[00:00:00] Intro: It's around the house. When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home. There is a lot to know though. We've got you coming. This is around the

[00:00:25] Intro: house.

[00:00:26] Intro: Welcome to around the house with Eric G and Caroline B. This is the midweek special, happy midweek, everybody. Hello, Carolyn. How are you doing here?

[00:00:36] Intro: This beautiful middle of the week body.

[00:00:38] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm trying to get myself pumped up for midweek, feeling a little. Yeah, gotta, I gotta get myself juiced, feel

[00:00:43] Eric Goranson: a little juice. There we go. Juiced like, uh, like baseball in the 1990s juice or just little excited, little excited.

[00:00:52] Caroline Blazovsky: not actual steroids.

[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: Okay. Rights. okay.

[00:00:57] Intro: I could use those too, though.

[00:00:59] Intro: Oh, [00:01:00] yeah. I'm at the end

[00:01:00] Caroline Blazovsky: where your muscles are

[00:01:01] Intro: depleting

[00:01:04] Eric Goranson: called not going to the gym. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well, let's see, man. You guys are burning up over there. Oh,

[00:01:11] Caroline Blazovsky: it's hot. It's a good time to talk about HVAC, cuz everybody's, HVAC's gonna be blowing out. You know, you're gonna be some parts gonna be seizing up when you've got 102 times, you know, it's

[00:01:21] Intro: gonna

[00:01:22] Eric Goranson: happen.

[00:01:23] Eric Goranson: And you know what happens is, is nobody, nobody goes out, nobody that there's plenty of you that do. Cuz we talk about it in the show, but generally speaking, nobody's on their maintenance agreement. They haven't had this person out there to service their heating and cooling system so that hasn't seen love since before COVID.

[00:01:40] Eric Goranson: And all of a sudden you got that thing running, running an Olympic marathon, cuz it's 102 out. And that's when it quits

[00:01:48] Caroline Blazovsky: and it's like 102 for days, it just keeps coming. Oh yeah. Mine. It's so funny. Cuz my HVAC is scheduled to be done next Friday. So I'm just like right under the gun, you know something's gonna [00:02:00] happen.

[00:02:01] Eric Goranson: Yep. So that means Wednesday tomorrow. Yep. That's how it works. That's how it works. So yeah. No it's tough. And, and you guys got the humidity with it too, don't you? Oh, we've got everything

[00:02:14] Caroline Blazovsky: here. It's. It is really hot and out there. It's like I saw San Francisco temperatures. Oh my gosh. It's like 60 degrees people.

[00:02:21] Caroline Blazovsky: Like what? 59.

[00:02:23] Intro: It's cool.

[00:02:24] Eric Goranson: Yeah. We're I mean, we're, I think we're gonna be eighties and nineties all week, so we're not too bad out here. Pretty dry. So not gonna complain about it. Not gonna complain about it. Considering last year we got. Burned to a crisp in, in June and July. So I guess we all

[00:02:37] Intro: wanna go to

[00:02:37] Caroline Blazovsky: we've had it pretty lucky.

[00:02:38] Caroline Blazovsky: This show San Francisco right now, San Francisco's the ideal spot right now. Nice and

[00:02:42] Eric Goranson: cool. Oh man. No kidding. So yeah guys, if, uh, you know, heating and cooling systems, by the way, if you're looking to replace yours out there, Those things have gone up so much over the last year or two, and I'm talking like 25, 30%.

[00:02:59] Eric Goranson: So [00:03:00] if you got a price a year or two ago for heating and cooling system, and you've been putting it off, guess what I hate to tell you? It's probably gone up 20 or 30% at least.

[00:03:13] Eric Goranson: right. Oh man. Sorry. Hey, I saw actually speaking of. I actually saw a news story over on CNBC on their personal finance thing. It was a study. They did, it said 43% of homeowners have delayed home improvement and maintenance due to inflation. And I'm like, that makes sense. I just

[00:03:33] Caroline Blazovsky: told you, Eric and I were talking off the air and uh, mm-hmm, like three clients I spoke to this week about different things were saying how tough it is.

[00:03:40] Caroline Blazovsky: The economy is bad. The stock market is down. So all those people who up get their money on the stock market, nobody wants to do anything. .

[00:03:48] Intro: Or they wanna do it exactly.

[00:03:49] Eric Goranson: Cause they're, well, they're looking at their 401ks. They're looking at that stock portfolio and going, man, it's been a rough year, right?

