March 23, 2025 • 29 mins
Dean continues with part two of big tract remodeling and recap's part one’s important mentions. Dean recaps a bit of part one's show to help set up part two. Dean talks turning windows into sliding doors, as it instantly provides natural lights into a tract home without creating any more holes. Lastly, new garage doors in tract homes and how it could change the visual appeal of a home.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. I am
Dean Sharp, the house Whisper, custom home Builder, custom home Designer,
and I am your guide to better understanding that place
where you live today on the show. It is part
(00:23):
two of our two part series this weekend about big
remodeling wins for tracked homes. Now, let me unpack that
for a second. There are inherent strengths and weaknesses in
a tracked home, a tracked home being the kind of
home that most of us live in. And because of
(00:48):
those inherent strengths and weaknesses, if we can identify them,
if we understand what we're dealing with, there are some
remodeling items, some hits as it were, that if you
know how to approach them, you can make big changes
for minimal amounts of time and money. Not free, not free,
(01:11):
not necessarily even what you might call cheap. But for
those who are planning a remodel, who are getting ready,
who are even thinking about it, I want you to
understand that these these to put it in Tim Conway's terms,
these are small bets that pay off big time. Okay,
big time payoff for a small investment relative to the effect.
(01:36):
And I've got a whole list for you and what
we did on the program yesterday, and for you who
follow our podcast, the previous episode is part one. Is
I laid the groundwork for today's list by really spending
most of the time talking about the strengths and weaknesses
(01:57):
of the track home. I'm going to review that with
you this small just so that we can review, you know,
in our previous episode, we'll do a little quick review
so that we can dive in and everybody has context.
But you're gonna want to listen to yesterday's show as well,
which of course you can find on the on our
podcast Home with Dean Sharp or The House Whisper. You
(02:21):
can search wherever your favorite podcasts are found, and we
are there of course on the free iHeartRadio app, but
also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can put in
Dean Sharp, Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. They're
all all roads with those words in it will lead
back to this fine program. So that is where we're
(02:42):
going today. And of course, of course I'm gonna be
taken calls because I always do. I'm going to give
you the number right now. We've already got a couple
of calls on the board and I haven't even started
talking about it yet. So and I take calls randomly,
so just know when you call in, doesn't matter how
many folks have called in before you, Uh, it's you.
Everybody has an equal chance of getting on the air.
(03:05):
The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask
Dean A three three two. Ask Dean A three three
the numeral two and then you just spell out ask Dean.
Phone lines are open. Producer Richie standing by. He is
ready to tell you everything you need to know. He'll
pop you into the queue. You can listen to the
show while you wait, and who knows, Hopefully you and
(03:28):
I will put our heads together. We'll figure out what's
going on. What's got you scratching your head about your home?
Follow us on social media. We only do the good
kind of social media. Social media is a thing that
you know, I touch it very lightly and I try
and take great respect with it because you know social media, Uh,
(03:50):
we're everywhere there as well on all the usual suspects, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook,
x home with Dean, same handle for them all and Finally,
just a reminder if your home is in need of
some personal house Whisper attention, you know, like listening, You're like,
you know what, I like what this guy's got going on.
What I really need him is sitting in our kitchen
(04:12):
he and Tina to figure out what that huge problem is.
Well guess what that can actually happen. All you have
to do to get an in home consult with me
and t is go get the information for it at
house Whisperer dot design, house Whisper dot Design. All right,
let me introduce our awesome team. Elmer is on the board.
(04:32):
Good morning Elmer, Good morning Dean. How you doing, Bud,
I'm doing really good. Thanks for asking. Yeah. Yeah. Every
time I hit up Elmer on a Sunday morning, he's like,
let's do it. I love it. Like I said, our
producer Richie he is standing by. He's working the phone
(04:53):
lines right now. So you know, let's put him to work.
Give me a call. Put Richie to work, Okay, so
he doesn't just get bored this mor Heather Brooker at
the news desk tune a row, Heather, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's the lucky weekend.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
We still haven't figured out how to get a buffet
in here.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
But no, what a dream, right? I think we need
like a field trip. We need a home field trip.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I think, so we gotta we just need to work
that out. We had a call yesterday. I had a
caller yesterday, and by the time I got to her,
she said, Okay, I'm gonna have to make this question
really quick because I'm standing in line at a buffet
and Heather and I were like, what the heck? But
then she described all of the food, like so she did.
I asked her at the end, I'm like, so, what
are you going to pick? And then she literally described
(05:39):
all the food And I shouldn't have done that because
I left hung Right now.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
We're all like, oh man, okay, next time, next.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Time, next time, next time. All right, Well, glad to
have you here. He always sitting across the table from me,
my better half, my design partner, the co founder co
yeah co, the co everything of house Whisper. Uh, my
best friend in all the world, Tina is here. You pause.
(06:12):
You know he was going to put your elephant in there.
I did, thank you for that. Yeah, welcome home, good morning,
good morning, Glad to see your smiling face. This morning.
