April 20, 2025 • 26 mins
Dean Sharp kicks off Easter Sunday with a conversation about the magic of makeovers—budget-friendly updates that can dramatically transform your home without the cost of full remodels. He breaks down the difference between a makeover, renovation, and remodel, and explains why design layered with creativity always wins. In this hour, Dean focuses on simple but high-impact bathroom updates, from swapping out your toilet and mirror to upgrading your shower head—all doable, affordable, and instantly refreshing.
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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. Hey, welcome home,
Happy Easter. I am Dean Sharp the house Whisper. I
design custom homes. I've built a few custom homes to
say the least. And I am your guide on the weekends,
(00:22):
including today, Easter Sunday, your guide to better understanding that
place where you live. It is a privilege and an
honor to be spending time with you this morning, as
it is every morning that we get together to talk
about this all important place that we call home. Today
on the show, we're going to be talking about makeover.
(00:45):
Makeover Magic is what we're calling the show. But basically
I want to run you through, Oh, just a big
old list of House Whisper favorite makeover ideas. And there's
a good reason for it. And is times are a
little weird right now financially, you know. We'll talk about
that a little bit in the next segment. Where housing
(01:09):
builds are they're not down, they're just paused a bit.
The rebuilds from the fires here in southern California, some
of them are pausing for a bit. A lot of
people are pausing right now, not sure what the price
of materials are going to be in the next ninety
days plus, and so there's hesitation and it's understandable, and
(01:34):
so whenever budgets are tight, but there's still things to
get done at home, that's when we start looking toward
the idea of the makeover. The makeover is just a
little bit more intensive than redecorating and a lot less
expensive than renovating or remodeling. So today makeover tips and ideas,
(02:01):
and of course we're going to be taking your calls
as well. The phone lines are open right now when
it comes to your calls. As you know, anything is
on the table, anything that's going on with your home
design wise, construction DIY, whether you want to know how
to fix that squeaky door hinge or why there's light
(02:23):
coming under the threshold of your front door, or you
want to talk about a big architectural concept for your home,
and anything in between. The number to reach me eight
three three two. Ask Dean eight three to three. The
numeral two ask Dean, Let me introduce our awesome team.
Elmer is on the board. Good morning, sir murmurmy. Wow,
(02:50):
that was like a that was like a hockey goal
alert right there. Hi, how you doing, Bud? How you doing?
I'm doing good? Thank you for asking. Yeah, good vibes.
All right, sweet sweet. Today we've got producer Matt Toffler
screening calls for us. Matt is standing by. He has
opened up the phone lines. He's not near Mike, but
(03:12):
he's letting me know. The lines are wide open. So
give us a call. You'll talk to Matt. He'll tell
you everything you need to know, and he'll pop you
into the queue and listen to the show while you wait.
And of course, my buddy Eileen Gonzalez is at the
news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning, Happy Easter. Yeah,
happy Easter to you. What is our Easter tea selection
(03:33):
this morning? I've actually I've had a couple cups of
green tea and now moving on to gingerberry kombucha. Oh yeah,
those mix okay in your stomach. We'll find out, I hope.
So first we're gonna load it up with caffeine and
green tea, and then we're gonna hit it with the
fermented beverage. Now that you mentioned it, maybe it's.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Not a.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Maybe just a glass of still water. The breaks here
are very short. I should be careful. Oh, sitting across
the table from me. There she is the one, the
only Tina is here. I love how you wait for
your elephant. Now you're just like just holding on for there. Pause,
(04:20):
just a short pause. Welcome home. How you doing good?
You're masterminding a lot of stuff. I am. I'm making
three types of deviled eggs. I don't think Olivia is listening,
but you were the easter Bundy deposited eighteen eggs around yard.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yes, I hit eggs this morning and it got a
little sketchy at the egg because I thought, I don't
remember what I just did.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
You're like five o'clock. It was. I was very tired,
I was very sleepy. I don't remember where they all are.
We found No, you did great, You did great. She
had a blast. And now the kitchen smells really good
because we colored eggs yesterday. Yeah, and those hard boiled
eggs are being turned into deviled eggs bigs, one of
my favorite things ever. All right, well, thanks for doing that.
(05:06):
I'm gonna do the show here. Yeah, you do the show.
You whip up some devil leggs, I will all right.
Sounds good. All right, y'all, let's get into it. Let's
talk about makeovers. Why this may be the spring and
summer of makeovers for you.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI A M six forty.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Hey, don't forget to follow us on social media. Why
don't you? We only do the good kind of social media.
I like to say, uplifting, informative, inspiring social media. Not
too much, not too little, just the right amount. We're
on all the usual suspects, you know, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook X.
All you have to do is look for Home with Dean.
(05:50):
It's the same handle for them all Home with Dean.
