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Now, please enjoy our podcast of On The House with the Carried Brothers. It's James and Morris Carried. Well, Magic Mike, you have a half right. It's James Carried, brother Morris, how do an electrical work today?
Bring her home to the basement. Doing a great job. But you know what? I'm here with Captain Dan and remodeling, babe.
And together we'll have some fun with you helping you fix up your home as we do each week at this time. And I will tell you, this is a terrific hour because it's about you. It's about things that you need, information that you need, is regards to fixing up your piece of the Great American Dream, improving comfort, lowering operating expense, whether it's your utility bill, your water bill, your home repair bill. You know, an ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure.
And we would love to hear from you at 800-737-2474. So let's start things off with Dave. I was wondering where you were. I can get the Chevron single oil.
Oh, yeah. Chevron or Shell, single and floor oil, Dave, we recommend that for folks that have cedar shake roofs where you've done power washing. You've stripped all of the oxidation off of the roof. You'll discover sunspots where UV has eaten right through the shakes, selective replacement of the shakes so that, you know, the shakes are not the waterproof barrier, right?
The waterproof barrier is the roofing paper below the shakes. But you certainly don't want any sunspots or any holes in the shakes because that will allow access to the waterproof membrane, which will deteriorate more rapidly. So, selective replacement of shakes, then you want to treat the shakes with Chevron or Shell, single and floor oil. And you can get the product by contacting either of the two companies, either Chevron oil or Shell oil and find where in your area you may get their product.
It's not readily available at retail. It's not readily available at retail. Now, there are other products like Chevron and Shell, single and floor oil that you can utilize penetrating oil finishes that contain some pigments. And by the way, I'm going to have a discussion today, a little bit about deck that we're refinishing and the importance of UV protection and penetration into the natural wood.
So, I hope that helps you. Good luck to you. And what a way to extend the life of your roof. That's so important, especially if you have a wood roof.
Alright, Jack, your turn on the house. Yes, I was just wondering what's the proper way to back build around the foundation for the water to flow away from the house. I put dirt on there, but I just wanted to get there and just run, wash it away so you could tell me how to do that. I appreciate it.
Well, I think that filling against the foundation is, first of all, you want to make sure that grade is a minimum of six inches from the bottom of your siting or whatever the exterior wall material is because you want to prevent mold, mildew, rot and structural pests. That's number one. Then if you're getting a wash away, there's got to be some water that's making its way there. That would lead me to believe Jack that you don't have the downspouts, or rather I should say that you don't have gutters, or if you do have gutters, they're overflowing, or you don't have downspouts, or if you do have downspouts, they're not transferring the water away from the foundation.
So one of the things that I would do is make sure that the gutters are clean, that the downspouts are clean, that you have a subsurface drainage system, that the downspouts exhaust into, that carry it away into a municipal storm drain, the curb, the gutter, or another non-erose of rip-rap that is a water collection area. That's number one. Then I would slope an eighth of an inch per foot, minimum, more, if you think that's prudent with a mixture of soil and a little bit of sand for compaction. Then I'd use a landscape fabric that's nothing more than a mesh fabric that's quite durable.
And then on top of that, you can use a little bit of organic compost, or you can even use gravel or rock or something like that, a little drip irrigation to minimize the amount of moisture around the house, yet you'll have water where you need it, so that you can irrigate plants and shrubs around the house without having water that potentially can make its way into your foundation, because that's where the damage happens. That's where heaving soil can cause the foundation to heave that expansive soil that is to say, where the expansive soil will cause the foundation to heave, the floor to move, the walls to develop cracks, windows become difficult to open, doors become difficult to open, and it's just a comedy of errors. So enough can't be said about the importance of proper watershed of the foundation, of modest irrigation of the foundation, and making sure that you have gutters, downspouts, and that water is exhausted away from your house. Jack, good to hear from you.
Thanks so much for the call. That leaves Jack's line open, the number. 800-737-2474, you are listening to On The House. Do you have a question?
Call on the house now at 800-737-2474. That's 800-737-2474. You're listening to The On The House Podcast brought to you by Emsertile, the fashion leader in glaze, ceramic, and porcelain tile, glass, metal, and natural stone products. Visit Emsert.com to learn more.
