January 4, 2026 • 30 mins
Cost, quality and time. For you to get the best out of your home design, you must give time to your project in the right way — it makes all the difference in the world. Slow down. Good takes time, excellent takes even more time. When it comes to design, listen to your house, but most importantly, listen to yourself!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
house Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app. Dean
Sharp The house Whisper, Custom home Builder, custom home Designer,
and your guide to better understanding that place where you live.
Every home has a path forward. Once you see it,
(00:21):
that's when everything changes. And that's exactly what I'm talking
to you about today, seeing the path forward. Today's topic
is the beginning of an ongoing series that we'll be
doing throughout the year, not just every single week, but
we'll be revisiting this throughout the year. Designing like a
(00:41):
house Whisper getting the biggest results from your limited budget
by unleashing the most powerful design principles possible in your home.
And that is that takes more than what appears on
the surface. It takes some unconventional thinking to get an
extra ordinary home. Extraordinary home. You've got to do some
(01:03):
things that are a little bit out of the ordinary
when it comes to approaching its design issues. And honestly,
I wish it wasn't out of the ordinary. I wish
what I'm talking about today was commonplace, was standard practice
for all design in all homes, everywhere, all the time,
(01:23):
and if I have anything to say about it, you know,
I'm attempting to make it far more common than it is.
I don't want it to be an extraordinary thing. I
want it to be something that people nationwide, you know,
just understand that this is how you approach the design
or the redesign of a home. But it's not. Unfortunately,
(01:45):
these are not ideas that are as common as they
should be. And so guys like me show up, you know,
guys who get called whisperers because somehow we magically interact
with the house and come up with answers that nobody
else has come up with. Well, it's not magic, it's
not magic, and no, I'm not talking to your house,
(02:06):
although I do enter into a relationship with it that
perhaps you don't have or haven't practiced. And there's a
reason for that, and there's a methodology to it. There's
a method to the madness, as they say, and I
want you to understand what that is because you're a
huge part of it, because it's your home. So we've
(02:27):
talked earlier in the show about this whole idea of
you know, what whisperers are all about. They tame things
that seem untamable by conventional methods, and that's true. I
was telling you my great respect that I have for
Buck Brannaman, the horse whisper. My granddaughter does a questria
and she rides, and she loves horses. I'm actually going
(02:49):
to be taking her to a Buck Brannuman clinic coming
up in April, because he's coming to southern California through
his travels. So I'm very excited to meet him, very
excited to spend a few seconds talking to him if
I get the chance to. But I'm mostly excited for
Olivia to see how somebody interacts with horses on a
(03:12):
level that most people just skip right over. Because here's
the thing. You know, you come to a horse and
you have your own intentions with it. You know, we
just think of horses so often as machines, as if
they're cars, and you just like, listen, I'm gonna throw
the saddle on that thing and ride it. And the
fact that I don't know, maybe eight out of ten
(03:33):
horses actually allow you to do that is amazing. That's
a testament not to you, by the way, or me,
but to the horse. Okay, that the horse is literally
allowing another animal to climb up onto its back, which,
by the way, is how their predators kill them. Okay,
Mountain lions will jump onto a horse's back, will reach
(03:55):
its paws around its throat to open up its wrote,
and will bite down on its spinal cord its backbone
from up top there in order to bring it down
to the ground. This is how horses die. Okay, this
is their innate fear of predators. And along come you
and I and we're like, hey, guess what, buddy, I'm
(04:17):
gonna climb up on your back and I want you
to have no issues with it. Whatso effort. Oh and
by the way, before I do that, I'm going to
take the skins of other dead animals and throw them
up there on your back as well. How about that
in the form of a saddle. So it's amazing that
more horses aren't more difficult to train. It is a
(04:40):
testimony to how amazing horses are. But nevertheless, there are
some that resist such coarse efforts and as a result
need a little something extra. Well. Houses are not unsimilar
to that. Okay, there are a lot of weird houses
out there, a lot houses that have issues in them,
(05:01):
and people just don't really see or understand what the
house itself can handle or what is actually wrong with it,
and we look past it. We just look to our
own intentions and desires, which is important because it is
your house, okay, and the house is not alive like
a horse. But you know, house abuse is probably a
(05:23):
real thing. You're never going to get arrested for it, okay,
but it shows up and pays the price in your
day to day living in the place. And this is
what I want to get switched around. Right, So, what
does a horse whisper see that others don't? They see
the horse? What do house whispers see that others do not?
(05:44):
We see the house? And how do we get there? Well,
I already explained step one. Slow down, slow your role.
We've got to take some time to overcome some things.
We've got to overcome your house blindness, the fact that
you've adapted and made do so long that you don't
really see what the issues are in the house anymore.
(06:04):
We've got to overcome that, and we've got to force
ourselves to see these issues come into our own consciousness,
to come into our own awareness. So the second step is,
once we've accepted the fact that hey, I got to
slow down, is start a design journal. Now you don't
have to be you know, dear diary. Today my house
(06:27):
treated me poorly. Now that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about start taking notes, okay, about these experiences,
and I'm going to walk you through some of those
experiences that I want you to have, very famously or infamously,
I should say. My clients, all of them love to
tell stories about me when they first when I first
(06:47):
get onto the scene and start quote unquote whispering the house,
I will sit, you know, one of the one of
these standard tools that we use that are sitting in
the trunk of the is a you know, a folding
camp chair. I will go out and sit out on
the sidewalk or in a room or whatever space I'm
(07:09):
being asked to figure out, and I'll sit there. I'll
sit there with my notes and I'll just sit there.
