I say most municipalities, even though it's pretty much all
there are, depending on the size of your lot, the location,
and the soil conditions. Sometimes there are deviations of this,
but for most municipalities, any retaining quote unquote retaining wall
that is holding back less than three feet of soil
you can do without a permit and without engineering. The
(22:31):
easiest way to go about doing that is to head
on down to the building supply, whether you've got a
stone yard near you, a home depot, a low's, a lumberyard,
and get those interlocking, stacked, racked back retaining wall blocks.
There's several different versions, but they lock into each other
(22:52):
and you can simply line out the bottom. Now, they
do slope back ever so slightly, because every course above
the the previous course sets back just ever so slightly,
and you can build a nice little garden retaining wall
out of that material in an afternoon or a couple
of days, depending on how long obviously the wall is.
(23:15):
But basically, you lay a course, you backfill it with
a little soil up to that course, set the next course,
keep backfilling and setting and backfilling, and legally you can
go in most municipalities up to three feet and that'll
hold just fine, and it'll last long, and you'll get
plant growth out of it, which I really like because
(23:35):
I don't like bare walls when it comes to that
kind of landscaping stuff. So that's the general gist of it, Herman.
If you have special soil conditions on your property and
you know it, then you might need a permit. If
you are going to be retaining more than three feet
of soil surcharging the back of the wall, then you're
(23:56):
going to need a permit, and you're going to need
some engineering. And that engineering is going to be for
the proper sized footing and steal in that footing so
that the pressure of the soil behind the wall doesn't
basically roll the wall over, doesn't knock it down. So
there you go. Okay, let's take a quick break and
then back to the phones. You're listening to Home with
(24:19):
Dean Sharp, the house.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Whisper You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand
from KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Dean Sharp, the house Whisperer, here to help you transform
your ordinary house into an extraordinary home. We're doing that
today by taking your calls. Let's get back to the phones.
I want to talk to Susan. Ay, Susan, welcome home, Hi.
Speaker 10 (24:47):
Dean, thank you so much for your show and taking
my call. My question is, I live in a very
dark home. I'm repainting. I want bright, bright white. I
know how difficult it is to figure out the right white.
I want to buy a few samples. And I question,
and it's a two part question. The first part is
do you think buying particle board I guess that's what
(25:08):
it's called and painting those and then carrying them around
is better than just going all around and painting walls.
And then the second part of the question is I
can't really afford Benjamin Moore. I think you once suggested
decorators white. I know you did. My question is, maybe
do you know of a bear b ehr, like a
(25:31):
very bright, bright, wonderful white that might be similar to
decorators white. That those are my two questions.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Okay, so let me ask you the second question. First,
I have no idea about it, even about you know,
if you're to asked Tina, you're sitting round here when
it comes to her husband's ability to rename paint colors
from any manufacturing, including Benjamin Moore, I know like five
of them, five of them that I can remember. Okay, Okay, hey, yeah,
(26:01):
it's not always decorator's white that we use. Yeah, only
because sometimes you know, there are may be five different
whites that we'll look at. But in one house it
looks very different than in another house, right, which leads
to others. So first of all, every you know, I
always say this, just you know, no guilt about that.
Use the best paint that you can afford. Okay, of
(26:22):
all the major man of fact, just use the best
paint you can afford. They all have a gabillion colors
when it comes to tints. And to answer your question,
when it comes to you know how to do that,
you're right on target. Get to you know, whether it's
whether it's a piece of cardboard or whether it's a
thin piece of masonite, some inexpensive but the largest piece possible.
(26:46):
The easiest way to do samples of color in a
room other than just putting it up on the wall
is to, you know, make a make a big board
and bring it in the room that way. And I
love that idea because that way you can move it
from one wall to the next, you can look at
the way that the light hits it here, light hits
it there. You can put the two boards next to
(27:07):
each other. You can keep the board separated, which is
usually the better way to do it. And that's the
problem with painting samples on the wall. You'll put one
white here and then about four feet away you'll put
another white, and actually those two will interact with each
other and give you a bias of both of them,
because that's the way light works in transmitting color. So
(27:29):
I prefer to have as large of a board as
possible and bring it into the room by itself, let
it stand alone, and then bring the other one in
by itself, let it stand alone. Make your decisions that way.