Good day. It's beautiful outside the gym this morning. You
did go to the gym this morning, which now thousands
of people have said, what is wrong with her? I know,
(06:32):
but it was really nice. It was great. What's wrong
with Tina is intrinsic awesomeness. That's it. That's what I
would say, generally speaking. Generally speaking, there are other things
wrong with her too, But we're not going there. We're
not going there because if we start, if I start
that list, a much larger list comes out. Oh, oh boy,
(06:53):
of what's wrong with me? House? The Secrets, Welcome home.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
All right, y'all, why don't we get this rolling? Sound good?
We will begin with a quick review, a quick review
of the strength and weaknesses of that tracked home that
you live in, so that there's context for this great
list of big tracked home remodeling wins. And we'll start
(07:23):
it all right after.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
We are talking about big wins for tracked home remodels
that would be the kinds of things that well, let's
just put it this way. Remodeling home, it's all about
making changes some changes are bigger than others. Some changes
cost a lot more than others. Because of the unique
nature of a tracked home, which is where most of
us live, most of them have very similar issues, very
(07:56):
similar problems. And so we've got a list of fixes,
remodeling fixes that achieve a disproportionate amount of good for
the money that they actually cost. Small bet by you,
big win for you. That's what we're at. So a
quick review of yesterday in today's part two of two
part experience. Here on the program, yesterday, I spent a
(08:21):
good amount of time talking about the intrinsic strengths and
weaknesses of a tract home. Here's just a quick review
on the positive side of a tract home. One, you
have a home. Tracked homes are, essentially is what made
middle class home ownership a reality ever since the tract
home experience began in the twenties, early in the twentieth century.
(08:45):
You have a home. That's a great positive about a
tract home because it was a mass produced home, but
it's affordable enough for you to be in it. Secondly,
on the positive side, the engineering of tract homes gets
better and better all the time, simply because tract homes
have to be built. They're the most common homes that
(09:05):
are built, and they have to be built by current codes,
and codes are always we're always learning, we're always increasing
the quality of the engineering of a home. And thirdly,
on the positive side, tracked homes, if you know what
you're doing, are fairly malleable. They are fairly malleable as
far as what we can change, where we can change it,
(09:27):
and how we change it, if you know what you're doing,
And that's really the large part of what we're talking
about today. On the weakness side of tract homes, craftsmanship
is obviously, you know, a mass produced product that is
essentially designed and built by the bottom line on a
spreadsheet somewhere, not going to find the greatest craftsmanship in
(09:50):
the world, clearly. So that's the thing. If you are
at a place where you are ready to remodel that
tract home, we don't have to worry about the craftsmanship
too much because I'm going to trust it. You're going
to get it done right this time. So that's an
inherent weakness one that can be overcome. The second one
is I spent a good amount of time talking about
(10:11):
this yesterday. The second weakness is not where most people
would think. The second weakness of a tract home is
its orientation on the lot. Because tracked homes, tracked home developments,
as you well know, are there's probably about, on average,
(10:31):
there's about four floor plans in a given development, four
different houses. Now those houses get you know, by way
of illusion, the sense that there's a lot more than that,
because you take four houses and you give each one
of those floor plans maybe three or four different facade
styles as they face the street, and then it looks like, well,
(10:55):
you know, give four houses three different facades. Now it
looks like we've got twelve different houses. And then if
you just simply flip the floor plan left or right,
you know, carbon copy upside down as it were, then
you've got twelve different houses. Now looks like you have
twenty four different houses in the neighborhood. And that seems
like a lot of variety of homes, but there are
(11:16):
really only four. And those four houses were designed in
a studio somewhere, not in relationship to the specific lot
that they ended up getting placed on. And as you know,
like in any development, there are lots that are at
the end of cul de sacs that are pie shaped well,
same house gets put there. There are lots that face west,
(11:38):
same house, lots that faced east, same house, South, same
house north, same house. Lots that are tight and soldiered
together in parallel lines, same house, lots that are big
and open on the edges, same house. Lots that have views,
same house, lots with no view, same house. You get
the idea. This is an intrinsic weakness because the doors
(12:02):
and window locations, while in theory might be lovely, change
their effectiveness depending on whether there's a view or no view,
or whether there's blazing southern sun coming in through that
living room window, or whether the living room window is
on the north side of the house and never gets
any direct sunlight. You see what I'm saying. This is
(12:23):
an inherent weakness in a tract home, but one that
quite often, if we know what we're doing, can be corrected. Finally,
another big weakness of tract homes is wasted space. Given
the nature of mass production, and by that I mean
like soffits and chases for air conditioning equipment. When we
build a custom home, we try and finagle everything as
(12:47):
tight and away from intruding into the interior of a
home as possible, but in a tract home development there
are things included built into the house kind of large
balloony space is because they don't worry about making, for instance,
an HVAC contractor build a specialized duck to get from
(13:08):
point A to point B. They just want to give
them a big old freeway so we can get through
there as fast as possible, use the least expensive materials
to get it done. And as a result, tracked homes
end up with lots of drop ceilings and lots of
weird chases and areas where space is being taken up
inside too much space, far more space than is actually necessary.
(13:29):
And we'll get to that too. So there you go.
There's a quick outline of the intrinsic strengths and weaknesses
of a tract home. And now we are ready to
start addressing the home from that perspective. And if we
know what we're doing, we can really make some big differences.