I get clients who get calls from their neighbors. They're like, Mary,
do you realize that there's a man sitting in a
chair out on the sidewalk staring at your house. I
just want you to know that they were like, no, no, no, no,
(07:29):
that that's my Ziching. He's supposed to be there, okay,
cause he's just sitting there And no, I'm not just
sitting there. But what am I doing while I'm just
sitting there? Let's talk about it. On the other side
of the break, You're Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Thanks for joining us on the show today, this very
first Sunday of twenty twenty, and we're starting our design
year together. You and I off with a bang. I
thought it would be appropriate, and it's been. It's been
on my heart and mind for a while now to
take a deeper dive with you into the you know,
(08:17):
the real nitty gritty of how this whole design process
can best be applied to you and and the things
that I see homeowners skip over and miss are the
things that break my heart because they are the the
processes that really produce the biggest change in a remodel
or renovation. Uh. It is something just inherent in our
(08:41):
culture that we jump to products and making decisions about
surfaces and faucets and toilets and tile and all of
these things before we have really really evaluated the things
that we want to change and remodel, and not just that,
(09:01):
but the whole house as a whole, taking into account
everything as a whole. I can't tell you how many
times I've been called in to help somebody with a
kitchen remodel, let's say, as an example, and they're like, yeah,
we want to remodel the kitchen. We want to transform
the kitchen, and on and on and on the conversation goes.
(09:25):
And after spending time on my own or Tina and
I moving through the house, first of all, somebody asked me,
like they we just told him we want to remodel
the kitchen. Why is he out in front of the
house looking at the front of the house. What does
that have to do with anything? Well, it's your house,
and looking at the entire house is part of this process.
(09:48):
Slowing down, stepping back, zooming out. It's part of the process.
It's part of the process that yields up unconventional answers
to questions that end up making a remodel approach extraordinary.
Quite often, you know, I'll come back in and say,
you know, I'm all for whatever cabinet surfaces you want
(10:10):
to do and your colors, and that's all fine and great,
But what's really going to change the house now that
we're we've decided to remodel this kitchen is it's in
the wrong room. The kitchen is in the wrong room.
And you know, eyes go big and jaws drop and
you're like, what are you talking about? We didn't want
you to, you know what, we weren't asking. And I'm like, oh, listen,
(10:32):
if you're going to cut a kitchen, I mean, if
you're gutting a kitchen down to the walls, down to
just everything goes out. Now it's an empty room. Guess
what Now it's an empty room. Moving it one room over,
or moving it a few feet, or moving it even
to the other side of the house is a fractional expense,
in most cases, added onto the replacement of that whole
(10:53):
kitchen anyway, And what if moving the kitchen to a
completely different room not only give you an opportunity for
a beautiful kitchen remodel, but changes everything about the house.
You see what I'm saying. So we look at everything holistically, comprehensively,
the whole house, in taking into account even the smallest
(11:15):
of changes. Just to make sure that we're not throwing
more money in the wrong place. That's what I'm talking about,
all right. So we've talked about slowing down, and right
before the break, I suggested that you start a design journal.
And I know I told you the story and everybody
can laugh, and everyone continues to laugh at me for
doing this or just joke about it. And that is that.
(11:39):
You know, quite often my clients will will say, you know,
it's interesting. The first time Dean came out and actually
spent the first day of kind of concepting the design.
You know, he pulled out his camp chair, or he
sat in the room that we asked him to talk about,
or he just wandered the house all day long. He
sat out in front of the house for like two
(12:01):
hours before coming in. That kind of thing. What am
I doing? I'm slowing down, I'm pushing everything aside. I'm
trying my best to see the house that, by the way,
is easier for me because I haven't lived there all
these years than it is for you. But it is
important for you to see it too, And this is
(12:23):
why I'm explaining it to you. So what am I
doing there? What notes am I jotting down? Because I said,
I want you to start a design journal, and it's
not a diary, but it's this idea of taking notes.
So my first set of design notes are nothing but
observations about my experiences in a space, good or bad.
(12:44):
It may. It's one of my favorite steps in the
design process for me, my process. There are no solutions
written down. I am not jumping ahead. I have to
resist that temptation. It's a discipline. You have to resist
the temptation to solve the problem. Okay, no solutions are
written down. It is simply notes about my experiences in
(13:08):
a space, what kind of experiences and what are the
questions that I'm asking. We'll talk about that right on
the other side of the break your Home with Dean Sharp,
The house Whisper.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Dean Sharp, The house Whisper. Here to transform your ordinary
house into an extraordinary home. We're talking about exactly that today,
how to design and think towards your house like a
house whisper might do. And I'm in a unique position
to tell you how a house whisper thinks because I
is one and do this every day of the week.
