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Before you start your next do it yourself project listen to this. You got this is on the air you got this is hosted by abt plumbing electric heat and air owner Andrew Twidwell and Rosalie brown with a helpful hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalia
Hi this is Andrew Twidwell, owner of abt plumbing, electric heat and air, once again with You Got This!, the of DIY do’s and don’ts. And I am zooming in with Rosalie Brown, our co host and producer, and she’s down in lovely LA and I am in Grass Valley right now and I’m very cold. There’s still snow on the ground. What’s up?
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That is cold, that is cold. I’m not living it up in sunny LA because it’s 62 right now, which is the warmest part of the day because we’re recording later than usual. I woke up this morning and it was 43. And I was not loving that at all.
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I don’t think it’s gonna get much warmer. But yeah, ironically, we just had a truck delivered from Santa Barbara today. And the drivers like yeah, that’s not even. I was saying how cold it was. And he’s like, Yeah, I’m from Santa Barbara. And it’s not that warm today. It’s in the 50s
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it’s really they were both co drivers. And they’re both in shorts and T shirts. I listen, I there’s a thing to that too. There’s like a psychology that there’s a there’s a joke and you probably know this because you spend time in Minnesota. But in the Midwest, if it’s anything over like I don’t know, 25 you’ve got people on like flip flops and like, you know, yeah, like like shorts and snug no big deal. If it drops below like 60 here. I literally am like I had someone visit me actually from up there last week. And we were walking around town. And she’s an unbundled up, right? And it’s your puppy on
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Ski hat. And she’s literally she’s walking around with like a light sweater and she’s like, what’s wrong with you? I’m like, Listen, if it drops below a certain temperature, I don’t care where I live. Okay, I’m bundling up. I don’t want to be cold. There is a lot to be said about acclamation, right? You do get acclimated to the climate that you’re in. And you get kind of used to it. Yeah.
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Yeah. All this cold and we can argue a cold is But once I’m cold, I’m cranky. So you don’t want me cold? Yeah, I know a bedding. Bedding. I went for a bike ride yesterday and it was chilly. And
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we got back we were pretty bundled up and we got back and and that we’re okay. And even after showers like my feet were still kind of tingly. I couldn’t warm up. My hands were cold all evening. Yeah, I just could not get I couldn’t get my core temperature back up to a reasonable to temperature. And it was only Yeah, it was like, you know, 45 degrees. So it wasn’t 30. But yeah, but when it hits when it hits you, it’s hard to come back. And it gets in your bones that show? No thank you. No, no, I’m not I’m not here for that. Right get the harder it is that that cold affects me more and more. The older I get. I don’t like that. Yeah, you’re like, are you getting like real creaky? Like real creaky and like a hard to move around? And you’re sore? Yeah, yeah.
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Welcome to middle age, they call it thanks.
3:36
I can’t see very well. I can’t hear very well. And I’m cold all the time. So yeah. Great, man. Yeah. So I’m like I’m so once I wake up, and when do I wake up so cranky? My kids are like, Excuse me? Is this a trick question? Like, okay, I don’t I don’t ask your kids don’t ask your grandkids to like, tell you any truth. Because they will. And you’re like, That’s insulting. I gotta go.
3:59
And speaking of mornings yeah, I’ve got I’ve got to deal with Betty because we’ve had a few arguments early in the morning because she’s a morning person. And she’ll typically get up usually about an hour before I do. And she’s already gone through her to do list and figured out everything that she’s going to be doing that day and she just wants to share and get you know, bounce things off. And I’m literally I’m like sweetie
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least let me get one cup. Preferably to Kimmy a half an hour.
