uh what have you had any home repairs done lately on your home
well
that's that's something um yeah we have it's a very timely subject i think in the Spring everybody decides that they're going to start over and do something with their house
and we started last year an we have a little i guess it's a sixteen hundred foot house and it's just my husband and i here but um we decided that uh we wanted to build a sun room
and um it's a good thing we got a contractor i mean this is not something you need to do by yourself so we ended up with a contractor and went through that whole schmeal with
um the contractor saying one thing and then doing another and and uh anyway we ended up with uh a really neat sun room on the back of the house it's beautiful it's like two hundred square foot
but that's not um something we did by ourselves if you talk about home repairs um Tom's real good at mowing the grass and doing the garden so that's about it
yeah we uh of course we have a new house that we've uh that we bought about a year ago and it's been a chore just getting the uh builder to come back and finish everything up the way it's supposed to
isn't that amazing
uh yeah it's been an experience it's one i don't want to repeat anytime soon but we've had some we haven't had anything really major uh wrong other than uh we did have like a water leak in the wall in the in the garage and
yeah
and uh the water heater upstairs in the attic it uh had a little leak and leaked down in uh under the ceiling
and they had to come in and do some tape and bedding and repaint you know treat the ceiling but nothing nothing major those those kind of things really weren't major uh just some of those kind of things that can happen
yeah
but uh just getting him out there to finish up and that sort of thing was has been a real effort
all those little details that you you don't really understand you know like we had some water leaks in the um well in the sun room there was a part that was fiberboard
and you know tape and bed over that and when it did rain of course the only way to tell if this place leaks is to see if uh what happens after it rains
uh-huh
and of course it leaked um which is no big deal because they said they'd come fix it well that's true but you know fixing the tape and bedding to make it look nice again it's it's
it's hard it's hard to make it fit perfectly
it's a chore and a half without tearing the whole thing out and repainting and doing everything again
well fortunately ours was on the ceiling where they had the blow in ceiling the little uh
oh
the little the little you know uh styrofoam balls that they paint over so it was easy to disguise that but uh it was in an area where you don't really look at very much so we were lucky in that respect
yeah
i don't know i i guess you get this idea that everything should be perfect and you know what this isn't a perfect world
no however i do think that a lot of times contractors try to get out of doing things that they say they're going to do and uh
it
but you do
oh i know because every time they send somebody out they have to take them off a crew that's making money doing a job and they have to send them back to you where they're not making any money trying to repair something that you know should have been right in the first place
yeah and and then they don't do a real good job doing it too they just kind of get get it done as quickly as possible
yeah
well i was real happy with our contractor um actually i wasn't happy with the contractor i was happy with the job foreman so i think that made all the difference because he was pretty um you know
concerned about how it looked and and you know how it should be done the right way and he gave us a lot of clues you just wish you knew all this stuff going in that um
it was funny because we didn't understand a lot of things that we had to do in addition to this you know like the tape and bedding and and doing finishing off this wall and that wall that wasn't in the contract you know kind of thing
so that was kind of interesting
yeah they i i like when they come in of course i designed my own house i'm i i've had prior experience in design and building and stuff like that so i know basically if it's done right the problem is i don't want to do anymore
oh neat
oh
yeah
i want someone to do it for me
and uh just trying to get them to do what they say they're going to do is a real effort
yeah well we've taken this another step further this year we're going to build a deck we've got some people building uh a deck out in the back you know to complete sort of the back yard kind of thing and um
well i could recommend something there if if you know if if it's not just cost prohibitive
oh yeah
for you uh i've built probably three decks on three different houses
oh
and the first time i went with
regular just treated pine
kind of a womanized pine and then i i treated spray treated it with some um
uh-huh
um panta oil which you have to do about every two years
okay
the problem with that is it warps after a couple of years then and you have to start replacing boards
i was wondering about that yeah
the second time i did it out of cedar which i soaked in Thompson Water Seal
