September To-Do List | Hour 1

Today, it's all about your September 'To-Do' List, things you need to do to transition from summer into fall, and winter to prepare your home for the change in weather. Dean addresses fall cleaning, decluttering, organization, sealing wood decks and stairs, and exterior painting, and answers a caller's question about planting privacy trees properly.

Episode Transcript

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KF I am six forty. You'relistening to Dean Sharp, The House Whisper
on Demand on the iHeart Radio app. All right, welcome to home where.
Every week we help you better understandthat place where you live. I
am Dean Sharp, the House Whisper, custom home Builder, custom home designer,
and your guide to turning your ordinaryhouse into something truly extraordinary. Whether

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you are listening to the local broadcastright here in southern California, or streaming
us live from somewhere across the country, or if you've joined in for another
episode of The House Whisper on demandpodcast, I am so glad that you
are here. And if you area fan of the show, you know
this Saturday morning's traffic is light hereon the program. So if there is

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any time that you've got your bestshot at getting through today, is it
this morning? Is it? Thenumber to reach me? Eight three three
two, Ask Dean eight three threethe number two. Ask Dean. One
more time for you sleepyheads eight threethree two, Ask Dean. I've got

(01:07):
an agenda today. I always havean agenda. But as always when it
comes to our calls, anything youwant to talk about regarding your home a
construction design. Yes, please,d I y stuff anything at all,
from property line to property line,from the ground to the top. Anything.

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Eight three three two asked Dean,give us a call and who knows,
you know what, We'll put ourheads together figure out what's going on
with your house today. Brian Burrowmanis at the news desk. Good morning,
Brian, Good morning. How youdoing, Bud? Feeling well?
Thank you. I felt like therewas a whole other thing going on there

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that you just decided to choke backand you're like, no, I'm not
going to discuss this with the audiencetoday, but I hope you're doing well.
Sitting across the table from me,my better half, my design partner,
the co founder and co owner ofHouse Whisper, and my best friend

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on the planet, Tina is here. Welcome home. That was so quiet.
Oh well it's dark. Everybody's onminimal words this morning. I can
tell that's fine. It's fine.Hey, now would be a time if
you're on minimal words, how aboutjust enjoy a warm comfort beverage. Right

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here's one for you right here.M yeah, okay, all right,
just sit back, keep breathing.Listen to the sound of my voice.
It's September. I am right herewith you. Everything is going to be
okay, So let's get to it. I'll tell you where we're going today

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and tomorrow. By the way,I definitely do not want to miss tomorrow's
show either. It is September.Have you noticed, Oh my goodness,
it is the foyer of fall.September is It's a transitional month. I
love it. I know, Iknow there's hot weather ahead. But the
point is the air is changing.You can tell we're in for a change.

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And we are, you know,rolling into my favorite time of year.
And I'm not just talking about theholidays. I'm just talking about autumn.
There's just something about autumn that justzings me in a way that no
other time of year does. Iabsolutely love it. I always have,
my whole life just fantastic. So, but that does not mean that there

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aren't things to get done. Ohyes there are. So what I've got
for you today is what we're goingto call September's to do list. And
it's not everything possible, and nordo I expect you even though I'm going
to go through twenty plus items onthis list. By the time we're done,
I don't expect you to get themall taken care of. This is
just a nudge, just a nudge, because you're gonna recognize some things on

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this list where you're like, ohyeah, oh yeah, that's me.
That's that's the thing I need todo. September is this transitional month.
I always say that Labor Day marksthe official end of the unofficial end of
summer. Right, And that waslast weekend. Right, it was the

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last weekend, Labor day. Whattime is it? When? When am
I end? When? What isYeah? Labor Day was last weekend,
so that was the unofficial end ofsummer. Now, summer doesn't officially end,
I think this month until I'm goingto say the twenty third. The
twenty third of this month is officiallythe beginning of autumn. But that's kind

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of the point, right, IMean, we all know summer is over
practically speaking, technically it ends ina couple three weeks. That makes September
this transitional month. We're back toschool, the holidays aren't here, but
we can definitely see them. They'reright around the corner. We're going to
start that roll up to those things. It is the perfect month September to

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get some stuff done before the holidayshit and you end up too busy.
And so that is what we aretackling today, your house whisperers, September
to do list, and we willdive in with both feet, head first
or with both feet. What's theright what's the right way to dive in?