(13:50):
And so we're to this point now where I've told
you to slow down, start taking a design journal, and
start reversing the process of the issues with your home
being pushed into your subconscious. I want you to bring
them up, bring them up, and just start to really
see the house for what it is. And so when
(14:12):
I famously sit around, sit around in a room and
stare at it, walk through the house again and again
and again from every angle, in every direction, sit out
front of your house staring at it, what am I doing?
What am I trying to do? Well? I am essentially
(14:33):
observing my own experiences of a space, good or bad,
and taking notes of them. That's it. I'm not trying
to fix it. That's all I'm doing in the first pass.
I'm not trying to fix it. I resist the temptation
to start saying, oh, well, you know what we can do.
We can do this, this and this now, not jumping
(14:54):
there first, right, Remember when I started the show talking
about a horse whisper? What is a horse whisper? See that?
Others don't? They see the horse. That's why they get
to the influence that they have over that creature, because
they see it I force myself to see the house.
You need to force yourself to see the house. So
(15:14):
what do I want you writing down? I want you
to look, listen, and you've got to take time to
do this. That's why I said the first step is
slow it down. Take the time, spend the time. You
gotta take time to look, to listen to what you're
actually hearing, move through the space. Write down your experience
(15:36):
of it. I want you to write them down morning experiences,
noon time experiences, nighttime experiences of the same spaces. This
is what gives you full perspective of what's going on
with So what examples, okay, of what I'm writing down.
This room makes me happy, This room makes me sad,
(15:58):
This room makes me anxious, This room bores me to death,
whatever that might be, or similar experiences. I like to
be here. Why if that's true, I don't like being
in this space, try and figure out why that is.
(16:19):
I wish it was more. Why what here's a huge one.
I'm sitting in this space, I don't have a use
for it, or I don't care about this room. Really
that should be a huge red flag, by the way,
(16:40):
and yet I meet so many homeowners who are like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
let's move on to the more important stuff. Okay, wait,
you realize how expensive your home is right per square foot?
Do you realize how expensive every square foot of your
home is, how valuable every square foot of your home is?
(17:01):
And you want to sit there and tell me Listen,
I don't have any use for this room, and that's
not raising a red flag about design about what this
room could and should be in relationship to the rest
of the house. Now, listen, I've spent a lot of
(17:23):
time in my career designing a state level homes mansions, okay,
ten fifteen, twenty plus thousand square foot buildings that people
air quotes live in. The bigger house is typically the
more wasted space there is. The smaller house is, the
(17:47):
more important it is to get every square inch right
of a house. But my philosophy of design is if
the house is designed properly, there are no wasted square
feet in the house. So it should be a huge
red flag. I don't have a use for this room.
I don't care about this room. Okay, take note of that.
How about I use this room for too many things?
(18:10):
This room is supposed to be that, but it also
is my office and my uh you know, my work,
my TV space, and my di and then you know,
and it's the dining room. Wait, okay, what what again.
I'm not trying to fix it. I just want you
to be aware of it. I use this room for
too many things. I use this room for nothing. I
(18:32):
use it for something very different than what it was
originally designed to be. And then more subtle experiences about
the space. It's too bright, it's too dark in here,
it's too noisy, and so on and so forth. You
(18:54):
see what I'm saying. All I want you to do
step one, and I cannot. I've spent the entire show
talking about this. I want you to understand how valuable
radio real estate is, and I want you to understand, therefore,
how valuable these two simple principles of slow down and
look are to the success of your remodel, to the
(19:18):
success of your design. They are critical. They may be amusing,
but they're critical. Okay, don't try to fix it on
this first pass. Try to understand it. That's what I want.
You don't like it when other people rush advice to
fix you, do you right? You say, Oh, I'm feeling little,
(19:41):
and somebody just jumps right in starts handing you advice.
Why because you want to know that you've been seen
and known and listen to first. The best advice comes
on the heels or comes out of somebody who you know,
knows you, who you know sees you for who you are,
(20:04):
somebody who truly has listened to you. Okay, now I'm
not saying your house again. I have to dispel this
stuff all the time because this whole house whisper a
thing and people are like, do you have a strange
spiritual relationship with my own? No? I don't. Okay. I'm
not saying your house wants to be seen as if
it was alive, Okay, But what I am saying is
(20:26):
that you know from your own experience that good advice
only comes from a place of being seen. Your house
doesn't want to be seen, but your house needs to
be seen. If you want every penny of that remodel
budget that you've worked so hard to accumulate and that
(20:46):
you've saved, and that you're going to spend in this
one blast, this maybe one change. Most homeowners have one
big remodel in them and that's it. I want every
penny all headed in the right place, and because of that,
your house needs to be seen. And all of this
leads to one point. Really, the key to transforming your
(21:10):
ordinary house into an extraordinary home is not finding the
right refrigerator or the right faucet or the right paint color,
or finding the right builder, or even finding the right
designer or having the right budget whatever that means. Okay,
the key is whether a house has the right owner
(21:34):
driving the production. The key is you. You are the
key to the success of your remodel and the impact
of it. Okay, that doesn't mean they're going to do
it alone. I am not telling you. You do these things.