[00:03:56] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm , you know, and, and that, and this study is interesting cause [00:04:00] it says, uh, for homeowners, big projects and purchases, 60% of homeowners in a recent survey are less comfortable making large purchases for their home because of rising prices. And that's according to a hippo insurance, 20, 22 homeowner preparedness report.

[00:04:15] Eric Goranson: Mm. And. That is interesting and nearly 43% strongly or 28.4% somewhat agree that inflation has caused them to delay planned home improvement and maintenance projects. Oh, they're gonna come

[00:04:28] Intro: to

[00:04:29] Caroline Blazovsky: us. Yeah. They're gonna look for DIY. So come on guys. We'll give you some basic

[00:04:34] Eric Goranson: money part though. Is deferred maintenance never costs you less, right?

[00:04:38] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[00:04:38] Intro: That's very true.

[00:04:40] Eric Goranson: Good point. I mean, you can look at our school systems around here in, in where, where I live here in the Portland Metro area, there was about 20 years that everybody went into deferred maintenance mode and nobody did anything and it's cost them three or four times to do the work now.

[00:04:59] Eric Goranson: Than it did back [00:05:00] then. So it's never cheaper to fix that deferred maintenance. So mm-hmm, be careful on the maintenance side. And I think we're all guilty of that from time to time. But, uh, you kick that can down the curb. It's gonna cost you more money I'll up in

[00:05:14] Caroline Blazovsky: take the, can I haven't heard that saying in a while, kicking the

[00:05:17] Intro: can, right.

[00:05:18] Eric Goranson: Pulling it, pulling it out of the way back machine, right. well, it, it just gets expensive, you know, it just climb expensive. So, you know, try to be careful out there and, and, you know, things like the heating and cooling system and I mean, My neighbor, I feel bad for them. They bought this house last year and they were they're on the flag lot behind me.

[00:05:39] Eric Goranson: And just before we were going on air here, uh, they're out there with a leak detection company going down their long, you know, mm-hmm, 200 foot driveway down the middle of it cuz the water line, where's it go right down the center of their driveway. So it's a whole pav. Block top. And now they're down there and now there's big blue marks of where the [00:06:00] leaks are in that line.

[00:06:02] Eric Goranson: So they're gonna have to, to do that. And I feel bad because not only they're gonna have to dig that up probably and either repair it or do the whole thing, they should do the whole thing. Cuz even the old homeowners there, we're doing patch repairs and see old polypipe. So it's the old black polypipe from the seventies.

[00:06:19] Eric Goranson: It just needs to be put into a new PEX line. Speaking of

[00:06:22] Caroline Blazovsky: asphalt, this is the time of year guys. It's time to do the driveway. So either you gotta do, you know, ceiling is good this time of year. There's a lot of good coupons out there. So if you're looking to do, you know, just completely repave or if you're looking to do ceiling, you gotta get that done before fall.

[00:06:39] Intro: Yeah. Yeah. All the cracks in the

[00:06:40] Eric Goranson: job. Absolutely. Get those sealed up so that water doesn't get down there and tear up the base and have a pothole. And a big crack. That's how they work. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, like, I feel bad for my neighbors, cuz it's not like we share a waterline down there, so they're gonna have to eat that whole cost.

[00:06:56] Eric Goranson: It's not like our waterline rides down with them, you know, [00:07:00] because it goes right. Kind of on their property. Not ours, ours, mine cuts through the front. Theirs goes down the middle of their driveway. So they're gonna be on that one. So that's gonna be a significant expense. Yes, it is. And I feel bad because the other thing is, is, you know, how they do boring.

[00:07:14] Eric Goranson: Sometimes it can go down and bore. Like when they put gas into this house in the nineties, they didn't tear up the whole front. Right. They did the directional boring to do it. Well here they can't because they, they scanned, they did a ground penetrating radar to see, and there's such big boulders down there that they can't.

[00:07:31] Eric Goranson: I bet. Do it, so cuz we're we have big rocks here. Mm-hmm it's just, they do it beautiful though. You know, I got it's cool. But it's like rocks filled in with dirt, you know? So they're like, ah, I can't do that. So I got a feeling they're gonna be putting a backhoe down the middle of the driveway, which is gonna suck, never good.

[00:07:51] Caroline Blazovsky: Be surprised projects. That's where you have to watch cuz all of a sudden something comes up and it's never.