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I guess either way, if you'rehead first or both feet, you're
fully in. Right, all right, We're going to dive in head first.
How about that. We're going tothe phones. The lines are open
now. Now's your chance to giveus a call. Jump into the queue.
Number to reach me eight three threetwo. Ask Dean eight three three
the number two. Ask Dean.All right, we are talking about September's

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to do list, this transitional month, this interesting month of time that sits
really, practically speaking, in betweensummer and autumn, when the of course,
no month truly sits between summer andautumn, but practically speaking, yes
it does. And so there's stuffto do around your house. What can

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we do? What should we do? Well? Right at the top of
the list, of course, Dean'sgonna say fall cleaning. Fall cleaning.
Now this is not a specific thing, this is a general item, but
it's the one that I want tomention first and foremost. I know there
are a lot of you who arelistening to us nationwide who are saying,

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hey, what about I thought itwas spring cleaning. Well for you,
if you live in an area wherewinter pummels you with snow and subzero temperature,
if you live in an area basicallywhere by the time winter hits you
are closing up the house for threeto five months, Yeah, spring cleaning

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is super important because you will havebeen all locked up inside for a long
time, and you know, youknow it's time to air that thing out,
clean out all that interior living,and you know, let the fresh
spring air in. But here,in southern California and several other regions across
the US, winter does not lockus in the same way, even when

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we have a you know, aserious rainy, long winter like we did
this last year, in which wevery much likely will have this year.
As well as far as what themeteorologists are telling us, well, we're
not talking about freezing weather. We'renot telling you know, this is the
kind of winter where you know,windows could still be open at times and

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so on. They're going to besome lovely days in between it all.
So the point is this, InSouthern California, I've always been a big
advocate for fall cleaning because we're aboutto spend more time than usual inside your
home. We're about to concentrate thattime. We won't be locked in,

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but we're going to spend more timethan usual. And the holidays are coming.
Football season is here, the WorldSeries and the playoffs are around the
corner. There's the holidays that followafter that. There's gonna be a lot
of use. I always look atautumn and winter in Southern california's kind of
the super Bowl of your home's abilityto handle whatever it needs to handle.

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You're entertaining more, very likely,you've got more folks over, friends over
you're just inside more So, whynot now, while the weather is still
perfectly fine, get everything organized andget the house clean because of what you're
about to do. That's what fallcleaning is about. It's preparatory cleaning for

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the big hits that you're about totake as the last part of the year
rolls out here. Number one itemon that list is decluttering. Now,
We're not gonna do a decluttering showtoday because I've got a lot of other
things that I want to cover,but needless to say, as I always

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say, decluttering is probably the oneart form that every single homeowner in the
United States needs to get better andbetter and better at. I was talking
to Amy King about this yesterday morningactually on her show on wake Up Call,
and it's you know, it isa first world problem, admittedly,

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but it's a problem nonetheless. Itjust if it makes you have pause when
you just walk out into the worldtoday and you will have purged your house
of all the extra stuff. You'rejust gonna walk out in the world today.
And if you spend two or threehours away from home today, guess
what's gonna happen. You're gonna comehome and there's gonna be stuff, just

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new stuff, stuff attached to you. You go out in the world and
just you just pick up stuff.Right, You're not just gonna get your
receipt at the grocery store, butyou're gonna get a bag and not just
a receipt now, but you canget that extra coupon thing after. I
mean, just stuff. There's extrastuff. There's stuff in the mail,

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there's stuff. You know, youunderstand what I'm saying. It is so
easy for us these days to justkeep adding stuff to our home. It's
unavoidable in so many ways, andthat is why decluttering has to be a
constant, vigilant goal for your home. Also from a design perspective as well,
which I will talk about just alittle bit. We'll touch on just

