SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, bamboo, privacy, growing, fence, weaving, nevada county, buy, yesterday, days, sky, labor, property, wood, andrew, midwest, riding, prices, rosalie, ideas
00:02
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.
00:18
This is Andrew Twidwell with ABT plumbing electric heat and air, here once again with the show you got this, the show about DIY dos and don’ts. Zooming in with Rosalie Brown. She’s in LA, I’m actually in St. Paul until next week, when I’ll be back in Grass Valley. Here in the midwest the weather is a little different than California.
00:43
Man it really is, and you and I are two people that can uniquely speak to the differences because if you’re from the Midwest, and you are just kind of used to that. It’s what you hear every day. It’s the weather changes at least 10 times a day. You know, you can wake up where it’s like hot and muggy. You can get like this crazy thunderstorm that lasts for anywhere from like five minutes to you know, an hour brings temperature down cools things down. And then oh, oh, humidity. Humidity chirps you out. So if you live in the you know, western states, you’re used to like summer being very hot. Rain for me always indicated like, oh, cooler temperature. So, you know, growing up on the West Coast, when it rains, it’s cold. And so to go out there and to be having like rain happen all the time, but have it be not cold. Not refreshing. Like that was really weird for me. We were
01:42
out. We were riding our bikes and we knew a storm was coming. And then we’re like everybody’s just out like paddleboarding and doing their thing. Right. And we’re out how rewarding as we’re paddleboarding. But then the rain came in and after we finished we want to finish before the rain really got there. But people are still up riding their bikes and doing stuff. And it’s like, just a normal day. And yeah, it’s been crazy. Yesterday, man, it was wild. Last night the sky was right. Bright orange. I posted a couple pics on social media last night. It was just, it was shocking. And then just a neighboring state in South Dakota and Sioux Falls and pick people sharing on Twitter. They had a green sky last night where it looked like an like an alien invasion. I mean, it was dark green, because the clouds for for some reason just reflected the light and reflected. You know, we’re filtering out every wavelength except for green, right or yellow and blue. And just turn the sky completely green as crazy last night was completely orange, everything was orange. And I ended up going into my my photos and editing it because my pictures didn’t do it justice. And I had to really push the color. And I’m like showing it tomorrow showing it to Betty and like, this is what it looks like. Right? Because I guess it was like way off the chart. I normally don’t push the pictures that far. But that was the only way I could get it to the point where it was as orange as as the light really was It was wild. So yeah, Midwest, it’s just a trip. And
03:13
it’s funny because when I saw those photos, it reminded me of back in I want to say 2008 2009 Maybe 2010 Anywhere somewhere in there. We had the fires were so bad that when you went outside besides the Akron choking and the taste and the sky was like super orange. And I remember taking my kids to I drove over to Seattle, because I knew that there was gonna be cold and it was gonna be clear. And we drove through Nevada County up through over by Chico and I think once we got past Chico is finally when blue skies again. And when I looked at your picture last night, I was thinking about that, that was like, Whoa, that reminds me of Armageddon. That reminds me of those summers of just being choked out. And just there’s something that happened
04:03
a year the year before in the Bay Area the same thing and we get it Yeah, Nevada County get every year right that those orange guys but yeah, it was. That was the worst I can read.
04:13
Yeah, that’s the worst I can remember because it was just days and days and days. And I remember just like starting to feel sick from it. And you know, now when you start to feel sick, you don’t know what it’s from. You don’t I mean, I literally have
04:25
a little sore like, I’ve been around anybody. I don’t think I’ve got COVID I don’t think I’ve called it must be allergies. But
04:30
I know. So woke up. So woke up yesterday. So yesterday, we’re filming on July 6 And so yesterday being July 5, it was the night before was July 4 And so as you know because you’re my friend on social media. I was laying on the bathroom floor with the dog and much of the night. And so I slept for about like two hours maybe. So when I woke up yesterday, the fifth I actually had a headache. I had a low grade fever. I was Spacey. I didn’t feel good. My body aches And I, as everyone does anymore, and I’m not making light of it, I was like, oh, yeah, like, and then I like was like telling my daughter, come here bring you some stuff to smell like I need to like, come here, right? Like, can I oh yeah, I can still smell the dog he stinks, I could still smell coffee, I still taste coffee. So then I was like, well maybe that’s not
05:20
even a good indicator anymore because like I had I mean this new one, I don’t think a lot of people are losing their smell anymore I think it was more like delta and some of the other variants that were
05:28
kind of so then. So then in the middle of summer when it’s hot as blazes out and like is that a fever? Or am I just like? Hi, like so it’s been a rough couple of days if we would have had to record yesterday I would have. I would have just sat there and pushed it pointed at you. I couldn’t I couldn’t farm I
05:46
checked in with you and you get back to me. I’m like, oh, yeah, I forgot. Yeah.