You don't need a designer, you don't need a creative team. No, no, no,
you're the captain of your creative team. But what you
(21:55):
bring to the table is something that no one else can,
which is, how does this house relate to you? Every
square foot? That's going to take some time. All right,
more thoughts on this after the break your Home with
Dean Sharp the house Whisper.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Here to remind you every home deserves great design, including yours,
especially yours, as it's your life, my friend. We have
been having a conversation, have we not, about what it
is to think like a house whisper. This is a
multi part series that I'm going to continue, you know
here and there throughout the year that you can piece
(22:42):
these together well, so be able to piece them together
at times for you. But I want you to follow
through with me on this because this is really what
is in my opinion, missing from the design process from
the home improvement industry as it were. I said this
earlier in the show. I'm going to underscore this one
more time. In the United States, home improvement industry is
(23:05):
a six hundred billion dollar industry. Six hundred billion dollar industry.
With that amount of money being spent on home improvement,
you got to ask the question, why aren't more homes improving? Okay,
So when we say the home improvement industry, we're talking
primarily about products and services. Okay, At the low end
(23:30):
of that list are design services the lowest end of
that list. And I'm not saying that design services should
be what you're spending the most money on. That's not
the point. I'm talking in terms of priority, and I'm
here to tell you every week something that you're not
hearing anywhere else. I wish you were. I want you
(23:53):
to start hearing it everywhere. I want you to hear
it on Magnolia Network. I want you to hear it
on HGT, which is dying I think primarily because the
fuss and the and the spangliness of it is kind
of over and at the end of the day, what's
being said has got to help. It's got to help.
(24:16):
I want you to hear it on Home Improvement TV Networks.
I want you to hear it when you talk to
your contractor. I want you to hear it throughout the
entire experience. Unfortunately, right now you're not. I'm saying it
here and you know, and maybe we'll have opportunity to
spread this message further as time continues to roll on.
(24:41):
I'm trying, but I'm saying it here and you and
I we're having this conversation right now, and that is
this design matters most, and the process by which you
approach design is not Okay, let's get in here and
fix this thing now. It starts with slowing down, pumping
(25:01):
the brakes and getting your head in the game. Your
head in the game, with really seeing your house, maybe
for the first time in many, many, many years, but
seeing it, seeing it in a very systematic way, forcing yourself.
That's why I say. Step two along this process, after
(25:22):
slowing down, was get a design journal. Just take notes.
Take notes about what you experience everywhere, at every corner
and every turn. It's critically important to bring that up.
Step three. Now that we've got your head kind of
oriented with your house, let's think about how your house
(25:43):
is oriented in general. Step three, this is real, quickie.
You just write down this one line. Dreaming is free.
Dreaming is free, window shopping is free. Don't put limits
on yourself. Don't put limits on yourself. Think allow yourself
(26:05):
to think at times in unedited ways. You say, I
can't move my kitchen to the other side of the house, Dean,
don't worry about that right now. Dreaming is free. Let
those thoughts come, write them down. If it's true that
that's where it should be, then it's true. Write it down.
(26:26):
You see what I'm saying. Free yourself up. Most of
the thoughts that we write down, most of the notes
that we take about certain things on a project, do
not end up manifesting the way you would think directly
into the project. But some of them, some of them
spark the thing that ignites the entire project in the
(26:48):
right direction. Something in there gives birth to the game changer.
And that's what we're looking for. The game changer. Step
four very very simple, and it's something that we will
talk about at greater length on another show. And that
is not only now are we looking at the house,
but I want you to add to your observation list
(27:10):
its orientation on the property and on the planet. Oh
my gosh, Dean on the planet, what do you mean?
I mean the way it's turned in relationship to the sun.
That's all okay, because your home is a shelter built
in nature, and that shelter has been given apertures, been
(27:31):
given windows and doors, windows and doors that let light
into the house and has solid walls that keep light
from coming into the house, and it's set in a
particular way. Most of us live in tract homes, and
amongst the many disadvantages initially of living in a tract home,
(27:52):
orientation on the property is one of the most significant.
Because your tracked home was one of the floor plans,
one of the four to five, maybe six if you're lucky,
floor plans in a tract of hundreds or thousands of homes.
That means that that floor plan has gotten reused again
(28:13):
and again and again throughout your neighborhood, different facades, different
street orientations. But that's the point. Your home, where its
doors and windows are located in relationship to the sun,
the path of the sun across the sky was not
taken into account. It was designed in a studio without
reference to the lot that it ends up sitting on
(28:34):
your home. Some of them sit in cul de sacs,
some of them sit soldiered facing west facing north, facing
east facing south, same exact window placements. That is not
how a custom home is designed. We're not going to
fix it right now. We're just gonna see it seeing it.
(28:55):
That's the difference. Right I'll leave you with this thought,
very quick one. There are people and circumstances in your
life that need to be seen to your house, them
and especially you. The answer is not to jump to
the fix it. The first step is always slow it down,
(29:16):
take a breath, take some time, figure out where you are,
how you are, figure out how you are, write it down,
think about it, come to a conclusion about the truth
of it, and then get help and get busy building
yourself a beautiful life. All right, y'all, We'll see you
(29:39):
right back here next weekend. You enjoy the 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 six to eight Pacific time and every
Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
house Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app. Dean
Sharp The house Whisper, Custom home Builder, custom home Designer,
and your guide to better understanding that place where you live.
