October 12, 2024 • 28 mins
Dean talks about trimming trees for the season, his vacation recap, and much more! Dean says to embrace the holidays as his neighborhood is Halloween and Autumn ready with the decorations. He provides a caller with their crumbling wall in their garage. Also, Dean talks about growing a lawn and setting a watering schedule to keep the lawn moist without drownin
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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.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
AM I.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
AM six forty and live streaming in HD everywhere on
the iHeart Radio app. Hey, welcome to home where. Every
week we help you better understand that place where you live.
I am Dean Sharp, the house Whisperer, custom home builder,
custom home designer, and most importantly today, your guide to
(00:34):
transforming your ordinary house into an extraordinary home. Let me
tell you what we're doing today. We're all over the place.
It's a little bit of this, a bit of that,
and most importantly your calls. I am so so in
the mood to take your calls today. I've been away.
We've been away for a couple of weeks. We've been off. Well,
(00:57):
I'll tell you about our trip in just a bit,
uh snippets of it at least. Uh. But we're back.
We're rested.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's October. The holidays are laid out in front of us.
The scorching heat seems to have gone away now and
hopefully it won't come back. But we've got some beautiful
weather here in southern California right now. The Dodger's one line.
There's so many things to smile about this morning, and
(01:27):
mostly though I would love to talk to you, so
let me give you the number right now, and then
I'll move on to other things. Eight three three two
Ask Dean A three three the numeral two. Ask Dean
eight three three two ask dean. Producer Richie is standing by.
The phone lines are open. He's ready to take your call.
(01:50):
He'll tell you everything you need to know. Poppy into
the queue and then we'll put our heads together. We'll
figure out what's going on with your home. No worries,
no worries, all right. And if we do this all right,
we're gonna bring some light into the morning. Even though
these these are my favorite mornings, are they not. I mean,
you're a morning person, obviously. Here you are, here, you are,
(02:10):
we're talking, you and me together, hanging out. How awesome
is it to be a morning person? To be up
in the morning before the sun. I just love this
time of year when the sun gets a little lazy
and and we actually, you know, beat him up, well
I don't, you know, not like a salt, but get
(02:31):
up before the sun. And I just love this time
of year. What can I tell you the team is
here for you. Sam is on the board. Good morning, Sam,
Good morning Dane. How you doing. I am great, actually
and rested. I'm we kind of you know, we got
back on last weekend late last weekend, and so I
(02:56):
took this week of work to just kind of roll,
you know how you kind of ran been and you're
hoping that you don't come up against everything crazy on
day one, and we didn't, and so it was a
really nice ramp up as far as design work and
construction work and radio work. And I'm just I'm in
(03:16):
a good place. I'm really happy to hear that sounds
like you got your feet under you this morning. I do,
I do, which is rare, right. No, Hey, I'm happy
for you. I wish I could be there right now. Uh.
Producer Richie is standing by to take your calls. He's
nowhere near a microphone, but he's doing his work like
he always does every week, and we appreciate him. Jackie
(03:38):
Ray is at the news desk. Good morning, Jackie, Good morning.
How are you. I am great? Did you hear I'm great?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I know.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I'm so excited for you. You're like, I'm really excited
for you rubbing it in. We've been here the whole time, yep,
all down.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, we went to uh we went to the great
state of Vermont. I have a new best friend Vermont.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Uh uh.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Anyway, I won't bore you with all that right now,
but glad you're here as always, and here we go.
Sitting across the table from me normally would be Tina
guess who has not completely ramped up from vacation yet.
(04:27):
I love being able to spoke fun at her in
the morning because she is such a morning person as well.
But currently she's nowhere to be seen. But let me look.
Oh yeah, there he is, Sammy the Beagle, sitting across
the table from me, and he has very little to say.
I can tell just by the look on his face
that he's like, move on, dad, move on, and we will.
(04:51):
Let's get to it this morning, shall we. We've got
your calls. Let me give the number out one more time,
eight three three two, ask Dean eight three three the
numeral to ask Dean. I'm ready for them. I'm going
to talk a little bit when we come back about permission,
permission to go a little bit further with your home
(05:14):
than you normally expect to the kind of attitude that
you have around the holidays. We'll talk about that. I've
got a couple of cool new items to introduce to
you today, and I want to remind you, and if
you've never heard this before, tell you for the first time,
that it's time to trim to prune your trees and
exactly how we're going to go about doing that. All
(05:36):
of that and your calls can't fine Jean Chart the
house whisper at your therapists. Whether you live in a
cottage or a condo or a castle, you know what,
it doesn't matter if that is the place that you
call home. I'm here to help you take it to
the next level. We're back from Bakay. We are having
(05:58):
fun this morning, just rested and ready to go and
hope you can pick up on that energy too. It
is a beautiful, beautiful weekend ahead of us here in
southern California. And it's cool. Dare I say cold? No,
not cold cool, cool, definitely cool outside right now and dark?
(06:19):
And here are you here? We are you and I
just hanging out on an early Saturday morning morning. People
that we are. I'm glad that you are here. We
are on that note, going to be taking calls. I'm
going to be going to the phones in just a smidge.