05:51
First thing I said yesterday was like I was on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good. So as you know, my pop and your pups are funny because they have their own little quirky personalities that come in and challenging. Right? Yeah. But thankfully, they are not freaked out by fireworks. Because you were saying so lucky that I’m here. Yeah, yeah.
06:14
I’m sure the same thing in LA. I mean, it’s just in cities. It’s just nuts. Man. It’s like, you can’t tell the difference of a gunfire compared to an ad, right? And you get those things going off in the play. And especially in this state, because, you know, you can you just go outside the area. And I think I mean, I think by an end state, but once that fly up, you know, or go to Wisconsin or South Dakota, you can buy all these things that you cannot get near California. Right. There’s ones that can shoot up and do all kinds of stuff. Yeah. I mean, they bring in from
06:46
out of state, we’d get no no, no, but it was. But it’s interesting too, because like we were talking just briefly about the being in a city right? You have like that’s that’s a whole nother thing. And then I shared a couple videos of like they did the sky pan of Los Angeles. And it was like, they showed the whole sky like just around the city and there was not one spot that you didn’t see lights going off like just non stop. So it’s a little bit overwhelming for anyone who has sensory issues. I’m it’s not just dogs it’s there’s there’s actually I
07:19
didn’t say we just stayed in. I mean, I close the close the windows turn the AC on and like, we’re just not going anywhere. Yeah, I just it was just too much. Yeah,
07:27
no, it is. And so I did, I did find a little thing for the dog. I turned it on. And at first that was working. And I gave him some Rescue Remedy and some like, I don’t know, calm yourself down shoes. And at some point, it just reaches like you’ve you’ve reached that you you’ve maxed the effectiveness, the efficacy just goes down the toilet because he was just like, Okay, the first hour or two he was like, Okay, I’m not coming out of my skin, and then it all this more, all bets were off. And I was like, Ah, so I’m looking forward to heading into non fire season and a little bit quieter. Hopefully over the next couple of days because I got no sleep. And I I don’t remember the last time I was so cranky, quite frankly, I was really quick yesterday.
08:10
That’s it a lot for you.
08:12
Because I can take it I can take it to places right. So it was it was legendary. So it’s a good thing. We weren’t interacting.
08:19
We’re literally just talking to you guys off off camera about the people the list of people that we’re not fond of.
08:27
The list was growing. It’s funny when you start that list. Yeah, I mean, if you’re on my list, you know, it’s not a secret. You’re probably not listening. I could probably name them, but the list is getting long enough that it’s getting too long to name. But besides that, and what all else is happening with you before we dive into our topic today, what else is going on? You’re in St. Paul. You’re having a great time little adventure.
08:54
Adventure working. Yes, that’s checking in still, you know, it’s been an interesting little ride because this isn’t really a vacation. This is kind of a work vacation. So yeah, I’ve been riding riding bikes a lot and trying to stay in shape. Yeah. Well, I’m some quality time with with with Betty Well, that’s
09:13
what matters, right? So like your this, this whole thing is really kind of about you being able to work remotely be able to get things done. And yeah, and that’s really I think, you know, we were headed that direction before.
