Avoiding DIY Fails: Tips from the Experts

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It's the nation's number one home improvement radio show and podcast with certified kitchen designer Eric G. And co host John Dudley, a former contractor and online technology expert.

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Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

I am Eric G. John Dudley.

It seems like it's been forever since we chatted.

Good to see you again, my friend.

Does seem like a long time dude.

Good to see you, brother.

But you should have your brace on.

And I'm going to tell your doctor.

I know it is my last day and I'm sitting at the office and my arm is gently sitting on the armchair here of my chair.

So I'm not doing any damage.

You can justify however you want, but you shouldn't be doing it.

And that's exactly why we get tomorrow.

So I got 24 hours.

I'm just cheating on the system just a little bit.

I am three weeks ahead though, on my PT though, so they're happy with me there.

So I'll give them that.

You know what, we've been friends for decades and I give you the same speech every time.

You never freaking listen to me and I don't listen to you, so we're even.

Fair point, brother, fair point.

Today I thought we should have some fun talking about some common DIY disasters out there that people should avoid at all costs.

Because I tell you what, if social media is good for one thing, it's good for documenting them, right?

My gosh, I don't know.

How many times have you seen the one where a roofer is carrying three tab up on the deck and it's a second story deck and they stack a pallet of three tabs by hand on the deck.

That's pretty smart.

Pretty smart.

And the dude walks up, carries up the top of the steps.

It's literally, it's higher than a pallet, so it's probably got three or four bundles too much.

And the guy slaps it down on top of it because he's obviously tired.

Down he goes.

And down he goes.

The whole deck drops feet, pulls away from the house first, comes down and then pushes the posts over and lands on the ground.

And it's all from their security camera

and it's, wow, the magic carpet.

Nice.

Yeah.

Full on carpet ride.

It was just like not only is he doing a roof he's probably got an ambulance ride because there's probably £2,500 of roofing that went somewhere.

As a guy that started out at 18 years old as a hot roofer, I could go through a list of incidents and roof falls I've taken and all that stuff.

But I remember one time, the hot pipe.

We're trying to unscrew the hot pipe from the kettle, clip me across the eyebrow, flip me wide open, man, gushing blood everywhere.

I legitimately stuck duct tape on it and said, let's get this roof.

So if he's any kind of roofer worth his salt, he'll get back up

there, get to work.

That's the thing.

Safety is important, but it's one of those things that you go, oof.

Stuff goes sideways.

And sometimes these good planning moments will save you from those disasters because, you know, no one wants to see anybody get hurt.

At the same time, if you don't get hurt, who wants to have to go build a deck too, on top of that, once you get the roof done?

Yeah, that.

That probably hurt more than any shingles landed on the deal.

Yeah.

Yeah, man.

I just bought a deck.

Really?

I just bought a deck.

And I didn't think it would have been a roofing contractor because most roofing contractors would have had that delivered to the rooftop.

I got a feeling this was a. Oh, yeah, A handyman or a diy.

Yeah, that's my guess.

That makes sense, if nothing else.

Generally speaking.

Again, there's varied definitions of common sense, but generally speaking, a roofer knows you don't stack that kind of weight on

a deck for the hot tub, and it was fully engineered for that.

You're literally putting the hot tub weight up on that.

So not a smart thing when you're dropping a couple thousand pounds of something.

No.

And you know the liability as a contractor, you're like, no, we don't want to screw up the deck and we don't want this pallet of even just the market might leave on the deck.

You don't want that.

No.

Pallets are not put together carefully.

There's always a bent over nail or something in the bottom that's going to mess something up.

It's never good.

It's never good.

Another one, man, I tell you what, here was another DIY nightmare.

I'm going to take a picture of this.

I'll put it up on Facebook.

This I found in my house in Lake Ao.

This is a 102 Romex and they added on the light circuit on the other side of the garage from it.

And so to describe this, they stripped back the romex, took two wires of.

I don't know, it's flexible, like it's trailer wiring or something.

And then if we unwrap this.

Which I've never done.

Yeah, they just stripped things back and slid it in here.

It looks very Columbia, to be honest.

It does.

It looks like your shower head installations.

It totally does.

Come on, guys.

If you're gonna add on to a circuit, do it in a junction box, please.

Who's got time for that?

I know it.

But some of the stuff.

And we found electricity.

It's not like it can burn the house down or anything.

So here's the funny part, man.

And this was awesome.

We ran into this so much in the 50s beach house in the original wiring where I don't know if it was not being inspected or if it wasn't code back then, but there were so many times you could tell where they ran out of wire off the spool and just spun it twisted together and taped it up and put it right back in the wall.

This was not a repair.

What are wire nuts?

What are junction boxes?

What are you talking about?

That's why they made electrical tape.

Yeah, that's why they call it.

But it was like in its defense, it lasted.

Held up certain years.

Yep.

But still not the optimal of safety.

And actually bring up something that's important.

And that's our perspective.

Right.

Because we're always yapping about, ah, these crazy codes are so ridiculous.

And.

And there's actually a lot of truth in that beyond what we really talk about.

Because you just said it, dude.

What?

Wow?

You did what?

You spliced together two by fours by notching them and putting a nail through them.

And that's a roof truss like.