The phone lines are open. It's definitely a caller morning.
I just want to reconnect with you, talk with you
about your house. Eight three three two, ask Dean. Is
(06:43):
the number to reach me? A three three the numeral
two beep, ask Dean A three three to ask Dean
anything you want to talk about regarding your home. Construction issues,
design issues, DIY stuff, whatever the case. Maybe whatever is
bugging you, whatever you're scratching your head about, give me
(07:04):
a call and we will figure it out. I promise. Okay,
and we've got some we've got some calls on the board,
but we've got room for you. All right. This is
something that always seems to come upon my mind this
time of year, and that is permission. Now what do
(07:27):
I mean by that, Well, around the holidays, people tend
to change their thinking in regards to their home. You
take it up a notch obviously, because you're thinking about
decorating the holidays. Beckon people to decorate and to create
a certain kind of emotional environment in your home. Of course,
(07:51):
you know, like the Christmas tree and that kind of
stuff and the twinkly lights and all of that, and
that's not that far away, but even around our neighborhood here.
We came back from vacation very very pleased to see
so many of our neighbors getting into Halloween decorations and such.
And it's just that kind of spirit right in the year.
(08:17):
So we've got Halloween out in front of us, and
then Thanksgiving and so on. Tina and I ran out
and we grabbed a bunch of cornstalks from the local
farm and propped them up all around the house and
the backyard, and now our yard is full of pumpkins
and gourds and not so much Halloween stuff, just autumn stuff.
(08:39):
Probably for some of it is well, not even probably.
Some of it is definitely bringing Vermont back home with us,
no question about it. But the point is this. The
point is this, we all give ourselves permission during the
holidays to take things up a notch. We think, how,
(09:01):
you know, what can I do to the fireplace? What
can I do to this chair in this corner over here?
Should we light a candle? Should we put twinkling lights
over here? What can we do to these areas of
our homes? To bring it up into the holiday spirit,
and that I love. I love it, absolutely encourage you
(09:22):
to step into that spirit. But here is the part
of permission that I'm talking about. What I really, really
really want is for you to take hold of that
spirit and give yourself permission to hang on to that
attitude towards your house for the rest of the year,
(09:44):
throughout the rest of the year. Okay. The permission that
we give ourselves during the holidays to make spaces very
emotionally special is the permission that great homeowners give themselves
year round to do exactly the same thing. Now, don't
(10:05):
get me wrong, all right, let me be very clear.
I am not talking about you being the person that
person who never takes their Christmas lights down. No, No,
that has not the point. We have like two of
those people in our neighborhood. Why, that's not what I'm saying.
(10:29):
What I'm saying is that attitude of how do we
make this room just emotionally special for every time we
walk into it. See, we tend to give ourselves permission
to do that around the holidays, and then you know,
come January, it's like, put all that stuff away, let's
(10:49):
just get back to our regular boring lives, and I
don't want you to do that.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I'm not talking about bling and jing and everywhere, right,
it's just the attitude. And so I am here to
officially this morning, and this is all I'm going to
say about it. I'm not going to harp on you
about it. I just want to say, officially this morning,
you have permission, You have my permission, please my encouragement
(11:17):
to take this spirit that you're starting to feel, those
nudges that you're starting to feel, and stretch it out
over the entire year, layer after layer. They just little
things here, there and everywhere as you continue to make
the space that you dwell in a very special space
for you every time you walk into the room, not
(11:40):
just around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but every time all year long.
Just be looking for it. It doesn't cost that much
to do why because you do it slowly and easily,
layer by layer. You know, a few weeks back, we
were talking to you about our firefly experiment. We bought
this new firefly lighting set and it's a hit. It's
(12:08):
a hit. People love the fireflies, so we're keeping the fireflies.
It was a sixty dollars investment and now it's going
to live on in our yard for as long as
it lasts, which I'm assuming is going to be several
years at least. So it's little layers like that that
simply add to the presence of your home and embrace it.
(12:31):
Embrace this holiday decorating time that's coming soon, and then
hold on to it. That's all I wanted to tell
you this morning. All Right, when we come back, we've
got several calls on the board, we're going to go
to the phones. Your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whispered.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
KFI AM six forty live streaming in HD everywhere on
the iHeart Radio app. You are Home with Dean Sharp,
the House Whisper. Fresh off vacation. We're back, ready to go,
ready to connect with you, and it's time to go
to the phones. By the way, the number to reach
me eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three
(13:15):
the numeral two ask Dean. All right, let's talk to David. Hey, David,
welcome home.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. I I have
a sixty five year old home. I have a two
car garage. When I'm inside the garage, the wall that
would face the lawn for about three feet on the bottom,
so you have the cement where you park. But then
(13:44):
you have the lip of the cement that comes up
two inches that the two by fours in the structure
of the garage attached to for about three feet there,
and on the other wall a couple of feet, the
cement is just crumbling about pieces a bit as big
as my finger for no reason. I'm not touching it.
I'm not. It's just crumbling and falling apart to dust.
