Hosts: Tom Kraeutler & Leslie Segrete
(NOTE: Timestamps below correspond to the running time of the downloadable audio file of this show. Text represents a professional transcriptionist’s understanding of what was said. No guarantee of accuracy is expressed or implied. ‘Ph’ in parentheses indicates the phonetic or best guess of the actual spoken word.)
BEGIN HOUR 1 TEXT:
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TOM: Coast to coast and floorboards to shingles. This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete.
TOM: The number is 1-888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974. If your toilet’s leaking, if your floor is squeaking call us right now at 888-MONEY-PIT. We’ll help you dig out of the home repair chores around the house. What are you doing? What are you working on? We want to talk about it. We are here to help you get the job done.
This hour we’ve got a great show planned for you. Up first, are your closets easily accessible to everybody in your house? You know, in my house my closets are …
LESLIE: They’re too filled with stuff and no one can get in there?
TOM: My closets are only accessible to those that can reach the pile on the floor. (laughing)
LESLIE: (chuckling) To those who know how to sort through the piles of stuff …
TOM: Yeah, exactly.
LESLIE: … and find exactly what they’re looking for. (laughing)
TOM: Well, if that is your house, no worries. This hour we’re going to have some tips on closet organization. We’re going to give you some tips that will help you if you have kids; show you how to get things in the area where they can reach; and, if you have older relatives, get you some shelves built where it’s in the area where they can reach. Whatever your organizational challenges are, we’re going to sort them out this hour on The Money Pit.
LESLIE: You know, Tom, just mentioning organizational problems, it gets me like the creepy-crawlies. (Tom chuckles) You know I’m so OCD with keeping things tidy. I’m like, ‘Ah, I’m coming to your house next weekend and I’m cleaning things up. That’s just how it’s going.’
And folks, we’re going to have a home improvement vocabulary lesson for you this hour. Do you know what a dormer is? Hmm. Well, here’s a hint: it’s definitely part of your house. And if you don’t know the right terminology for certain parts of your home, it could cost you big dollars. We’re going to tell you how to save a lot of dough and the words you need to know.
TOM: And if you bought an old house that’s been several owners and are now faced with like 100 years of conflicting decorating ideas (Leslie chuckles), we’re going to help you clean that up, too, because this hour we’re giving away, from Stanley, a picture-hanging gift pack. It’s got all the doodads that you need to get the pictures up on the wall and off of the floor and out of the storage. And we’ll help you clean all that up. That’s all coming up this hour on The Money Pit. Call us right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974. The calls are already streaming in.
Leslie, who’s first?
LESLIE: Amanda in Nebraska is looking to install a dishwasher. Hopefully we can help. What’s going on?
AMANDA: How easy is it to install a dishwasher – a built-in dishwasher – and put the fixtures in for like the piping and stuff for a house that has never had a dishwasher in it?
TOM: Well first of all, Amanda, you need enough room to do that. To the left or right of the sink area or somewhere in the cabinet area, would you have a space that’s 24 inches wide?
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
TOM: OK. Because that’s the space that you need for a dishwasher. So you need to carve out that space. Now, if you happen to have, for example, a 24-inch drawer base or 24-inch cabinet that you can remove and you don’t mind losing that much storage, now …
LESLIE: Then it’s a perfect fit.
TOM: Yeah, now it’ll fit fine. In terms of the plumbing itself, not that hard to do because the lines are flexible. You can have a flexible water supply line that connects up and you can also have a flexible drain hose that connects up.
Is this house over a crawlspace?
AMANDA: No, it’s just a regular house with an attic.
TOM: But is it on a slab? What’s underneath the kitchen floor.
AMANDA: Oh. No, there’s a full basement.
TOM: Oh, OK. So then you have access to get under it. You have access between the cabinets. So it’s actually not that terribly hard. You have to run the wiring so you can plug it in. And you have to hook up the plumbing. So you have the drain line and you have the hot water – the hot and cold water supply lines.
AMANDA: OK.
TOM: You need to carve out the space in the cabinets. Those are all the projects that are involved. You know, if you’re a handy person it could be a do-it-yourself project. If not, a plumber or electrician could bang the whole thing out for you.
AMANDA: OK. And can you put one under a sink? Like under the kitchen sink itself?
TOM: (overlapping voices) Can you put under a sink? You know, Leslie and I have been looking a lot into the topic of universal design. And I know that we have seen dishwashers that are split that have drawers so that you have almost two dishwashers in one. But I’ve never seen one that fits under a sink. Have you, Leslie?
LESLIE: No. And then you’re putting the dishes so low to the floor that it becomes a tripping hazard and it becomes sort of a backache every time you have to bend down and get them.
AMANDA: OK.
TOM: Yeah, you really want to put it to the side of the kitchen sink.
AMANDA: OK.
TOM: That would be the place to put it. OK?
AMANDA: Alrighty. Thank you very much and I love your show.
LESLIE: Thanks, Amanda.
Tuning in on WABC in New York we’ve got Sal. Let’s talk flooring. What can we do for you?
SAL: How you doing? Thanks for taking my call.
TOM: Our pleasure.
LESLIE: You’re so welcome.
SAL: I have a den with a – that is on grade. It’s concrete.
TOM: OK.
SAL: And I was wondering what’s good to prevent the moisture from coming up from the concrete and also to prevent it from being – creating a mold.
TOM: So do you want a finished floor that’ll work over concrete? Is that what you’re asking?
SAL: Right, right. I know that you can’t put the rug right on top of it because the moisture comes up from the concrete because it’s on grade.