Every home has a path forward. Once you see it,
(00:21):
that's when everything changes. And that's exactly what I'm talking
to you about today, seeing the path forward. Today's topic
is the beginning of an ongoing series that we'll be
doing throughout the year, not just every single week, but
we'll be revisiting this throughout the year. Designing like a
(00:41):
house Whisper getting the biggest results from your limited budget
by unleashing the most powerful design principles possible in your home.
And that is that takes more than what appears on
the surface. It takes some unconventional thinking to get an
extra ordinary home. Extraordinary home. You've got to do some
(01:03):
things that are a little bit out of the ordinary
when it comes to approaching its design issues. And honestly,
I wish it wasn't out of the ordinary. I wish
what I'm talking about today was commonplace, was standard practice
for all design in all homes, everywhere, all the time,
(01:23):
and if I have anything to say about it, you know,
I'm attempting to make it far more common than it is.
I don't want it to be an extraordinary thing. I
want it to be something that people nationwide, you know,
just understand that this is how you approach the design
or the redesign of a home. But it's not. Unfortunately,
(01:45):
these are not ideas that are as common as they
should be. And so guys like me show up, you know,
guys who get called whisperers because somehow we magically interact
with the house and come up with answers that nobody
else has come up with. Well, it's not magic, it's
not magic, and no, I'm not talking to your house,
(02:06):
although I do enter into a relationship with it that
perhaps you don't have or haven't practiced. And there's a
reason for that, and there's a methodology to it. There's
a method to the madness, as they say, and I
want you to understand what that is because you're a
huge part of it, because it's your home. So we've
(02:27):
talked earlier in the show about this whole idea of
you know, what whisperers are all about. They tame things
that seem untamable by conventional methods, and that's true. I
was telling you my great respect that I have for
Buck Brannaman, the horse whisper. My granddaughter does a questria
and she rides, and she loves horses. I'm actually going
(02:49):
to be taking her to a Buck Brannuman clinic coming
up in April, because he's coming to southern California through
his travels. So I'm very excited to meet him, very
excited to spend a few seconds talking to him if
I get the chance to. But I'm mostly excited for
Olivia to see how somebody interacts with horses on a
(03:12):
level that most people just skip right over. Because here's
the thing. You know, you come to a horse and
you have your own intentions with it. You know, we
just think of horses so often as machines, as if
they're cars, and you just like, listen, I'm gonna throw
the saddle on that thing and ride it. And the
fact that I don't know, maybe eight out of ten
(03:33):
horses actually allow you to do that is amazing. That's
a testament not to you, by the way, or me,
but to the horse. Okay, that the horse is literally
allowing another animal to climb up onto its back, which,
by the way, is how their predators kill them. Okay,
Mountain lions will jump onto a horse's back, will reach
(03:55):
its paws around its throat to open up its wrote,
and will bite down on its spinal cord its backbone
from up top there in order to bring it down
to the ground. This is how horses die. Okay, this
is their innate fear of predators. And along come you
and I and we're like, hey, guess what, buddy, I'm
(04:17):
gonna climb up on your back and I want you
to have no issues with it. Whatso effort. Oh and
by the way, before I do that, I'm going to
take the skins of other dead animals and throw them
up there on your back as well. How about that
in the form of a saddle. So it's amazing that
more horses aren't more difficult to train. It is a
(04:40):
testimony to how amazing horses are. But nevertheless, there are
some that resist such coarse efforts and as a result
need a little something extra. Well. Houses are not unsimilar
to that. Okay, there are a lot of weird houses
out there, a lot houses that have issues in them,
(05:01):
and people just don't really see or understand what the
house itself can handle or what is actually wrong with it,
and we look past it. We just look to our
own intentions and desires, which is important because it is
your house, okay, and the house is not alive like
a horse. But you know, house abuse is probably a
(05:23):
real thing. You're never going to get arrested for it, okay,
but it shows up and pays the price in your
day to day living in the place. And this is
what I want to get switched around. Right, So, what
does a horse whisper see that others don't? They see
the horse? What do house whispers see that others do not?
(05:44):
We see the house? And how do we get there? Well,
I already explained step one. Slow down, slow your role.
We've got to take some time to overcome some things.
We've got to overcome your house blindness, the fact that
you've adapted and made do so long that you don't
really see what the issues are in the house anymore.
(06:04):
We've got to overcome that, and we've got to force
ourselves to see these issues come into our own consciousness,
to come into our own awareness. So the second step is,
once we've accepted the fact that hey, I got to
slow down, is start a design journal. Now you don't
have to be you know, dear diary. Today my house
(06:27):
treated me poorly. Now that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about start taking notes, okay, about these experiences,
and I'm going to walk you through some of those
experiences that I want you to have, very famously or infamously,
I should say. My clients, all of them love to
tell stories about me when they first when I first
(06:47):
get onto the scene and start quote unquote whispering the house,
I will sit, you know, one of the one of
these standard tools that we use that are sitting in
the trunk of the is a you know, a folding
camp chair. I will go out and sit out on
the sidewalk or in a room or whatever space I'm
(07:09):
being asked to figure out, and I'll sit there. I'll
sit there with my notes and I'll just sit there.