(14:07):
And I don't know if I should put a ceiler
on it. I don't know what's causing it.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Okay, So you're talking about the stem wall, that small
short stem wall that's rising up on the on the
corner of the garage.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And you're saying about three linear feet not up, but
along the wall along that stem wall near the front
three feet. What's on the other side of this.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Wall, it would be the lawn and the flower bed.
Now you can make the argument that the water is
causing that. But on another wall where the door meets
a regular door that goes to the backyard, that is
also crumbling for a couple of feet. Now cement butts
(14:53):
up to that the outdoor cement butts up to that door.
So I don't know if it's getting moisture from the cement.
It's just such an odd it's not accurrence.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Are you here in southern California or you elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I'm an Orange County in California.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
You're an Orange County, okay, yeah, And so it's about
you saying chunks about the size of your finger rolling off.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
That would be the biggest. Now, it hasn't compromised the
area directly under the studs, the two by fours, that
is the structure. But it's about an inch in, gotcha.
And I don't know if I should just put sealer
on it and forget about it. But a friend says
that that would just trap if there's any moisture, it
would just trap it in, and that would be bad
(15:40):
to do. So I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, I got you, all right. So here's the situation.
Not exactly sure what the cause is here. It's simply
maybe Now it's a sixty you say, a sixty five
year old home. Okay. The thing with concrete is it's
hard to tell from concrete that's that old when how
(16:06):
the conditions it was poured in. Obviously it has been
there for sixty five years. It may be may be
the fact that it is starting to crumble as a
result of it not having been perfectly mixed in the
and perfectly cured in the best possible situation when the
house was first built, that it's just showing its age essentially.
(16:32):
That sounds like that is more than likely the thing,
because of all the things that concrete can do, Concrete
either gives out pretty quickly because it got screwed up
to the beginning the beginning, or it doesn't. It just holds.
And most of the things that people say, oh, I'm
worried about my concrete is what we call effluorescence, which
(16:53):
are salt mineral salts that are being pushed through the
wall because of moisture. It sounds like, David, that it
simply may be in your case that this concrete is
starting to show its age. Now, is that a problem.
Probably not, It's probably not a problem. It's probably just
(17:14):
settling in there. So what I want you to do is, well,
we can do a couple of things. One, I'm going
to tell you to sit still, if you haven't seen
any significant cracking crumbling off that edge, that's one thing.
But if we haven't seen any cracking, okay, then sit
still and just keep an eye on it. Don't lose
any sleep over it, but just keep an eye on okay. Secondly,
(17:38):
if you want to help stop the crumpling on the inside,
then I don't want you to use a sealer, because
your friend is right, we don't want to trap moisture
inside the cement there. But you could run down to
the hardware store get a little concrete patch kit. And
(17:58):
I'm not talking about trying to reform the edge. If
you were ambitious, you could try and reform the edge there,
but just kind of get a patch kit and mix
up a little concrete patch like sidewalk patch, and you know,
kind of tral that onto the crumbling area to sort
of just hold it and secure it so it doesn't
(18:21):
want to crumble anymore, just to hold it together. And
then now I know you can't do it on the
side with the sidewalk on it, but on the side
that is got planting on the other side, if you
wanted to, I would say, why not invest a little
bit of time, dig down just a bit, and I
mean just a bit, meaning you know, in that planter bed,
(18:42):
maybe dig down eight ten inches and just for you know,
six inches wide so you have access to the lower
part of that concrete footer, and put a little water
proofing treatment on the outside of that concrete so that
(19:03):
we don't want to trap moisture inside the concrete stem wall,
but we can certainly reduce the amount of moisture that
comes into it, okay, So that would slow the absorption
rate of moisture from at least the garden bed. Now
the other side, if moisture is the issue, okay, which
I suspect it probably is, it doesn't surprise me that
(19:26):
both sides are crumbling equally because concrete is just a
giant sponge and the concrete of the sidewalk or the
cement that's abutting it on the other side is doing
the same thing. It's you know, conveying moisture into the cement.
But we could slow it down at least on the
planter wall side, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
If it ever gets worse, what type of contractor would
I call.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
If it ever gets worse, I want you to call
a foundation repair contractor, like a foundation here. Write this
down a Foundation Repair LA. They are the guys that
I go to almost with every one of the foundation issues,
and they specialize in justice, just taking people's foundations that
(20:11):
are failing, abutting them, supporting them, replacing them, you know,
all that kind of stuff. You don't want to call
just a regular general contractor because the chances are they'll
turn around and call a place like Foundation Repair LA
and then add their feet on top of it for
making the call. So you could just call these guys
directly and they will help you out if you ever
(20:34):
see cracking or settling that in any way affects the
rest of the wall. But just to you know, hold
on to the crumbling for now and just keep an
eye on it.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Perfect. You've been a big help.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Thank you, Thank you, David, Thank you for the call,
my friend. All right, when we come back more of
I told you, I told you we were going to
solve problems. Did I not? Of course I did. Here
Pie the house, welcome home. We're doing a little bit
of this and that and taking calls today. We're back
(21:06):
from vacation. I'm back with you live again, feeling good.
Hope you're feeling good too. It's a beautiful weekend ahead
of us here. Truly, truly, let's get back to the phones.
