0:03
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 Rosalie
0:18
Hi this is Andrew Twidwell, owner of ABT plumbing, electric heat and air, once again with the show you got this, a show of DIY do’s and don’ts. Zooming in here with Rosalie Brown, who is down in LA and I’m up here in Grass Valley, in lovely Grass Valley. Mildly warm again, it’s unseasonably warm right now, but it’s nice. I like it. What temps you got?
0:42
It’s almost 60 degrees. And sunny.
0:44
It’s wobbly. Yeah. I mean, this time of year, though, I love a 60 degree, Sunny 60 degree day, considering when we come out of the month of funk. I love the fact that we got so much rain. It was fantastic for the reservoirs. Fantastic for olive trees, fantastic for everything but man. I, I moved out of the bay area because of my seasonal disorder issue. You know, like not being able to deal with the fog for months on end. But dealing with cloud cover and rain for a month. I got into a little bit of a funk there for a while. And being sick. That didn’t help either. You been a mess. I’ve been a mess. The new year and holidays it was it was it was lovely. But also learning is problematic. Yeah. Like everybody else. And yeah, oh, no. Yeah, the shirt here like, now we’ve got COVID going through our office. I’ve got three people out with COVID right now. So like, we were just talking about off off air, and I was talking to my wife about it just a half an hour ago. Or to say I thought we just got better. I can’t I don’t want to get sick again.
1:53
I don’t even want to say it but I am to this day. I knock on wood. Not once not not been avoiding it. Not one. So I’m just like, people are like, what’s your secret? I’m like, I don’t care for people. I try to I try to stay away from people. I’m a hermit. I just I mean, when I go out and do stuff, and I do I am like a big enforcer of the six foot rule. I’ve always been that way. You know, if I don’t invite you into my circle, get out. So yeah, I just go places where there people are not or I go at different times, but I’m speaking of no personal space, I have to tell you this because you can see me so you’re probably wondering, like, why was she like, kneeling? Or what’s she doing? So, you know, because now I’m okay, so besides having new equipment, trying to test out so we can you know, up the level of our amazing product here. Um, every morning I wake up, and Theo, the big headed dog sniffs out that I’m breathing differently. So he appears at the side of my bed. And last night I had a little little celebration, a little bit of drinking. Too close.
3:11
Yeah. Now you need to get closer to the mic. It’s kind of going in and out. So yeah, we were trying out new equipment here. She got a new microphone and trying to figure it out. I’m still on my headphones, but
3:21
already I just suck this thing like my face is on top of this thing. This is not freedom. We’re gonna be there. Yeah, we’re gonna we’re gonna order a new mic. Anywho. So I have this little celebration last night. So I went to bed with some water next to my on my bedside table. And Theo big had dog this morning. I say Okay, time to get up. And he takes his big fat beak, and just propels that waterglass across the bedroom. So shoes, electronics. Everything super wet. So
4:00
good way to wake up.
4:02
I was I was awake.
4:04
We both have had worse, right? Because it’s that we’ve talked about this before where you have that. Any like, you could be dead asleep. And if you start to hear that noise, like you’re picking the dog. I mean, fortunately, when that happens, it’s usually our little dog who’s only about 14 pounds. Pick him up and put them on the ground right away. Yep, that’s worse than getting a little wet. So at least it’s at least that’ll dry. You don’t have to throw in the laundry. Right?
4:32
Yeah, it was just that you know, just how you it was a little bit of rough a rough start this morning because I wasn’t sure if I was gonna have a headache or not when I woke up so I was distracted for that was that was a good no headache. That’s all good. It was a little bit creaky but it was it was alright. Yeah, it wasn’t too bad. It was just it was champagne. And you know, the problem with champagne is just that. I really liked dry stuff. And so it’s like, goes down kind of it’s easy. So anyway, but Now we’re good. But um,
5:01
yeah, I have Yeah. Recently had actually one of my recently Yeah, this weekend. Yeah. had some friends over and had a little. Got a little overserved with the with the vino. Yeah. Felt a little bit the next day. Yeah. Yeah, her does go down. The grape stuff goes down a little too easy the beer, you can kind of modulate a little bit. Yeah, like two or three. And you’re like, Alright, I’m good. Yeah, but the wine just like goes down. So easy. Next thing you know, it’s like, we’re Champagne. Champagne has been, you have been known to have more than one problem with champagne.