And by the way, after you hear some of these
makeover ideas today, if you're thinking, Wow, what I really
need is some personal house whisper attention. We need Dean
and Tina sitting in our home looking at the real
problems and helping us figure it out. Well, you can
do that too. You can book an in home design
(06:11):
consult with me and the t You just go to
house Whisperer dot Design, house Whisperer dot Design. All right,
I'm gonna give the number out one more time because
the phone lines are open and we will be going
to the phones in a bit. Eight three three to
ask Dean is the number to reach me at? Eight
three three to ask Dean? A three three the numeral two.
(06:33):
Ask Dean. All right, today we are talking about the
magic of makeovers. Whenever we find ourselves in uncertain financial times,
belts get tightened, purchases are cautious, and the world of
remodeling tends to turn toward the world of makeovers. And fortunately,
(06:57):
a great makeover can go a long long way towards
transforming an ordinary house into something truly extraordinary. Now, let
me draw some lines for you, because this is always
something that I find our listeners benefit from because there
are a lot of terms that get thrown around. Right,
there's renovation, remodel. I mean, everybody knows what a new
(07:17):
build is, right, there wasn't this something there before? And
then we build, and I think everybody knows what an
addition is. There is the house, and now book there's
something sticking out from it that wasn't there before. So
we've got new builds and room editions. Those are pretty
easy for everybody to understand. What's the difference between redecorating
(07:41):
a makeover, renovation, and a remodel or these just terms
that get thrown around and they all mean the same thing.
Now not actually they all mean something different. Let's start
with the most intense of those four, remodeling. Remodeling literally
means that we are changing the shape of a thing.
(08:02):
We are modeling it differently. So we're moving walls, we're
opening up walls, we're eliminating walls, we're vaulting ceilings, We're
doing a change in the actual form of the structure.
That's a remodel, and of course it involves all the
finished stuff too, but at the heart, at the beginning,
we're changing some big stuff. Therefore you know it has
(08:25):
the bigger price tag attached to it. Next two remodel
or one step down from that is renovations. A renovation
is technically a refreshing and a renewal of everything that's
already there now. Renovation may include things like switching out
(08:46):
cabinets one for one, It may include things like switching
out fixtures one for one. And I guess a couple
of the items on my list might technically straddle over
into the renovation cabgory just a little bit, but not completely.
So complete renovation is really a full on facelift and
(09:06):
maybe even a lot of finished change out. But we're
not changing the bones. Okay, we're not remodeling the house.
We're renovating it. And then the extreme of other end
of this spectrum is redecorating. It's just literally, hey, you know,
I'm gonna buy a new throw for that sofa, maybe
(09:32):
some new curtains, maybe you know, some new pillows, maybe
a piece of furniture different here or there. We're redecorating.
That's the lightest of all in between those two falls
the makeover. The makeover is not a full renovation. We're
not doing everything, We're not changing everything. It involves a
(09:52):
little bit of renovation, involves some redecorating, but really a
makeover is going in and making whatever changes we can
that really hush up a place, really change its vibe.
And the good news is they're little things. They tend
to be little things, incremental things. That doesn't mean that
(10:16):
it's going to cost you zero, But compared to the
other approaches to a home, this area the makeover is
probably the area that I would center in on and
say this area will give you the biggest bang for
the least buck the biggest effect for the smallest amount
of budget invested. Sometimes big things happen, and sometimes they
(10:39):
need to happen. But life isn't really divined by the
big is it. It's in the real world. Real lives
are constructed from a million tiny moments. The most beautiful lives,
I think, are built in layers, and the most interesting
people are built in layers. The strongest relationships are built
in layers. Right and following suit, the most wonderful homes,
(11:02):
in my opinion, are built in layers. And that's great
news for those of us with limited time and limited budgets.
We don't have to save up tens of thousands of
dollars to make it different if we learn the lesson
of layers for our home design matters most, always, always, always,
creativity always has a way of conquering cost. So today's
(11:25):
about those little things way to enhance your home's potential
without breaking the bank. Many of these makeovers are not
just for the budget challenge. Some of these layers just
need to be in every home, whether you only have
twenty bucks in your pocket or whether you have twenty
thousand dollars in your pocket but still this two hundred
dollars makeover needs to be in both of those homes.
(11:47):
And makeovers are also great gateway projects for the budding
di wire because they're not too intense, but they involve
you a little bit and they can get you headed
down that road. And you know, for a lot of you,
once you start, oh, you're just gonna love it and
you're going to want to keep doing it for the
rest of your life because it's so rewarding.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Here with you live on this Sunday, April twentieth, this
Easter Sunday morning. So glad that you are with us
here on the program. Happy to be here. Hope you
are having a lovely Easter Sunday morning. We had our
egg hunt earlier here this morning, and it went pretty good.
(12:38):
I think there's another egg hunt planned for later this afternoon,
but today's this morning's egg hunt went pretty good, went
pretty good, and it's a gorgeous day. And I'm not
going to rub it in. If you are listening from
somewhere other than southern California, I don't want to rub
it in. I get it. There's some bad weather rolling
across the country right now. But if you ever wonder
(13:00):
I do people stay in California with all those high
prices and all that craziness, and I'll tell you, anybody
here right now just has to look out the window
or walk outside, and you know exactly why we are
still here. It is good, good, gorgeous outside, beautiful spring day.
