Foreign.

Welcome to around the house with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

Whether you're tackling a DIY project, hiring it out, or just trying to keep your home running smoothly, you're in the right place.

With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G. Takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends, and the latest innovations for your home.

Home.

It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

Now let's get this show started with our host, Eric G. And John Dudley.

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for home improvement information.

I'm Eric G. And we got Johnny D over here in the co pilot seat today.

Good to see you, my friend.

Hello, sir.

Good to see you.

Good to see you.

You know, here's the interesting thing.

You and I have been talking about this for a while, but we've been trying to figure out how to all of you guys out there that listen to the show every week and really be able to answer your questions even better and even easier.

So Johnny and I have been talking about some stuff.

We got some new stuff coming up in the future.

But right now if you have a question you're trying to figure out, maybe you're like, I don't know where to go from here.

I got a project.

Or I've been trying to track down this noise in my house or what does my toilet do this whatever it is you've got a question with.

The easy way to get a hold of us is to head over to around the house online.com and just head over to the contact us page there and you can reach out and send us a message.

It runs right into my email box and that way I can get back to you and maybe we can cover it on an upcoming show.

Maybe we'll even have you come on the show.

So we'd love to hear your questions, ideas for things, any of that stuff.

We're here to communicate with you as well as on social media and you can find all that over@aroundthehouseonline.com.

what do you think, Johnny?

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, just getting the audience involved is exciting for us.

We tired of talking to each other all the time and we provide as much value and information as we can.

But you know, it's for you all, it's for the audience.

And so you've got a new product you're not sure about.

My mom just did this to us the other night.

Hey, guys, what does this stuff work?

Right?

This is you Know, pour some gravel, spray some glue on it.

That's what we're up doing at 11 at night looking at, you know, glued gravel products.

So, you know, you're starting a new project, you're thinking about buying a new appliance, you're thinking about doing a remodel, you're trying to pick a contractor.

Hit us up.

We love talking about this stuff and we want to help you the best we can with our 70 plus years collective knowledge and, and help you get it done right with the least amount of problems for the best amount of money.

And yeah, don't be shy man, open up to us.

We're here to talk to you guys.

Yeah.

So yeah, we really encouraging that lately and may have been brief on it in the past and just kind of mentioning it at the end, but you guys are the show, so hit us up, please.

Absolutely.

And if you got that domestic dispute, how do you load the dishwasher?

Do you pre rinse it, whatever that is, you know, whatever those questions are.

We're here to help.

We're here to help.

Today is going to be a little more of a rant filled episode of Johnny and I talking about some latest stuff that's in the news and there's been some interesting stuff out of there.

And the cool thing is I haven't talked to Dudley here about this stuff.

So we're kind of keeping this fresh to see what the pluses and minuses are of this topic.

And the first one I wanted to talk about was hitting the news this last week and it was the Here in the US the Trump administration exploring the idea of having a 50 year home loan, not the 25 or the 30, but a 50 year home loan to try to help people get into homes.

And I think it's an interesting topic, but there's some things that really scare me with that as well.

If you do the math, and I have the math here, it does help a little bit.

As long as you're not counting the interest of what that is 50 years later.

Yeah, what's your take on that, Johnny?

Man, I'll tell you what, if they do it on sailboats, I'm in.

Well, that being said, property I legit.

Raj and I legit got a 30 year amortized loan on the catamaran we bought.

Really years, years back.

Yep.

God bless credit unions.

Actually Boeing Credit Union.

Nice bcu those guys.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So our payment was like, you know, I don't know, ridiculous.

200, $300 a month or something.

Perfect.

Was it great?

Absolutely.

We were young, we could afford it, and we were riding around the catamaran.

Nice.

Is it the smartest financial decision?

Absolutely not.

Like if you could pay your house off in 15 years, pay it off.

And again, now here's another rule.

Like I'm a guy that.

I'm a guy that will not pay off a loan one day early if it's amortized for 15, 30, 500 years.

If it's got me at 3% and I can go make 13, right?

Sure, depends.

Okay, it's 50 year mortgage, but interest rate's 12%.

Well, I'm going to lose money.

Yeah.

You know, so here's 30 at 7% and then I can actually not pay that mortgage a day early.