Number one on the list, and these are in no
(13:52):
particular order, but number one on the list turning windows
into doors. We're going to deal with that right after.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on Demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Let us dig into our list of big wins for
tracked home remodels. If you've just joined us, we are
in the thick of just talking about aspects of remodeling,
specifically a tract home, which is what most of us
live in. That because of the unique nature of tract homes,
make certain moves very very beneficial, relatively easy, relatively inexpensive,
(14:32):
not cheap necessarily, but inexpensive in the big remodeling picture,
but with a massive, massive payoff. And before the break,
I teased you with the very first item on our list,
turning windows into doors. Now what am I talking about? Well,
you know, when you think about the orientation of a
tract home on a lot, there may be a lot
(14:54):
of opportunities for getting more light into a room. Turning
a window, let's say, a sliding window a typical thing
found in, for instance, a tracked home bedroom. Turning a
window into a door, a sliding glass door doubles you know,
the amount of light that's coming into a room without
(15:15):
punching big holes in the rest of the walls anywhere,
And so many tracked homes fall under this category. Let's
say you've got a classic. Like here in southern California,
you've got some version of a classic California ranch home, right,
single story tracked home. And in those situations, quite often
(15:39):
there's at least one, two, sometimes three bedrooms with a
window to the backyard or the sideyard of the home.
So imagine, if you will, the design possibilities if we
take a room that has a window out onto a
(16:02):
navigable part of your property. Okay, Now, the area right
now may be underutilized, it may be a wasted space,
it may be all concrete, it may be not private.
Those are all things to take into account or that
can be changed. But just imagine how it raises the
(16:22):
esthetic and raises the living vibe of any bedroom. When
any bedroom has access to its own doorway out into
the backyard, its own Your backyard may be large enough
that you could actually create its own little patio area,
its own just vibe for itself, just outside its window
(16:48):
now turned into a door. So I think most of
you can imagine the benefits of that. The question is, oh,
that seems like a lot of stuff, all right, So
day with me. Now, let's imagine turning a sliding glass
door into a window. Okay, no, I didn't misspeak. I'm
(17:11):
talking about the opposite. But there's a reason why. Let's
imagine that you've got a sliding glass door, maybe a
six foot wide sliding glass door, right three foot fixed panel,
and the three foot door that slides back and forth,
it's six feet wide. Let's imagine turning that sliding glass
door into a window. Now, if you really think about it,
(17:32):
you think, well, actually, that's that's that'd be pretty easy
because we would just take out the sliding glass door,
and we would put in a window the same width okay,
or smaller if you want it, but the same with
like a six foot wide sliding window. And then since
that's all just standing there all by itself, then all
(17:53):
you have to do is build that little wall in
underneath the window, and you know, finish it off in
the inside and the outside, and you're done. And you're
absolutely right about that. That's what you would do, and
you're done, and it's easy, all right. So the reason
I explained that is because that's exactly what's going on
(18:14):
with all of the windows in your house. In other words,
when your house was originally framed up by the framers,
every window in your house started out as a doorway.
In other words, the header over the windows, the studs
that are holding that header up, they go all the
(18:37):
way uninterrupted down to the bottom plate of the wall.
And then only after the windows arrived. That was a
doorway when that house was first being framed up. And
then only after the windows arrived on site did the
guys who installed the windows build those that little wall
inside that frame and put the window in. So what
(18:58):
does that mean for you? It means that you could
take virtually Now there's an exception to every rule, but
this one, especially in a tract home, is almost never
never an exception. You can take virtually any window in
your home and have that little section of wall removed
(19:19):
below the window and open it up and insert a
sliding glass door. You're not changing the structure of the house.
You're not replacing the header over the top with a
bigger beam because that header is already rated to be
holding that amount of width. And wait, so if you
put in a door the same width as the window
that's there, there are no structural changes the most, at
(19:41):
the most, what you will be dealing with is probably
somebody ran some electrical through that little wall down below
the window and electrical can be re routed up and
above and over and around very very easy. So the
fact of the matter is this is a huge wind
for a tract home. If you can imagine a couple
(20:02):
of the bedrooms in your home with their own doorways
out into the yard, even sideyard, even a sideyard that
you could treat as a tiny little garden pathway that
would lead again privately into the main yard. We're not
talking about doing this on bedrooms that face the front
of the house, okay, so that we've got sliding glass
(20:24):
doors out to the street, But we're talking about bedrooms
that have windows sideyard or rear yard. Doubling the amount
of glass, doubling the amount of light, increasing the size
of the room because you see the outside, and everything
you can see from the outside see on the outside
(20:44):
from the inside increases the spacious ness of a room.
You're increasing the vista, you're increasing the access, and for
all of that, it's really just the cost of the
slider and a little bit of labor to rem move
something that's actually very very easy to remove and change.
Think about that. That is a massive win for a
(21:08):
relatively small move. And if you understand that we're dealing
with one of the intrinsic weaknesses of a tracked home.
Then we're using it to our advantage and we're getting
a lot out of it. So give that some thought.