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I don’t I don’t wake up ready to go anymore. That takes me a while and it’s worse than worse. The older I get. I was never a morning person. But it’s gotten worse. Yeah, that’s funny. You say that because I tend to wake up way earlier than I want to, but, and my brain you’re getting up at like 5am these days. I it’s so it’s so like ridiculous. But I will say this just because I’m up, like honestly, I need that bubble of time three to four hours. I had that
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data. So the provider that you knew I was meeting with today this morning, right? Yeah, I wake up and God bless. He sends me this email. So I’m up super early. And he sends me an email. He says, hey, my appointment got cancelled due if you if you want to move up by an hour, I’m available to do that. And I looked at that message on my phone. I was like, Are you insane? Like, I literally on the East Coast. Right, right. Right. I was like the difference? Yeah, there’s a difference between eight o’clock and nine o’clock and I can’t explain it. If you don’t know the difference. I can’t talk to you about it. You just the I was like, I can’t just because I’m awake. Doesn’t mean that I have any functioning cognitive ability. Like, yeah, so just because my body wakes up. Don’t assume that I know what I’m doing until like, 910 o’clock in the morning, you know, better than to schedule early meetings with me. I mean, we get it. I mean, not not doing this early. I mean, our show is on at 9am. But yeah, we’re not doing this at night, because it would not be pretty.
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And so we should probably talk about what’s coming up. The seasons coming. Right. We got Chris Christmas coming up. Got a bunch of other holidays that are happening, New Year’s. Hanukkah has already begun all this stuff going on.
6:14
We had a Christmas party when we when this airs. We’re having a Christmas party that evening. Are you coming up? You’re not, you’re not gonna be there for the Christmas party. I’m having an 1849. So hopefully it sounds like they have, they can serve booze. Now they can sort of fear. So that’s good.
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They had a little problem, apparently.
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But so we’ll be there with 54 people, we got a list of 54 people coming.
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All the employees and all their significant others and children. I will be I will be in my toasty home toasting all of you. I think it’s always cool. When you guys get together. I did plan on coming. But you know, here we are. Maybe next year, there’s always next year. How Spring Fling have a spring fling. I’ll come and we are talking about that. And we actually we have a spring fling this year. So we will we’ll we’re going to do that again. The bigger we get the more and more we’re going to be doing these things. Yeah, I’ll probably be helping to plan it. So I should probably show up. That would be good.
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Yeah, no. So we are doing this. We’re recording this on the 14th. By the time the show airs. We’re getting creeping closer to Christmas. We do technically one more show before Christmas.
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If our show I don’t even remember what day these airs are. They’re going to end our show on Christmas Eve.
7:29
Maybe not. We’ll have to find out. We may we may have next week off. We don’t
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have the week after off. I don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know. Well, let’s just say right now, before we go any further. If you’re still listening, and you haven’t like turn your dial for stuff, we can’t say enough how much we appreciate you. Because we really came in we came into this four and a half years ago, thinking that. I don’t know what we thought. But I know that things would be fun. Why not? Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. We didn’t think we were changing lives. But I didn’t realize people actually listen, I’m always surprised that like, when you say things and like I remember I called one of our vendors to pay the bill. And he’s like, Hey, is this Andrew? I’m like, Yeah, I hear you every week on the show. I recognize your voice on the phone. What you actually listen to my show. It’s so weird. It’s so weird. Well, I kind of have a joke, right? Because like I’m in LA, right? So I have this one friend here that is like superstar focus. Like it’s all about like, Oh, I saw John Hammett. You know, last ones. I saw this guy here. I saw this person there. And I’m always like, Yeah, whatever. I don’t know what like I don’t I don’t see anybody ever. And so the other day, I was really in my full self and I said, wow, you know, you are in the presence of a pretty radio producer. Right? He’d realized like, I’m on air talent. And I’m ready sir. And it was kind of like the joke landed flat but it works between you and me. So
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but it’s true. It’s true. It’s true. You are a producer of a radio show in a local am radio station in Grass Valley. That’s legit. I don’t know anyone who is I don’t know anyone else who is so their
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husband Yeah, that is maybe we should maybe we should talk about why people actually listened maybe they just listened to hear us banter back and forth. But now we’re gonna switch gears switch we’re gonna switch gears we’re gonna said we are in the holiday season and we are in the cold season. So we got a couple of topics on you know, we’re gonna kind of wait the winter best winter home improvement projects that you can kind of tackle Okay, did you know that they actually estimate that and I think the numbers higher for me, but they say that in the winter you spent 40% more time indoors in your own home.