I want to talk to Peter. Hey, Peter, welcome home.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I want to thank you for a great show you
in your better half. I mean, you have such a yeah,
you have such an upuffing attitude. It's great this early
in the morning, you know, besides of being knowledgeable. Okay, yeah,
my gardner. We have two great guys. I mean I
(21:47):
take them out of coffee, you know. They do such
a great job around here. But the older guy, he
has a tendency, comes out with this nylon weed cutter,
you know, and he cuts it down to the quip,
you know. So I had half of my lawn was
green with weeds, which I was happy to have, and
(22:07):
I was watering and keeping the weeds going, and he
cut that down and now I've got a dust bowl
back there. And I talked to his son and he
said he would come in with a rotokiller this week
and rotokiller and then we'll put in a grass. And
one of the questions I wanted to ask you is too,
I like to keep the grass like at two or
(22:28):
three inches for the dogs, you know, because they like to,
you know, wrestle around in it and everything. So that
was one question. I wanted to see how long I
should keep the length of the grass because they seem
to want to cut it real short. And then the
other thing is what can I put in there that's
really fast growing you know, that will take take so
(22:52):
I can green up that backyard pretty quick. It's only
about eighty by eighty, you know, Well that's a good
the yard. That's a good sized yard for for a
lot of people here, they'd be like only eighty by eighty.
What is that the south for there? No, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a nice backyard, but it's a and now it's
(23:13):
a dust bowl, and I'm trying to think of the
quickest way to get it back into green up. And
I don't care if it's weeds. I mean, you know,
awful plant whatever grows fast, Well, I just like to
give them and find what they're going to bring in
the seeds. So I don't know, all.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Right, well, weeds grow the fastest. Now I'm assuming I'm
assuming you've just you've you've priced out and decided, no,
we're not going to put turf back there. We're not
gonna put sawed back.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
No, no, And I'm a renter. I'm glad I'm a
renter because I'm not paying high taxes and all that.
But my landlord's going to take care of it.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
You said he'll.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
He'll give them instructions and not to cut it lower
than two or three inches. So because I had a
beautiful green. The whole thing was like beautiful green. But
then they cut it down last year, and they cut
it down so short, and we got that hot weather
and it just burned out the lawn. So this is
the third time they've done this, you know, like cutting
it so short. I just wanted to get your opinion
(24:13):
on that.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Well, all right, So first of all, a couple of things.
Perennial Rye grass, Kentucky bluegrass, either rye or bluegrass. They're
very very fast growers. Okay, they're not my first perennial rye,
just Rye Kentucky bluegrass, I would probably Okay, So here's
(24:37):
the thing, you know, you know me, I'm not a
big fan of non native grasses in California, but you're
renting and you just need it back, and I get it,
and I'm a very practical guy. At the end of
the day, So I'm not going to tell you to
do a scientific experiment with the backyard. And you know
you can, though, look into bermuda grass. Bermuda I think
(25:04):
it germinates in as little as ten days. Bermuda grass
grows thick, and it has the advantage of being tough,
especially for pets and people running around on it. And
so I would probably direct you towards bermuda grass first,
but the rye and the bluegrass probably grow a little
(25:27):
bit faster, maybe just just a hair faster. So yeah,
those are the grasses that I would recommend as far
as getting it back and then keeping it tough. And
the other thing I like about bermuda grass is because
it has a thick matting underneath it, it tends to
exclude weeds better than just your typical straight bladed bluegrass
(25:53):
or rye when it comes to a lawn. That being said,
let me be clear and underscore the fact that you
already know real quick here before I have to go,
don't cut your grass too short. Get on, you know,
to tell them no more coffees and lunches for you
guys if you cut my grass too short, Because grass,
I mean, this is the photosynthesis blade of grass is
(26:16):
the is the way a lawn photosynthesizes, and so most lawns,
almost all lawns, listen to me, everybody, Almost all lawns
optimally should be kept at three to four inches, and
people are gasping four inches. I would never Yeah, three
to four inches, that's lush, and I'm gonna throw another
(26:38):
curveball at you. Have your gardener stop with the sucking
up of all of grass blades. The very very optimal
situation you could get yourself in is to mow the
grass without collecting the grass. Mow it and allow the
cuttings to go down and lay down inside the lawn
(27:00):
a macerating mower, so that they themselves begin to self
mulch the lawn. Best possible situation, lowest amount of weeds
growing through healthiest lawn three to four inches, leaving the
cuttings ground up in the lawn instead of bagging them
and taking them away, leave it all there. Best possible
(27:23):
lawn situation. And in the meantime, after this rototilling, change
your watering schedule so that I don't want you to
increase the amount of water that you put back there, Peter,
but I want you to break up that amount of
water into smaller doses throughout the day, just if you
want it to grow back as fast as possible. Instead
(27:45):
of hitting it all at once on your regular watering schedule,
break it up so that you distribute it in smaller
doses across the period of time to keep the soil
as moist as possible, not drowning, but as moist as
possible for as long long as possible. Wall those new seeds, Germany, Peter,
thank you for your call, buddy, and for your support
(28:05):
of the show. Appreciate you love our early morning Saturday
listeners and callers, and we've got more to come right
after we go to the news. You are Home Dean
Sharp the House Whisper on KFI. You're listening to Home
with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp, the
House Whisper on demand on the iHeart Radio app.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
AM I.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
AM six forty and live streaming in HD everywhere on
the iHeart Radio app. Hey, welcome to home where. Every
week we help you better understand that place where you live.
