Holiday Gift Guide

Holiday Gift Guide

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp the
house Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Every week
your guide to better understand that place where you live.
Every home has a path forward, my friend, including yours.
Once you see it, that's when everything changes. And I'm
here to help you find that path every single week,

(00:23):
whether we are doing a topical show, whether we are
answering your calls about your home, however the case may be,
I'm talking home repair, home maintenance, home design, which is
truly my definition of home improvement, all of the above
and more. Now we are in our what is today?
Today is literally the last day of November, is it not? Yes,

(00:45):
it is. We are just after This is the Sunday
after Thanksgiving twenty twenty five, which is when we traditionally
lay out for you our house Whisper Holiday Gift Guide.
This is a gift guide of curated items specifically for
the di wire, the home improvement of ficionado in your life,

(01:06):
the lover of manual things and such, and so every
year I try and put together this list to help
give you some insights on great gifts, great gifts for
these kind of folks. Anyway, Shall we get back to
the gift guide? All right? How about this the Rogue

(01:26):
Fishing Company has put together. Now there are a lot
of these out there. This is the one I like
the best from the Rogue Fishing Company. No, it's not
about fishing, not for us, not for our application. The
iPhone or the I should say, the smartphone protector and
phone tether. It's a leash. It's a leash for your phone. Okay,

(01:49):
it is a bungee cord kind of leash. The mounting
device for your phone does not require that you take
the case off your phone. It can be exactly how
it is, but it has a way of wrapping around
and holding on to your phone temporarily while you're doing
your work and keep your phone in your pocket. It's
totally usable. There's a d ring, a carabine or on

(02:11):
one side that you clip it onto your belt or
a belt loop or somewhere else on your clothing. Because
you know, we're in the day and age in which
we always have our phones with us, and you know, hey,
when I've got to set a tool bags on, I've
got my phone there because a call might be coming
in or I may need to reference something, or sometimes
I just use the camera and or the flashlight for

(02:34):
on the phone for whatever it is that I'm doing.
There's a hundred reasons why we keep our phones with
us while we're working, but it puts them in relative danger.
And even if it's not so much the danger for
the phone, it is the fact that if we end
up dropping it and we're up on a ladder and
then we got to go down, you to stop what
we're doing. And da da da. This is a tether

(02:54):
and a leash for your phone. Another great stocking stuffer
because this one comes in at seven dollars and how
useful is it? And yes, it's made by the Rogue
Fishing Company because they're thinking about the fact that you're
out on a boat and you're fishing and active, and
all of a sudden your phone goes PLoP right over
the side. And with this you just yank it back in,

(03:17):
put it, dry it off, put it back in your pocket,
and get on with your day. It's a really, really,
really good idea. Another really good idea is the world's
best kind of setup for an extension cord. Now this
may not sound like the most exciting thing ever, but
let me tell you. Okay, the right extension cord can

(03:37):
make all the difference in the world. Now, what is
the right extension cord? Well, first of all, for a pro,
the right extension cord is a twelve gauge extension cord. Okay,
extension cords come in different gauges. That is the size
of the wires inside. So a little mini lamp cords,

(03:58):
very very lightweight cords. Right, you don't want to run
power tools with them. You'll literally run so much draw
so much current through them that you'll melt them down. Okay,
A medium gauge cord, yeah, you can get away with
a small power tool on that. Okay, a fourteen gauge cord.
But if you just want to go worry free, then
you get yourself a twelve gauge extension cord, all right,

(04:21):
that is going to be able to run on a
twenty amp circuit. It can pull all sorts of juicy
power through it. It can power up multiple tools at
once if you put a splitter on it. So it's
a twelve gauge cord. Secondly, it's long enough, but it's
not too long. And what is that typically, Well, my
own personal preference is if you're not working on big

(04:43):
job sites in places you don't need one hundred foot
extension cord, but a fifty footer is really, really super practical.
You think about the size of your lot, size of
your yard. A fifty foot extension cord gets you pretty
much where you need to be without being too cumbersome.
Twenty five footers usually I find myself, you know, about
half the time they work and half the time I'm like, oh,