We are talking makeovers today, and I want to dive
(13:22):
right into our makeover list of ideas. I said we
were going to start in the bathroom, and so let's
do it now. I hear right off the bat, I'm
gonna talk about something that technically might fall in the
renovation category, but we're not talking about renovating everything, changing
out everything in the bathroom. This is a This is
(13:43):
the easiest thing, the easiest thing to change out in
a bathroom, and that maybe it's time to update the toilet.
That's it. You can change your life. The toilet is
something you visit quite regularly. And the way that a
toilet sits in a bathroom, the way that a toilet
looks in a bathroom, the way that a toilet functions
(14:03):
in a bathroom, can make a big change for a
relatively small amount of money. Now, toilets don't cost twenty bucks.
They range anywhere from well, I mean, you can buy
toilets that are like rolls Royces, but the average toilet
these days you can find anywhere from you know, one
hundred and eighty to the high two hundreds. Most of
(14:27):
the toilets that we recommend for makeovers fall in the
low two hundreds category. And for a couple of hundred
bucks and what amounts to I don't know. Even with
an inexperienced person doing it for the very first time,
maybe an hour, maybe an hour, you can completely switch
(14:47):
a toilet out in a bathroom. It's very intimidating for
a lot of people because they're like, I don't even
know how the thing what. There's those two little caps
down at the bottom. Those little caps are hiding the
bolts that mount the toilet to the floor. And the
only other thing that's connecting your toilet to the house
is the hose that is running the cold water into
(15:08):
the toilet tank. So if you shut that off and
disconnect that piece and undo those bolts, that toilet can
be lifted out, flushed, drained, lifted out, and carried away.
And a new toilet installed in its place. Yes, there
are tiny variations in toilets as far as from brand
(15:31):
to brand and model to moutel as far as their offset,
but generally speaking, manufacturers have made this easy because they
understand that there is kind of a standard twelve inch
offset from the back wall to the middle of the drain,
and most the vast majority of toilets on the market,
from the very high end to the very low, fall
(15:53):
within that category and will fit a twelve inch offset.
So the good news is almost every toilet you would
go out to see the one sitting on the shelf
at the big boxes like Lows and Home Depot, or
at the hardware store, or at the plumbing supply place
or wherever, you just measure your offset before you go,
just to double check. But most of them are there
(16:15):
and ready and available to you. And here's the thing.
There was a time when a toilet is a toilet,
and you try, and you juz up and thematically direct
the rest of the bathroom, and then you get to
the toilet and there it is same old toilet that
everybody's got. It either has this weird modern look or
it's just the old standard two piece toilet. These days,
(16:38):
you've got lots of styles to choose from, so you
can push the toilet in the direction of the style
that you already want your bathroom to be going in.
It can be more integrated in that place. And it's
an easy change out. You change out the wax ring.
That costs about four dollars, and you reseal that and
reset that toilet, even if you have to change out
(17:00):
the bolt. Maybe you're talking ten fifteen dollars plus the
price of the toilet. It is a great fix. And
for those of you who are like, you know what,
that's not my problem, Dean. The thing I hate about
my toilet is the fact that it's so dang hard
to clean down there, right, Not anymore. Doesn't have to
be that way anymore. Yeah, there are some old school
toilets that still have the little caps and the little
(17:22):
bolt head sticking up and gunk and grint. Yeah, it's
just who figured that this is an easy thing to clean?
Plus that weird shape off the back of the lower
end of the toilet looks like a pair of cartoon legs,
a character just sitting there right, skirted toilet. These are
the two words that I have for you. If that's
(17:44):
your frustration, skirted toilet when we go to break, feel free.
Just just open up your phone or your browser and
search for skirted toilets and you'll see what I'm talking about.
There is a massive amount of fully skirt toilets. That
means that the entire base that it's sitting on smooth,
(18:04):
one piece, one surface, all the way to the floor,
all the way around. The bolts are still there, but
they're behind little doors. They are not in the way.
There's that comic book leg is not there anymore. This
is easy to clean, beautiful, smooth, clean, look any style whatsoever,
(18:25):
fully skirted toilets. We're in the golden age of skirted toilets.
Get on the train, Get on the toilet train. Now
that doesn't sound right. All right, We're going to continue
with the bathroom when we come back.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Welcome home, Hey, thanks for joining us on this Easter
Sunday morning, this very sunny, beautiful Easter Sunday morning here
in southern California. I know you're listening. We've got listeners
all across the United States. So I hope and pray
the weather is treating you kindly, or at least you
are in and protected from it. If you're not here
(19:08):
in Southern California or in a place where things are
as bright and sunny as they are here today, I
just hope that you're having the best Easter Sunday possible.
But I am glad that you are with us here.
And we're talking about makeovers, the tips and tricks that
you can take for your home that yield large results
(19:32):
of effect with minimal amounts of expense. And a lot
of people are considering these things right now, simply because
economically things are a little up in the air right now,
to say the least, and some people have pressed pause
on major projects. I said I was going to mention
this earlier, and I forgot to, and I apologize. But
(19:53):
there's been some articles just in the news, some items
in the news just this last week here in southern California.