I am Dean Sharp, the house Whisperer, custom home builder,
custom home designer, and most importantly today, your guide to
(00:34):
transforming your ordinary house into an extraordinary home. Let me
tell you what we're doing today. We're all over the place.
It's a little bit of this, a bit of that,
and most importantly your calls. I am so so in
the mood to take your calls today. I've been away.
We've been away for a couple of weeks. We've been off. Well,
(00:57):
I'll tell you about our trip in just a bit,
uh snippets of it at least. Uh. But we're back.
We're rested.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's October. The holidays are laid out in front of us.
The scorching heat seems to have gone away now and
hopefully it won't come back. But we've got some beautiful
weather here in southern California right now. The Dodger's one line.
There's so many things to smile about this morning, and
(01:27):
mostly though I would love to talk to you, so
let me give you the number right now, and then
I'll move on to other things. Eight three three two
Ask Dean A three three the numeral two. Ask Dean
eight three three two ask dean. Producer Richie is standing by.
The phone lines are open. He's ready to take your call.
(01:50):
He'll tell you everything you need to know. Poppy into
the queue and then we'll put our heads together. We'll
figure out what's going on with your home. No worries,
no worries, all right. And if we do this all right,
we're gonna bring some light into the morning. Even though
these these are my favorite mornings, are they not. I mean,
you're a morning person, obviously. Here you are, here, you are,
(02:10):
we're talking, you and me together, hanging out. How awesome
is it to be a morning person? To be up
in the morning before the sun. I just love this
time of year when the sun gets a little lazy
and and we actually, you know, beat him up, well
I don't, you know, not like a salt, but get
(02:31):
up before the sun. And I just love this time
of year. What can I tell you the team is
here for you. Sam is on the board. Good morning, Sam,
Good morning Dane. How you doing. I am great, actually
and rested. I'm we kind of you know, we got
back on last weekend late last weekend, and so I
(02:56):
took this week of work to just kind of roll,
you know how you kind of ran been and you're
hoping that you don't come up against everything crazy on
day one, and we didn't, and so it was a
really nice ramp up as far as design work and
construction work and radio work. And I'm just I'm in
(03:16):
a good place. I'm really happy to hear that sounds
like you got your feet under you this morning. I do,
I do, which is rare, right. No, Hey, I'm happy
for you. I wish I could be there right now. Uh.
Producer Richie is standing by to take your calls. He's
nowhere near a microphone, but he's doing his work like
he always does every week, and we appreciate him. Jackie
(03:38):
Ray is at the news desk. Good morning, Jackie, Good morning.
How are you. I am great? Did you hear I'm great?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
I know.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I'm so excited for you. You're like, I'm really excited
for you rubbing it in. We've been here the whole time, yep,
all down.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, we went to uh we went to the great
state of Vermont. I have a new best friend Vermont.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Uh uh.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Anyway, I won't bore you with all that right now,
but glad you're here as always, and here we go.
Sitting across the table from me normally would be Tina
guess who has not completely ramped up from vacation yet.
(04:27):
I love being able to spoke fun at her in
the morning because she is such a morning person as well.
But currently she's nowhere to be seen. But let me look.
Oh yeah, there he is, Sammy the Beagle, sitting across
the table from me, and he has very little to say.
I can tell just by the look on his face
that he's like, move on, dad, move on, and we will.
(04:51):
Let's get to it this morning, shall we. We've got
your calls. Let me give the number out one more time,
eight three three two, ask Dean eight three three the
numeral to ask Dean. I'm ready for them. I'm going
to talk a little bit when we come back about permission,
permission to go a little bit further with your home
(05:14):
than you normally expect to the kind of attitude that
you have around the holidays. We'll talk about that. I've
got a couple of cool new items to introduce to
you today, and I want to remind you, and if
you've never heard this before, tell you for the first time,
that it's time to trim to prune your trees and
exactly how we're going to go about doing that. All
(05:36):
of that and your calls can't fine Jean Chart the
house whisper at your therapists. Whether you live in a
cottage or a condo or a castle, you know what,
it doesn't matter if that is the place that you
call home. I'm here to help you take it to
the next level. We're back from Bakay. We are having
(05:58):
fun this morning, just rested and ready to go and
hope you can pick up on that energy too. It
is a beautiful, beautiful weekend ahead of us here in
southern California. And it's cool. Dare I say cold? No,
not cold cool, cool, definitely cool outside right now and dark?
(06:19):
And here are you here? We are you and I
just hanging out on an early Saturday morning morning. People
that we are. I'm glad that you are here. We
are on that note, going to be taking calls. I'm
going to be going to the phones in just a smidge.
The phone lines are open. It's definitely a caller morning.