Now, back to the podcast. On the house, 800-737-2474, Dave, earlier, looking for Chevron, Shingle and Floor Oil, founded for you, Dave, online. This is one resource. It is Alexis Oil, A-L-E-X-I-S-O-I-L, Alexis Oil.com.
A five-gallon pail of Chevron Shingle Oil is $89.39. That's a good price. And it says Chevron Shingle Oil is designed for use on shake roofs, log homes, wood siding and fences. Chevron Shingle Oil penetrates the wood surface to enhance or replace natural oils and resins leached out by cyclical exposure to sun and rain.
I know that it's a good and affordable product for wood roofs. And by the way, you can add a little pigment to it if you'd like. You can, and it's a pigment so that you can get some color. It doesn't hurt.
Karen, welcome. It is your turn on the house. Okay. I had a question and it was a wet and forget.
I got hard water spots on my window and I was wondering if that would take it off. Wet and forget probably will not remove hard water spots on your windows. Are they on the inside or outside? Outside.
Okay. Cool of the morning. Cool of the morning. Out of the sun.
Direct sun. White distilled vinegar. Spray bottle. Spray it onto the glass.
And cover it with the cheap painters plastic drop cloth. And let it sit for 30 minutes. Peel back the cheap painters plastic drop cloth. And I'm talking about the 99 cent one.
Yeah, the real thin plastic and then spritz the window again with more vinegar, Karen. Mm hmm. Right on there. And then covered again.
Let it sit for 30 minutes. Then I like to use a window washers surgical steel blade. A very sharp blade. You have to be real careful.
But you run that along the glass and that will you won't believe that your windows could ever be that clean. They'll look brand new like the glass was replaced. Because the vinegar, the vinegar will soften any mineral deposits, calcium carbon and hard water stains, whatever. And the blade will just take everything right off.
And then once you've done that, you can use a window cleaning product like Windex or something, whatever your favorite window cleaning product is. Of course they say newsprint is the best material, the best wiping material. I've heard that. Eugenia Chapman, the queen of clean and the author of Clean Your House and everything in it.
I recommend newsprint as the wiping material. Okay. All right. But thank you so much.
Welcome to the air for me. All right. Karen's line open the number eight hundred seven, three, seven, two, four, seven, four. Let's talk to Frank.
My questions to the Morris Brothers is I got a deck 10 by 20 and I cannot keep a stain on that every year. I got to replace it or something. They got some idea how to keep staying on my deck. That's a red one.
Frank, the Morris Brothers. Thank you. That's first questions to the Morris Brothers. Yeah.
Very good. Okay. So here's what I have to say about that. And I have a lot of experience.
Why? Because we built about a thousand square foot redwood deck a couple of years ago. And we applied a clear finish, a leading brand, a clear finish. And a year later, that was last year, the homeowner called and said, you need to come out and see the deck.
And it was virtually void to finish. So we cleaned the deck. We sanded it. We power washed it.
And then we applied a different product. This time the product wasn't clear. It had a little bit of pigment, but it was an oil penetrating oil product. And we applied that product and it looked beautiful.
This deck looked beautiful. Just gorgeous. The trellis, the built in benches, the handrail, the post, the stairs, the decking. Redwood deck, con heart, clear in some locations.
Beautiful. Okay. Done. Homeowner calls a year later.
Now we're two years into this. This was a few months ago. I don't know. The finishes is not lasting.
Why? I fly out there. Take a look. Well, okay.
This time, I think I'm going to get the California Redwood Association involved. I'm going to get the lumber supplier involved. And I'm going to get a leading stain company involved. And you need to know the stain company that I got involved was not the company that we originally from which we got the product.
This was another brand. But I got this company involved because the California Redwood Association said, you know, they've got really great product and got their a great resource. And he mentioned several brands, but he said, you know, reach out to these folks. So I did.
And we, Frank, had to end up removing some of the boards because here was the problem. This deck is in full sun from the moment the sun comes up until the sun goes down at the end of the day. I mean, it is full sun and it's just here in the deck up. Now, when I made my investigation, the second time after we had stayed at the second time in a year had passed and the homeowner said, you know what, the finish is just not good.