5:37
Yeah, so there’s
5:37
Thanksgiving 15 years ago with my sisters. Yeah, that was bad. They never left my glass. They never let my Glasgow dry. And it was very sweet of them. But yeah. And I just finished the remodeling. We had everybody in our house. And I hadn’t quite finished the remodel. It was still mostly everything was done. But I was up till like one o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the morning finishing things so we could have 20 family members come into our house for Thanksgiving. Yeah, a little stressful. Yeah, a little too much. A little too much champagne.
6:06
So, yeah, so anyway, so here we are. We’re through. Got about a centimeter from my mouth. So I feel like this one might not be the winner. Um,
6:17
yeah, kind of like, you can see what you know, singers, like, yell into the microphone. Right? This is
6:23
a little bit goofy. This is good. Yeah, this will not be my solution. But anyway, um, I feel like I
6:29
do not have mine set up. Yeah, I left mine some more at the other at the other office. So one of these days, one of the days we’re going to bring, we’re going to take this up a notch. So our sounds good. And we’re going to be videoing with really good video quality and editing. We’ll get there. It’s only been four years.
6:44
But yeah, four and a half. Actually. on five.
6:47
Oh my gosh. Work in Progress. Yeah. Wow.
6:51
Right. Okay, so let’s talk about this show is called you got this. And it’s so DIY do’s and don’ts. And it’s brought to you by ABC, plumbing, electrical and air. So we try to focus on topics that are in that realm, we don’t always, but today, we’re gonna get a little creative. So tell us what we got.
7:09
So you found me this great article and US news about the best time of year for every home improvement project. They don’t exactly do every. But that’s a good list. So there’s certain times a year, it’s going to be better than other times of year to do certain things. So we’ll kind of go through through the list of what you know, what they’ve pointed out. And I’ll kind of give my take two cents on it as well. And number one is interior paint. And yeah, by far, this is the best time of year if you’re going to be doing interior paint, because especially coming out of the wet that we’ve just had, most painters are not painting outside right now. So they’ve got time, you have a much better chance of finding a painter that can paint inside your house. It’s gonna do the interior, I know just had, I had to do some interior painting. And I called the painter that I use, and she was able to show up within days, and she’s normally a month or two booked. So if you are thinking about doing an interior paint job, and hiring somebody, now is definitely the time to do it. If you’re gonna do it yourself, you know, it’s up to you doesn’t really matter so much other than the fact that it’s also a nice time of year to, if you’re gonna be working in your house, if you want to work on your house, doing something inside, although today’s really nice, but you know, this is only gonna last for a little while. You’re gonna want to work inside where it’s nice and warm. The heat’s on and comfortable and you can set the temperature, whatever you want, you have to have the air conditioning running while you’re painting that stuff. So yeah, good time of year to do interior painting. And it is one of those things that I think it’s, I think it’s a really great DIY type of project because most people can paint. Especially if you watch some videos and learn about some of the prepping that you should be doing. It can be relatively easy to do it. So that’s a great, great thing to take on. You’re not hearing that furnace. That’s just one idea, or Yeah, I am not sure. Okay, great. That’s one nice thing about these headphones. They don’t pick up a lot of exterior noises but doesn’t sound like yours does either. So that’s a that’s a good that’s a plus on that microphone. Yeah, the next one they suggest for the winter projects are electrical updates. And I would say yeah, it’s a great time to do electrical work. If you’ve got some interior work that needs to be done if you need a panel upgrade or a generator that could be curtailed by weather. Especially like if we’re upgrading a panel, we’ve got to get pg&e out. And if there’s a storm and if they’re busy working on power poles, you know sometimes we’ve had situations where we had trees take out power poles, weather heads in people’s homes and had to replace their, their, their main circuit panel. And it was weeks before we can get a PGE technician out there to to drop the power and come back for inspections and things. So it can take a little while during the wintertime to do the exterior, electrical but interior electrical, adding circuits inside. Adding lighting, adding fans, upgrading to USB outlets, or upgraded led can lights, that’s a great one man, you want to save some energy not only in your electrical, but on your heating bill, change those can lights that you’ve got those recessed lights, those lights to have the light bulbs that are inside the ceiling there. Yeah, those things. Most of them aren’t insulated. And most of them are installed in an attic space or a crawlspace. And the air just flows right through them. So you lose a credible amount of heat. Not to mention the fact that most of them have incandescent light bulbs. So they use a lot of energy, changing them with these new remodel puck. They’re literally just like these little thin puck LED lights that you don’t have to ever replace the light bulb until the light breaks. And that’s usually like 20 to 40 years when they break, save energy on your heating and save energy on your on your electricity as well. So great people upgrade. So wintertime is definitely a good time to be doing winter electrical projects. This one kind of surprise me an outdoor project like a backyard. It seems like a natural, natural undertaking for the summer. But it’s actually just the opposite. deck building and contractors report that pressure treated wood which is the best for building decks stabilizes best when humidity is low. Additionally, the increased sun exposure in summer can cause the surface of the deck to crack and cloudy or winter days of help avoid early damage if you live in a particularly cloudy, cold climate. Aim for early winter to avoid the bulk of snowfall, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So surprisingly, decks are not a bad time. You know, wintertime is not a bad time to do decks that one kind of surprised me.