uh-huh
and that works fine but there again it it discolors real bad
you soaked it
oh yeah
you know the sun and everything else it just makes it look gray and dull an and it doesn't look attractive after a a few years the wood lasts fine but the color i was real dissatisfied
the color is what you're yeah sometimes after
and if you can stand the additional expense which you you'll recoup after a while because it will last forever is the redwood if you'll go with the redwood
that's that's what we're doing is just the redwood and we're doing it where they use the screws that are um they're not nails they're the screws have
they're screws the self adhesive screws all right
yeah those and so they're not going to split and and i was really concerned about bugs really when i when we were considering other types of wood because you know termites can be a real hazard around here
you have to pretty much spray them regularly you know under an and around or whatever so you want to leave yourself uh enough space to get under it or or be able to lift it up
yeah
on some ends a lot of times they won't even detach them to the ground they just lay them up on some cinder blocks underneath in the ground
um-hum
and they're heavy enough where they won't the wind won't pick them up or they won't shift if it's big enough and heavy enough
so they're several ways of doing it but the redwood is by by far the best and i would and i would also insist on that they do treat that with Thompson's Water Seal
that
yeah that's that's the end part that's where you you know get the uh
that's the part we have to do we got that up front we figured it out you know we need to know what we need to do um that's not included in this and that's one of the uh details but that's fine as long as they tell you
yeah
yeah
it's so funny because Tom is getting more and more adept at doing things it's just things like painting just always used to really scare me he didn't know where to start um you know with a paint can you know an
well it is it's it's a frightening experience
the one thing you might do if he will deliver the boards that he is going to make the under structure with
it sure is
um-hum
before he starts doing the construction to go ahead and do the water seal
oh and do the water seal floor
on those and then when he cuts them and puts them together then that'll already be treated and a fast way of doing that if you'll go get a piece of guttering material like a little trough
uh-huh
and cover cover both ends or some sort of something that that will fit in
okay
and
i got you covered there
pour that in pour the water Thompson's Water Seal in there and then just put that in there and turn them over several times and let them set and soak in
kind of like marinate them yeah
that's right that that works wonders it i know it takes a lot of extra time but it's it's by far worth it
and that's just a water sealing and what happens if they aren't water sealed
well over a period of time any any lumber will deteriorate
yeah will deteriorate yeah
now redwood would take quite a few years it depends on how many years you you plan to stay there
yeah
but uh redwood even if you don't treat it properly will begin to discolor and will begin to degrade even though it will be strong structurally strong and and will be there for a lot longer
yeah they did tell us that we'd have to you know every couple of years just you know do brush up on the color
um
actually if you do the the water seal correctly
um-hum
you don't even have to do that
oh really
i've seen decks that are ten years old that uh that still have never had the had the uh the water proof stain put back over it or whatever
huh
and uh or they even have some rejuvenator that you can put on there that makes the redwood color come back but it's expensive and and and most cases if you do it properly it will not even be required
well that's a really interesting tip and uh definitely something Tom could handle doing that
yeah and and the Thompson's is is good because you can roll it on with a roller you can spray it on you can
yeah he suggested just getting uh um a uh um a mop like you would use
or or a mop anything you can put that on with anything whereas a lot of this other stuff you have to you have to actually sit down and paint it with a brush
a mop just
paint it yeah
uh and or spray it but then you've got to worry about the over spray whereas this stuff is clear
uh-huh
even if you got it on the side of some of your bricks or or on your concrete it wouldn't hurt anything
you couldn't tell oh
you would never be able to know it so
well that's definitely interesting so here we go with another home project
well it it's kind of fun though things like that especially something like that where where you're outside you're not worrying about something inside the house that you can mess up outside you can learn a lot by doing that
it is i like
well like i said Tom does great with his garden i i always uh enjoyed working on the crew in the plays and building stuff so i'm i'm really in infatuated with building things and
well and it's and it could be cheaper in the long run and
and making things
you know
but there's nothing like getting a perfect