The rebuilding of the Eton area and the Palisades has
kind of sort of begun. And then right in the
middle of this, you know, trying to recover from this
tragedy and rebuild from the tragedy, you know, we get
(20:13):
news that the tariffs are on the way, and because
of that, some of these projects have literally been stopped
in their tracks. The owners have because you could understand,
like you are on a limited budget to rebuild and
a contractor is telling you, Okay, it's X amount of
(20:36):
dollars and that's the contract that we're going to agree
to sign. All right, I'm ponying that up. I'm ready
to go for X amount of dollars. But by the
end of the year, every contract that I have ever seen,
when it comes to a home building scenario, including any
that we would ever issue, always have this disclaimer in
(20:56):
it that if materials, you know, skyrocket for some reason,
that gets passed on to the owner and unfortunately, you know,
are you going to commit to a contract that is
X dollars today? And once we commit and we're rolling
three months into the project suddenly turns into X times
(21:17):
one hundred and twenty five percent more. It can just
really really terrify you. And so some of these projects
are just have literally ground to a halt as we're waiting.
And that's just the most extreme example of this right now.
The fact of the matter is a lot of people
are just unsure how much savings they've got, how much
(21:39):
cash they'll have on hand, and yet people still want
to make changes at the home. And that is why
we're talking makeovers today. So we're in the bathroom, we
already talked about toilets, and hit you up with a
couple of other items on my list. Maybe you've got
that big old you know, still got the nineteen sixties
or nineteen seventies giant to wall of mirror and you're
(22:03):
just sort of over it. It just doesn't feel, you know,
it feels dated to you, it feels out of style,
doesn't feel you know, too refined. And yeah, I agree
for a lot of bathrooms unless you're going for that
look that it does. Mirrors aren't that tough, and mirrors
aren't that expensive either. Some of those mirrors can be
(22:23):
removed successfully. Some of them are not masticked on quite
as well as we think they are, and they can
be kind of, you know, carefully cut away from the wall.
Some of those mirrors are being held on by external clips.
And in that case, man, it's easy to pull that
mirror down and then take that mirror to a glass shop,
(22:44):
have it cut down to size so that it is
a smaller mirror that could take a frame put around it,
a frame made out of framing material, a frame made
out of moldings and trim from the you know, the
molding and trim aisle at the big box store. A
frame made out of crown molding. And suddenly what we
(23:06):
now have is what looks like a mirror that has
been hung on the wall. It's a refit and an
upcycling of the mirror that you've got. And even if
you try to move the mirror off the wall and
it breaks and you lose its functionality, the fact of
the matter is the big scheme of things, mirrors are
(23:27):
not that expensive. Go to your local glass shop and say, hey,
this is what I really want. I don't want a
six foot wide mirror in my home. I just want
a mirror that reflects my body back to me when
I'm standing in front of the sink, and that only
needs to be you know, maybe thirty inches wide and
maybe three feet tall or something like that. You will
(23:47):
find it to be eminently affordable to upcycle the mirror situation.
How about this for a simple thing in a bathroom,
change out the shower head. Change out the shower head,
you've got some old, crappy shower head. It's underperforming. Maybe
you inherited it from the previous owner. Maybe it's some
(24:08):
old plastic thing. The only thing I'm going to tell
you is, if you can change out the showerhead, do
it right. And when I say do it right, I
mean go find a really nice shower head, something that
isn't full of plastics, something that isn't going to And
my recommendation is always this, and this is just my
personal taste, but also I've seen this prove out. You know,
(24:30):
I would keep you away from the shower heads that
have the eighty seven different functions to them. It's all
seems glitzy and wonderful when you're staring at it the store.
But let's face it, those of us who have ever
used a shower head like that, you just dial it
around until where do I find the actual, just real
water coming out. That's what I want. So yeah, in general,
(24:54):
I stay away from that. If you want an adjustable
shower head, I like a Speakman style shower head. Speakman style.
It's not a dial that you turn. There aren't eighty
seven different settings. It's just a actually a lever on
the side of the shower head. It's all metal construction,
no little pin holes to get clogged up. It's a
lever on the side and it moves the head nodules
(25:17):
slightly in and out, and it moves them from like
a wider spray into a more direct stream forward. That's
it for me. That's all the adjustability a shower head
ever needs to have. And it's lovely and luxurious, but
at the end of the day, whatever your taste in
(25:37):
shower head is. All it takes is an adjustable end wrench,
a flat end wrench. Don't use something with teeth. Don't
maar it up to put on the end of the
shower head that you've got, you'll notice that the chances
of there being two flat sides to that shower head
where it connects to the pipe coming out of the wall,
it's almost universal. Put a red there, spin it off.
(26:01):
It'll take you just a few seconds to spin off
that existing shower head. Those sizes are universally standard. Take
it on down to the hardware store, get yourself a
new shower head, and change the way your bathroom looks
and feels. All right, we got other things that are
more decororiented we will return to this list, but you
(26:21):
know what, we're approaching the top of the hour, which
means when we come back, I'm going to the phones.