Use the other 7% or make the other 7% by using the money.

I'm not.

You get it?

You know, absolute general rule, you know, put it in the market, make 12 to 13%, don't make extra payments on your house.

That's my take.

Plenty of people argue against it.

Dave Ramsey, I think he falls with me on that one.

But I can't remember kind of.

Yeah, you know, he's, he's the heat.

You know, Ramsey's rules are at least.

Yeah.

Pay off everything as soon as you can and then you have all the money that's yours.

You're not paying anybody else for money.

Right.

And he does that unless you can.

Use other people's money to make more money.

And that falls under that.

So.

Well, here's the impact here on a 50 year loan.

So we're gonna use some general numbers here.

In my house, in my neighborhood here or my metro area, I couldn't buy a house for this.

So it's just a kind of cool thing anyway.

But if you had a $300,000 loan at 4% interest over 30 years, you got a monthly payment of about 1432.

So 1,432 bucks on that, on the same loan over 50 years, that takes it down to $1,100.

So it takes your payment down by 23%.

So by adding the extra 20 years to it.

So the benefit that I see is that it could get more people into entry level homeownership.

Because now you're starting to get under there where it's cheaper to buy a house than it is to rent an apartment in many places and you get something back out of that.

So that could help, you know, so you get the lower monthly payments on that, and that's good.

And that extra what, 332 bucks could free up money that you're investing or paying off other stuff with as well.

So that's what you do.

That's what you do.

And I like that.

I like that.

That's the real question.

What kind of discipline do you have?

Like if your grandpa, my grandpa, you're gonna pull that off.

If you're me, I'm buying extra guitars every couple of months.

Exactly, exactly.

It's not gonna go where it should.

Now they've been doing this in Japan for a while.

So this isn't like some new thing.

But like in Japan they allow prepayments without penalties, giving borrowers that flexibility to pay off early if they're making more money, you know, if they're five years into it.

And like, wow, I got a huge raise.

I was in a first time home buyer and now I got a better career.

I'm not flipping burgers, I'm actually working at the, you know, working for the government or got something going on.

They can go, oh, I'm going to pay it off earlier.

They make it a 30 year, but it still has a 50 year if I want to.

Okay.

I see that.

You know, penalty free.

Great.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now when we come back here and.

That, I mean that's ideal situation, right?

No really need a home right now.

Can't afford it like that.

But if I could get it for this, just for the first five years, you know, almost kind of a balloon payment.

Ideal.

Although no balloon payment.

But yeah, I mean that, that's great.

Yeah.

So Johnny, we're gonna watch a break here.

Come back.

I want to talk about the costs of this.

What's it going to cost you to do this?

How much extra does it cost you?

We'll do that just as soon as around the House returns don't change that dial instrument.

What's up?

This is sticks it in you and.

Satchel from Steel Panther and you are.

Listening to around the House with Eric.

G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should too.

1987.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

Your trusted source for home improvement information.

Johnny, if anybody out there has questions for us, where do you think they should go?

Aroundthehouse online.com hit us up in the.

Contact form, let us know where.

Yeah, give us your opinion on this particular subject.

Let us know what kind of loan you're in or, or if you're having a bad time with a reverse mortgage or if you wish there was a 50 year loan because what would you do with the extra money?

There's always been this whole life this is a, whatever lifelong question, right?

Pay off your mortgage early, don't pay off your mortgage early.

And there's definitely two divided sides.

And not that anybody has the right answer.

It's what makes you comfortable.

And I'd be curious to see, please somebody, some folks out there listening to.

Tax deductions if you're itemizing.

So where's that land?

There's a complex question.

It is and it affects a lot of things in your life, including comfort of living.

So love to hear some stories out there.

We took a 15 year mortgage because we wanted to pay it off early because we wanted to do X, Y and Z.

That can make perfect sense.

We got a settlement and paid off our mortgage first thing and then took what we got from that house and built a house free and clear.

There's a million different situations, but no, it'd be a hoot to hear about some of you alls and bring them up on the next episode and revisit this because this has always been a fight I've had with friends.

Not a fight, but always been a no, you're a fool.

No, you're a fool.

Including my mother.

It's a hot subject, brother.