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a little bit, because I'm notjust giving you the home organization advice,
but I really I want your hometo be beautiful. And to be beautiful,
you need to have focal points andnot so much stuff that nobody knows
where to look. The cleaner,the more spartan. And I'm not advocating
a truly spartan home. I don'twant you to have just like two things

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in the room. But the cleanerand the more decluttered your home is,
the more beautiful it is, themore psychologically and emotionally present it is,
and presentable it is. All right, let's get outside on our September to
do list that we're running through thismorning, on this lovely, so far
cool September morning. I know thethings are going to be heating up a

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little bit here in southern California,maybe not where you are, Thank goodness.
It's time to seal the deck.It really is whether you've got heavy
snow and ice expected this winter orwhether you've just got a bunch of rain
coming. The question is this,simply this, How many years has it

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been since you have sealed the deck. If it's been more than three,
then you're do. You are,absolutely, without question, do whether or
not it looks great. Okay,it doesn't matter how good it looks.
If you've got a wood deck,That's what I'm talking about here. I'm
not talking about a you know,an AzaC deck or anything like that that's

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synthetic. But if you have awood deck, don't go more than three
years or so without getting a reallyreally good sealer on it. And what's
the one that I would recommend.Well, there's two that I would recommend
that I have often recommended here onthe program if you're wondering, And both
of them are oil based. Andthere's the different from oil based paints,

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which aren't a thing in California anymore. But deck sealers, wood sealants,
oils are still available for that becauseyou know, wood loves oil and that's
just the nature of the beast.And these are different kinds of oils in
in deck sealers then you find inoil based paints and so the state has
doesn't have the same issues with thosethat they have with oil based paints in

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general. The two that I recommendhighly our q tech, cu te K
q tech and you can find qtech at q tech stain dot com.
You're going to go there and thewelcome page is going to ask you what

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country you're in, Canada, Australia, US. Just click on us.
You'll be at the q tech USsite. Q tech Extreme Okay, I
love q tech. I've used iton my decks here for years now because
it is such a fantastic penetrating sealer. You can buy it if you don't
want to stay in the deck orchange any colors. You can buy completely

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clear. In fact, the basecan is always just transparent, always okay.
And then what you can get,and this is what I super love
about q tech is that there arethese small bottles of color tint that you
can add to them and as aresult, you can alter the tone of
your deck. You can decide foryourself how intense you want the color to

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be. And you know what,just a handful of years ago we redid
a portion of our deck because wemoved a nexterior door in our house during
the remodel, so I had toadd brand new wood. I had bad
brand new wood to a ten yearold deck and guess what, Yeah,
it's not the same color anymore.But with the q tech system, I

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was able to take the tints andblend them and match just right so that
the brand new deck sealer went ontomy wood with a little bit of stain
tint and on day one, onday one, the brand new wood looked
exactly like the rest of the deck, blended in seamlessly. Nobody had a
clue. So yeah, Q techcute, k q tech stain dot com.

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The other, of course, welove, have always loved. And
that's from Benjamin Moore. And that'sarbor Coat. You can find that at
Ace Hardware right here in town orat your local Benjamin Moore dealer. Arbor
Coat. You want to get thearbor Coat oil base. There's a water
based too. I think the oilbase is the way to go. Arbor
Coat is a fantastic deck celant aswell, So there you go. Seal

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the deck, Okay, keep itprotected, keep it moist and moisturized so
that rot and water doesn't have achance to get down inside and really start
doing damage. Along that line,you might want to consider whether it's time
to get some paint touch up orjust a new paint job on the outside
of the house. Right, I'mnot telling you you have to do that,

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just now is the time? Now, now, while the weather is
still warm and dry, is thetime to decide do we need to repaint
the outside of the house. Yougot to take a second to evaluate.
We got chipping paint, We've gotissues, caulking issues. Maybe it's touch
up or maybe it's a full onredo. How nice would the house beef