I get clients who get calls from their neighbors. They're like, Mary,
do you realize that there's a man sitting in a
chair out on the sidewalk staring at your house. I
just want you to know that they were like, no, no, no, no,
(07:29):
that that's my Ziching. He's supposed to be there, okay,
cause he's just sitting there And no, I'm not just
sitting there. But what am I doing while I'm just
sitting there? Let's talk about it. On the other side
of the break, You're Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisperer.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Thanks for joining us on the show today, this very
first Sunday of twenty twenty, and we're starting our design
year together. You and I off with a bang. I
thought it would be appropriate, and it's been. It's been
on my heart and mind for a while now to
take a deeper dive with you into the you know,
(08:17):
the real nitty gritty of how this whole design process
can best be applied to you and and the things
that I see homeowners skip over and miss are the
things that break my heart because they are the the
processes that really produce the biggest change in a remodel
or renovation. Uh. It is something just inherent in our
(08:41):
culture that we jump to products and making decisions about
surfaces and faucets and toilets and tile and all of
these things before we have really really evaluated the things
that we want to change and remodel, and not just that,
(09:01):
but the whole house as a whole, taking into account
everything as a whole. I can't tell you how many
times I've been called in to help somebody with a
kitchen remodel, let's say, as an example, and they're like, yeah,
we want to remodel the kitchen. We want to transform
the kitchen, and on and on and on the conversation goes.
(09:25):
And after spending time on my own or Tina and
I moving through the house, first of all, somebody asked me,
like they we just told him we want to remodel
the kitchen. Why is he out in front of the
house looking at the front of the house. What does
that have to do with anything? Well, it's your house,
and looking at the entire house is part of this process.
(09:48):
Slowing down, stepping back, zooming out. It's part of the process.
It's part of the process that yields up unconventional answers
to questions that end up making a remodel approach extraordinary.
Quite often, you know, I'll come back in and say,
you know, I'm all for whatever cabinet surfaces you want
(10:10):
to do and your colors, and that's all fine and great,
But what's really going to change the house now that
we're we've decided to remodel this kitchen is it's in
the wrong room. The kitchen is in the wrong room.
And you know, eyes go big and jaws drop and
you're like, what are you talking about? We didn't want
you to, you know what, we weren't asking. And I'm like, oh, listen,
(10:32):
if you're going to cut a kitchen, I mean, if
you're gutting a kitchen down to the walls, down to
just everything goes out. Now it's an empty room. Guess
what Now it's an empty room. Moving it one room over,
or moving it a few feet, or moving it even
to the other side of the house is a fractional expense,
in most cases, added onto the replacement of that whole
(10:53):
kitchen anyway, And what if moving the kitchen to a
completely different room not only give you an opportunity for
a beautiful kitchen remodel, but changes everything about the house.
You see what I'm saying. So we look at everything holistically, comprehensively,
the whole house, in taking into account even the smallest
(11:15):
of changes. Just to make sure that we're not throwing
more money in the wrong place. That's what I'm talking about,
all right. So we've talked about slowing down, and right
before the break, I suggested that you start a design journal.
And I know I told you the story and everybody
can laugh, and everyone continues to laugh at me for
doing this or just joke about it. And that is that.
(11:39):
You know, quite often my clients will will say, you know,
it's interesting. The first time Dean came out and actually
spent the first day of kind of concepting the design.
You know, he pulled out his camp chair, or he
sat in the room that we asked him to talk about,
or he just wandered the house all day long. He
sat out in front of the house for like two
(12:01):
hours before coming in. That kind of thing. What am
I doing? I'm slowing down, I'm pushing everything aside. I'm
trying my best to see the house that, by the way,
is easier for me because I haven't lived there all
these years than it is for you. But it is
important for you to see it too, And this is
(12:23):
why I'm explaining it to you. So what am I
doing there? What notes am I jotting down? Because I said,
I want you to start a design journal, and it's
not a diary, but it's this idea of taking notes.
So my first set of design notes are nothing but
observations about my experiences in a space, good or bad.
(12:44):
It may. It's one of my favorite steps in the
design process for me, my process. There are no solutions
written down. I am not jumping ahead. I have to
resist that temptation. It's a discipline. You have to resist
the temptation to solve the problem. Okay, no solutions are
written down. It is simply notes about my experiences in
(13:08):
a space, what kind of experiences and what are the
questions that I'm asking. We'll talk about that right on
the other side of the break your Home with Dean Sharp,
The house Whisper.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Dean Sharp, The house Whisper. Here to transform your ordinary
house into an extraordinary home. We're talking about exactly that today,
how to design and think towards your house like a
house whisper might do. And I'm in a unique position
to tell you how a house whisper thinks because I
is one and do this every day of the week.