TOM: That’s true. Concrete is fairly hydroscopic, but you have a lot of options. Two in particular – well, actually – well, three but I’m going to say first of all locking hardwood floor; engineered hardwood floor is a good option. Because it’s engineered it’s made of different laminations that are sort of cross planked (ph) constructed so it’s dimensionally stable. So you can put that down.
LESLIE: And there’s still a vapor sort of underlayment that you have to put below that floating hardwood, correct?
TOM: Exactly. And then second thing is laminate floor which would be a perfect solution here. And laminate floor could look like hardwood or could look like stone or it could look like vinyl or it could look like tile. It’s great stuff, it’s durable stuff. Or of course, you could use one of these premium vinyl materials.
LESLIE: Yeah, there’s actually a lot of different options. The vinyl materials are available in a sheet. They’re full size; they get cut to the room for all those dimensions. I think the sheet products really need to be done by a pro only because they’re so large and unwieldy and the measurements have to be exact. But that’s really a low expense option. And really, they all look good.
SAL: Very good. Thank you so much for your help.
TOM: You’re welcome, Salvador. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Doris in Michigan listens to The Money Pit on WAAM – whamo! How’s it going, Doris? What’s going on at your house?
DORIS: OK, when my washer water goes into the laundry tub there’s a terrible smell. And I don’t know if it’s some water heater water or what it is.
LESLIE: And this is the only place you find the odor. Not in a kitchen sink; anywhere else?
DORIS: Just the laundry tub when the – when washing and that water goes into the laundry tub to disperse. Well, it’s …
TOM: Do you have well water or city water?
DORIS: I have city water.
TOM: I can’t think of a reason for it but what – except that perhaps this: that laundry tub. Where that laundry tub drains, do you know if under that tub there is a u-shaped pipe – it’s called a trap?
DORIS: I think there is but I’m not sure.
TOM: If the laundry tub was not installed properly and there’s no trap, what you might be smelling is a sewage gas that’s backing up from the rest of the house and the rest of the waste pipe back into the house.
LESLIE: And the reason why the trap is installed and it’s u-shaped is because it holds a little bit of water in there which, as the sewer gas comes into it, it sort of dissipates through the water and you don’t smell that odor. So if it’s not there you’re going to smell it.
DORIS: Well, you know, you guess what I did?
LESLIE: What did you do?
TOM: What’d you do?
DORIS: I gave it a good shot of Clorox and, boy, that took care of it. So I figure that must have done something to that water that sets in there.
TOM: Well, the water that sits in there is always changing every time the washer dumps. But if you don’t wash too frequently, if the trap dries out or if you have no trap that’s what’s causing that problem.
LESLIE: And it’s always a good idea, Doris, to maybe a couple times a year run an empty wash with just some bleach in it to clean out everything in there because we are finding that certain bacteria remains within the washer itself.
DORIS: Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. I have been doing that.
TOM: Well, you’re on the right track. Doris, thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Michael in Florida finds The Money Pit on WGUF and there’s oil on a brick drive. Hopefully we can help. What’s going on. What happens?
MICHAEL: I have a red brick interlocking drive and I have oil stains that are coming from my car. And I found a product called Pour-N-Restore that I’ve used to get rid of the oil. And it does a decent job of getting rid of the black oil but then I’m left with this nasty ring that is continuing on. It looks like I’ve got polka dots all over my driveway. (Leslie chuckles).
TOM: Huh. Hey have you fixed the car yet, Michael?
MICHAEL: Yeah, I actually did.
LESLIE: (chuckling) Good.
TOM: (chuckling) I hope you – that would be a good first step, you know?
LESLIE: Unless you really like cleaning.
TOM: If you had called us before you put on this other chemical product we probably would have told you to try something called TSP; stands for trisodium phosphate.
MICHAEL: Right.
TOM: And you can make a paste of this stuff and cover the oil stains and then let it sit for a bit and rinse it off. Probably not a bad idea to try it now to see if you can pull out anything else that’s causing this stain. But it may in fact be that this product is – has had a chemical reaction with the brick color and you may not be able to change it back.
MICHAEL: OK. Would you recommend putting acid on at all?
TOM: No, because now you’re really going to start to mess with the color. If you want to try to step it up, I mean try to pick at least one area. Because they’re pavers you can actually take that brick out of the driveway and take it to another area and see if you can sort of test some different cleaning processes on it there. But the other thing to think about is if you have all of these spots and you do have pavers you can simply replace those areas that are damaged with new pavers because they’re fairly interchangeable.
MICHAEL: OK. Well I’ll give the TSP a shot and see how that works.
TOM: Alright, Michael. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
LESLIE: Hey, Money Pit listeners. Is there a remodeling project in your future? Well, we can help get you and your home ready if you call in your home repair or your home improvement question 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
TOM: 888-666-3974.
Is your closet a one-size-fits-all affair? Well, if so it probably doesn’t work well for everyone in your family. But if you make some simple changes now it will carry you through all of life’s phases in your house. Kids, adults, parents; you need room for your closets? We’ll talk about that, next.
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ANNOUNCER: The Money Pit is brought to you by Therma-Tru, the nation’s leading manufacturer of fiberglass entry and patio door systems. Choose the brand more building professionals prefer. And add up to $24,000 to the perceived value of your home. For more information, visit ThermaTru.com.
TOM: This is The Money Pit Home Improvement Radio Show. I’m Tom Kraeutler.
LESLIE: And I’m Leslie Segrete. And if you give us a call right now at 1-888-MONEY-PIT we’ve got a prize today that’s going to help you put all those finishing details into your home’s d
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