I know, right, Oh, I've got a whole list of
pearls for you. We will move forward right after.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
If somebody gives me free cheese steaks for a year, Heather,
how does that work?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I mean, I wish. I'm just trying to process, like
I was listening to that, going, how can we make
that happen here? How can the rest of us get
in on this? Am I allowed to apply? Like what
i'ma have to tune in to find out.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, we're gonna have to tune in to Gary and
Shan and find out how to get free cheese steaks
for a year. And I'll and in a deeper question,
Heather is why are you and I spending so much
time talking about food on this program?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I think, Well, I know, for me, I come in
at like five in the morning and I don't really
have time for a proper breakfast.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So I'm sitting here going like, okay, is this muffin
gonna sustain me? And then we're talking about like grilled
mushrooms and breakfast buffets and now cheese steaks, so yeah,
it's it's it's time to eat basically.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, yeah, Well thanks for joining us, everyone. Heather and
I have got to go get something to eat and
we'll catch TOMRK now right back, all right, be right
back in a couple of hours. All right, let us
dive back in. I know I left just jaws draping
just on the floor with this whole idea of turning
(22:56):
windows into doors. That was one of the items on
our list of really really effective moves when you're remodeling
a tract home. Okay, a relatively small effort, relatively simple
procedure that yields a big win. All right, let's move
on to yet another one. Okay, this one I've you know,
(23:19):
none of these are absolutely brand new to the program here.
I've talked about them in different contexts before, and this
one is something we've covered again and again. But nevertheless,
it's because it's such an important move for most tracked houses,
and that is the new garage door. The new garage door.
Now you're like, what's wrong with the garage door I've got.
(23:40):
I don't know, maybe nothing. I just want to point
out the fact that, you know, starting in the late
nineteen fifties into the sixties and well beyond to current day,
a trend in suburban housing shifted. There was, of course
that the time when from let's say the nineteen twenties,
(24:05):
when suburbia was kind of really invented, all the way
through World War Two and into the post war area,
even into the nineteen fifties, and for some areas the sixties,
but very rarely that we had detached garages in the
back of the lot, the back of the property and
alleyways in between our homes. Now, if you ask me,
(24:26):
why did that ever go away? Dean, Well, there are
numerous reasons why it shifted. One was there were concerns
about crime at the time, and that an alley way
is just a place where things can happen. Obviously, nowadays,
with cameras and you know, and everybody's ability to watch
everything all the time, that's not so much a concern anymore.
(24:48):
And so and developers were buying less property and squeezing
more houses into them, and you know, alleys take up space,
and so if you don't have an alley, then the
lot can go all the way halfway across the alley
and we can squeeze more houses into the same property development.
And so what happened was for a number of different reasons.
(25:10):
I won't waste any more time on the history lesson here.
Starting in the sixties, all of a sudden, garages are
in the front of the house facing the street, okay,
and you all well know, and there are some variations
of that. There are detached garages in the back that
have no alleys, but you've got a big driveway going
all the way past the house back to that garage,
(25:30):
and that takes up a lot of space on the
property as well. So the point being this, love them,
hate them, doesn't matter. You've got a garage, very likely
facing the street. Most of us do. And because of that,
from a design point of view, now the designer is
(25:50):
speaking to you, not the contractor. From a design point
of view, the simple reality is a garage forward, a
garage street facing presence means that that door, that door,
not your front door. That door is the most important
door on the front of your home. Okay, if you're
going to make a change about how your home feels
(26:12):
the vibe from the street, there is no better place
to invest money in a door than on the garage door.
And here's the advantage. Garage doors, uh, you know, buy
pure in terms of pure square footage, are far less
expensive to improve upon and change than your entry door
(26:35):
to your home. Let's say you've got an entry to
your home and you'd say, oh, we're gonna judge this up.
I'm gonna put a solid oak entry door there and
a couple of sidelights, or I've got a couple of
door double doors, which Dean doesn't love anyway, But that's
a whole nother discussion. Let's just say we put a nice, big,
solid oak and tree door. You know very well if
(26:56):
you've priced any of this out, that that could start
at three three thousand plus dollars and just keep on going.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And a replacing garage door, a decent one doesn't have
to be top of the line, but a decent looking,
well insulated, maybe wood grained. And I'm not saying wood
but wood grained. I mean all sorts of options for
a garage door. The same amount of money to that
(27:24):
you would spend on the entry door to your home
will buy you a better garage door same amount of money.
And so when you think about it by the numbers, like, well,
the entry door to my home is thirty six inches
wide and my garage and that's going to cost me
three thousand dollars. My garage door will cost me three
thousand dollars and it is yeah, probably sixteen maybe seventeen
(27:50):
feet wide, And so dollar for dollar, square foot for
square foot, inch for inch, and the fact that the
garage door is very likely closer to the street, larger,
taken up maybe a third of the frontage of the house.
If that is the situation you find yourself in, then
(28:10):
embrace this idea that this is actually the most important
design door on the front of your house. Second to
that is the actual entry door, the main entry door
into your home. So adding or replacing a garage door
to improve the aesthetic of your home is very, very
(28:31):
rarely the wrong move. And if a remodel budget is
being assembled and a remodel is being considered, don't skip
over that idea because it's a huge change for a
decent amount of money, for a small investment, disproportionate huge change.
(28:53):
And that's our list today, all right, So we're going
to get back to this list. But we're at the
top of the hour, which means when we come back
from the news, we are going to the phones. The
number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean
A three three the numeral two, Ask Dean. You are
listening to Dean Sharp the House Whisper on KFI. This
(29:14):
has been Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper. Tune
into the live broadcast on KFI Am six forty every
Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time and every
Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime
on demand on the iHeart Radio app.