Love to get some outside opinions.

Yeah, absolutely, man.

When we went out to break, I tell you what, we told the good part of the story.

Now here's the more expensive part of the story.

The cons of what a 50 year loan would be and total higher interest costs.

Of course that seems obvious, but there is a serious number to that.

Before we were talking about like a what a $300,000 loan of 4% would be.

Now at a 30 year loan, your total interest would be $215,600.

But at a 50 year loan, adding 20% of that onto that, you're at 360,000 in total interest, a 67% increase of interest.

So to me that kind of reduces long term wealth accumulation off of that because you're paying a lot more on that.

You're taking another 150 off the top basically in round numbers.

And so that's interesting.

Also I see that you could be building slower equity, right?

If you've got a 50 year loan and you're not accounting for, you know, the real estate market right now is not booming here in the States.

Across the country you have places that are doing okay.

Many places are getting better or falling behind.

If you got a slow roll over 50 years of equity making those payments, you could be five years into that.

And if you've been just making the Minimum payments.

You're not going to see much of a difference on what your equity is from your payments because a lot of that's going to interest on the front end.

All but $2.

You go to sell it, you could be a wash or even upside down in it.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

It's kind of like having a five year car loan.

You go to trade it in two years and they're like, man, you still owe more than this, this thing's worth.

And you're like, what are you talking about?

I've done that math before and it didn't work.

So that's actually a really good point.

That can be super dangerous because yeah, you're really not making a dent in, in what would show as equity in your home for a lot of years when it's amortized out so long.

Yeah.

So you're doing fundamental math.

Even at just 30 years.

The first five years is just interest.

You go to sell and unless the market's gone crazy, you're like, we didn't, we haven't made a dime because we've just been paying the interest down.

Which is why a lot of people make that extra payment.

And it is effective.

Yeah.

10 years on a 50 year.

On a 50 year loan, the borrowers probably paid down 10% of the principal where it would be 20% on a 30 year loan.

Big difference.

It makes a big difference.

And especially, first of all, I don't, I don't know anybody that stayed in a house for 50 years.

My grandparents stayed in that one house for 35 or maybe 40.

But point being is that the odds are pretty good you're going to move anyway.

And when you move, you want the biggest amount of equity you can possibly have in there.

If it takes that to get into a house for the first, like you said, Eric, the first five years or so or three years and there's no penalties to adjust and bump it down to a 30.

Okay, maybe that's the plan.

But I think the bigger topic is you have to consider all these different situations and what they look like.

Run them out, run them through your head and go, if we're just paying interest for the first five years, you're going to walk out with nothing.

Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot of math, a lot to consider.

When you think about Japan.

So they have 50 year loans.

They also have hundred year multi generational ones.

Oh geez, I can't imagine that.

Hey kids, by the way, welcome to college.

You get the mortgage in 10 years.

Yeah.

I don't want to live in this house.

Too bad.

Yeah.

I don't how the numbers even make sense on things like that.

That just keeps naughty.

All right, let's wrap a bow around that one.

And again, if you guys have comments on that one, you want to say something about it, make sure and email us or send us a Message over to roundthehousonline.com on the contact Us page.

Like to hear your take on it.

Now then it's a great one to send out the audience because there's so many different situations and so many different reasons for doing it a multitude of ways.

Absolutely.

And they all could make sense.

It's just I love hearing about the options and how people have utilized that and what they regret accomplished.

Absolutely.

Now, the next one here is something that I ran into here, and this is just over the last couple months.

I didn't even realize it because I'm not in an hoa.

We're seeing a huge trend in the States where large builders, these are those big national builders that are putting in townhome projects or residential communities where the houses are pretty tight together, that kind of stuff.

Large builders are running the HOAs for the communities they build.

Yeah, We've touched on this before.

Yeah.

And I want to go off on this because the more I see, the more I go, wow, this is incredible.

Monkeys running the zoo.

What's going on now is you're getting a community being built, and the home builders retain control of the HOA board during the initial phases of community development, sometimes for years, until a certain percentage of homes are sold.

But the crazy part is that if you're complaining about it, you're complaining to the builder.

And the builder goes, yeah, HOA board said no.

They hired the HOA board.

Yeah.

They're their employees.