Your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on KFI.
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
(26:44):
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
house Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Hey, welcome home,
Happy Easter. I am Dean Sharp the house Whisper. I
design custom homes. I've built a few custom homes to
say the least. And I am your guide on the weekends,
(00:22):
including today, Easter Sunday, your guide to better understanding that
place where you live. It is a privilege and an
honor to be spending time with you this morning, as
it is every morning that we get together to talk
about this all important place that we call home. Today
on the show, we're going to be talking about makeover.
(00:45):
Makeover Magic is what we're calling the show. But basically
I want to run you through, Oh, just a big
old list of House Whisper favorite makeover ideas. And there's
a good reason for it. And is times are a
little weird right now financially, you know. We'll talk about
that a little bit in the next segment. Where housing
(01:09):
builds are they're not down, they're just paused a bit.
The rebuilds from the fires here in southern California, some
of them are pausing for a bit. A lot of
people are pausing right now, not sure what the price
of materials are going to be in the next ninety
days plus, and so there's hesitation and it's understandable, and
(01:34):
so whenever budgets are tight, but there's still things to
get done at home, that's when we start looking toward
the idea of the makeover. The makeover is just a
little bit more intensive than redecorating and a lot less
expensive than renovating or remodeling. So today makeover tips and ideas,
(02:01):
and of course we're going to be taking your calls
as well. The phone lines are open right now when
it comes to your calls. As you know, anything is
on the table, anything that's going on with your home
design wise, construction DIY, whether you want to know how
to fix that squeaky door hinge or why there's light
(02:23):
coming under the threshold of your front door, or you
want to talk about a big architectural concept for your home,
and anything in between. The number to reach me eight
three three two. Ask Dean eight three to three. The
numeral two ask Dean, Let me introduce our awesome team.
Elmer is on the board. Good morning, sir murmurmy. Wow,
(02:50):
that was like a that was like a hockey goal
alert right there. Hi, how you doing, Bud? How you doing?
I'm doing good? Thank you for asking. Yeah, good vibes.
All right, sweet sweet. Today we've got producer Matt Toffler
screening calls for us. Matt is standing by. He has
opened up the phone lines. He's not near Mike, but
(03:12):
he's letting me know. The lines are wide open. So
give us a call. You'll talk to Matt. He'll tell
you everything you need to know, and he'll pop you
into the queue and listen to the show while you wait.
And of course, my buddy Eileen Gonzalez is at the
news desk. Good morning, Eileen, Good morning, Happy Easter. Yeah,
happy Easter to you. What is our Easter tea selection
(03:33):
this morning? I've actually I've had a couple cups of
green tea and now moving on to gingerberry kombucha. Oh yeah,
those mix okay in your stomach. We'll find out, I hope.
So first we're gonna load it up with caffeine and
green tea, and then we're gonna hit it with the
fermented beverage. Now that you mentioned it, maybe it's.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Not a.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Maybe just a glass of still water. The breaks here
are very short. I should be careful. Oh, sitting across
the table from me. There she is the one, the
only Tina is here. I love how you wait for
your elephant. Now you're just like just holding on for there. Pause,
(04:20):
just a short pause. Welcome home. How you doing good?
You're masterminding a lot of stuff. I am. I'm making
three types of deviled eggs. I don't think Olivia is listening,
but you were the easter Bundy deposited eighteen eggs around yard.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yes, I hit eggs this morning and it got a
little sketchy at the egg because I thought, I don't
remember what I just did.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
You're like five o'clock. It was. I was very tired,
I was very sleepy. I don't remember where they all are.
We found No, you did great, You did great. She
had a blast. And now the kitchen smells really good
because we colored eggs yesterday. Yeah, and those hard boiled
eggs are being turned into deviled eggs bigs, one of
my favorite things ever. All right, well, thanks for doing that.
(05:06):
I'm gonna do the show here. Yeah, you do the show.
You whip up some devil leggs, I will all right.
Sounds good. All right, y'all, let's get into it. Let's
talk about makeovers. Why this may be the spring and
summer of makeovers for you.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI A M six forty.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Hey, don't forget to follow us on social media. Why
don't you? We only do the good kind of social media.
I like to say, uplifting, informative, inspiring social media. Not
too much, not too little, just the right amount. We're
on all the usual suspects, you know, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook X.
All you have to do is look for Home with Dean.
(05:50):
It's the same handle for them all Home with Dean.
And by the way, after you hear some of these
makeover ideas today, if you're thinking, Wow, what I really
need is some personal house whisper attention. We need Dean
and Tina sitting in our home looking at the real
problems and helping us figure it out. Well, you can
do that too. You can book an in home design
(06:11):
consult with me and the t You just go to
house Whisperer dot Design, house Whisperer dot Design. All right,
I'm gonna give the number out one more time because
the phone lines are open and we will be going
to the phones in a bit. Eight three three to
ask Dean is the number to reach me at? Eight
three three to ask Dean? A three three the numeral two.