They had an outdoor rug, an outdoor rug on the center of the deck with garden furniture and I peeled back that rug and the deck looked as good as it did the day we stained it. And it looked beautiful, which led me to believe that the product that was on the deck wasn't holding up to the UV. It wasn't holding up to UV. It was completely evaporating.
We removed everything. We selectively replaced boards that were damaged. We sanded. We used.
Oxilic acid in solution, which is a deck brightener. We sanded. We rinsed. And we ended up with a beautiful canvas.
Then, Frank, what we did was a water test, taking a little bit of water, pouring it onto areas on the deck to make sure that the water was on the deck. To make sure that the water would be absorbed into the deck, which would lead us to believe that our penetrating oil finish would be easily absorbed into the deck. One of the things that can happen is that when you sand, you can burnish the finish, which will close the wood pours and prevent it from absorbing the material. Boy, was that a discovery.
There is also a better application technique that I will share with you, Frank, in a moment that will ensure that you get maximum coverage, maximum penetration, that the product that you put on will stay there. And there's something else that you also need to know about the product. Do you need to finish your deck every year? Well, depending upon the product that you choose and what the elements are, you may need to.
But if that doesn't appeal to you, there are some things that you can do and we'll tell you about that in a moment. As On The House continues at 1-800-Repair It. After this. You're listening to The On The House Podcast brought to you by Panasonic Eco Solutions, High Performance Ventilation Solutions for Healthy Clean Indoor Air Quality.
Visit Panasonic.com slash Vent Fans Today. Now, back to the podcast. Thank you, Magic Mike. Thanks for tuning in to this half of this hour on the house.
8-0-737-2474. Frank wants to know how he can prevent having to stain his deck, his redwood deck every year and going through that and experience that we had on a redwood deck that we built and some things that we learned. So you can, if you sand, you think sanding is great. Okay, that's wonderful, but you can close the pours.
So California Redwood Association said, look, if you do that and it's okay to sand. It's necessary in many cases to sand, even after you use the Xcelic Acid. Then wet the deck and then let it dry. Then wet it again and let it dry and that will open the pores up so that the finish that you apply will penetrate.
So we did that. Then they said, okay, you're using an oil-based product and we know that when you use an oil-based product, you need to use an applicator that's compatible. So the applicator is a natural China bristle brush, not a latex polyester nylon brush, but a China bristle brush. Fine.
So that's, that's good. Then the mistake that most people make is they put on too much product and it puddles and gets sticky. That's a whole nother problem. So most of the better products, like the super deck product that we installed the third and final time, they're one coat products.
They're one coat products, but you don't wipe it on with a rag because you don't let the material get in. So what you do is you brush them. Now they say you can spray it. They say you can roll it or you can brush it.
But whether you spray it, roll it or brush it. You need to back brush it, which means brush the stain back in with a dry brush. So you're really applying stain with two brushes, Danny. You're using one to dip into the stain and brush it onto the decking.
And then you're taking another brush that's a dry brush that you don't dip into the stain and you use that to brush out the stain that's on the deck. That makes sense to you. That's all bad brushing. Then you have a rag handy where you occasionally remove the excess material from the brush.
Fine. Well, I have to tell you. We went through, we did what are called brush outs. So for a homeowner that's interested in painting their house or that's interested in staining a deck or something like that, you do brush outs.
You get samples of the color that they want. And then you brush it out on the wood or on cardboard samples for in the case of interior exterior paint. And then they look at it and say, well, yeah, we like that one. So we did like 15 brush outs of wood colors for these to get the color that they wanted.
You can buy stain in a clear finish. You can buy deck stain in a semi transparent finish, which will show first of all, clear. No color shows everything semi transparent. Typically a color and shows the wood grain.
And then you have a heavy bodied opaque stain, which is typically not for decks. It's for siding and vertical surfaces, but can be used on a deck. And that will show none of the finish. I mean, none of the grain or anything like that.
So fine. So we used a semi transparent. That's not something that we use before. We used a transparent stain.
So now we used a semi transparent. The other thing we did was we went to iron oxide pigments. Which have microscopic properties that prevent the sun from beating the deck all the hell. So semi transparent iron oxide and then a redwood color pigmented stain.