Their interest is, number one, where the residence is number two.

And that's kind of interesting.

But here's what I'm seeing.

And before we're heading out to break here in a second, what I'm seeing is they're staying on board still.

So the one here where my girlfriend's house is, they're still in control of this thing seven years later.

They're the kind of ghost company behind it.

I want to understand how that works.

I'll let you go.

But, yeah, it's crazy.

Now, what happens, though, when you have a builder that built things incorrectly, or what you and I would call defects in construction of materials.

They make sure the HOA covers it and charges the homeowner for it because they don't want to get sued.

But if they deal with that through the HOA and it gets fixed, you're eliminating the liability of the builder.

The HOA is not going to sue the builder for defects in materials, siting, falling off.

We're going to have some issues.

Now when we come back, I want to talk about some of the other stuff that we're seeing with this and stuff that you need to look for as a homeowner.

We'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.

Don't change that dial.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for home improvement information.

You want to get a hold of us, send us a message over to Roundthe House online dot com.

I'd love to hear your HOA stories because I know you've got them.

You know, there's people out there that have dedicated YouTube channels for this subject.

So you gotta have some out there.

And I've never really been in one.

Johnny, you've never really been in one.

I am in one now and I tell you what it is.

The one I'm in is really scammy.

And it's a national home builder that if I name the name, which I won't.

But for instance, what they do here is they'll send out a message on Sunday or Monday or whatever and go, all right, we've got an HOA meeting on Tuesday at 2 o'.

Clock.

Yeah, everybody's work.

Thanks.

Yeah, nobody's coming to that.

Nobody's coming to that.

So I think what I'm going to start doing is I'm going to be a little proactive in this.

I think when that happens, I'm going to surprise and I'm going to start showing up and then I'm going to bring my camera and record it to make sure that it's shared with everybody.

I think that's a fantastic idea.

And I'll tell you, I've had my buddy Bryce, he bought a condo in Arizona.

They had an hoa.

I didn't know much about it.

I just listened to him bitch about it like everybody does.

And my mom is also involved in one up in Lake Taps.

But I guess the confusion I wanted to ask you about because I myself have never been involved in one, is it's a homeowners association.

So a.

Wouldn't there be a direction that you have to be a homeowner there?

Not counting.

I'm a builder that hasn't sold a home, so I technically own that empty home that should not Count.

And secondly, some kind of regulation that says you can't be the general contractor on the job.

They said it's a.

There should be no relation.

It's a total conflict of interest.

Right.

The homeowner station association should be a voted group of actual homeowners that live there and monitor situations and rectify them accordingly, whether that's going out and getting bids on the jobs that need done.

I've worked for several of them as a contractor.

Worked for plenty of them.

I don't remember any of them being.

Yeah, I'm the general contractor that built this whole complex.

And I honestly, I can't see how that's feasibly legal, even it seems.

I'm sure there's plenty of loopholes.

It's just an hoa.

But come on, guys, that doesn't seem fair.

Doesn't seem right, doesn't seem just.

And these guys are crazy here because the streets out in front are the city.

They're the city streets.

They're not the homeowners association.

Yeah.

They're not a private drive.

But like the neighbor, he was getting fined because he had too many cars parked on the street, which has nothing.

To do with the housing complex.

No, it's city street.

That's.

Call the police, have them, ticket them.

Yeah, I'd be fighting that one in court.

They used to come by and give my girlfriend a hard time because dogs, she.

If you walk from one direction, there's all this landscaping stuff, and the first green grass is her yard.

If she was getting brown spots from dogs peeing in the grass, they would try to find her for spots in the grass from the dog, pee from.

Not her dog.

I get super.

Well, I get vigilant over stuff like that.

I'm like, man, that's why I'm getting involved.

Break open.

Let's break open the books here.

You've.

Yeah, I think it's time to honestly see what's going on.

Let's see what's going on.

Let's see your relationships to the contractors that you are hiring to come in and repaint and fix these things.

And.

And let's see whose cousin's getting paid from who and how much is going back into your coffers.

And I mean, that's legit concern this.

I would have an HOA member that is not one from the general contractor.

Go talk to an attorney and go, how are they getting away with this?

Oh, yeah.

Seriously.