[00:07:57] Eric Goranson: Oh, no, you know, and, and that's what some of [00:08:00] the things that I've been enjoying working on this house is you start to get the big stuff out of the way. Right. You know, you get the, you get the house painted, you get the H V a C system in mm-hmm you get the water heater.

[00:08:10] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm you start checking off a lot of those big boxes, which are the expensive ones. Right? Exactly.

[00:08:15] Caroline Blazovsky: And then you can kind of do the decorating and all the fun stuff. Yeah, but it always seems that there's something that goes wrong. Either it's septic or sewer, or like you said, gas line, or you've gotta move a meter because they want you to do that.

[00:08:28] Caroline Blazovsky: There's always these popup projects. I just don't anticipate.

[00:08:32] Eric Goranson: Right. It just keeps, it was like when I did my, uh, meter upgrade when I moved into this house. Yeah. You know, I'm like, oh cool. They're like, oh, well you gotta move the meter all the way over here to this side of the house. And I'm like, what. What I wanna put it over here and it ended up being closer to my front door and I'm like, no, man, I don't want it over there.

[00:08:49] Eric Goranson: And they're like, uh, that's code. Sorry. Good. Really? Oh, that's what Eric told. There we go. That was me talking to the power department. [00:09:00] oh yeah. But you know, sometimes those battles are, are, are impossible to win. You just have to shrug your shoulder and go, okay. Got it. Not how I want to do it, but that's what it is.

[00:09:11] Intro: I.

[00:09:12] Caroline Blazovsky: So what else? You've got good stuff coming up this week, by the way.

[00:09:15] Eric Goranson: I'm excited. Oh man. We have a killer show. So we're gonna start out talking about, uh, you know, woods in the wood shop, right? Yeah. Different woods that you can use. And more importantly, which ones are kind of toxic that you probably shouldn't be cutting indoors.

[00:09:29] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[00:09:30] Caroline Blazovsky: Check this out. Wait until you hear it's mind blowing. Like you could just simply be cutting some Doug fur and end up with like a septic

[00:09:37] Intro: splinter. Yeah,

[00:09:40] Eric Goranson: absolutely. So you gotta be super careful of that. And then we dive into what you see on HDTV so much, and that's that, you know, you, you see it, they go in and it's like, all right, we're gonna tear all the walls down on the inside of the house and make this the air quote open concept.

[00:09:56] Eric Goranson: Right? So we talk about that so much. [00:10:00] And, uh, we're gonna dive into load bearing walls, kind of what you should be looking for to see if you have a load bearing wall, cuz it's always a grand debate of what a load bearing wall is. Absolutely.

[00:10:12] Caroline Blazovsky: And, and even people like me mess up.

[00:10:16] Eric Goranson: Oh yeah. It happens. It happens.

[00:10:19] Eric Goranson: And trust me, I've had plenty of projects that we talk about that, uh, that, uh, we're doing a kit tree model and I'm like, That's soffit has load bearing beam in it. What's going on in there, you know, so it stuff happens. And then hour number two. Oh my gosh. This is one of my favorite interviews of the year.

[00:10:38] Eric Goranson: Whoa, that's a big compliment. I know we got Joe Gardner coming on. Joe Lampe. Woo. Talk and gardening. This is gonna be a great,

[00:10:48] Caroline Blazovsky: is Mr. Famous gardener? He's I think he's had like a, I mean, how long has his show been on? Do you even know? He's had a show on PBS for like ever,

[00:10:56] Eric Goranson: ever, ever he's got that. And then of course his podcast for [00:11:00] gardening as well.

[00:11:00] Eric Goranson: So he's the

[00:11:01] Caroline Blazovsky: real deal. He knows gardening guys. So if you have any questions about gardening, you should tune in cuz he answers them all pretty much.

[00:11:09] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm feeling old this week. My daughter's turning 21, my youngest. So it, uh, I'm like, whew. All right. Wow. We're gonna take her out tonight and dinner and cocktails and that kind of stuff.

[00:11:23] Eric Goranson: And, and, uh, and of course I got meetings in the morning, so I won't be hitting it hard by what drink

[00:11:27] Caroline Blazovsky: did you have? I'll be the, when you turned 21, did you have a special drink that you had.

[00:11:33] Eric Goranson: You know, I'll be honest. I didn't because for a number of reasons, um, I'd been drinking in pubs since I was 15, probably.