09:26
We’re heading in that direction before the COVID really pushed it forward tenure track for everybody. And it’s been kind of an interesting ride to see how I’m kind of testing how long I can go with this remote work thing and going back and forth. And it’s working out I mean, the the staffs doing good. There’s obviously some mishaps that just happens because we’ve got a lot of people but everybody seems to be happy and customers are happy and we keep getting rave reviews. So yeah, I don’t think it’s it’s the wave of the future and I see more and more People do it, I know more and more people that are doing it. So it’s kind of fun.
10:05
Well, and I think to like, you and I have been friends for a very long time. And the the goal with us always been to, you know, initially, you build up the brand, and you’re part of that, right. But you have expanded and built, the point of growing your business was to build people around you that would be able to really look after the business do you know, do good work
10:26
and allow them to grow and let them let them grow financially in right career path wise, and, and emotionally and I think that’s happening. So yeah, and, and COVID. And I, well, I, you know, I’ve suffered from ADHD, and I’m kind of a I get bored really easily and didn’t do well in school. So
10:45
I’m not trying to, but I try people. It’s out of control.
10:53
And I’ve never been, I’ve never been diagnosed, I just say that, because I don’t know how else to describe it, whether or not I really have ADHD, I don’t know. But I do know, something, I do know that I get very bored. And I like, I like having new experiences. And I like changing of I like my my panorama to change often. So I like going back and forth and moving around a lot. Because in changing it up. So it’s been kind of fun. And it fills me with life. And it’s good, it’s a good thing that keeps your creative. Creative, it makes getting away from the businesses, it’s kind of one of those weird things being a business owner as opposed to working in the business, is when I get away from it, I tend to come up with a lot of really good ideas to do the business because you know, the day to day, you’re putting out fires every day. And and you don’t really have the time to really think about the future and what where you want to take this and how you want to grow your pupil and stuff. So that’s been very beneficial.
11:50
Many of your many of your ideas are are good. I wouldn’t say all of them, but I’m assuming that you have, but it’s always fun to see when your process so
12:03
that you can’t be afraid of trying it. Right. I mean, that’s that’s unfortunately, you know, I’ve known to many people, and it seems to me successful people to realize that the people that don’t take the risk don’t really never fulfill themselves. They know they don’t have they don’t reap those rewards, right. And you take those risks, and some of them are gonna fail. Yeah, some of them just don’t work. I’ve lost lots of money on some really bad ideas. But I’m glad I took them because I learned a lot. So
12:29
they’re a risk taker, I bought a house over the internet. Okay, so I, I mean, we’re in the same boat, one of us has to keep our feet on the ground to keep this balance. So speaking of that’s what my life is for. Right? Right. Like, you’re surviving people that grind you by the way, like there’s like, we might not be a glam squad, but we’re an Andrew squad for sure we keep you grounded. Okay, so let’s pivot into what
12:54
our show doesn’t really want to listen to us banter on all day. Because you really come here for DIY projects. So you came up with some fun stuff. And ironically, I’ve been kind of working on some of the stuff up found some ideas for for privacy screening. And I don’t know about you, but I like this is gonna be kind of funny. I’m just gonna share this. So when we when we bought our house, and we’re our house that we’re living in right now, in Grass Valley, I remember telling one of my friends and he still brings us up like eight years later, I told him, I want to have a property where I could pee in the corner, and no one could see me. Now it’s because you want that privacy, right? And that’s kind of like my line right there. Right? Those of us live in the country want to deal with it. And that’s dudes want to be able to do that. So let’s sometimes you have to put some strategic screening up to make that so that that’s, you know, not illegal, not illegal, right. So we’ve done a lot of screening in our property in Grass Valley. And you kind of have some cool ones. We’ve done a lot of plantings, and also some some wood and this one’s really cool spam.
13:59
So dive in and talk about a little bit just because remember, we you and I are visual to each other, but no one can see what we’re talking right.
14:09
This guy well, I mean, like you as you brought up there are those those mats that you can buy that are pre woven with bamboo, right that you can buy at ANZ or BNC any of the hardware stores, and they’re pretty inexpensive and those go up really quick and really easily.