(05:05):
it's ten feet short. So I like a fifty foot
extension chord. Lastly, heavy duty outdoor, weather proof, waterproof, heat
and corrosion exist resistant. And here it is a light
up prong outlet and a locking plug. Okay, So what

(05:27):
it means is when you plug this in, if there
is indeed power coming into it, the plug side of
the cord is a clear acrylic and so there's a
light on the inside. So when you plug it in,
the light lights up and you know you got power,
because sometimes that's a question like why is there no power?
Is the chord bad? Is this outlet bad? Okay, you

(05:49):
plug it in, it lights up, you know you got power.
On the other end, where you're plugging your tools in,
there is a pole hasp a little lock. You can
just do it with one hand. But what have you
ever wondered why the plugs on most appliances, on the
actual prongs have those little holes in them at the end. Well,
a locking extension cord has a little ball bearing that

(06:11):
will actually engage into that little hole and hold it
in place so that you're not up on a ladder.
And you jiggle it and all of a sudden the
cord comes out. Okay, this locks your tool into the
end of the extension cord, and to take it out,
all you do is just pull back the collar a
little bit and boom, it pops right out. This is,

(06:33):
in my opinion, one of the world's finest extent any
extension cord that has all these features, and the one
that I'm referring to specifically is made by Dwault fifty
foot twelve gauge locking light up prong all of the
above fifty five dollars. There you go, and you are welcome.
All right, let's talk about blowing things up. No, not

(06:55):
to demolition, I mean an inflator, battery powered, cordless in flater.
We'll talk about that on the other side of the break.
You are Home with Dean Sharp the House Whisper.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Thanks for joining us on the show. Today. We are
moving our way through the twenty twenty five House Whisper
Holiday Gift Guide, the personally curated gift Guide by me
to you for that di wire or home improvement enthusiast,
that active handy person in your life. These are great

(07:33):
options for them if you are looking for the definitive
gifts gift and the gift guide. By the way, you
can see the whole thing, including pictures and live links
to where you can purchase these items on our social media.
And while you're there, won't you follow us as well?
Because we got lots of cool things coming up. You're

(07:54):
not gonna want to miss out. We don't bug you,
we don't flood your streams. We're just here to help.
That's we are on all of the usable suspects, Instagram, Facebook,
TikTok x, all of the above, same handle to find
us all. You can follow us on all of them,

(08:14):
choose one or two however you want to do it. Home.
You remember that word right Home with Dean. That's all
you have to do to find us there home with Dean,
and while you're there, follow us. But the gift guide
is pinned right at the top of those streams. Right now.
You can download it with its live links and its
images to research it later. All right, let's get back

(08:37):
to it. Right before the break, I said, if you
feel like blowing something up, here's something for you. But
I don't mean explosives, I mean an inflator. And again,
we live in the age of cordless battery powered tools,
and this is no exception. Now again, this is a
Milwaukee and I've already said, you know, I have a

(08:58):
lot of Milwaukee tools in our tool family. And so
again when it comes to battery operated tools, if you
kind of sneak into your loved ones zone and see
what you know. Are they a Milwaukee person, Are they
a Dwault person? Are they a Bosh or does it
not really matter? But if they are, if you see
a lot of the same brand of tools, cordless tools,

(09:20):
then you're going to want to try and find a
gift for them in that tool family because they won't
have to buy new batteries. They'll use the existing batteries
that they have. On the new tool because the batteries
are interchangeable. So we're talking here about a Milwaukee. Now
I know Dwault also has a fantastic inflator, but this
is the M eighteen Milwaukee one hundred and fifty PSI

(09:42):
Max Tire inflator. Now, they have two sizes to it.
This is the one hundred and ninety nine dollars version. This
is they're larger of the two. This could take a
full on, you know, like a pickup truck with thirty
three inch tires and top off the whole truck in
just a few minutes. Okay, it's powerful, it's very very fast,
it's totally portable. It's like the size of a lunchbox.