Yeah.

And the crazy thing is, too, is that now the homeowners in the homeowners association under These warranties, especially on buildings like this, the developments, it's usually not just a one year warranty.

You can get them years later for defects in material and stuff like that.

Right now the homeowners association is paying stuff for what?

Especially on condos in these places.

The homeowners association is now paying for what the builder should be on the hook for.

They're able to shirk that responsibility somehow.

This just gets so crooked and I don't understand.

Her place is what, 10 years old or something?

Seven.

Yeah, seven.

And you're having to repaint it and the paint's falling off and the wood's rotten and it's their responsibility to take care of the exterior of the building.

How is nobody pitching a fire around this camp?

Like, seriously?

Oh yeah.

Guess what I'm going to be doing, brother?

Do it.

Do it.

We'll have tons of fodder for the show.

I'm curious.

I'm really curious.

And again, please speak to the audience.

Like if you've got any kind of experiences like this with HOA stuff, please share the wealth with us.

Because it's something I'm not real knowledgeable in, but I'm also no dummy to do the math to go, that's the horse run and the trainer, that's the monkey run in the zoo.

That's okay.

And you know, that's people's hard spent money that's going to waste and going into pockets where it shouldn't go on.

No.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

It's.

I want to come out there and get busy.

Yeah.

I'm going to have some fun with that one.

That's going to be my sport for the winter and fall and spring here is going to be starting a little bit of a battle, brother.

I wanted to transition now over to another subject which is going to be probably even more controversial from that point of view.

I want to talk about style and hot things that are out for 2026.

Not a big fashion guy, but let's go.

Ah.

And you might agree with some of this stuff.

One of the big ones that are going away in most homes is the Chip and Joanna Gaines Shiplap.

That's been done with respect to wall covering or wall coverings in floor.

You know where you come in, you take the white MDF boards, you paint it wire, you paint it gray and you put it up on the wall and it's that kind of minimalist, 50 shades of gray inside the house.

Wainscoting of sorts or full wall cover, planks of boards.

You've been out of the country, so you haven't seen that as much here.

It's been just, you know, it here.

It's been.

Sheesh.

As popular as rooster wallpaper in the 90s.

It was just everywhere.

Huh.

So that's a big one.

That started in about 2015.

It's been going for a decade.

It's done now.

And is that going for a rustic vibe or a modern vibe?

You say 50 shades of gray.

Modern Farm out is what I would call.

Okay, yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

I mean, great in a beach cabin, but yeah.

And that's the thing.

I still think that it has its place.

That's one of the exceptions.

The beach cabin not in a downtown.

You're not putting in the loft.

High rise townhome.

Yeah, not at all.

So you're seeing that basically being gone.

Sorry, Chip and Joanne, I got nothing against you, but that's just a style you brought in, and it's definitely worked its way, like almost every style does 10 years ago.

It's a great run.

What's replacing it?

You're seeing a lot of more wall treatments with more depth, sophistication.

You're actually seeing stuff right now, like new kinds of lime wash or plaster finishes.

There are some people out there that do really good artisan work where it looks like it's.

And we're not talking the 2000s Venetian plaster, but we're talking about the crazy cool stuff that you're seeing where it looks like it makes the wall look like concrete or it makes it look like some kind of stone.

It looks really cool.

It's good for that kind of Mediterranean or modern look, even rustic.

And it's all done with plaster and painting, which is really cool.

I don't know if you've seen.

I put it at my last house.

It's that vertical wall slat where you've got a slat of walnut, a micro slat of felt flower black behind it.

And so it gives you that striped wood look.

Acoustical panels.

Yeah.

Brings back that 70s vibe.

That's a great one right there.

So good for a pool room.

Absolutely.

That stuff is super cool.

Now we come back, we got a lot more to go through, so we're gonna have to lightning round through these so we can get them touched on, because there's a lot more that's out for next year.

So if you're starting that project right now, you might want to think about this stuff a little bit around the house.

We return after these important messages.

Keep an Eye out for those sponsors.

They're the ones that keep the show going.

For more information on the show, head to aroundthe house online.com around the house show will be right back.

All right, welcome back, guys, to the around the House Show.