[00:11:42] Eric Goranson: So I was kinda the roll break. yeah, there's no problem. And I mean, and when I was a kid in Eastern Washington, they just. Didn't worry about IDing people at the pubs. I, I was working at McDonald's. We would go play pool afterwards. And, uh, after work [00:12:00] I'd get off at like 11 o'clock and the bartender didn't care.

[00:12:03] Eric Goranson: And they were really upset when I went in there for my 21st birthday celebration, because I went in there on my 21st birthday and they went. You've been coming here for like

[00:12:13] Intro: six years. You've been 21 for six years.

[00:12:17] Eric Goranson: exactly. Nobody ever ID me, you know? And so they were, they were very kind of upset with me that I.

[00:12:25] Eric Goranson: Coming in there for my 21st birthday. And I almost had my own name on a chair. So it was pretty funny. Well, it was

[00:12:29] Caroline Blazovsky: so much more lax back then. I mean, I would go buy kegs with some fake ID and I obviously did not look 21. I mean, I looked like I was 60 and they didn't care different time. Well,

[00:12:40] Eric Goranson: And, you know, being in Eastern Washington, right across the border into Idaho.

[00:12:44] Eric Goranson: When I was in high school, they had an 18, 18 drinking age. Oh, oh. So there you go. You know, I mean, I could drink in high school technically if I went over into Idaho. So it wasn't that big of a deal back on the day. It's a lot different. Now.

[00:12:58] Caroline Blazovsky: I remember going out on my [00:13:00] 21st birthday and everybody bought me.

[00:13:02] Caroline Blazovsky: Buttery nipples. Do you remember butter? You know what a buttery nip is? Oh,

[00:13:05] Eric Goranson: geez. Old drinks. Yeah. Buttery nipple. I was doing probably back then. I was probably doing the Ru Cokes and the, oh yeah. You know, the, the, the Jack and Coke and that kind of stuff. Kind of the, what I'd call the rookie drinks for a guy, you know,

[00:13:22] Intro: do you remember what you did on your 21st birthday?

[00:13:26] Eric Goranson: You know, I think we went out. Yeah. We just went out and, and, uh, went to a bar and hung out at a sports bar. It wasn't anything like, because you were

[00:13:34] Intro: drinking for 60 prior. So it was like, yeah. You know, you were 21 again. I, since you were like 14

[00:13:41] Eric Goranson: I got all my college drinking out young in age, you know, I got that done out when I was in high school, not in college.

[00:13:46] Eric Goranson: So got it outta the way and then went, all right, we're gonna keep this a little more, dialed back, little more dialed back.

[00:13:51] Caroline Blazovsky: I turned 21 at a bar called the Tallyho, which was in Lehigh, Pennsylvania. I don't know it was a hot place to go, you know, it was like you were college age, [00:14:00] so they served you those college drinks, like,

[00:14:04] Eric Goranson: oh yeah, you were having the, the silly things you were having the, so probably diving into the, the long island ice teas and yeah.

[00:14:12] Eric Goranson: Remember that whole

[00:14:13] Intro: thing.

[00:14:14] Eric Goranson: Oh yeah.

[00:14:16] Caroline Blazovsky: this crazy shots and stuff.

[00:14:18] Intro: Good times.

[00:14:19] Eric Goranson: Yes, good times. But yeah. Yeah. So anyways, we've got a lot going on this summer and, uh, excitement, uh, getting ready to go to Florida for a couple weeks here in a few weeks, gotta be down there for the Southeastern building conference.

[00:14:31] Eric Goranson: So any of you contractors and designers out there in Florida. I'll be at the, uh, SCBC show the first week of August. So come down and say, hi, I'll be down there on the, um, live stage, seeing that area. So come down and say hello to us. Hey, I have to

[00:14:48] Caroline Blazovsky: give a shout out and we're gonna do a little more when my mom does her project, but Sako is giving my mom for her problem.

[00:14:56] Caroline Blazovsky: Some of their great CA to finish the project. Really [00:15:00] big stretch. Nice. Yes. Yeah. They have nicely and kindly donated to fix a problem that she has. And so I promise them, there we go. We'll take some video and we'll share it on the show.

[00:15:11] Eric Goranson: Nice. Yeah. I love our friends over at Saco. Those guys are great. So thank

[00:15:15] Caroline Blazovsky: you.