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. I am
Dean Sharp, the house Whisper, custom home Builder, custom home Designer,
and I am your guide to better understanding that place
where you live today on the show. It is part
(00:23):
two of our two part series this weekend about big
remodeling wins for tracked homes. Now, let me unpack that
for a second. There are inherent strengths and weaknesses in
a tracked home, a tracked home being the kind of
home that most of us live in. And because of
(00:48):
those inherent strengths and weaknesses, if we can identify them,
if we understand what we're dealing with, there are some
remodeling items, some hits as it were, that if you
know how to approach them, you can make big changes
for minimal amounts of time and money. Not free, not free,
(01:11):
not necessarily even what you might call cheap. But for
those who are planning a remodel, who are getting ready,
who are even thinking about it, I want you to
understand that these these to put it in Tim Conway's terms,
these are small bets that pay off big time. Okay,
big time payoff for a small investment relative to the effect.
(01:36):
And I've got a whole list for you and what
we did on the program yesterday, and for you who
follow our podcast, the previous episode is part one. Is
I laid the groundwork for today's list by really spending
most of the time talking about the strengths and weaknesses
(01:57):
of the track home. I'm going to review that with
you this small just so that we can review, you know,
in our previous episode, we'll do a little quick review
so that we can dive in and everybody has context.
But you're gonna want to listen to yesterday's show as well,
which of course you can find on the on our
podcast Home with Dean Sharp or The House Whisper. You
(02:21):
can search wherever your favorite podcasts are found, and we
are there of course on the free iHeartRadio app, but
also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. You can put in
Dean Sharp, Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. They're
all all roads with those words in it will lead
back to this fine program. So that is where we're
(02:42):
going today. And of course, of course I'm gonna be
taken calls because I always do. I'm going to give
you the number right now. We've already got a couple
of calls on the board and I haven't even started
talking about it yet. So and I take calls randomly,
so just know when you call in, doesn't matter how
many folks have called in before you, Uh, it's you.
Everybody has an equal chance of getting on the air.
(03:05):
The number to reach me eight three three two. Ask
Dean A three three two. Ask Dean A three three
the numeral two and then you just spell out ask Dean.
Phone lines are open. Producer Richie standing by. He is
ready to tell you everything you need to know. He'll
pop you into the queue. You can listen to the
show while you wait, and who knows, Hopefully you and
(03:28):
I will put our heads together. We'll figure out what's
going on. What's got you scratching your head about your home?
Follow us on social media. We only do the good
kind of social media. Social media is a thing that
you know, I touch it very lightly and I try
and take great respect with it because you know social media, Uh,
(03:50):
we're everywhere there as well on all the usual suspects, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook,
x home with Dean, same handle for them all and Finally,
just a reminder if your home is in need of
some personal house Whisper attention, you know, like listening, You're like,
you know what, I like what this guy's got going on.
What I really need him is sitting in our kitchen
(04:12):
he and Tina to figure out what that huge problem is.
Well guess what that can actually happen. All you have
to do to get an in home consult with me
and t is go get the information for it at
house Whisperer dot design, house Whisper dot Design. All right,
let me introduce our awesome team. Elmer is on the board.
(04:32):
Good morning Elmer, Good morning Dean. How you doing, Bud,
I'm doing really good. Thanks for asking. Yeah. Yeah. Every
time I hit up Elmer on a Sunday morning, he's like,
let's do it. I love it. Like I said, our
producer Richie he is standing by. He's working the phone
(04:53):
lines right now. So you know, let's put him to work.
Give me a call. Put Richie to work, Okay, so
he doesn't just get bored this mor Heather Brooker at
the news desk tune a row, Heather, that's right.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's the lucky weekend.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
We still haven't figured out how to get a buffet
in here.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
But no, what a dream, right? I think we need
like a field trip. We need a home field trip.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I think, so we gotta we just need to work
that out. We had a call yesterday. I had a
caller yesterday, and by the time I got to her,
she said, Okay, I'm gonna have to make this question
really quick because I'm standing in line at a buffet
and Heather and I were like, what the heck? But
then she described all of the food, like so she did.
I asked her at the end, I'm like, so, what
are you going to pick? And then she literally described
(05:39):
all the food And I shouldn't have done that because
I left hung Right now.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
We're all like, oh man, okay, next time, next.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Time, next time, next time. All right, Well, glad to
have you here. He always sitting across the table from me,
my better half, my design partner, the co founder co
yeah co, the co everything of house Whisper. Uh, my
best friend in all the world, Tina is here. You pause.
(06:12):
You know he was going to put your elephant in there.
I did, thank you for that. Yeah, welcome home, good morning,
good morning, Glad to see your smiling face. This morning.
Good day. It's beautiful outside the gym this morning. You
did go to the gym this morning, which now thousands
of people have said, what is wrong with her? I know,
(06:32):
but it was really nice. It was great. What's wrong
with Tina is intrinsic awesomeness. That's it. That's what I
would say, generally speaking. Generally speaking, there are other things
wrong with her too, But we're not going there. We're
not going there because if we start, if I start
that list, a much larger list comes out. Oh, oh boy,
(06:53):
of what's wrong with me? House? The Secrets, Welcome home.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
All right, y'all, why don't we get this rolling? Sound good?