14:25
Those 10s are kind of short though they’re not typically like Yeah, so like six feet
14:31
so you can get some some
14:34
what you’re doing. I just so so when you live in the land of apartments, which when you’re in a Metro City, there’s apartments everywhere, and and I live in an apartment so there are privacy things where you want the lights come in, but you don’t want to be exposed to everything. So, you know, I’ve got kind of some interesting stuff going on with mine. I’ve got like, I’ve got some, here’s where I’m gonna screw myself though. Honestly. I love Jasmine and I took Reaper, right? So and it’s growing fantastic. And so I’m weaving it into my privacy screen. And it looks amazing, right? But I think smells great, it smells great, because LA stinks. So I mean, it’s awesome. But it’s not practical, because I’m not going to be here forever. And yet this whole thing I’m creating on my balcony is is amazing. But But again, you know, I did start by looking at privacy screens like that, I don’t know, if it’s faux bamboo or actual bamboo, it must be actual bamboo. Okay, so they haven’t already rolled. But what we looked at, for backyards was something a little more substantial. And so that’s where I’m
15:39
not only is it substantial, but it’s like for this, you know, maybe you don’t want to spend 100 bucks or whatever it is, for all that stuff for I can’t remember how much I didn’t even look at the prices before. But I know it’s, you know, it’s, it’s cheap, but it’s not insignificant. So one of the more cheaper ways to form it, like this one, this is free. This one is free. So they’re still using bamboo. But the dude put up an ad on Craigslist, or whatever. I mean, these days, I just put it up on Facebook, or next door or someplace like that. There’s a lot of free a lot of sites where people are asking for free stuff or offering free stuff. And this guy said, hey, I’ll clean up some some bamboo and some bamboo for some fencing. I’ll come and clean out your property. What do you say? And then two days later, he gets a call back saying, yeah, come on over. And I can’t tell you how many patches I’ve seen in about a county of bamboo that have just gone wild because bamboo grows really fast. That’s a grass right?
16:35
To people that can’t see what you’re looking at what you’re talking about. So somebody took the bamboo, and they certainly need
16:41
bamboo. So getting the source of the bamboo is one thing, right? And then next is actually building it, this guy actually just put her on his three foot four foot chain link fence, weaved it into the cyclone fencing, and then took the bamboo we split it, which is a good idea. But you don’t necessarily have to split it depending on how thick the bamboo is. Splitting, it can be a little bit of a chore if you’re not used to that sort of thing and bamboo. You know, there’s, you know, we’ve all heard about the torture of bamboo underneath your fingernails. Bamboo hurts, right? I mean, that’s the splinters hurt. I’ve gotten bamboo splinters underneath my fingernails and they hurt. So you know, yeah, you can split it, but you might not want to just because of that, and it might be a little bit more. And if you can get a pile off of it. And you just kind of weave it in like a like you would, you know, weaving a blanket or weaving yarn into making a fabric in and out in and out. And he built this six foot privacy fence around his house, wherever he is, I don’t even know where this guy is, but basically for free. So it’s one of those things like, you know, for those people that really want to do things on the cheap, this is not about bad idea. And like you’re saying like if you’re in a rental, you know, you may not want to drop three to $5,000 for a privacy fence or whatever it’s costing the price of lumber is ridiculous still. But this stuff, you can just put on Craigslist and find or whatever and find people end up I’ve seen it. Like I said, I’ve seen it all over Nevada County, especially at North San Juan. People have planted it for privacy, but it just grows wild. So it’s it comes up they had issues runners out and just keeps getting wider and wider and wider. So great way to get a privacy screen, very inexpensive, to the point of just your labor. And then you shared this other one, which I really dived to of using pallets for a fence. Again, it’s one of those things where lumber is still really expensive. We’ve been seeing numbers expensive for over a year now. And it’s still really expensive. It’s not quite as expensive as it was last year, but it’s still pricey. And pallets are essentially free. It takes some labor to prep the wood for it. But you can make a really nice little fence and this is a little four foot fence that goes around a play area. And there’s actually somebody that did this on Butler wish I could remember the crush street but it’s like in between Condon and Packard. And he built this great little fence utilizing just on the corner lot of his lot goes wraps right around the corner of just using pallets, free wood and it looks amazing. And he did it for just the labor of of getting the pallets