(06:33):
Ask Dean. All right, today we are talking about the
magic of makeovers. Whenever we find ourselves in uncertain financial times,
belts get tightened, purchases are cautious, and the world of
remodeling tends to turn toward the world of makeovers. And fortunately,
(06:57):
a great makeover can go a long long way towards
transforming an ordinary house into something truly extraordinary. Now, let
me draw some lines for you, because this is always
something that I find our listeners benefit from because there
are a lot of terms that get thrown around. Right,
there's renovation, remodel. I mean, everybody knows what a new
(07:17):
build is, right, there wasn't this something there before? And
then we build, and I think everybody knows what an
addition is. There is the house, and now book there's
something sticking out from it that wasn't there before. So
we've got new builds and room editions. Those are pretty
easy for everybody to understand. What's the difference between redecorating
(07:41):
a makeover, renovation, and a remodel or these just terms
that get thrown around and they all mean the same thing.
Now not actually they all mean something different. Let's start
with the most intense of those four, remodeling. Remodeling literally
means that we are changing the shape of a thing.
(08:02):
We are modeling it differently. So we're moving walls, we're
opening up walls, we're eliminating walls, we're vaulting ceilings, We're
doing a change in the actual form of the structure.
That's a remodel, and of course it involves all the
finished stuff too, but at the heart, at the beginning,
we're changing some big stuff. Therefore you know it has
(08:25):
the bigger price tag attached to it. Next two remodel
or one step down from that is renovations. A renovation
is technically a refreshing and a renewal of everything that's
already there now. Renovation may include things like switching out
(08:46):
cabinets one for one, It may include things like switching
out fixtures one for one. And I guess a couple
of the items on my list might technically straddle over
into the renovation cabgory just a little bit, but not completely.
So complete renovation is really a full on facelift and
(09:06):
maybe even a lot of finished change out. But we're
not changing the bones. Okay, we're not remodeling the house.
We're renovating it. And then the extreme of other end
of this spectrum is redecorating. It's just literally, hey, you know,
I'm gonna buy a new throw for that sofa, maybe
(09:32):
some new curtains, maybe you know, some new pillows, maybe
a piece of furniture different here or there. We're redecorating.
That's the lightest of all in between those two falls
the makeover. The makeover is not a full renovation. We're
not doing everything, We're not changing everything. It involves a
(09:52):
little bit of renovation, involves some redecorating, but really a
makeover is going in and making whatever changes we can
that really hush up a place, really change its vibe.
And the good news is they're little things. They tend
to be little things, incremental things. That doesn't mean that
(10:16):
it's going to cost you zero, But compared to the
other approaches to a home, this area the makeover is
probably the area that I would center in on and
say this area will give you the biggest bang for
the least buck the biggest effect for the smallest amount
of budget invested. Sometimes big things happen, and sometimes they
(10:39):
need to happen. But life isn't really divined by the
big is it. It's in the real world. Real lives
are constructed from a million tiny moments. The most beautiful lives,
I think, are built in layers, and the most interesting
people are built in layers. The strongest relationships are built
in layers. Right and following suit, the most wonderful homes,
(11:02):
in my opinion, are built in layers. And that's great
news for those of us with limited time and limited budgets.
We don't have to save up tens of thousands of
dollars to make it different if we learn the lesson
of layers for our home design matters most, always, always, always,
creativity always has a way of conquering cost. So today's
(11:25):
about those little things way to enhance your home's potential
without breaking the bank. Many of these makeovers are not
just for the budget challenge. Some of these layers just
need to be in every home, whether you only have
twenty bucks in your pocket or whether you have twenty
thousand dollars in your pocket but still this two hundred
dollars makeover needs to be in both of those homes.
(11:47):
And makeovers are also great gateway projects for the budding
di wire because they're not too intense, but they involve
you a little bit and they can get you headed
down that road. And you know, for a lot of you,
once you start, oh, you're just gonna love it and
you're going to want to keep doing it for the
rest of your life because it's so rewarding.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Here with you live on this Sunday, April twentieth, this
Easter Sunday morning. So glad that you are with us
here on the program. Happy to be here. Hope you
are having a lovely Easter Sunday morning. We had our
egg hunt earlier here this morning, and it went pretty good.
(12:38):
I think there's another egg hunt planned for later this afternoon,
but today's this morning's egg hunt went pretty good, went
pretty good, and it's a gorgeous day. And I'm not
going to rub it in. If you are listening from
somewhere other than southern California, I don't want to rub
it in. I get it. There's some bad weather rolling
across the country right now. But if you ever wonder
(13:00):
I do people stay in California with all those high
prices and all that craziness, and I'll tell you, anybody
here right now just has to look out the window
or walk outside, and you know exactly why we are
still here. It is good, good, gorgeous outside, beautiful spring day.