(10:06):
There is a smaller version that you could also get
that's one hundred and twenty nine dollars. It'll also get
the job done, but you might have to use more
than one battery as it does it. And also it's
going to take a little longer, but it'll still get
the job done. And these also are perfect for bicycle
tires and sports equipment, balls and so on. And what's

(10:26):
so cool about these is that they're digital. Okay, so
what that means is you look on the tire or
the you know, the bicycle tire or the ball, and
you're like, what is the maximum psi? What is the
optimal psi? The tire will say it, oh, this is
a this is a you know, sixty five psi tire.
And all you do is you turn on the unit,

(10:47):
you press in sixty five psi and you press go,
and it's gauging it and monitoring it. It'll bring it
right up to sixty five and stop the end and
you move it on to the next tire. Inflators are great, okay,
moving on. Everybody needs a great ladder because we all

(11:08):
have things doing around the house that we can't reach now.
In past years I have recommended some really really great ladders,
eight foot ladders, six foot ladders, extension ladders. This year,
I am moving down a notch to a ladder that
I think, in fact, will probably get the most use
of all. It's certainly around here these are the categories

(11:30):
of ladders that get the most use, because let's face it,
most of us are working in the eight to ten
foot ceiling zone and we've got to reach up that
far and not much further than that. So what do
we need we need to get up, you know, two
or three feet off the ground, which is not lugging
around even a big six foot step ladder, but a
really well made steel step stool project ladder, three hundred

(11:54):
pound rated. Okay, I'm trying to remember what the actual
brand on this one is that I recommend. Oh, it's
a Gorilla, of course it is. It's Gorilla. Gorilla is
a great ladder manufacturer, one of the two wonderful ladder
manufacturers out there are actually three Werner, Gorilla and Little Giant.

(12:14):
This is a Gorilla And what's great about it three
steps up, folds up real easy, out of the way,
but at the top a rail that you hold on
to for balance and stability, and a tool tray at
the top as well to set it whatever it is,
the light bulb that you're changing out, whatever the case
may be. Ninety nine dollars and it's so so it's

(12:35):
got the nine foot reach heighth capacity to it, three
hundred pound load. It's for everybody. So that is the
Gorilla three step pro grade steel step stool ladder. All right,
I've got just a minute before we run to break.
I'm gonna recommend to you a set of wrenches, the

(12:55):
only wrench set that I'm gonna recommend and crap, well, actually, yeah,
you don't set of wrenches here. It is Craftsman twelve
point metric and an SAE that's standard Imperial ratcheting box
set wrench tools. Okay, these are ratcheting tools. What does

(13:16):
that mean. Let's talk about it on the other side
of the break, because I've got these and what are
called pass through sockets, and if you don't know what
those are, then stay tuned. Ratcheting wrenches and pass through sockets.
Will talk about it right after this your Home with
Dean Shark the House Whisper.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
And what we're doing today to help you do that
is giving you some gift advice for this holiday season,
for Christmas Day, for that special di wire or hands
on manual person, the crafter, all of those kind of
folks in your life. These are quality choices for them.
We do this every year. I try to do it

(14:01):
every year. There have been a couple of years where
we've had to skip over it for one reason or another.
But we're here and we're doing it this year. And
let's get back to our list now. Before the break,
I talk to you about some of the most basic
of tools, right, actual wrenches, Okay, not adjustable wrenches, but
actual box wrenches. Box wrenches are what you would imagine

(14:24):
your classic mechanics wrench right on one end, piece of steel.
On one end it's an open end, right and on
the other end it's a closed end. It's a ring. Okay.
Each wrench does the same size nut on each end. Okay,
both the ring and the box end. But sometimes the

(14:44):
open end gives you better access. Sometimes the ring gives
you better traction when possible. Okay, this adds one more
level to it. And believe me, these are wrenches that
I have absolutely loved. It is a twenty piece set,
which means that there are ten metric and ten imperial wrenches,
which covers you know, not everything, but most of the