Your trusted source for home improvement information, Johnny Dudley and I have been sitting here talking about a lot of different things this hour, but if you have a comment on these, if you didn't like my shiplap comment earlier, send us a message over to roundthehouse online.com we're here to help.

And if you have one that you think is out that we didn't talk about, love to hear it for next week's episode.

Might be able to slide you in the show.

That might be something cool we could do.

Johnny, would be to sit there and have a comments from last week's show section.

We absolutely need to.

We haven't done enough of that, in my opinion.

So, yeah, y' all are going to hear us pushing, prodding a lot more to get more of your input.

Make sure we're staying on the beam and giving you what you want and always getting better, always finding new ideas, always hearing new opinions.

That only helps us to help you.

So please reach out.

We love it.

We love it.

Love it.

Absolutely.

All right, here's my next one.

We've talked about this a few episodes ago, but that vinyl plank flooring, the click together vinyl plank flooring, I think that has finally run its course and I think a lot of it is because it promised a lot of great things and it has been pretty durable out there.

But they'll give you a 30 year warranty on the floor.

But you can walk through a stair transition and wear the edge of that off in 10 months.

Or you walk across an older floor or a floor that's got a little spring to it.

Maybe when the builder built it, they didn't block it out well.

And so it's got a little bit of spring to it and it just makes everything come unconnected and you have to remove the floor and relay it down again.

I think there's been enough of that that the vinyl plank floor I think is on the way out.

I think this 2025 is the last year of that being hot.

And I know there's a lot of people, even John and I were talking before we came on going, but the stuff was so easy to lay.

Yeah.

But when he had to come back and fix it six months later, it wasn't so cool.

Yeah.

Nobody likes warranty claims, Nobody likes warning claims.

All right, ready for the next one, Johnny?

What do we got?

All white or all gray interiors?

That stark minimalist look of all white or gray on gray spaces.

Super popular.

2010, 2020s has now gone cold and impersonal.

Yeah.

Same thing happened in 89.

Yeah.

Think about in the 90s how everything was like brass doorknobs, just bright brass.

Bright brass, Bryce brass.

And you got into the 22 thousands and everybody went fresh bronze, rub bronze, all that kind of stuff.

It was just.

It's always like a big sweep.

So what's hot now?

Warmer neutrals.

You're seeing those creamy beiges.

Beiges like a taupe, even a terracotta sage.

All these different colors are dominating.

It's almost like the 70s, mid to late 70s colors.

Our back.

Yeah.

I think the world's looking for a little comfort.

Yeah.

On the horse we get all mechanical and I don't know how to say it exactly, but minimalist and super modern.

And I think society as a whole, just people cycle with things start getting awry and getting a little crazy in the world.

We're like, we're looking for that comfort food and it comes in paint colors.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And the other thing I'm seeing too is stainless steel appliances in some kind of contexts are going away as well.

You're seeing in higher end products, like higher end kitchens, you're seeing much more of a paneled look.

You're seeing where they're built in flush.

Even the oven front of the oven is flush with the cabinetry.

You're seeing a lot of that stuff.

You're seeing bold colored ranges where it's a avocado green or a yellow or a red or a purple.

You're seeing that where the ranges that way.

But really stainless steel appliances have now gone to where white appliances used to be, where you walk in and go up.

That's the builder basic ones where you.

Sounds like it speaks to the same point we were just talking about back to like we need color and color brings emotion and senses.

And we look for comfort in our homes as a general rule.

And when the world feels scary, ah, it makes sense that we go back to some comforting, soothing mel.

Not metal.

Cold, white, steep.

Like you want a little apple pie in there.

Yeah.

Warm.

All right, man, the whole world's beating me up.

I want to come home to a nice warm yellow stove or whatever.

Whatever.

Yeah.

Here's the other thing, too.

Authentic spaces are big.

What I mean by that is not using all the fake plastic stuff in there, using real wood, using Real stone.

Sometimes when you go into your Home Depot's or Lowe's or some of those more builder basic places, those finishes are inauthentic in a way you can.

Oh, that looks like plastic.

That's not real.

Yeah.

You know where outside things are going to composite for durability.

Inside, it's going back into wood warmth, which is awesome.

And that's a big one.

Warmth is big.

That's what's in.