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For me it probably I wish I would more it would be like it would be at for me.
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I try to sit outside as much as I can. I mean, that’s incredible. Right like that’s a huge like, that’s a huge like
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You’re inside a lot. So that’s kind of why these. And I will say this other thing, too. That’s related. So there are there is a study that says building materials and labor for home renovations are supposed to be the cheapest, between October and March.
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And I don’t know if that number if that factoids still, now that we are post COVID, pandemic eight, wherever we are in the world. Yeah. I don’t know if that numbers probably mean, I still hold true. But it is true. Because the fact that Yeah, I mean, we hit a wall. Most most service providers hit a law I’m specifically construction really slows down during the wintertime, because it’s hard to do stuff. So
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yeah, people aren’t buying as much. And it’s, you know, capitalist society supply demand, right? When supply goes down, or when when demand goes down, prices go down. So right, so let’s go ahead and go grab some materials and get a few things done. Because things are working in our favor right now. So I just wanted to throw that in there. And so here’s the here’s the list that you sent me, which I really appreciate. So we’ve got number four, we’re going to pass up on number 123. Because we’ve already gone over those. Number four, changing the batteries in your smoke detector. So as you know, you should be changing your smoke detector batteries every year. And typically what they say the best time to do it is at the New Year, so that you can remember to do it every new year, guess what? We’re at the New Year, so time to change those batteries in your smoke detectors. But did you know some people don’t know this, there are smoke detectors that have a 10 year life battery. So I was kind of just playing around. Before we started the show and just trying to see how much these 10 year battery smoke detectors are. I just I just looked it up on Amazon, of course, because that was readily available. And I didn’t look I wasn’t able to look at B and C or A to Z or any of the political guys around here or Hills flat 15 bucks 16 $17. Probably by the time you’re said and done. So under $20 For this bat 10 year battery, that you don’t have to smoke detector, they don’t have to change the batteries except for every 10 years. And when you do have to replace it. You just replaced the whole thing anyway. So and then you start thinking about how much does it cost to get nine volt batteries, nine volt batteries, if I remember correctly, or close like $5 for a pack of two. So for 10 years times 2.5, that’s 25 bucks. So you could literally buy the smoke detector the last year 10 years for less money than the batteries to replace the ones that are already existing in your old smoke detector. And it’s brand new. So it’s working, you know, it’s going to be the most up to date technology and probably more sensitive. So I would say if you have the ability, this is a really a good home improvement job. Just replace your smoke detector. Chuck the old one, get a 1010 year warranty for tenure like battery one. I want to interject I just want to say let us not forget because to me, the most important thing, that 3am beeping that literally freaks you out since you are running through the house. Like how do I turn this off? Where am I? What’s my name? What’s happening? So if I could go through life with never having that chirp, wake me up and blow and like freak me out at two three in the morning. Honestly, it’s worth the investment. I mean, yeah, we get an amen. I mean like to never have to hear that again. Come on. Perfect. Yeah, perfect Christmas. Granted, this is for for smoke detectors that aren’t hardwired into your electrical system. These are just battery operated ones. When you get into the hardware ones.
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That’s a little bit more of an a slightly more advanced kind of project only because of the fact that you get to wire it in, unless the molex connector that’s that is already wired in matches the molex connector on the new one, which they do sometimes sometimes they don’t.
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So in any event, this is particularly just for just a smoke detector. But while you’re at it, too, if you don’t have carbon monoxide detectors in your home, you can get a combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector. And those I didn’t I meant to pull that up as well.
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Smoke and then any way that you can do that
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really good idea to do that because you should have technically whenever we go in and work on a house, we get a get a permit. When we do a larger job and we need to get a permit.