We are talking makeovers today, and I want to dive
(13:22):
right into our makeover list of ideas. I said we
were going to start in the bathroom, and so let's
do it now. I hear right off the bat, I'm
gonna talk about something that technically might fall in the
renovation category, but we're not talking about renovating everything, changing
out everything in the bathroom. This is a This is
(13:43):
the easiest thing, the easiest thing to change out in
a bathroom, and that maybe it's time to update the toilet.
That's it. You can change your life. The toilet is
something you visit quite regularly. And the way that a
toilet sits in a bathroom, the way that a toilet
looks in a bathroom, the way that a toilet functions
(14:03):
in a bathroom, can make a big change for a
relatively small amount of money. Now, toilets don't cost twenty bucks.
They range anywhere from well, I mean, you can buy
toilets that are like rolls Royces, but the average toilet
these days you can find anywhere from you know, one
hundred and eighty to the high two hundreds. Most of
(14:27):
the toilets that we recommend for makeovers fall in the
low two hundreds category. And for a couple of hundred
bucks and what amounts to I don't know. Even with
an inexperienced person doing it for the very first time,
maybe an hour, maybe an hour, you can completely switch
(14:47):
a toilet out in a bathroom. It's very intimidating for
a lot of people because they're like, I don't even
know how the thing what. There's those two little caps
down at the bottom. Those little caps are hiding the
bolts that mount the toilet to the floor. And the
only other thing that's connecting your toilet to the house
is the hose that is running the cold water into
(15:08):
the toilet tank. So if you shut that off and
disconnect that piece and undo those bolts, that toilet can
be lifted out, flushed, drained, lifted out, and carried away.
And a new toilet installed in its place. Yes, there
are tiny variations in toilets as far as from brand
(15:31):
to brand and model to moutel as far as their offset,
but generally speaking, manufacturers have made this easy because they
understand that there is kind of a standard twelve inch
offset from the back wall to the middle of the drain,
and most the vast majority of toilets on the market,
from the very high end to the very low, fall
(15:53):
within that category and will fit a twelve inch offset.
So the good news is almost every toilet you would
go out to see the one sitting on the shelf
at the big boxes like Lows and Home Depot, or
at the hardware store, or at the plumbing supply place
or wherever, you just measure your offset before you go,
just to double check. But most of them are there
(16:15):
and ready and available to you. And here's the thing.
There was a time when a toilet is a toilet,
and you try, and you juz up and thematically direct
the rest of the bathroom, and then you get to
the toilet and there it is same old toilet that
everybody's got. It either has this weird modern look or
it's just the old standard two piece toilet. These days,
(16:38):
you've got lots of styles to choose from, so you
can push the toilet in the direction of the style
that you already want your bathroom to be going in.
It can be more integrated in that place. And it's
an easy change out. You change out the wax ring.
That costs about four dollars, and you reseal that and
reset that toilet, even if you have to change out
(17:00):
the bolt. Maybe you're talking ten fifteen dollars plus the
price of the toilet. It is a great fix. And
for those of you who are like, you know what,
that's not my problem, Dean. The thing I hate about
my toilet is the fact that it's so dang hard
to clean down there, right, Not anymore. Doesn't have to
be that way anymore. Yeah, there are some old school
toilets that still have the little caps and the little
(17:22):
bolt head sticking up and gunk and grint. Yeah, it's
just who figured that this is an easy thing to clean?
Plus that weird shape off the back of the lower
end of the toilet looks like a pair of cartoon legs,
a character just sitting there right, skirted toilet. These are
the two words that I have for you. If that's
(17:44):
your frustration, skirted toilet when we go to break, feel free.
Just just open up your phone or your browser and
search for skirted toilets and you'll see what I'm talking about.
There is a massive amount of fully skirt toilets. That
means that the entire base that it's sitting on smooth,
(18:04):
one piece, one surface, all the way to the floor,
all the way around. The bolts are still there, but
they're behind little doors. They are not in the way.
There's that comic book leg is not there anymore. This
is easy to clean, beautiful, smooth, clean, look any style whatsoever,
(18:25):
fully skirted toilets. We're in the golden age of skirted toilets.
Get on the train, Get on the toilet train. Now
that doesn't sound right. All right, We're going to continue
with the bathroom when we come back.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Welcome home, Hey, thanks for joining us on this Easter
Sunday morning, this very sunny, beautiful Easter Sunday morning here
in southern California. I know you're listening. We've got listeners
all across the United States. So I hope and pray
the weather is treating you kindly, or at least you
are in and protected from it. If you're not here
(19:08):
in Southern California or in a place where things are
as bright and sunny as they are here today, I
just hope that you're having the best Easter Sunday possible.
But I am glad that you are with us here.
And we're talking about makeovers, the tips and tricks that
you can take for your home that yield large results
(19:32):
of effect with minimal amounts of expense. And a lot
of people are considering these things right now, simply because
economically things are a little up in the air right now,
to say the least, and some people have pressed pause
on major projects. I said I was going to mention
this earlier, and I forgot to, and I apologize. But
(19:53):
there's been some articles just in the news, some items
in the news just this last week here in southern California.