Right. So there’s there’s ways of getting some privacy and some ways of getting fencing that are really inexpensive. I’ve been kind of going down this path too because a property here we’ve had some kind of we’ve had some complaints from some of our tenants because we got some papers like to walk through the property because there’s no fencing and I’ve been looking into just just fencing to short fencing just to kind of slow people down to kind of give the illusion of a border right not necessarily locking people out but getting a border. And I found these things at at one of the local box stores that you know one of the one of the big problems about One of the big labor issues about putting a fence and just putting the fence posts, digging the hole, laying the gravel, putting the concrete and putting the wood in or, or the sound of tube or whatever you’re doing to put to set your fence posts. They make these little arrow shaped. Basically, they look like lawn darts, if you will, the things we played with his kids that are illegal these days. And you pounded into the ground, and then put the fence posts right on top of it. So really simple, good DIY thinks we’re looking we we own a partment building out here. That’s that’s kind of historic. And I want an iron gate. And you get these iron gates are relatively expensive inexpensively. And one of the big problems I saw is you know, we’d have to hire somebody to put a fence post and that’d be about three to $4,000 for labor, probably in a city. But it’s something I can do. It’s literally just pounding these things down. So you know, we’ll save three to four grand on labor. So there’s a lot of different ways of putting in a fencer isn’t just the standard, you know, wood, you can use bamboo, you can use wood. I’ve also seen a lot of people use the woven fiber, the screen reading, I’ve seen a lot people use that. That’s more of a temporary thing and would be a good thing if you’re a renter. Because that stuff I our neighbor did it in one of the trailers next to us. And it ate through the top, the sand destroyed it, so they don’t last forever. And we’ve got some up on top of the pergola. And you can expect that some stuff in Nevada County to maybe last about three to five years tops, right? Because it just gets beat down with the UV.
21:41
While the weather is pretty intense, right? Cam Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:45
But bamboos gonna last you quite a while, you know, eventually will rot out too, but unless you painted, but so there’s different different ideas for getting your privacy. Another thing you can do too, is what I’ve been doing in our property in in Grass Valley is we’ve got to I wish I knew the name of this Elizabeth post, told me but contractor right the second, but we just have this tree in the backyard, that’s also bush, and it drops all these seeds. And it’s an area that that gets watered. So I’ve been taking a little shoots out of it. And strategically placing in between our neighbor’s house and our fence line to kind of build a wall. And it’s growing. I’m irrigating it. So I’m not having to buy buy plants. So look around your property. And you know, we have a lot of those little like I’ve heard people call money trees. It’s a nation tree that has a little Oh, yeah,
22:37
it’s like, no, yeah, yeah, you can actually take Jade clippings, by the way, and you can jam those and they take to the end they like you and I believe how do we multiply? Yeah, and they are they make a nice little. I don’t know if they make a lot of privacy depending on what you have. But they do tend to they’re Hardy Lisa
22:55
seasonal. It’ll be it’ll you know, because it is a deciduous tree, it’s going to drop at least during during the wintertime. But at least during the summertime, when you want the most privacy, you’re going to have a wall of bush and you can kind of click those and prune those to make it into a into a shrub. I’ve also seen people use cedar trees for that, because, you know, in Nevada County cedars grow like weeds as well. You can prune those and keep those short and use those as a privacy fence. So hopefully, those are a couple of different ideas of building a privacy fence or a fence up have found this information useful. If you need fencing, don’t call us but there’s plenty of people around around the county that you can call us. But if you do need plumbing, electrical heating or air service, and I know it’s been very mildly, but summer is coming baby. If you do need HVAC, get it done now, because prices are going up. I know January 1, we got some new regulations coming down from the federal government where prices are going up anywhere from eight to 20 to 30%. So if you’re thinking about getting you seen the house, get it done now. It was call it 530-230-9092 The number again 532-230-9092. You can find us on the web at easy as abc.com Like us on Facebook, you’ll see a lot of this information that is pertains to her show and some other fun stuff. And with that, that’s our show. Catch you guys next week. Thanks for listening.
24:18
Bye. 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