And I have to tell you. It's amazing that homeowner is thrilled and we're feeling like we have done what we need to do on all ends in order to preserve the integrity of this wood. The manufacturer said you should have to reapply the stain every three years. I think it'll be every two years because of the sun and the finish with this rank for you and for you considering doing that.
I'm hoping that you find this helpful. What we did was because this deck is in full sun from morning until night and you're not supposed to stain in sunlight or on a warm surface. We completely built a covering like a big old tarot, a thousand square foot tarp over this deck to create shade. And here's what the homeowner discovered.
Oh my God. I think I want to have some kind of a shade structure. So what she's going to do is there are these Roman shades, deck shades which can be drawn back. And she's going to end up with a partially shaded deck which is going to make this space infinitely more useful throughout the year, especially in the heat of the sun.
And it's going to preserve the deck more and prevent them from having to apply the finish more frequently. So that's the story of the gift that keeps on giving the deck finish that wouldn't cooperate. I think now we're on to something lesson learned. Thanks to channel lumber to the California Redwood Association and to super deck duct back stains and wood preservatives for their help in making this project a success.
800-737-2474 is our number. Look forward to hearing from you on the house. Straight ahead. Do you have a question?
Call on the house now at 800-737-2474. That's 800-737-2474. You're listening to the on the house podcast brought to you by Ronbo, creative distinctive cabinet design solutions for every bathroom. Ronbo, your best choice for beautiful long lasting bathroom furniture.
Learn more at Ronbo.com. Now back to the podcast. Alright 800-737-2474 to Vince and Wenatchee Washington listening to the program on KPQ. Vince, welcome.
Hi, how you doing? I am terrific. How are our friends at Wenatchee? It's about time we, is all the snow off the mountains now?
We didn't get much snow this winter. They got it all back east this year. Yeah, they did. Just a beautiful, beautiful view of those mountains in Wenatchee.
Oh, it's a beautiful town. I love it here. It's God's country up here. I just had a quick comment.
I actually managed a Cedar remanufacturing plant here in Wenatchee. I won't mention the names or anything. Oh, you can. It's okay.
Go ahead. It's sunshine lumber. Sunshine lumber. What do you guys do?
Well, we are remanufacturing. We buy Cedar and we have different programs either with fencing, decking, and we actually ship furniture stock all over the world to make Adirondack chairs for about 400 different producers. How wonderful is that? Is this reclaimed material?
Recycle it. We call it rediscovered. I don't want to be remembered. Rediscovered.
So, I know you didn't call about that, but if you don't mind, if you'll indulge me for a moment, we'll make plenty of time for you to say whatever you'd like to say. But I'd like to learn a little bit more about this. So, you guys reach out to how do you find this material? How do you find your material?
It's a grade of wood that in the past has been either hard, depth, or fuel, or made into different lower value. We basically would say there's a turn at call, a fancy turn call value. So, what we're taking is material that otherwise would have been either scrapped or underutilized, if you will. And then we go through it and chop out and defect it for making different programs.
So, where do you find the material? Where do you find the material? We have a dozen different mills we buy from. They're working up as a more to a better term, it's a mill run grade.
Everything from what to clear in it. And we defect it out and make our material out of it. Is this Western red cedar? Western red and some inland red too.
And some inland red. Boy, I had a gazebo that was all furniture grade Western red cedar. And that was manufactured by, oh gosh, I can't think of the cut. They were in Everson, Everson, Everson, Pennsylvania.
And it came in 39 boxes. You didn't need to sort of put this thing together. All you needed was a wrench. All pre-cut, pre-drilled, all the anchors, everything.
Boom, you just a socket wrench and an open end wrench or whatever. And you know, you put it together. And we built one of those for Dom De Loise many years ago in his backyard. God rest his soul.
He's a great man. And Western red cedar, just beautiful beautiful products. So you take it and you mill it. You're running it through a saw.
And what are you guys doing when you get the material? We're chopping it, ripping it, re-sawing it. We don't pre-drilled anything. We actually just produce the cut stock.
And we ship that by pallet form to our producers all over the world. And they have their own jigs and templates that they cut their pieces, burn it throughout and assemble the pieces with their jigs inside. And we're going to be done. By the way, the name of that gazebo company was Vixen Hill.