The rebuilding of the Eton area and the Palisades has
kind of sort of begun. And then right in the
middle of this, you know, trying to recover from this
tragedy and rebuild from the tragedy, you know, we get
(20:13):
news that the tariffs are on the way, and because
of that, some of these projects have literally been stopped
in their tracks. The owners have because you could understand,
like you are on a limited budget to rebuild and
a contractor is telling you, Okay, it's X amount of
(20:36):
dollars and that's the contract that we're going to agree
to sign. All right, I'm ponying that up. I'm ready
to go for X amount of dollars. But by the
end of the year, every contract that I have ever seen,
when it comes to a home building scenario, including any
that we would ever issue, always have this disclaimer in
(20:56):
it that if materials, you know, skyrocket for some reason,
that gets passed on to the owner and unfortunately, you know,
are you going to commit to a contract that is
X dollars today? And once we commit and we're rolling
three months into the project suddenly turns into X times
(21:17):
one hundred and twenty five percent more. It can just
really really terrify you. And so some of these projects
are just have literally ground to a halt as we're waiting.
And that's just the most extreme example of this right now.
The fact of the matter is a lot of people
are just unsure how much savings they've got, how much
(21:39):
cash they'll have on hand, and yet people still want
to make changes at the home. And that is why
we're talking makeovers today. So we're in the bathroom, we
already talked about toilets, and hit you up with a
couple of other items on my list. Maybe you've got
that big old you know, still got the nineteen sixties
or nineteen seventies giant to wall of mirror and you're
(22:03):
just sort of over it. It just doesn't feel, you know,
it feels dated to you, it feels out of style,
doesn't feel you know, too refined. And yeah, I agree
for a lot of bathrooms unless you're going for that
look that it does. Mirrors aren't that tough, and mirrors
aren't that expensive either. Some of those mirrors can be
(22:23):
removed successfully. Some of them are not masticked on quite
as well as we think they are, and they can
be kind of, you know, carefully cut away from the wall.
Some of those mirrors are being held on by external clips.
And in that case, man, it's easy to pull that
mirror down and then take that mirror to a glass shop,
(22:44):
have it cut down to size so that it is
a smaller mirror that could take a frame put around it,
a frame made out of framing material, a frame made
out of moldings and trim from the you know, the
molding and trim aisle at the big box store. A
frame made out of crown molding. And suddenly what we
(23:06):
now have is what looks like a mirror that has
been hung on the wall. It's a refit and an
upcycling of the mirror that you've got. And even if
you try to move the mirror off the wall and
it breaks and you lose its functionality, the fact of
the matter is the big scheme of things, mirrors are
(23:27):
not that expensive. Go to your local glass shop and say, hey,
this is what I really want. I don't want a
six foot wide mirror in my home. I just want
a mirror that reflects my body back to me when
I'm standing in front of the sink, and that only
needs to be you know, maybe thirty inches wide and
maybe three feet tall or something like that. You will
(23:47):
find it to be eminently affordable to upcycle the mirror situation.
How about this for a simple thing in a bathroom,
change out the shower head. Change out the shower head,
you've got some old, crappy shower head. It's underperforming. Maybe
you inherited it from the previous owner. Maybe it's some
(24:08):
old plastic thing. The only thing I'm going to tell
you is, if you can change out the showerhead, do
it right. And when I say do it right, I
mean go find a really nice shower head, something that
isn't full of plastics, something that isn't going to And
my recommendation is always this, and this is just my
personal taste, but also I've seen this prove out. You know,
(24:30):
I would keep you away from the shower heads that
have the eighty seven different functions to them. It's all
seems glitzy and wonderful when you're staring at it the store.
But let's face it, those of us who have ever
used a shower head like that, you just dial it
around until where do I find the actual, just real
water coming out. That's what I want. So yeah, in general,
(24:54):
I stay away from that. If you want an adjustable
shower head, I like a Speakman style shower head. Speakman style.
It's not a dial that you turn. There aren't eighty
seven different settings. It's just a actually a lever on
the side of the shower head. It's all metal construction,
no little pin holes to get clogged up. It's a
lever on the side and it moves the head nodules
(25:17):
slightly in and out, and it moves them from like
a wider spray into a more direct stream forward. That's
it for me. That's all the adjustability a shower head
ever needs to have. And it's lovely and luxurious, but
at the end of the day, whatever your taste in
(25:37):
shower head is. All it takes is an adjustable end wrench,
a flat end wrench. Don't use something with teeth. Don't
maar it up to put on the end of the
shower head that you've got, you'll notice that the chances
of there being two flat sides to that shower head
where it connects to the pipe coming out of the wall,
it's almost universal. Put a red there, spin it off.
(26:01):
It'll take you just a few seconds to spin off
that existing shower head. Those sizes are universally standard. Take
it on down to the hardware store, get yourself a
new shower head, and change the way your bathroom looks
and feels. All right, we got other things that are
more decororiented we will return to this list, but you
(26:21):
know what, we're approaching the top of the hour, which
means when we come back, I'm going to the phones.
Your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper on KFI.
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
(26:44):
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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