If you need to put them next to each other
just to get a sense of which one has more
cream in it, which one has more blue in it,
(27:50):
that's all well and good. But judge them as independently
as possible, and putting them on boards it's a brilliant
way to do it. Susan. Just know that the larger
the sample, the more accurate you're going to get in
regard because the mass of any one color in a
room changes the color the way that it reacts with
(28:10):
the room, So, you know, bringing in a little two
by two square and taping it to the wall not
going to give you a good representation of what that
color is going to do when it's you know, eight
by ten.
Speaker 10 (28:22):
Fantastic. Thank you, perfectly, thank you.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
You are so welcome, Susan. Thank you for the question
and for the call, Tony. Welcome home.
Speaker 8 (28:31):
Hi Dan, how are you. We're joining a complete kitchen
remodel with cabinets, floors, and appliances, and my question is
do the cabinets should those sit on the sub floor
or do we install all of the wood floors first?
And the part that seems the most trickiest from what
I've read, is how to handle the dishwasher?
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Ah, yes, okay. So it's a good question, really good question.
And it depends. It depends. And I say that in
all sincerity because I don't know. Maybe I would say
maybe seventy five percent of the time, typically we will
not install on top of the floors, on top of
(29:17):
the hardwood floor or the tile sometimes just purely from
the practicality that you know, why do you want to
run the expense of hardwood all the way underneath cabinet
kicks where it will never be seen again, so simply
to save square footage of cabinets, but there's also another reason,
I'm sorry, save square footage of flooring material. The other
(29:39):
reason is that sometimes, quite often floors are not perfectly level,
and so your cabinet installers will quite possibly have to
shim up the rough cabinet kicks. Now these days, rough
cabinet kicks get shimmed and then there is is a
(30:01):
finished kickplate that goes over it, and then the shims
are hidden and they meet the floor very nicely. So
but that's a consideration as well. But I would say
typically what we're aiming for is to not run material
underneath the cabinet kicks because it's unnecessary. Now, when it
comes to the dishwasher, whatever the flooring is in the
(30:22):
room that we do run into because the dishwasher is
just an area, a void area, So we go ahead
and run that material into the dishwasher area so that
the dishwasher doesn't get trapped behind flooring material down in
the recess there. And I know some people are like, well,
I don't know if I want to run hardwood in there,
because what if the dishwasher leaks. I guarantee you. If
(30:44):
the dishwasher leaks and you've got hardwood in your kitchen,
it's going to go way beyond just the wood that's
directly underneath. It's going to affect wood in the whole
area there. So it's kind of a moot point when
it comes to that argument. I just prefer the idea
that we can easily slide the dishwasher in and out
for installation or service or what have you. So my
(31:07):
recommendation is typically save the money on the extra flooring material. Now,
occasionally there is a situation where it's like, well, I
don't want to put the cabinets in yet because there's
all this other stuff and if we have to set
the cabinets then then they're going to get in the
way and they're going to get beat up. So I'd
rather have the flooring go in without the cabinets. Well,
(31:29):
you can ask your cabinet manufacture or installer to put
in rough kicks, just the kicks themselves, detached from the
cabinet boxes, and that way, once the kicks are in place,
they determine the cabinet set and then your flooring people
can get in there and lay all the flooring in
the kitchen without the cabinets in their way. That's only
(31:52):
something that happens though when it comes to cabinets that
have detachable kicks, where the kicks are separate from the
boxes themselves elves and you have to talk to your
cabinet person about that. But typically, eh, we wouldn't you
recommend wasting material underneath the cabinet, Kate? Does it matter?
Speaker 7 (32:12):
Though?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Not really, it's not really going to change the install much.
Always account for the height of the hardwood floor though,
so don't set yourself up for a thirty six inch
tall countertop. Then put in, you know, five eighths or
three quarters of an inch of hardwood and find yourself
with shorter cabinets, so the kicks have to be taller
if they're going to go in before the hardwood. Thanks
(32:34):
for the question, Tony, all right, more of your calls
right after this your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer.
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
(32:55):
anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app.
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