[00:15:15] Caroline Blazovsky: Thank you guys. And we will let you know how it goes.

[00:15:18] Eric Goranson: And if you don't know who SASCO is, go back and search where you're listen to the podcast here and listen to the episode I did back in February while I was in the booth, talking to them about their different stuff. If you wanna see a good caulking that really stretches and you can use on different things from stucco to brick, to anything else, take a look at that one.

[00:15:37] Eric Goranson: It's a good little conversation we had with, I

[00:15:40] Caroline Blazovsky: reached out to them and I said, I sent them, you know, Instagram's great. Cuz you can just reach out to people. And I asked them, I said, yeah, we're thinking about using. Big stretch because she's got, you know, a pretty good quarter inch gap in between the new flooring now mm-hmm and her trim around her doors and in between.

[00:15:54] Caroline Blazovsky: And so they said, it's perfect for that. That's what it's designed to do. And so, and they so graciously [00:16:00] offered. I mean, they just said, Hey, we'll send her some out to her. I thought that was really sweet. Yeah. So thank you guys. Yeah, those guys

[00:16:04] Eric Goranson: are great. Yeah. Sweet. Yep. Very, they have been supporters of around the house in the past and we have to appreciate that for sure.

[00:16:11] Eric Goranson: So they've been good people, so it's good stuff. I use it around the house here. Uh, for my project. So it works out well, and it's so much better than that stuff that you can get at the, uh, regular home improvement store that, uh, doesn't stretch as much and tends to pull off and fall off. So

[00:16:26] Caroline Blazovsky: yeah, it's such, you can stretch.

[00:16:28] Caroline Blazovsky: It's two inches. That's pretty big.

[00:16:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah, that stuff does it really stretches. And that's the cool thing. When they stretching cock stretchy caulk. You got it. Well, what else you got going on, Caroline? You got some door projects

[00:16:41] Caroline Blazovsky: coming up. Don't you doors going in? So Eric's gonna be partying in Florida and I'm gonna be doing projects, projects left right in center.

[00:16:47] Caroline Blazovsky: So I've got a lot of stuff going on. Yep. Doors going in and uh, I still have to call our friend I've I've gotten a, a hard scape. What we call hardscape recommendation. So they [00:17:00] do landscape and patio, everything all together and make that backyard into that awesome creation that you want. So I'm gonna call some of our friends that were recommended and see what kind of designs they can come up with for us.

[00:17:12] Eric Goranson: Cause you've got a big project from going with a, with a patio, like a paver patio to a deck above it, with doors going in. You've got a lot going on over there. Yeah.

[00:17:21] Caroline Blazovsky: So it's gonna be fun, but it's also gonna. Break the bank, if you will. So it may cause home equity, loan time. I think it's home equity.

[00:17:29] Eric Goranson: Yeah.

[00:17:29] Eric Goranson: And the good news is, is lumber prices. Caroline are way down from where they were, you know, just a couple months ago. So we're getting much better on that line right now. So we're gonna be seeing a lot better pricing for your lumber project. So that's the good news is it's gonna save you a little bit of money than if you did this, like two months ago.

[00:17:47] Eric Goranson: Yeah, no,

[00:17:48] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm liking it,

[00:17:49] Intro: liking it guys.

[00:17:51] Eric Goranson: All right. Well, we should run outta here. Make sure you guys check the show this weekend. And, uh, thanks for tuning in to the hydroplane show that took off [00:18:00] this last weekend about unlimited hydroplane. That was fun.

[00:18:03] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm jealous cuz we don't really have it here in the Northeast, but Eric's got a whole boatload haha.

[00:18:08] Caroline Blazovsky: Boatload of it. And um, it's just fun if you like NASCAR and you like watching potential crashes and really high speed chase. It's so fun.

[00:18:17] Eric Goranson: It's good stuff. So next year, we'll get you out here, Caroline. Oh, I wanna go up for the race.

[00:18:22] Intro: I

[00:18:22] Caroline Blazovsky: love it. I think it's a lot of fun. It's so much more fun than, I don't know.

[00:18:25] Caroline Blazovsky: I think it's better than NASCAR and I do like NAS.

[00:18:28] Eric Goranson: Yeah, I think so too. I think so, too. All right, everybody. I'm Eric G and I'm Caroline B.

[00:18:34] Intro: You've been listening to Around the House!