12:14
Weird, no one expected.
12:17
Yeah. And I guess it’s true. Because you know, a lot of a lot of the decks these days are being framed out with everything from metal to pressure treated wood, and then the deck top can or you know, we’re using a lot of composites now. So, yeah, a deck is not necessarily the winner is not necessarily a bad time to be working on decks. The next one they recommend is a full remodel. So interior remodels, again, not a bad time of year to be doing interior work. And especially this time of year, like after the new year. We’re also down I mean, I’m in contact with contractors. I was talking to a buddy of mine in Baltimore last night. And even in Baltimore, things are slow. And I know we’re slow right now. Generally speaking, January and into February things kind of slow down a little bit for most all contractors weather service or construction, and particularly contract construction contractors we really, really slow down during the wintertime. midwinter. So if you been on the fence about doing that kitchen remodel bathroom remodel, or anything like that, right, now’s not a bad time to do that. So if you got any kind of interior work, not a bad time to start calling around getting contractors out to do stuff, you can actually find people that can work right now.
13:40
I want to ask you a question. And I hope you know the answer to this. So have prices on materials stabilized at all.
13:49
They’ve come down quite a bit, we’re still seeing some some things or they haven’t come down, you know, some of the things like Heating and Air I don’t know, I don’t know if our equipments ever going to come back down. Because we’ve already got the price increases and it doesn’t really come down but like wiring and pipe. Those two things are based on the price of copper, which is a commodity. So it really depends on the commodity prices and wires come down 50% I mean substantially. So that’s been really good. We haven’t really seen a thing for the HVAC for our equipment or water heaters. But we should see a little bit of a downtick but one thing that we have noticed is we can actually get things. You know, there was a period of time I think probably six months ago that you know, if we had a call for a furnace that would that we didn’t have in stock, it could be out for a week or two and sometimes even a month and we had one project for a generator and we were looking at a year to get the park. There are a finite source it was for a special switch for the special generator was a commercial job. And they generally were pretty far out anyway, like, a couple months, but they’d had so many problems of getting material and getting stock, that it backed everything up, that they were literally a year out. So that project has been put on hold for a year until we can get the till we get the product. That’s, it’s getting better. It’s definitely getting better. But it’s by no means what pre pandemic levels, right. I know even like, you know, cars are coming down, but interest rates are still high. Yeah. Yeah. So if you’ve got, if you add into your project, it’s, you’re still going to spend more than you would have two years ago by by a pretty big margin. But it’s, you know, now’s the time to do it, if you’re going to do it. Not a bad time. They didn’t really didn’t know they kind of go into spring and fall, I will also say, you know, they say flooring spring and fall, the best time to install wood flooring is during parts of the year with the least extreme conditions. And spring and fall you’ll avoid heat, humidity and dry air, both of which can cause problems like bowing and warping wood are cracking in to dry conditions. I’ve done quite a bit of flooring in my life. And I know a couple of people that do fours. Again, this time of year, if you’re on the fence about doing a new floor, I would just call somebody up most of the floors that we’re dealing with now anywhere in engineering. You can do even the the hardwood is engineered these days. And if you put the product in, in the place where you’re going to install it like you should and let it acclimate to its environment for a week or two, I can’t remember exactly how long but the flooring person would know. It stabilizes enough that you can install it and you’re going to have these extremes in humidity next year. So I don’t know why it would really affect it if you’re gonna be doing it. You know, they saying during the spring or fall, but I just know for a fact right now. Every contractor that I’ve talked to is, is yeah, we’re seeing a little bit of a slow season. And to be honest, we haven’t seen that we haven’t seen things getting this slow since pre pre pandemic. I mean, it’s been kind of it’s not shocking. I mean, it’s everybody kind of saw it coming just because of the fact that you know, we’ve got interest rates are so far up and people are a little afraid right now in the economy so people aren’t doing as much as they normally would. And so yeah, if you can get if you if you’re on the fence about doing something, do it now
17:45
when you’re dealing with yourself, but when you’re doing it yourself so what you can do your own painting, you can do your own lock and load flooring, you know that snapping? Yeah, you can do a lot of
17:55
engineered flooring is it’s pretty not difficult to install. And one thing I would highly recommend is if you are doing your own Pergo for lack of a better dance like Band Aid rating, type of flooring the click in place watch a video on how that particular flooring is installed. Because I know I did. I know I’ve talked about this before where I did a floor in our cottage and then I rented it out to I can’t remember his name is escaping me. Anyway, a flooring contractor and I had to apologize because I had little bows and every quarter because I used a hammer and I wasn’t supposed to use a hammer and I’d already gotten three quarters away through it so yeah, had I read the instructions and ironing maybe watched a video or two? I would have installed it correctly. But yeah, I was in a hurry. Yeah,
18:49
I was the irony is that it was the flooring guy who rented the cottage that’s what’s so funny.