(15:08):
most popular sizes of nuts and the range. But the
key is number one. It's craftsmen. It's made really really well,
lifetime kind of made. Number two. The closed end is ratcheting,
so it's not simply the closed end that you have
to turn it, lift it off the nut, put it

(15:28):
back on, turn it again. No, this is a ratcheting set,
so that closed end has a built in ratchet set
into it, which means once it's on, all you have
to do slide it back and forth. Yeah, and off
you go, off to the races. The other thing I
love about this set is that it actually comes with
a really rugged folding case a lot of wrenches. They

(15:52):
you know, I would say this if you're at the
at the hardware store and you're thinking about buying wrenches
and you're looking at the cases, the black cases, the
red cases. A lot of times they're just they look
nice on the outside, but they end up being kind
of like cheap polystyrenes kind of stuff, and they just
don't hold the wrenches in place. You know. You pop
them in there and you close it up and you

(16:14):
can hear like three of the wrenches just fell out
of their settings inside. Very very frustrating. But this set
comes with a beautiful, rugged, fully exposed case that holds
these wrenches in place beautifully. There's nothing wrong with this set.
Seventy dollars a twenty piece lifetime wrench set, and to
go with it, Okay, there is a twenty five piece

(16:38):
ratcheting set. Okay, you know sockets. Okay, ratchet sockets very
very useful. Here's the thing about sockets, though, that you'll
find out in a heartbeat if you've never really used
one before, and that is sometimes the bolt that's sticking
up beyond the nut is too long for the socket
to actually reach. And then you got to step up

(17:00):
to what we call a set of deep set sockets,
which are very very long sockets, very very heavy sockets,
and very very expensive because they're duplicating all your normal
sockets unless you do this because years ago, I think
Craftsman actually initially came out with this idea, but now
Crescent is doing it really really well. On our gift guide,

(17:20):
we've got a twenty five piece three hs inch drive
pass through spline mechanic socket set. Now, what it means
is the pass through. It means that that the sockets
have a hollow back end, which means that the bolt,
even no matter how long it is, passes through the
socket and the wrench itself, which means the bolt length

(17:43):
is now irrelevant and you don't have to have a
deep set socket. You got to take a look at it,
and take a look at it online. It is a
thirty two dollars set and it is worth every penny.
All right, those are wrenches. Now, let's move on to
something super simple, another stocking stuff for every household. Every

(18:04):
household needs a good utility knife. And I've talked about
utility knives through the years. There's a lot of good
ones out there. I like the Milwaukee switch Blade folding
utility knife. It's a great win. But this has got
to be my all time favorite utility knife, and that
is made by Dewault. It is so dang ergonomic. It's
heavy duty, it's well made, it's got a great grip

(18:27):
in the hand, and believe me, when it comes to
cutting things with a very very sharp blade, really the
comfort in your hand is key. Okay, it's got a
great locking blade, it's got a reservoir for holding extra blades.
It's you know, enough said. It is beautiful, it's lovely.
It's seventeen dollars. I love that, and it will last

(18:47):
a long long time. I mean mine are ancient at
this point and still going strong, and they're still making it,
which is a great sign that a tool has done
its job right, that it's been designed well, that it's
still around even today, and yeah, seventeen bucks d Walt
Tough Series retractable utility night. Okay, now here is something

(19:10):
for that workshop person, woodworker, somebody who's always working on
a wood bench. And it's not the easiest thing to describe,
or it sounds a little weird at first, but these
are called bench nuts. I don't know why I laugh
when I say that. They are hexagonal shaped, you know,

(19:32):
so they're honeycomb shaped. They are basically thick niaprem, basically pads.
And the thing with a bench nut is they come
in a set. I believe this is a set of
eight that you get for twenty five dollars. They simply
slide onto a dowl for storage, a little rack in
the corner. But the thing is, bench nuts have an

(19:55):
amazing ability to because they're open celled niaprem, they have
this amazing ability to grab onto the surface that they're
sitting on and the surface that you put on them.
So they do two things really. One, they lift the
thing that you're working on off the bench, off the workbench,
so if you've got to cut it or if you've
got to do something to it, it's not directly down.