I just want to reconnect with you, talk with you
about your house. Eight three three two, ask Dean. Is
(06:43):
the number to reach me? A three three the numeral
two beep, ask Dean A three three to ask Dean
anything you want to talk about regarding your home. Construction issues,
design issues, DIY stuff, whatever the case. Maybe whatever is
bugging you, whatever you're scratching your head about, give me
(07:04):
a call and we will figure it out. I promise. Okay,
and we've got some we've got some calls on the board,
but we've got room for you. All right. This is
something that always seems to come upon my mind this
time of year, and that is permission. Now what do
(07:27):
I mean by that, Well, around the holidays, people tend
to change their thinking in regards to their home. You
take it up a notch obviously, because you're thinking about
decorating the holidays. Beckon people to decorate and to create
a certain kind of emotional environment in your home. Of course,
(07:51):
you know, like the Christmas tree and that kind of
stuff and the twinkly lights and all of that, and
that's not that far away, but even around our neighborhood here.
We came back from vacation very very pleased to see
so many of our neighbors getting into Halloween decorations and such.
And it's just that kind of spirit right in the year.
(08:17):
So we've got Halloween out in front of us, and
then Thanksgiving and so on. Tina and I ran out
and we grabbed a bunch of cornstalks from the local
farm and propped them up all around the house and
the backyard, and now our yard is full of pumpkins
and gourds and not so much Halloween stuff, just autumn stuff.
(08:39):
Probably for some of it is well, not even probably.
Some of it is definitely bringing Vermont back home with us,
no question about it. But the point is this. The
point is this, we all give ourselves permission during the
holidays to take things up a notch. We think, how,
(09:01):
you know, what can I do to the fireplace? What
can I do to this chair in this corner over here?
Should we light a candle? Should we put twinkling lights
over here? What can we do to these areas of
our homes? To bring it up into the holiday spirit,
and that I love. I love it, absolutely encourage you
(09:22):
to step into that spirit. But here is the part
of permission that I'm talking about. What I really, really
really want is for you to take hold of that
spirit and give yourself permission to hang on to that
attitude towards your house for the rest of the year,
(09:44):
throughout the rest of the year. Okay. The permission that
we give ourselves during the holidays to make spaces very
emotionally special is the permission that great homeowners give themselves
year round to do exactly the same thing. Now, don't
(10:05):
get me wrong, all right, let me be very clear.
I am not talking about you being the person that
person who never takes their Christmas lights down. No, No,
that has not the point. We have like two of
those people in our neighborhood. Why, that's not what I'm saying.
(10:29):
What I'm saying is that attitude of how do we
make this room just emotionally special for every time we
walk into it. See, we tend to give ourselves permission
to do that around the holidays, and then you know,
come January, it's like, put all that stuff away, let's
(10:49):
just get back to our regular boring lives, and I
don't want you to do that.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
I'm not talking about bling and jing and everywhere, right,
it's just the attitude. And so I am here to
officially this morning, and this is all I'm going to
say about it. I'm not going to harp on you
about it. I just want to say, officially this morning,
you have permission, You have my permission, please my encouragement
(11:17):
to take this spirit that you're starting to feel, those
nudges that you're starting to feel, and stretch it out
over the entire year, layer after layer. They just little
things here, there and everywhere as you continue to make
the space that you dwell in a very special space
for you every time you walk into the room, not
(11:40):
just around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but every time all year long.
Just be looking for it. It doesn't cost that much
to do why because you do it slowly and easily,
layer by layer. You know, a few weeks back, we
were talking to you about our firefly experiment. We bought
this new firefly lighting set and it's a hit. It's
(12:08):
a hit. People love the fireflies, so we're keeping the fireflies.
It was a sixty dollars investment and now it's going
to live on in our yard for as long as
it lasts, which I'm assuming is going to be several
years at least. So it's little layers like that that
simply add to the presence of your home and embrace it.
(12:31):
Embrace this holiday decorating time that's coming soon, and then
hold on to it. That's all I wanted to tell
you this morning. All Right, when we come back, we've
got several calls on the board, we're going to go
to the phones. Your Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whispered.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
KFI AM six forty live streaming in HD everywhere on
the iHeart Radio app. You are Home with Dean Sharp,
the House Whisper. Fresh off vacation. We're back, ready to go,
ready to connect with you, and it's time to go
to the phones. By the way, the number to reach
me eight three three two. Ask Dean A three three
(13:15):
the numeral two ask Dean. All right, let's talk to David. Hey, David,
welcome home.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Hey, good morning, good morning, good morning. I I have
a sixty five year old home. I have a two
car garage. When I'm inside the garage, the wall that
would face the lawn for about three feet on the bottom,
so you have the cement where you park. But then
(13:44):
you have the lip of the cement that comes up
two inches that the two by fours in the structure
of the garage attached to for about three feet there,
and on the other wall a couple of feet, the
cement is just crumbling about pieces a bit as big
as my finger for no reason. I'm not touching it.
I'm not. It's just crumbling and falling apart to dust.
(14:07):
And I don't know if I should put a ceiler
on it. I don't know what's causing it.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Okay, So you're talking about the stem wall, that small
short stem wall that's rising up on the on the
corner of the garage.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And you're saying about three linear feet not up, but
along the wall along that stem wall near the front
three feet. What's on the other side of this.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Wall, it would be the lawn and the flower bed.