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We need to put a carbon monoxide detector outside of every bedroom. So you know if you’ve got a bunch of bedrooms at the end of the hall, you put one of those at the end of the hall. So just change out that smoke detector and put a combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector. Here’s one you have 10 years $29.30 bucks, carbon dioxide and
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smoke smoke and carbon dioxide 40 bucks, some of them are $40. So you know, again, the combination one’s pretty
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inexpensive relative to having to get both of them and relative to having to buy batteries. So these are both things that are great DIY easy thing started the new year. Don’t change the batteries in your in your smoke detector put a 10 year battery life battery in your smoke detector, just replace it. Replace the whole thing. I say that right? Get a smoke detector that has a 10 year battery
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built in.
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Peasy that’s off the list. Check that one off, right? And thinking about a psycho Man, I should do that my own house. Should I do what I say more often. That’s that’s another whole series of shows, sir. So let’s just stick to the topic.
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I have a dude that says a lot of stuff and don’t necessarily do at all.
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Don’t take my own advice. Okay, now there’s So these, these are projects that are cheap, cheaper in the winter, giving a room paneling or cabinetry a fresh coat of paint. Paint is an inexpensive update for any homeowner. And that is so true, it is such a change, you can change your house so quickly by simply painting it. And now this time of year is the time to do it. Because you’re in in the house anyway. And especially on these cold and or rainy or snowy days, when you’d really don’t want to go outside at all. It’s a project that you can get done. I know, we just got to a place we had to paint in a painted nine rooms. And it took us about two days. But then I was a painter at one time. So but painting is really changes it changes the mood of the space. And you know, if you’ve got some if you haven’t, if the place hasn’t been painted in 10 years, it’s time to paint again, it’s you know, we’re out of that style of color right by the border likely.
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So painting is really good. One thing to remember though, when you’re painting is prep is key. So you know, you want to make sure you mask everything off. Unless you’ve got a lot of experience with cutting with a
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blade blade cutting with a paintbrush mask is a lot easier. One thing I learned from a friend of mine who is a decorator, one of the issues, one of the hotspots always is that corner where the ceiling and the walls meet, where you kind of you know, you paint too high and it hits the ceiling. And also you don’t have the ceiling paint anymore, and you got to wash it off really quick enough. Hope you can get it off before it sets. One thing that she said to do was take one inch or three quarter to one inch
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masking tape and mask the wall so you get a nice straight line all the way around. And let’s face it, most ceilings are not square, they’ll have like, peaks and valleys in them. So by doing that, it’s it fix the the eye it tricks the eye and it makes you think that you actually have a flat ceiling. So it looks cool. And you just drop the color down by about three quarters of an inch to an inch. And it really it just changes it all makes it look a lot tighter. And I was kind of surprised. I haven’t done that in a while. But man, when I we’ve done we did a couple houses like that. A couple of our homes like that, I learned it like 25 years ago or something that’s a really good tip. But yeah, that is a really good tip. Okay, it’s a good interest. The other one that’s a really good tip for painting is you know, rollers are your friends.
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If you get if you just take a broom handle or a long handle and screw it in the end of your broom or the end of your roller and makes it so much easier to roll I can, I can do a full one cycle of me rolling and go from ceiling to floor. That makes sense cycle, one stroke. So as opposed to just trying to hold on to the roller and do like six inches, I can You can do the whole ceiling you know full eight feet with a four foot pole. And it makes you can paint the wall so much faster. So use those poles and even on when you want to use this. When you’re doing something tight, get a little short, one, two just to have around, they’re really handy, but those polls make a big difference. The other thing that makes a big difference is and I can’t remember the name of them but they have these little micro rollers that have
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that don’t have they have an end that has on the end of the roller, there’s still rolling material, so you can roll right up into the corners. So you can do those corners in the wall without having to use a paintbrush or you can get to this little tight spots. Those things are amazing. Love those little rollers and they’re only about six inches long. And they’re about an inch in diameter game changer when you’re painting it’s worth the 1520 bucks for that for that alone because it’ll save you a good two or three hours on your paint job. So there’s a couple of things. The other thing too is when you’re buying tape and stuff, get some decent tape, you don’t have to buy a Frog Tape or anything but get some decent tape because you’d want to be pulling off paint that’s, you know, if it’s an old house you might pull off some of the old paint and have to go back and patch
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so get some decent don’t get the cheapest paint or tip
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cheapest tape, go up a level or two up and you’ll be much happier. And speaking of paint, and cheap, don’t buy cheap paint.