We will begin with a quick review, a quick review
of the strength and weaknesses of that tracked home that
you live in, so that there's context for this great
list of big tracked home remodeling wins. And we'll start
(07:23):
it all right after.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
We are talking about big wins for tracked home remodels
that would be the kinds of things that well, let's
just put it this way. Remodeling home, it's all about
making changes some changes are bigger than others. Some changes
cost a lot more than others. Because of the unique
nature of a tracked home, which is where most of
us live, most of them have very similar issues, very
(07:56):
similar problems. And so we've got a list of fixes,
remodeling fixes that achieve a disproportionate amount of good for
the money that they actually cost. Small bet by you,
big win for you. That's what we're at. So a
quick review of yesterday in today's part two of two
part experience. Here on the program, yesterday, I spent a
(08:21):
good amount of time talking about the intrinsic strengths and
weaknesses of a tract home. Here's just a quick review
on the positive side of a tract home. One, you
have a home. Tracked homes are, essentially is what made
middle class home ownership a reality ever since the tract
home experience began in the twenties, early in the twentieth century.
(08:45):
You have a home. That's a great positive about a
tract home because it was a mass produced home, but
it's affordable enough for you to be in it. Secondly,
on the positive side, the engineering of tract homes gets
better and better all the time, simply because tract homes
have to be built. They're the most common homes that
(09:05):
are built, and they have to be built by current codes,
and codes are always we're always learning, we're always increasing
the quality of the engineering of a home. And thirdly,
on the positive side, tracked homes, if you know what
you're doing, are fairly malleable. They are fairly malleable as
far as what we can change, where we can change it,
(09:27):
and how we change it, if you know what you're doing,
And that's really the large part of what we're talking
about today. On the weakness side of tract homes, craftsmanship
is obviously, you know, a mass produced product that is
essentially designed and built by the bottom line on a
spreadsheet somewhere, not going to find the greatest craftsmanship in
(09:50):
the world, clearly. So that's the thing. If you are
at a place where you are ready to remodel that
tract home, we don't have to worry about the craftsmanship
too much because I'm going to trust it. You're going
to get it done right this time. So that's an
inherent weakness one that can be overcome. The second one
is I spent a good amount of time talking about
(10:11):
this yesterday. The second weakness is not where most people
would think. The second weakness of a tract home is
its orientation on the lot. Because tracked homes, tracked home developments,
as you well know, are there's probably about, on average,
(10:31):
there's about four floor plans in a given development, four
different houses. Now those houses get you know, by way
of illusion, the sense that there's a lot more than that,
because you take four houses and you give each one
of those floor plans maybe three or four different facade
styles as they face the street, and then it looks like, well,
(10:55):
you know, give four houses three different facades. Now it
looks like we've got twelve different houses. And then if
you just simply flip the floor plan left or right,
you know, carbon copy upside down as it were, then
you've got twelve different houses. Now looks like you have
twenty four different houses in the neighborhood. And that seems
like a lot of variety of homes, but there are
(11:16):
really only four. And those four houses were designed in
a studio somewhere, not in relationship to the specific lot
that they ended up getting placed on. And as you know,
like in any development, there are lots that are at
the end of cul de sacs that are pie shaped well,
same house gets put there. There are lots that face west,
(11:38):
same house, lots that faced east, same house, South, same
house north, same house. Lots that are tight and soldiered
together in parallel lines, same house, lots that are big
and open on the edges, same house. Lots that have views,
same house, lots with no view, same house. You get
the idea. This is an intrinsic weakness because the doors
(12:02):
and window locations, while in theory might be lovely, change
their effectiveness depending on whether there's a view or no view,
or whether there's blazing southern sun coming in through that
living room window, or whether the living room window is
on the north side of the house and never gets
any direct sunlight. You see what I'm saying. This is
(12:23):
an inherent weakness in a tract home, but one that
quite often, if we know what we're doing, can be corrected. Finally,
another big weakness of tract homes is wasted space. Given
the nature of mass production, and by that I mean
like soffits and chases for air conditioning equipment. When we
build a custom home, we try and finagle everything as
(12:47):
tight and away from intruding into the interior of a
home as possible, but in a tract home development there
are things included built into the house kind of large
balloony space is because they don't worry about making, for instance,
an HVAC contractor build a specialized duck to get from
(13:08):
point A to point B. They just want to give
them a big old freeway so we can get through
there as fast as possible, use the least expensive materials
to get it done. And as a result, tracked homes
end up with lots of drop ceilings and lots of
weird chases and areas where space is being taken up
inside too much space, far more space than is actually necessary.
(13:29):
And we'll get to that too. So there you go.
There's a quick outline of the intrinsic strengths and weaknesses
of a tract home. And now we are ready to
start addressing the home from that perspective. And if we
know what we're doing, we can really make some big differences.