Vixen Hill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you called in because you heard me talk about the redwood and the decking stain.
Yeah, I'm just checking in the problems with the stain sticking. All right. Hold on one second because Captain Dan wants to take a quick commercial break. And I'm so happy that Vince you called in and that you were willing to share a little bit about what you do in your product.
I always find that interesting. We take a little bit of a break and we come back then Vince is going to weigh in on the discussion that we had a little earlier with regard to Frank's question about how to prevent from having to restain a deck every year. It's all in the house at 800 737 2474 after this. On the house, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
You're listening to The On The House Podcast brought to you by Wet N' Forget. Easy cleaning solutions for everyday problems. Visit Wet N' N' Forget.com for a store near you. Visit the Wet N' Forget Facebook page for weekly product giveaways.
Now back to the podcast. All right, Vince is on the line. He is in Wenatchee, Washington listening to the program on our longtime affiliate K.P. Q.
Vince. So it's not it's not reclaimed lumber Vince. What is it called? I'm sorry.
I had a real bad connection there for a minute. No problem. The point I was going to try to make on all stains and all software species like in Redwood whether you're milling it out of Redwood or Red Cedar is people don't wait long enough to stain their product after they get the wood wet. They've prescribed them to that down.
You have to wait a minimum in the summer of one week. It preferably two weeks before you put the stain on. The problem is you get water in the wood. And if most stains, most modern stains, they have their water tight.
Yeah, right. So when you put your woods wet, when you put the stain on, it's not going to penetrate, especially penetrating oil type sealer. That's right. The good point.
My big point is that my main point is make sure the wood is bone dry. When you put that stain on, the drier the wood, the better it penetrates. Yeah, indeed. And that's true not only when you wash the wood, when you're prepping, but also if the material comes to the job green.
Green, exactly. And we're not talking about the color green. We're talking about, of course, that it's got a high moisture content. Boy, what a good point, Vince.
I totally missed discussing the importance of that. Making sure that your material is not green and that if you do clean the deck, that you give it an opportunity to fully air dry so that it'll. We prefer to be too. If it rains on it, you got to wave another week.
Yeah, right. Well, thank you. Go ahead. One more quick question.
Sure. Comment. If your deck is low to the ground, okay, you have to when you're initially putting the decking down, you have to stain all four sides. The reason being you're going to get moisture up from the ground, vis-a-vis dew.
And if you're only, you only seal the top two or three sides and the bottom is still bare. And you get dew up. It's going to absorb moisture from the bottom and it's going to cut the wood. Boy, you just, you're terrific.
That's true. As a matter of fact, Remondly, babe has us up. I didn't add it for a few years. You certainly have.
And we're getting ready to embark on a project where this is not decking events. This is siting and it happens to be a Rissant Cedar. It's one by, I think it's one by six, tongue and groove, vertical. Some of it is a bigger part in diagonal.
Some of it is vertical. Beautiful product, but it wasn't cared for on the south wall. So we're going to have to tear it off. Boy, I'm thinking, I don't know, could some of it find a home with you?
I'm just thinking, you know, this material that we're taking off and replacing with new product. That would be perfectly good product that you guys could recycle. We actually produce double-siding here. So we make double.
We make tongue and groove. We make channel, you know, etc. Remondly, babe, is going to get your info so that we can make a love connection because you're a very valuable resource. The one guy that helps out is the one guy that is going to be happy with his product rather than miserable.
This has a profile, a special profile, which looks Rissant, but it's not exactly Rissant. We may send you a sample of it because we may need to make a match and you can help us out. Is it like a channel or a button or what? No, it's one by six V rustic, but it's got some kind of, according to the owner, it's got some kind of a finish.
It almost to me looks like a light sandblasted finish. But I don't know. We're going to get a sample of it when we begin the job in June and we'll send you a sample. I'm putting you on hold so that you and our modeling babe can exchange info.
And we'll certainly enlist your help on this project. And we appreciate you being there for us. Well, that's all the time we have this hour of the program. Reminder that you can get more information and check in on some of the websites that were mentioned in products by visiting our website, specifically the show notes section of our website at onthehouse.com.
On the house with the Carrie Brothers is a presentation of On the House Media.