(20:17):
And the workbench is no longer in the way. And
they do the second thing, which is they also grip it.
I mean amazingly well. You could have a table full
of sawdust and slap a benchnut down, put something on
top of it. It's holding it in place. It's like
having a second set of hands on a workbench. I
know no woodworker or anybody who does regular work around

(20:40):
any kind of a workbench outside or in the garage
who would not appreciate these because they are just handy.
You can double stack them. You can triple stack them
if you need to. But there are eight of them,
which means you can put them all around and support
a very large piece. You could support a large piece
ofply would with this and have it not move on
you as you're trying to cut it, manipulate it, or

(21:00):
move it around. There you go. Carbon Method is the company.
Bench Nuts is the product twenty five dollars, really really good.
All right, So now we've gone from a stocking stuff
or two one of the most expensive items on the
gift guide. I do this every year because there's somebody
out there who this year, because of this, is going

(21:21):
to get the one tool, the most iconic tool ever, ever, ever, ever,
and they're going to get the world's best version of
it for two hundred and thirty nine dollars. It's a hammer.
It is a stiletto. That's the name of the hammer company.
Fifteen ounce t bone milled face with curved handle, handled hammer.

(21:47):
I gotta describe this to you because I have to
justify two hundred and thirty nine dollars for a hammer.
I probably won't be able to justify that for most
of you. I get it, but there are people out
there who are like, oh, you know what for the
di wire who has everything the stiletto, let's talk about it.
On the other side your Home with Dean Sharp, the

(22:07):
house whisper.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
All right, we're in the home stretch. We're in the
last segment of today's show. WHOA I wasn't celebrating that
the show is m celebrating the fact that we've made
it here and we're still rocking and rolling on our
twenty twenty five Holiday Gift Guide. All right before the break, Yeah,
I hear it. Every year. You're like, Dean, this is ridiculous.
It's not actually ridiculous, but I get it. I understand

(22:37):
that you feel that way. A two hundred and thirty
nine dollars hammer that sounds like something we should sell
to the US military two hundred dollar hammers. But this
one is two hundred and thirty nine dollars for a reason, Okay,
and just feel free to just be amused by it.
But there are some of you who are like, you
know what, that's the one that Dad deserves. It is

(23:00):
a technically a framing hammer made by Stiletto. These are,
in my opinion, currently the finest hammers on planet Earth.
This is literally the world's best hammer. Okay, when it
comes to this, and I'll tell you why, I'll tell
you why it is. Okay, this Stiletto framing hammer number
one for its size and it's like seventeen and three

(23:21):
quarter inches about eighteen inches long, okay, for its size
fifteen ounces. How could that be an all steel hammer?
Because it's made out of titanium and that makes it light.
Light is okay for a framing hammer. Now, because you
know what, we've discovered, the lighter hammer, the faster it swings.
The faster it swings, you can equal the amount of

(23:42):
force of a larger hammer even exceed the amount of
force of a larger heavier hammer, because it is the
speed the velocity of the hammer that ends up making
up all the difference. So lightweight not gonna hurt your elbow,
not going to wear out your shoulder, especially for somebody
who is a professional who hasn't already built those muscles up.

(24:04):
Number two. This hammer pulls nails from the side from
the back. It's a straight claw hammer, which is fantastic.
That's the right one to do. It has a magnetic
nail set up on top so it'll hold the nail
for you to set it, which also makes you about
three feet taller than you actually are without getting up
on a ladder to set and nail in and nail

(24:26):
the face. That's where the nail gets hit. The face.
The milled face and a mild face means that waffly
kind of rough face on it for framing purposes is replaceable.
The one thing that any good hammer does. After you've
used it for a whiles, that face will smash down
and not be a milled face anymore. These are interchangeable.