18:55
Yeah, Joe Mo Yeah, great guy. Yeah, he’s one other house and he was kind of in between homes at the time needed a place to stay and a buddy of mine and yeah and like dude really sorry.
19:09
He rented your cottage. How do you not look at the floor? How do you know
19:14
especially as a as a Florida guy or is right that this is literally his business for 30 years and he’s a really good floor guy. Yeah I’m sure he looked at it and had to had to apologize to a few football people saying yeah, I didn’t install this so let’s get into a little bit more like early spring fall so we’re getting into we’re gonna be getting into fall here cash in another month than a half. Two months. The March is March starting a fall.
19:47
Fall What are you talking about? Gonna be spring
19:51
is March kind of the start of kind of remember stuff? Yeah,
19:55
the guy I’m gonna make a recommendation for more coffee before you come back. Right so sir her fall, fall is October so
20:05
we’re getting into, we’re gonna get stuck getting the spring. So cleaning the gutters. I had to, you might want to think about cleaning the gutters right now I know how to reclaim my gutters after the last was last storms, because a bunch of pine needles came down and a bunch of leaves came down. That hadn’t come down before with all that wind, and rain. So yeah, we’re not a bad time to get up there and clean the gutters spring and fall update decking and fencing. Another good thing, we get time for a couple more here, exterior painting, obviously, like I saying in the beginning, when the first thing you know, during the winter, painters work inside during the spring and summer and fall a little bit in fall, not a lot. Painters work on the exterior. So if you’re thinking about getting your house painted now, or painting your house, if you’re thinking about getting your house painted by a contractor, now it’d be a good time to start calling said contractor to come in and give you an estimate. Because they could start it in March or April. If you’re thinking about doing it yourself, Wait till March or April before you start. And think of an I had a painter buddy of mine. Tell me what, give me a good analogy of what exterior paint is. Exterior Paint is a screen for your wood. So oh yeah, no, I
21:27
like that. Yeah, so
21:28
really think of it like that. So like if you’ve got bubbling and things like that, or wood that’s exposed, you definitely want to get out there and touch it up, prime it and paint it because it will save that wood from drying out cracking and starting to fall apart. Because wood expose to sun. It takes a real beating especially up here at elevation it and we get you know, the wood gets destroyed a lot faster here than it does today in the bay area or something. So definitely, you know, get that taken care of. And then lastly, roof repairs. summer and early fall. Winter is a little or sometimes a little rough for doing roofs when it’s 100 degrees out or 90 degrees out. You know the guys got to start at five o’clock and fit try to finish up on lunch because your tools start to get to 140 degrees. So I had to repair my roof. I know we had two roofs leaks this winter one in our shop in Grass Valley and my own house when he says we had to get that roof replaced. But in any event, I know some people Yeah, I got a few people roof repairs and replacement early spring to fall and or summer early fall. HVAC care is another great one. Best time. Best time of year is in the shoulder seasons spring and fall. Have that thing checked out. Change the filter, change the filter, change the filter
22:59
change the filter is monthly.
23:02
As monthly at least look at it. If you if you have us come in and put in a high efficiency filter. You only have to do it once a year and we take care of it during the service when we come out and do the
23:12
great plan. So if I were interested in that, what phone number would I reach abt plumbing electric?
23:17
good segue, you can reach us at 530-230-9092 That’s 530-230-9092. Or you can find us on the web at easiest abc.com or EBT plumbing.com. Also, you can find us on Facebook. Please like our Facebook page. We’ve got all this information and more entertaining stuff and really educational stuff on there. And with that, we have a show. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you guys next week. Bye.
23:48
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Rosalie. Now let’s get that project started. You got this. We’ll be back next Friday morning at nine o’clock on Cancio Newstalk 830
Transcribed by https://otter.ai