Now you can make the argument that the water is
causing that. But on another wall where the door meets
a regular door that goes to the backyard, that is
also crumbling for a couple of feet. Now cement butts
(14:53):
up to that the outdoor cement butts up to that door.
So I don't know if it's getting moisture from the cement.
It's just such an odd it's not accurrence.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Are you here in southern California or you elsewhere?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
I'm an Orange County in California.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
You're an Orange County, okay, yeah, And so it's about
you saying chunks about the size of your finger rolling off.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
That would be the biggest. Now, it hasn't compromised the
area directly under the studs, the two by fours, that
is the structure. But it's about an inch in, gotcha.
And I don't know if I should just put sealer
on it and forget about it. But a friend says
that that would just trap if there's any moisture, it
would just trap it in, and that would be bad
(15:40):
to do. So I'm confused.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Yeah, I got you, all right. So here's the situation.
Not exactly sure what the cause is here. It's simply
maybe Now it's a sixty you say, a sixty five
year old home. Okay. The thing with concrete is it's
hard to tell from concrete that's that old when how
(16:06):
the conditions it was poured in. Obviously it has been
there for sixty five years. It may be may be
the fact that it is starting to crumble as a
result of it not having been perfectly mixed in the
and perfectly cured in the best possible situation when the
house was first built, that it's just showing its age essentially.
(16:32):
That sounds like that is more than likely the thing,
because of all the things that concrete can do, Concrete
either gives out pretty quickly because it got screwed up
to the beginning the beginning, or it doesn't. It just holds.
And most of the things that people say, oh, I'm
worried about my concrete is what we call effluorescence, which
(16:53):
are salt mineral salts that are being pushed through the
wall because of moisture. It sounds like, David, that it
simply may be in your case that this concrete is
starting to show its age. Now, is that a problem.
Probably not, It's probably not a problem. It's probably just
(17:14):
settling in there. So what I want you to do is, well,
we can do a couple of things. One, I'm going
to tell you to sit still, if you haven't seen
any significant cracking crumbling off that edge, that's one thing.
But if we haven't seen any cracking, okay, then sit
still and just keep an eye on it. Don't lose
any sleep over it, but just keep an eye on okay. Secondly,
(17:38):
if you want to help stop the crumpling on the inside,
then I don't want you to use a sealer, because
your friend is right, we don't want to trap moisture
inside the cement there. But you could run down to
the hardware store get a little concrete patch kit. And
(17:58):
I'm not talking about trying to reform the edge. If
you were ambitious, you could try and reform the edge there,
but just kind of get a patch kit and mix
up a little concrete patch like sidewalk patch, and you know,
kind of tral that onto the crumbling area to sort
of just hold it and secure it so it doesn't
(18:21):
want to crumble anymore, just to hold it together. And
then now I know you can't do it on the
side with the sidewalk on it, but on the side
that is got planting on the other side, if you
wanted to, I would say, why not invest a little
bit of time, dig down just a bit, and I
mean just a bit, meaning you know, in that planter bed,
(18:42):
maybe dig down eight ten inches and just for you know,
six inches wide so you have access to the lower
part of that concrete footer, and put a little water
proofing treatment on the outside of that concrete so that
(19:03):
we don't want to trap moisture inside the concrete stem wall,
but we can certainly reduce the amount of moisture that
comes into it, okay, So that would slow the absorption
rate of moisture from at least the garden bed. Now
the other side, if moisture is the issue, okay, which
I suspect it probably is, it doesn't surprise me that
(19:26):
both sides are crumbling equally because concrete is just a
giant sponge and the concrete of the sidewalk or the
cement that's abutting it on the other side is doing
the same thing. It's you know, conveying moisture into the cement.
But we could slow it down at least on the
planter wall side, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
If it ever gets worse, what type of contractor would
I call.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
If it ever gets worse, I want you to call
a foundation repair contractor, like a foundation here. Write this
down a Foundation Repair LA. They are the guys that
I go to almost with every one of the foundation issues,
and they specialize in justice, just taking people's foundations that
(20:11):
are failing, abutting them, supporting them, replacing them, you know,
all that kind of stuff. You don't want to call
just a regular general contractor because the chances are they'll
turn around and call a place like Foundation Repair LA
and then add their feet on top of it for
making the call. So you could just call these guys
directly and they will help you out if you ever
(20:34):
see cracking or settling that in any way affects the
rest of the wall. But just to you know, hold
on to the crumbling for now and just keep an
eye on it.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Perfect. You've been a big help.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Thank you, Thank you, David, Thank you for the call,
my friend. All right, when we come back more of
I told you, I told you we were going to
solve problems. Did I not? Of course I did. Here
Pie the house, welcome home. We're doing a little bit
of this and that and taking calls today. We're back
(21:06):
from vacation. I'm back with you live again, feeling good.
Hope you're feeling good too. It's a beautiful weekend ahead
of us here. Truly, truly, let's get back to the phones.