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had a fresh coat of paint goinginto the holidays. So there you go,
exterior paint. Let's get back insidefor a second. Here's one that
only those who love you most willsay. Reset the garage. Reset the
garage. Yes, I need totell my mother in law this to reset
the garage. And I can safelytell her this this morning on the radio,

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not only because she does not listento the Saturday morning show and she
won't get upset with me, butshe's also not in town right now,
so they're definitely not listening to theshow. And you can't walk through the
garage. It's time to reset thegarage. And you know, I'm not
talking about clutterbugs per se. I'mjust talking about again summer. Right,

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Summer just has a way of pilingthings up in the garage as well.
It's time to reset, get ridof yard sale garage. Say what do
you need to do? But reorganizeit? Okay, because less than fantastic
weather is not that far away,so why not get the garage back in
shape. Reorganize, get some newhanging stuff for tools and for yard tools,

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get rid of the unnecessary stuff.Just get rid of it and get
yourself a full on reset. Replantingthe flower garden and replanting the vegetable garden.
Yeah, now is the time.We're in that transitional phase where it's
time for like in your vegetable garden, it's time for root vegetables to go

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in. Right, it's time forcarrots and radishes and the good stuff like
that to go in. Time toclear out the old stuff. There are
flowers and bulbs and things that haveto be planted or that could be planted
right now Now is the time.Now is the time. Now tomorrow Tomorrow's

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show. We're going to spend theentire show on the gardening theme. Okay,
specifically, I'm going to show youtomorrow how to properly trim your trees.
One of the most critical, mostimportant things you can know about your
piece of property are is how totrim your own trees, or at least

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how to supervise having your trees trimbecause most tree trimming companies that you hire
aren't you know, news alert,you know, professional artistic experts at trimming
trees. In fact, some ofthem just do an absolute terrible hack job
at it. And I want youyou to be in charge of directing that

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process to make sure it gets doneright. So tomorrow we're going to focus
in on that and a little bitof gardening stuff in the yard as well
for autumn. So today I'm justsaying this, it's on the list.
Replant the flower garden, replant thevegetable garden. And how about this changing
the irrigation timers. We're going througha change. Yeah, I know,
we still got you know, somewarm weather ahead, but we're going to

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be very very quickly dropping into lowertemperatures and a little bit more moisture coming.
So now is the time to alterthe timing on the lawns and all
the drip timers, or better yet, invest in a smart weather slash moisture
timer. What is that? Whatis a smart timer? These days you

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can have a timer for one hundredand fifty to two hundred dollars. You
can put up a control center foryour irrigation system that not only sets up
all the timing of all the variouscircuits out in your property, but also
has a Wi Fi connection to theWeather Service and also has a direct connection

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to moisture sensors in your lawn andin your flower beds. So imagine that
it's ready to go because you've saidit. It's schedule Jold tomorrow to irrigate
for ninety minutes this flowerbed. Butbut it notices a ten degree trop in
temperature that's happening and a thirty percentchance of rain, and it checks the

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moisture sensor and it's like, well, there's adequate moisture in the soil.
Guess what, it's just gonna skipit. It's gonna skip it because it
doesn't need it. That is asmart irrigation timer. And these days,
when we first started talking about themon the program, they were like five
hundred bucks to get one and stillworthwhile investment Today these days one hundred and
fifty to two hundred dollars, youcan get yourself a world class smart irrigation

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timer to take care of this stuff, save water, make it more efficient,
and just make sure that the plantsare getting exactly what they need and
not too much. There you go. We're about to go to the phones.
We're talking about your September to dolist today, right. I try
not to lay too many heavy thingson you on a Saturday morning, but
these are important. These are importantitems. So we're just moving through a

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checklist of things, seeing what Ican spark in you so that you can
make you know a little preparedness hereto the transitional month here September before the
holidays and autumn gets rolling along.So we'll get back to that in just
a bit. But as is ourcustom, it's near the top of the
hour, so it's time to takesome calls. Right, sound good?