(13:50):
And so we're to this point now where I've told
you to slow down, start taking a design journal, and
start reversing the process of the issues with your home
being pushed into your subconscious. I want you to bring
them up, bring them up, and just start to really
see the house for what it is. And so when
(14:12):
I famously sit around, sit around in a room and
stare at it, walk through the house again and again
and again from every angle, in every direction, sit out
front of your house staring at it, what am I doing?
What am I trying to do? Well? I am essentially
(14:33):
observing my own experiences of a space, good or bad,
and taking notes of them. That's it. I'm not trying
to fix it. That's all I'm doing in the first pass.
I'm not trying to fix it. I resist the temptation
to start saying, oh, well, you know what we can do.
We can do this, this and this now, not jumping
(14:54):
there first, right, Remember when I started the show talking
about a horse whisper? What is a horse whisper? See that?
Others don't? They see the horse. That's why they get
to the influence that they have over that creature, because
they see it I force myself to see the house.
You need to force yourself to see the house. So
(15:14):
what do I want you writing down? I want you
to look, listen, and you've got to take time to
do this. That's why I said the first step is
slow it down. Take the time, spend the time. You
gotta take time to look, to listen to what you're
actually hearing, move through the space. Write down your experience
(15:36):
of it. I want you to write them down morning experiences,
noon time experiences, nighttime experiences of the same spaces. This
is what gives you full perspective of what's going on
with So what examples, okay, of what I'm writing down.
This room makes me happy, This room makes me sad,
(15:58):
This room makes me anxious, This room bores me to death,
whatever that might be, or similar experiences. I like to
be here. Why if that's true, I don't like being
in this space, try and figure out why that is.
(16:19):
I wish it was more. Why what here's a huge one.
I'm sitting in this space, I don't have a use
for it, or I don't care about this room. Really
that should be a huge red flag, by the way,
(16:40):
and yet I meet so many homeowners who are like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
let's move on to the more important stuff. Okay, wait,
you realize how expensive your home is right per square foot?
Do you realize how expensive every square foot of your
home is, how valuable every square foot of your home is?
(17:01):
And you want to sit there and tell me Listen,
I don't have any use for this room, and that's
not raising a red flag about design about what this
room could and should be in relationship to the rest
of the house. Now, listen, I've spent a lot of
(17:23):
time in my career designing a state level homes mansions, okay,
ten fifteen, twenty plus thousand square foot buildings that people
air quotes live in. The bigger house is typically the
more wasted space there is. The smaller house is, the
(17:47):
more important it is to get every square inch right
of a house. But my philosophy of design is if
the house is designed properly, there are no wasted square
feet in the house. So it should be a huge
red flag. I don't have a use for this room.
I don't care about this room. Okay, take note of that.
How about I use this room for too many things?
(18:10):
This room is supposed to be that, but it also
is my office and my uh you know, my work,
my TV space, and my di and then you know,
and it's the dining room. Wait, okay, what what again.
I'm not trying to fix it. I just want you
to be aware of it. I use this room for
too many things. I use this room for nothing. I
(18:32):
use it for something very different than what it was
originally designed to be. And then more subtle experiences about
the space. It's too bright, it's too dark in here,
it's too noisy, and so on and so forth. You
(18:54):
see what I'm saying. All I want you to do
step one, and I cannot. I've spent the entire show
talking about this. I want you to understand how valuable
radio real estate is, and I want you to understand, therefore,
how valuable these two simple principles of slow down and
look are to the success of your remodel, to the
(19:18):
success of your design. They are critical. They may be amusing,
but they're critical. Okay, don't try to fix it on
this first pass. Try to understand it. That's what I want.
You don't like it when other people rush advice to
fix you, do you right? You say, Oh, I'm feeling little,
(19:41):
and somebody just jumps right in starts handing you advice.
Why because you want to know that you've been seen
and known and listen to first. The best advice comes
on the heels or comes out of somebody who you know,
knows you, who you know sees you for who you are,
(20:04):
somebody who truly has listened to you. Okay, now I'm
not saying your house again. I have to dispel this
stuff all the time because this whole house whisper a
thing and people are like, do you have a strange
spiritual relationship with my own? No? I don't. Okay. I'm
not saying your house wants to be seen as if
it was alive, Okay, But what I am saying is
(20:26):
that you know from your own experience that good advice
only comes from a place of being seen. Your house
doesn't want to be seen, but your house needs to
be seen. If you want every penny of that remodel
budget that you've worked so hard to accumulate and that
(20:46):
you've saved, and that you're going to spend in this
one blast, this maybe one change. Most homeowners have one
big remodel in them and that's it. I want every
penny all headed in the right place, and because of that,
your house needs to be seen. And all of this
leads to one point. Really, the key to transforming your
(21:10):
ordinary house into an extraordinary home is not finding the
right refrigerator or the right faucet or the right paint color,
or finding the right builder, or even finding the right
designer or having the right budget whatever that means. Okay,
the key is whether a house has the right owner
(21:34):
driving the production. The key is you. You are the
key to the success of your remodel and the impact
of it. Okay, that doesn't mean they're going to do
it alone. I am not telling you. You do these things.