So you're seeing those earthy neutrals, kind of like those bold jewel tones or natural woods to really create inviting spaces.

And so I think that's big.

Now, one of the things that I'm seeing, and we're going to run out of time here pretty soon, but one of the things that I'm seeing too is you're seeing designers flip this way.

Many designers aren't onto what the current trends would be.

And I wanted to talk about this since we're talking trends.

What, how trends change so fast.

Now, Johnny, when you and I started out in construction, if we grabbed the latest Architectural Digest magazine at the grocery store, for instance, we knew that project was designed probably four or five years ago.

It was built the next year and a half.

It got completely done.

Then they took pictures and it took nine months to a year before that hit a magazine.

So that project could have been done for four or five years before the public saw it.

Heck, now if you and I had a construction meeting showing drawings to a client with textures and pieces of samples, they'd have it on Internet on their Pinterest board within 10 minutes of the meeting being out.

And it's out in the public.

Yeah, huge difference.

Styles would change almost by the decade.

There was a 70s look, there was an 80s look, there was a 90s look.

Now that's a, yeah, 2005 look.

There's a 2000.

So it really can change on a dime.

And it was funny.

When I was designing higher end projects, I knew a style was starting to die in those days.

When it showed up at Home Depot or Lowe's, they were the last to get there because they had to pivot.

This big ship might take them four or five years to believe that's a style.

Then it comes out and the new one's coming in.

Back when we were going at it together, you could walk in nine out of 10 kitchens and you knew it was cherry cabinets, shaker doors, granite countertops, Viking range.

Like it just it.

We printed them out like Volkswagens.

Yeah.

And yeah, you're right, it's way quicker.

The Quickening has become.

And a large part of that's Internet and accessibility and people making their own decisions and not relying on stuff.

For the last four years, it's been this, so it must be this.

It's just.

It's a different world, different game, and it's changing yearly, which is.

Can be unfortunate because you're like, no, I love this year.

And then next year it's gone where you at least used to get a good 5 years before your kitchen look dated.

After you spent 50k on that, you're like, what do you mean it's dated?

Yeah, brother.

In our last minute here, the way to prevent that is if you pick a good natural wood.

Natural woods tend to be in no matter what, to some extent.

And then if you do knobs on the hardware in the kitchen so you can change those out to the next hottest color, right?

Yep.

And you do a tile backsplash that you're not sold on, that maybe in five to 10 years you can swap out and you stay on top of paint colors and hopefully pick something kind of natural for the countertop.

You're probably going to be good to go.

And you can slide it into places.

Yeah.

You can fudge stuff around where just like you said, swap out all the drawer pulls in the cabinet handles, paint it a different color, and you'll probably get in the ballpark, maybe change an appliance after three years or something.

But, yeah, generally speaking.

Yeah, generally speaking, it's more about decoration at that point than it is about.

More about aesthetics than it is about the actual products that are in the kitchen at that point.

Like, how do you keep up with.

Pretend it's Christmas, but it's for the whole year.

Absolutely.

Decorate accordingly.

And by the way, when you're working with a designer out there, the last thing I want to say before we get a break is your personal taste matters.

Your designer is the person you hired for that project.

So make sure that what you're getting what you want.

But maybe they're steering you to make sure that you're not making any glaring mistakes, that you're picking something that's either outdated or is going to be outdated or is not going to last for you.

Pay attention to that designer because they are there to help.

You're paying for their expertise.

Definitely lean in because you've already hired them.

Or if you have any doubts, you email Eric G. And he'll dial you in.

There we go over to Roundthe House online dot com.

All right, guys, end of the show.

Thanks for tuning in.

Feel free to reach out to us.

We got a great show coming up next week as well.

That excited?

We're coming up towards Thanksgiving already.

I don't know what's going on, what other alternative universe we're in, but it's creeping up, and we got to get ready for it.

Crazy.

Are you ready, Johnny?

Yeah, I don't.

I miss it down here.

We don't really have it, so.

Yeah, there we go.

There we go.

No, no panic.

No stress for me.

I like it.

Easy, easy.

All right, guys.

I'm Eric G. Exactly.

And I'm Johnny D. You've been listening.

To around the House.

Enjoy your taco.

With.