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All right, let's talk to Vince. Hey, Vince, welcome home,
Thank you, Good Morningdean. Havea question about planting trees, privacy trees.
I got a seven foot wide byabout thirty foot long strip, and
I'd like to plant some trees thatgrow to about oh, I don't know,

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twenty feet that privacy between our myneighbor and I. So I've been
trying to look for what's the bestthing that doesn't, you know, destroy
concrete the walls. But ghost aboutthat tall might be asking for something that's
too much. So what do yougot? No, you're not. You're
not asking for anything that's too much. It is, okay, So I'll

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give you. I'm gonna give youthe quick list. Are you ready?
You got something to write this down? I'm going to give a quick list.
I am going to give you thelist. I'm about to mention five
different plants that I want you tolook into. They all have their different
properties to them, and they allhave slightly different looks, so you'll have
to make the decision do your researchbetween them all. But these are what

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we classically call in the estate businessHollywood hedges. Okay, Hollywood hedges are
any kind of plant that we wouldcome into a brand new let's say,
a celebrity or you know, aperson buys a property and they want instant
privacy, instant privacy, and sowe'll buy full grown versions of these hedges.

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But the good news is you don'thave to break the bank and buy
full grown versions of them, becausethey all grow pretty quickly, and so
if you want, you can justinvest in the well. Most of the
time they come the minimum and aboutfive six feet high, about just you
know, person height, little skinnyguys. You plant them about three feet

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apart from each other. If youwant maximum density, about three feet apart,
and then within you know, twothree seasons, you are going to
have that exact same coverage that you'relooking for, anywhere between fifteen and twenty
feet tall and absolutely thick and soundresistant and just beautiful privacy edges. Here

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we go, Ficus Ficus natita.That's the fastest growing of everything that I'm
mentioning here. It also technically getsthe tallest at like twenty to thirty feet.
Hey, Ficus natita, wax leafprivot or texts privet Okay, either
one a little bit more drought tolerantthan the ficus, So that's worth looking

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into. My personal favorite, theone that Tina and I find that we're
using, you know, I don'tknow, maybe seven times out of ten,
especially in southern California, Potocarpus popo do Carpus cr pus, also
commonly known as fern pine bay laurelis number four and number five Carolina cherry.

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Those five typically, now there areothers as well, but I'll just
tell you these are the five thatwe reach for in our toolbox for creating
those privacy hedges. And good onyou Vents, by the way, for
doing this, because I urged clientsall the time. You either have a
view lot in your yard or youdon't. In other words, you either

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have a backyard in which you're whatyou're trying to do is see the panorama,
or you don't. There's nothing particularlyoutside of your yard that you're trying
to look at. And when youdon't, that is when we use hedging,
plant hedging, not extra high wallsor fences, but plant hedging in

(25:18):
order to box in the walls ofour theater. And I use, with
air quotes the theater of your yardin order to not only ensure privacy,
but also to control the view becausewe don't want your the beauty and the
serenity of your yard dependent on howyour neighbors take care of their house.
That's all I'm saying. All right, I'm not the wall yourself in from

(25:41):
your neighbors kind of person. I'mnot saying that never speak to your neighbors
again, build the highest wall possible. No, I'm talking purely from the
most artistic of perspectives. When weare building a theater. Theaters are all
about gaining control of the vista andthe environment so that when we're out there,

(26:02):
we see exactly what we want peopleto see, and not a single
thing more. There's a stage,there are walls, there are curtains,
and hedges are a critical part tothat. Now, Vince, I'm up
against a break. You you don'thave to hang on the line, but
keep listening because on the other sideof the break, I'm going to mention
a couple of more things about thesekinds of hedges, including how to plant

(26:26):
them so that you don't have rootissues with them, because you're gonna hear
people say no, no, no, that's gonna mess up your fence or
your wall, or no it's notif you plant them right, So everybody
hang tight. You're home with DeanSharp, the House Whisperer on KFI.
This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House whisper tune into the live

(26:47):
broadcast on KFI AM six forty everySaturday morning from six to eight Pacific time
and every Sunday morning from nine tonoon Pacific time, or anytime on demand
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