I want to talk to Peter. Hey, Peter, welcome home.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I want to thank you for a great show you
in your better half. I mean, you have such a yeah,
you have such an upuffing attitude. It's great this early
in the morning, you know, besides of being knowledgeable. Okay, yeah,
my gardner. We have two great guys. I mean I
(21:47):
take them out of coffee, you know. They do such
a great job around here. But the older guy, he
has a tendency, comes out with this nylon weed cutter,
you know, and he cuts it down to the quip,
you know. So I had half of my lawn was
green with weeds, which I was happy to have, and
(22:07):
I was watering and keeping the weeds going, and he
cut that down and now I've got a dust bowl
back there. And I talked to his son and he
said he would come in with a rotokiller this week
and rotokiller and then we'll put in a grass. And
one of the questions I wanted to ask you is too,
I like to keep the grass like at two or
(22:28):
three inches for the dogs, you know, because they like to,
you know, wrestle around in it and everything. So that
was one question. I wanted to see how long I
should keep the length of the grass because they seem
to want to cut it real short. And then the
other thing is what can I put in there that's
really fast growing you know, that will take take so
(22:52):
I can green up that backyard pretty quick. It's only
about eighty by eighty, you know, Well that's a good
the yard. That's a good sized yard for for a
lot of people here, they'd be like only eighty by eighty.
What is that the south for there? No, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a nice backyard, but it's a and now it's
(23:13):
a dust bowl, and I'm trying to think of the
quickest way to get it back into green up. And
I don't care if it's weeds. I mean, you know,
awful plant whatever grows fast, Well, I just like to
give them and find what they're going to bring in
the seeds. So I don't know, all.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Right, well, weeds grow the fastest. Now I'm assuming I'm
assuming you've just you've you've priced out and decided, no,
we're not going to put turf back there. We're not
gonna put sawed back.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
No, no, And I'm a renter. I'm glad I'm a
renter because I'm not paying high taxes and all that.
But my landlord's going to take care of it.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
You said he'll.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
He'll give them instructions and not to cut it lower
than two or three inches. So because I had a
beautiful green. The whole thing was like beautiful green. But
then they cut it down last year, and they cut
it down so short, and we got that hot weather
and it just burned out the lawn. So this is
the third time they've done this, you know, like cutting
it so short. I just wanted to get your opinion
(24:13):
on that.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Well, all right, So first of all, a couple of things.
Perennial Rye grass, Kentucky bluegrass, either rye or bluegrass. They're
very very fast growers. Okay, they're not my first perennial rye,
just Rye Kentucky bluegrass, I would probably Okay, So here's
(24:37):
the thing, you know, you know me, I'm not a
big fan of non native grasses in California, but you're
renting and you just need it back, and I get it,
and I'm a very practical guy. At the end of
the day, So I'm not going to tell you to
do a scientific experiment with the backyard. And you know
you can, though, look into bermuda grass. Bermuda I think
(25:04):
it germinates in as little as ten days. Bermuda grass
grows thick, and it has the advantage of being tough,
especially for pets and people running around on it. And
so I would probably direct you towards bermuda grass first,
but the rye and the bluegrass probably grow a little
(25:27):
bit faster, maybe just just a hair faster. So yeah,
those are the grasses that I would recommend as far
as getting it back and then keeping it tough. And
the other thing I like about bermuda grass is because
it has a thick matting underneath it, it tends to
exclude weeds better than just your typical straight bladed bluegrass
(25:53):
or rye when it comes to a lawn. That being said,
let me be clear and underscore the fact that you
already know real quick here before I have to go,
don't cut your grass too short. Get on, you know,
to tell them no more coffees and lunches for you
guys if you cut my grass too short, Because grass,
I mean, this is the photosynthesis blade of grass is
(26:16):
the is the way a lawn photosynthesizes, and so most lawns,
almost all lawns, listen to me, everybody, Almost all lawns
optimally should be kept at three to four inches, and
people are gasping four inches. I would never Yeah, three
to four inches, that's lush, and I'm gonna throw another
(26:38):
curveball at you. Have your gardener stop with the sucking
up of all of grass blades. The very very optimal
situation you could get yourself in is to mow the
grass without collecting the grass. Mow it and allow the
cuttings to go down and lay down inside the lawn
(27:00):
a macerating mower, so that they themselves begin to self
mulch the lawn. Best possible situation, lowest amount of weeds
growing through healthiest lawn three to four inches, leaving the
cuttings ground up in the lawn instead of bagging them
and taking them away, leave it all there. Best possible
(27:23):
lawn situation. And in the meantime, after this rototilling, change
your watering schedule so that I don't want you to
increase the amount of water that you put back there, Peter,
but I want you to break up that amount of
water into smaller doses throughout the day, just if you
want it to grow back as fast as possible. Instead
(27:45):
of hitting it all at once on your regular watering schedule,
break it up so that you distribute it in smaller
doses across the period of time to keep the soil
as moist as possible, not drowning, but as moist as
possible for as long long as possible. Wall those new seeds, Germany, Peter,
thank you for your call, buddy, and for your support
(28:05):
of the show. Appreciate you love our early morning Saturday
listeners and callers, and we've got more to come right
after we go to the news. You are Home Dean
Sharp the House Whisper on KFI. You're listening to Home
with Dean Sharp on demand from KFI AM six forty
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