Number one on the list, and these are in no
(13:52):
particular order, but number one on the list turning windows
into doors. We're going to deal with that right after.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on Demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Let us dig into our list of big wins for
tracked home remodels. If you've just joined us, we are
in the thick of just talking about aspects of remodeling,
specifically a tract home, which is what most of us
live in. That because of the unique nature of tract homes,
make certain moves very very beneficial, relatively easy, relatively inexpensive,
(14:32):
not cheap necessarily, but inexpensive in the big remodeling picture,
but with a massive, massive payoff. And before the break,
I teased you with the very first item on our list,
turning windows into doors. Now what am I talking about? Well,
you know, when you think about the orientation of a
tract home on a lot, there may be a lot
(14:54):
of opportunities for getting more light into a room. Turning
a window, let's say, a sliding window a typical thing
found in, for instance, a tracked home bedroom. Turning a
window into a door, a sliding glass door doubles you know,
the amount of light that's coming into a room without
(15:15):
punching big holes in the rest of the walls anywhere,
And so many tracked homes fall under this category. Let's
say you've got a classic. Like here in southern California,
you've got some version of a classic California ranch home, right,
single story tracked home. And in those situations, quite often
(15:39):
there's at least one, two, sometimes three bedrooms with a
window to the backyard or the sideyard of the home.
So imagine, if you will, the design possibilities if we
take a room that has a window out onto a
(16:02):
navigable part of your property. Okay, Now, the area right
now may be underutilized, it may be a wasted space,
it may be all concrete, it may be not private.
Those are all things to take into account or that
can be changed. But just imagine how it raises the
(16:22):
esthetic and raises the living vibe of any bedroom. When
any bedroom has access to its own doorway out into
the backyard, its own Your backyard may be large enough
that you could actually create its own little patio area,
its own just vibe for itself, just outside its window
(16:48):
now turned into a door. So I think most of
you can imagine the benefits of that. The question is, oh,
that seems like a lot of stuff, all right, So
day with me. Now, let's imagine turning a sliding glass
door into a window. Okay, no, I didn't misspeak. I'm
(17:11):
talking about the opposite. But there's a reason why. Let's
imagine that you've got a sliding glass door, maybe a
six foot wide sliding glass door, right three foot fixed panel,
and the three foot door that slides back and forth,
it's six feet wide. Let's imagine turning that sliding glass
door into a window. Now, if you really think about it,
(17:32):
you think, well, actually, that's that's that'd be pretty easy
because we would just take out the sliding glass door,
and we would put in a window the same width okay,
or smaller if you want it, but the same with
like a six foot wide sliding window. And then since
that's all just standing there all by itself, then all
(17:53):
you have to do is build that little wall in
underneath the window, and you know, finish it off in
the inside and the outside, and you're done. And you're
absolutely right about that. That's what you would do, and
you're done, and it's easy, all right. So the reason
I explained that is because that's exactly what's going on
(18:14):
with all of the windows in your house. In other words,
when your house was originally framed up by the framers,
every window in your house started out as a doorway.
In other words, the header over the windows, the studs
that are holding that header up, they go all the
(18:37):
way uninterrupted down to the bottom plate of the wall.
And then only after the windows arrived. That was a
doorway when that house was first being framed up. And
then only after the windows arrived on site did the
guys who installed the windows build those that little wall
inside that frame and put the window in. So what
(18:58):
does that mean for you? It means that you could
take virtually Now there's an exception to every rule, but
this one, especially in a tract home, is almost never
never an exception. You can take virtually any window in
your home and have that little section of wall removed
(19:19):
below the window and open it up and insert a
sliding glass door. You're not changing the structure of the house.
You're not replacing the header over the top with a
bigger beam because that header is already rated to be
holding that amount of width. And wait, so if you
put in a door the same width as the window
that's there, there are no structural changes the most, at
(19:41):
the most, what you will be dealing with is probably
somebody ran some electrical through that little wall down below
the window and electrical can be re routed up and
above and over and around very very easy. So the
fact of the matter is this is a huge wind
for a tract home. If you can imagine a couple
(20:02):
of the bedrooms in your home with their own doorways
out into the yard, even sideyard, even a sideyard that
you could treat as a tiny little garden pathway that
would lead again privately into the main yard. We're not
talking about doing this on bedrooms that face the front
of the house, okay, so that we've got sliding glass
(20:24):
doors out to the street, But we're talking about bedrooms
that have windows sideyard or rear yard. Doubling the amount
of glass, doubling the amount of light, increasing the size
of the room because you see the outside, and everything
you can see from the outside see on the outside
(20:44):
from the inside increases the spacious ness of a room.
You're increasing the vista, you're increasing the access, and for
all of that, it's really just the cost of the
slider and a little bit of labor to rem move
something that's actually very very easy to remove and change.
Think about that. That is a massive win for a
(21:08):
relatively small move. And if you understand that we're dealing
with one of the intrinsic weaknesses of a tracked home.
Then we're using it to our advantage and we're getting
a lot out of it. So give that some thought.