You don't need a designer, you don't need a creative team. No, no, no,
you're the captain of your creative team. But what you
(21:55):
bring to the table is something that no one else can,
which is, how does this house relate to you? Every
square foot? That's going to take some time. All right,
more thoughts on this after the break your Home with
Dean Sharp the house Whisper.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Here to remind you every home deserves great design, including yours,
especially yours, as it's your life, my friend. We have
been having a conversation, have we not, about what it
is to think like a house whisper. This is a
multi part series that I'm going to continue, you know
here and there throughout the year that you can piece
(22:42):
these together well, so be able to piece them together
at times for you. But I want you to follow
through with me on this because this is really what
is in my opinion, missing from the design process from
the home improvement industry as it were. I said this
earlier in the show. I'm going to underscore this one
more time. In the United States, home improvement industry is
(23:05):
a six hundred billion dollar industry. Six hundred billion dollar industry.
With that amount of money being spent on home improvement,
you got to ask the question, why aren't more homes improving? Okay,
So when we say the home improvement industry, we're talking
primarily about products and services. Okay, At the low end
(23:30):
of that list are design services the lowest end of
that list. And I'm not saying that design services should
be what you're spending the most money on. That's not
the point. I'm talking in terms of priority, and I'm
here to tell you every week something that you're not
hearing anywhere else. I wish you were. I want you
(23:53):
to start hearing it everywhere. I want you to hear
it on Magnolia Network. I want you to hear it
on HGT, which is dying I think primarily because the
fuss and the and the spangliness of it is kind
of over and at the end of the day, what's
being said has got to help. It's got to help.
(24:16):
I want you to hear it on Home Improvement TV Networks.
I want you to hear it when you talk to
your contractor. I want you to hear it throughout the
entire experience. Unfortunately, right now you're not. I'm saying it
here and you know, and maybe we'll have opportunity to
spread this message further as time continues to roll on.
(24:41):
I'm trying, but I'm saying it here and you and
I we're having this conversation right now, and that is
this design matters most, and the process by which you
approach design is not Okay, let's get in here and
fix this thing now. It starts with slowing down, pumping
(25:01):
the brakes and getting your head in the game. Your
head in the game, with really seeing your house, maybe
for the first time in many, many, many years, but
seeing it, seeing it in a very systematic way, forcing yourself.
That's why I say. Step two along this process, after
(25:22):
slowing down, was get a design journal. Just take notes.
Take notes about what you experience everywhere, at every corner
and every turn. It's critically important to bring that up.
Step three. Now that we've got your head kind of
oriented with your house, let's think about how your house
(25:43):
is oriented in general. Step three, this is real, quickie.
You just write down this one line. Dreaming is free.
Dreaming is free, window shopping is free. Don't put limits
on yourself. Don't put limits on yourself. Think allow yourself
(26:05):
to think at times in unedited ways. You say, I
can't move my kitchen to the other side of the house, Dean,
don't worry about that right now. Dreaming is free. Let
those thoughts come, write them down. If it's true that
that's where it should be, then it's true. Write it down.
(26:26):
You see what I'm saying. Free yourself up. Most of
the thoughts that we write down, most of the notes
that we take about certain things on a project, do
not end up manifesting the way you would think directly
into the project. But some of them, some of them
spark the thing that ignites the entire project in the
(26:48):
right direction. Something in there gives birth to the game changer.
And that's what we're looking for. The game changer. Step
four very very simple, and it's something that we will
talk about at greater length on another show. And that
is not only now are we looking at the house,
but I want you to add to your observation list
(27:10):
its orientation on the property and on the planet. Oh
my gosh, Dean on the planet, what do you mean?
I mean the way it's turned in relationship to the sun.
That's all okay, because your home is a shelter built
in nature, and that shelter has been given apertures, been
(27:31):
given windows and doors, windows and doors that let light
into the house and has solid walls that keep light
from coming into the house, and it's set in a
particular way. Most of us live in tract homes, and
amongst the many disadvantages initially of living in a tract home,
(27:52):
orientation on the property is one of the most significant.
Because your tracked home was one of the floor plans,
one of the four to five, maybe six if you're lucky,
floor plans in a tract of hundreds or thousands of homes.
That means that that floor plan has gotten reused again
(28:13):
and again and again throughout your neighborhood, different facades, different
street orientations. But that's the point. Your home, where its
doors and windows are located in relationship to the sun,
the path of the sun across the sky was not
taken into account. It was designed in a studio without
reference to the lot that it ends up sitting on
(28:34):
your home. Some of them sit in cul de sacs,
some of them sit soldiered facing west facing north, facing
east facing south, same exact window placements. That is not
how a custom home is designed. We're not going to
fix it right now. We're just gonna see it seeing it.
(28:55):
That's the difference. Right I'll leave you with this thought,
very quick one. There are people and circumstances in your
life that need to be seen to your house, them
and especially you. The answer is not to jump to
the fix it. The first step is always slow it down,
(29:16):
take a breath, take some time, figure out where you are,
how you are, figure out how you are, write it down,
think about it, come to a conclusion about the truth
of it, and then get help and get busy building
yourself a beautiful life. All right, y'all, We'll see you
(29:39):
right back here next weekend. You enjoy the 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 six to eight Pacific time and every
Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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