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Spend the 50 to 60 bucks a gallon. I know it’s ridiculously expensive these days, paint Stein really expensive, like everything else. But it makes a huge difference in terms of its coding capacity. So, again, you know, I don’t know about you, but paintings not really fun. It’s kind of fun that I like the end result, I don’t really like doing it so much. So if I’ve got paint that is of higher quality has more pigment in it, it requires fewer coats, you can usually get your painting job done in one to two coats, depending on what color is behind it.
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Some of the cheaper brands that are less than the 50 $60 ones that you buy at nights or some of the other Shawn Williams, you’re probably gonna have to do three coats, if not four, so that one extra coat can take you an extra, you know, four hours. So how much is your time worth? Is it worth spending an extra 20 or 10 to $20 per gallon of paint when you’re only using maybe five gallons, is that worth an extra 100 bucks for you to save a day’s labor, probably how much you make it work, spend a little more more money, we got time for one more, I’m gonna use that. I’m gonna use that argument with you. I’m gonna
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those words are gonna come back to bite you spend a little more, a little bit more because I am really cheap. But I do find things I will spend money on equality. I know I do the same, I do the same coffee and
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we still use the Costco
21:41
removing die or dead or dying trees. Now’s the time to do that because most of the trees are deciduous trees have dropped their leaves. So now’s the time to prune and get rid of dead and dying trees.
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And limbs go out and start hacking away. Right? Do it strategically. You don’t want to be hacking the whole tree ah. But one thing we were kind of talking about in off air is stump removal. I was always kind of I didn’t really see the value in the stump removal. And I thought it was way more expensive than it was. We had like three or four stumps removed here. And I think since we had multiples, it wasn’t just one, I think it ended up being like 100 bucks per stump. So I realized it’s worth the money, because it may change the way our yard looks. So it’s if you’ve had some trees taken out and you’ve got some stumps look into getting a guy out there to person out there not necessarily guy but a person out there with a stump grinder. And it’s a lot more reasonable than you would think. Travel removal on the other hand is pretty expensive. Yeah. But it’s a dangerous job. You don’t necessarily want to be doing that job. If you don’t know really what you’re doing. Because I’ve known plenty of people that are in that industry. And oh my gosh, the stories they’ve got about guys getting hurt and fallen trees, trees exploding, all sorts of things unless you really know what you’re doing. Don’t mess with dropping trees. It’s scary.
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I think yeah. Well.
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That’s right. So let me we can
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Yeah, let’s. So we don’t know if we’re going to talk to you next week or not. But just know that we’re wishing you a happy holiday. Happy Christmas. And we hope you have safe, safe holiday. Listen, if you need any plumbing, electric heat or air help give abt a call at 5302309092530230092. Is that right? Did I say it right? Yeah.
23:40
Take it home. Andrew, what else did I leave out? What else we got? Our find us on the web at easiest abt.com or EBT plumbing.com. Find us on facebook, please like our Facebook page because we share a lot of the stuff. We still share the shows again. So if you want to listen to the shows again or if you want to share them. They’re there. And with that, yeah, we’re out I guess so. We’ll catch you guys if we don’t catch you guys next week. We’ll catch you next year. Thanks for listening. Have a happy holiday. Bye. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Rose Lee. Now let’s get that project started. You got this. We’ll be back next Friday morning at nine o’clock on KNC on Newstalk 830
Transcribed by https://otter.ai