I know, right, Oh, I've got a whole list of
pearls for you. We will move forward right after.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
If somebody gives me free cheese steaks for a year, Heather,
how does that work?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I mean, I wish. I'm just trying to process, like
I was listening to that, going, how can we make
that happen here? How can the rest of us get
in on this? Am I allowed to apply? Like what
i'ma have to tune in to find out.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah, we're gonna have to tune in to Gary and
Shan and find out how to get free cheese steaks
for a year. And I'll and in a deeper question,
Heather is why are you and I spending so much
time talking about food on this program?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I think, Well, I know, for me, I come in
at like five in the morning and I don't really
have time for a proper breakfast.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So I'm sitting here going like, okay, is this muffin
gonna sustain me? And then we're talking about like grilled
mushrooms and breakfast buffets and now cheese steaks, so yeah,
it's it's it's time to eat basically.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, yeah, Well thanks for joining us, everyone. Heather and
I have got to go get something to eat and
we'll catch TOMRK now right back, all right, be right
back in a couple of hours. All right, let us
dive back in. I know I left just jaws draping
just on the floor with this whole idea of turning
(22:56):
windows into doors. That was one of the items on
our list of really really effective moves when you're remodeling
a tract home. Okay, a relatively small effort, relatively simple
procedure that yields a big win. All right, let's move
on to yet another one. Okay, this one I've you know,
(23:19):
none of these are absolutely brand new to the program here.
I've talked about them in different contexts before, and this
one is something we've covered again and again. But nevertheless,
it's because it's such an important move for most tracked houses,
and that is the new garage door. The new garage door.
Now you're like, what's wrong with the garage door I've got.
(23:40):
I don't know, maybe nothing. I just want to point
out the fact that, you know, starting in the late
nineteen fifties into the sixties and well beyond to current day,
a trend in suburban housing shifted. There was, of course
that the time when from let's say the nineteen twenties,
(24:05):
when suburbia was kind of really invented, all the way
through World War Two and into the post war area,
even into the nineteen fifties, and for some areas the sixties,
but very rarely that we had detached garages in the
back of the lot, the back of the property and
alleyways in between our homes. Now, if you ask me,
(24:26):
why did that ever go away? Dean, Well, there are
numerous reasons why it shifted. One was there were concerns
about crime at the time, and that an alley way
is just a place where things can happen. Obviously, nowadays,
with cameras and you know, and everybody's ability to watch
everything all the time, that's not so much a concern anymore.
(24:48):
And so and developers were buying less property and squeezing
more houses into them, and you know, alleys take up space,
and so if you don't have an alley, then the
lot can go all the way halfway across the alley
and we can squeeze more houses into the same property development.
And so what happened was for a number of different reasons.
(25:10):
I won't waste any more time on the history lesson here.
Starting in the sixties, all of a sudden, garages are
in the front of the house facing the street, okay,
and you all well know, and there are some variations
of that. There are detached garages in the back that
have no alleys, but you've got a big driveway going
all the way past the house back to that garage,
(25:30):
and that takes up a lot of space on the
property as well. So the point being this, love them,
hate them, doesn't matter. You've got a garage, very likely
facing the street. Most of us do. And because of that,
from a design point of view, now the designer is
(25:50):
speaking to you, not the contractor. From a design point
of view, the simple reality is a garage forward, a
garage street facing presence means that that door, that door,
not your front door. That door is the most important
door on the front of your home. Okay, if you're
going to make a change about how your home feels
(26:12):
the vibe from the street, there is no better place
to invest money in a door than on the garage door.
And here's the advantage. Garage doors, uh, you know, buy
pure in terms of pure square footage, are far less
expensive to improve upon and change than your entry door
(26:35):
to your home. Let's say you've got an entry to
your home and you'd say, oh, we're gonna judge this up.
I'm gonna put a solid oak entry door there and
a couple of sidelights, or I've got a couple of
door double doors, which Dean doesn't love anyway, But that's
a whole nother discussion. Let's just say we put a nice, big,
solid oak and tree door. You know very well if
(26:56):
you've priced any of this out, that that could start
at three three thousand plus dollars and just keep on going.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
And a replacing garage door, a decent one doesn't have
to be top of the line, but a decent looking,
well insulated, maybe wood grained. And I'm not saying wood
but wood grained. I mean all sorts of options for
a garage door. The same amount of money to that
(27:24):
you would spend on the entry door to your home
will buy you a better garage door same amount of money.
And so when you think about it by the numbers, like, well,
the entry door to my home is thirty six inches
wide and my garage and that's going to cost me
three thousand dollars. My garage door will cost me three
thousand dollars and it is yeah, probably sixteen maybe seventeen
(27:50):
feet wide, And so dollar for dollar, square foot for
square foot, inch for inch, and the fact that the
garage door is very likely closer to the street, larger,
taken up maybe a third of the frontage of the house.
If that is the situation you find yourself in, then
(28:10):
embrace this idea that this is actually the most important
design door on the front of your house. Second to
that is the actual entry door, the main entry door
into your home. So adding or replacing a garage door
to improve the aesthetic of your home is very, very
(28:31):
rarely the wrong move. And if a remodel budget is
being assembled and a remodel is being considered, don't skip
over that idea because it's a huge change for a
decent amount of money, for a small investment, disproportionate huge change.
(28:53):
And that's our list today, all right, So we're going
to get back to this list. But we're at the
top of the hour, which means when we come back
from the news, we are going to the phones. The
number to reach me eight three three two. Ask Dean
A three three the numeral two, Ask Dean. You are
listening to Dean Sharp the House Whisper on KFI. This
(29:14):
has been Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper. Tune
into the live broadcast on KFI Am six forty every
Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time and every
Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime
on demand on the iHeart Radio app.
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