(24:49):
It can also be interchanged with a smooth face, making
it a finish hammer. It can also be capped off
with a mallet a rubberized mallet tip, making it a
rubber mallet. This is a really really well designed hammer, lightweight,
shock proof, rubberized grip. The grip is replaceable. The grip

(25:11):
is also interchangeable on multicolor, so you can give this
hammer away to that loved one and make it the
favorite color of theirs. Whatever the case may be. Anyway,
you got to go check it out. It is. The
Stiletto makes a lot of these kinds of hammer. Some
of them are less expensive. This is just kind of
the cream of the crop. But you should go on
stilettotools dot com and check them out. Okay. A headlamp.

(25:36):
Headlamps are an absolute necessity for doing work in dark
areas so that your hands are free, whether you're crawling
up into an attic or crawling under a house, or
just getting out at night having to check something in
the middle of the night. Headlamps are really really important. Now,
the world is full of cheap and expensive headlamps, and

(25:57):
guess what, you put batteries in them and they light
things up for you. But if we want something that
is truly innovative and truly like the best light Band
Pro twenty five hundred twenty five hundred stands for lumens
twenty five hundred lumens. This is a bright headlamp, but
what really makes it key is that it is a

(26:18):
combination wide band, wide beam and spot. It has two
lights on it that light up. One is a long
led band that goes all across the forehead and just
spreads out light all around you. The second one is
a spot that at the same time focuses concentrated light

(26:39):
on exactly where you're working. It's one hundred and twenty
dollars worth every penny. The light Band Pro twenty five
hundred lumen pure HD multi band headlamp right there on
the list. Brilliant all right. Now from that one hundred
and twenty dollars down to nine dollars. One of the
most brilliant tools ever made. A dual head nail setter.

(27:02):
This is a nail set not that you hit with
a hammer, but that has two nail sets on each end,
or get one on each end, so it's a dual
ended nail set with a heavy duty spring in between.
And this is brilliant. Every pro painter I know and
finished carpenter I know now carries one of these in
their bags because instead of getting out the hammer, running

(27:23):
the risk of missing the set, making a dent on
the wood or anything like that, all you do is
you set this nail set against the top of a nail,
pull back on the spring, and release and it is
just enough force to set the nail down below the
surface of the wood. It is brilliant. It should have
won some kind of engineering prize. It probably has. It's

(27:46):
nine dollars to drop into a stocking. All right, we did.
We almost make it, man, we just came short. I'm
just gonna end with one thing here because I'm right
down to the wire, and that is a T shirt. Okay,
There's like three items on the list that I didn't cover.
There's a great Franklin censor stud detector there that is

(28:07):
worth every penny. There is a contour gauge which helps
you take you push this against weird curved areas and
it will hold that shape and you can take it
back to the wood bench and scribe those shapes out.
That's on the list. But last, but not least, a
simple T shirt. If there is nothing else for the person,

(28:28):
the handyman in your life, and it simply says, I
enjoy romantic walks through the hardware store. It's twenty dollars.
You can order it online. It's great. They will love it.
They'll appreciate that you understand exactly who they are and
that you appreciate them as well. And there you go.
We made it all the way through this year's twenty

(28:50):
twenty five House Whisper Holiday Gift Guide. I hope it
is of use to you again. You can go on
to our socials. You can go on to Instagram, Facebook,
TikTok also and find the link to the Gift Guy.
You can download the entire pdf with live links to
where you can purchase these items, and then you know,

(29:10):
shop them competitively. You'll find perhaps for half of them
at least even better pricing that we've included on the list.
And there you go. You're off to the races. Happy
holidays from all of us here at home. We'll see
you right back here next week. This has been Home
with Dean Sharp the House Whisper. Tune into the live
broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from

(29:34):
six to eight Pacific time and every Sunday morning from
nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on
the iHeart Radio app.