And guess what?

It worked for 100 years.

You know something, Johnny?

Right now would have been a great time to slide in next week's new sponsor.

We're bringing on the show Red Wing Shoes.

I love those guys.

And you can check out what they've got over there@redwingshoes.com but they're going to be a new sponsor we've got coming on the show next week.

And right now would have been the perfect time to slide it in.

But I love those guys and what they're doing.

So little sneak peek for our partnership coming together next week.

Speaking of lasting for a hundred years, right?

Yeah.

Seriously, those are around since the beginning of time, and I just love how they do stuff that is just old school.

Whether you're a lumberjack or a cowboy out there with your boots or an

ad guy in the 50s.

Like, they covered it all right.

Yeah.

Plenty of people been swearing and wearing for a lot of years with those fellas.

Yeah, it's.

And they've just got some really cool stuff.

All right.

Just wanted to make sure before I misspoke.

So you are closer than I am.

So.

Yeah.

Whoosh.

Wow.

That's crazy.

Absolutely.

So great stuff from those guys.

Speaking of safety, when it comes into getting back to our absolute craziness when we see this with projects, when in doubt with the electrical stuff, guys, just hire the electrician to come out.

If you don't understand it, hire them and maybe stand back across the room and watch what they're doing and understand it a little bit better.

Because that's one of those things that you can have a problem.

You can have a problem if you don't do it right.

It's super important.

There's two things I never liked really messing with, even after 30 years of being in the trades, man, like electrical and gas.

If I had any kind of question or doubt because I knew it'd keep me up at night, I just wouldn't do it.

I'd call Sparky.

No, I just.

I need to know that stuff is done right.

And that's a guy that had been building houses for 30 years.

Like.

Absolutely.

I knew where not to mess around.

And those are two places right there.

Yeah.

We're gonna have to go, at the

very least, watch a YouTube video from a real electrician.

Yeah.

You were using the book out of Home Depot before you.

So that's the thing, you know, John, that is one issue that I see out there that people need to consider.

So always consult your local building code to make sure you're tackling that electrical correctly.

I think there is some significant danger on, you know, being in Canada, watching the US or vice versa, because electrical code can really different even from state to state and how you're doing it, even though, generally speaking, it's the same across the US but we're seeing so many changes now in electrical code.

Just like kitchen islands where you don't put the outlet in the side anymore.

Those kind of things that we're starting to see.

And we're seeing those outlets put on the top.

So there's A lot of issues that we need to be careful with because it could be five years old at that YouTube video you're watching, and then you're getting yourself in trouble.

So always consult a professional and make sure that you're doing what's right for your area.

That way you're safe and you're not kind of co mingling different codes because that could lead to problems and worse off, even a fire.

All right, when we come back, we got more DIY disasters.

We'll talk about that just a second.

Soon as around the House returns.

Don't go anywhere.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Johnny and I have been sitting here talking about those DIY disasters, and I think the smartest thing you can do, brother out there, is plan ahead.

Right?

I mean, whatever.

The project is just planning ahead and coming up with a game plan, just like you would for if you were a football coach or whatever.

Just come up with the game plan so you know what you're heading so you can get things in order and do them the right way.

Because so many times I see people and you do too.

They all right, I'm gonna do my kitchen remodel.

And they knock it out.

Then they realize that they're gonna do the bathroom model next.

But half the stuff that they're re plumbing and rewiring from the bathroom had to go through the kitchen.

So now they're ripping up walls again.

And you just got to think ahead of the entire project and put it into consumable bites.

Well, and again, I'm going to say this, and I'm going to say it firmly now because we've talked about it more than a few times on the show.

There is no excuse for not planning and not knowing what you're getting into, because that's how you get in trouble, dude.

Spend the two minutes.

Go ask Grok.

Go ask ChatGPT.

Hey, what should I be thinking about?

What are priorities?

What are important to note?

What should I consider for future planning?

Ask five solid questions about what you're thinking about doing and you will get in 30 seconds.

Like, more than you want to read about how to pull it off successfully and execute without going, oh, I didn't think about that.

And costing yourself money or an extra week or double work.

Just.

Dude, we have AI.

We've got YouTube.

It's so information out there, Johnny.

We can just go back into the 2,000 episodes on the podcast player.

I'm sure you can find it.

Yeah.

So no excuses, no Excuses.

If you get mud on your face, that's your mud.

You get zero sympathy from me at this point.

Sorry.

Talking about planning.

I want to talk to you about this one brother.

I have been watching all the news and this is not a political discussion here by any means.

But there's the Obama Presidential center that's being built in Chicago and I'm a little bit more of a classic architecture person.

I go with the Frank Lloyd Wright.

That building should fit in its environment.

And I'm going to say the Presidential center there, that obelisk or whatever you want to call it definitely is a bold statement and I'm going to say that as nice as I can.

I will back you on, on, on, on.

Let's on placement and scale according to its environment.

Fair enough.

Putting a skyscraper in a middle of a neighborhood and park.

That's exactly what it is.

That's exactly what it is.

But I will say that I like the design.

I thought it looked pretty damn cool, but yeah.

Is it compensatory?

Maybe man.

It's over there by the University of Chicago and all you guys over there.

I get it.

But.

And it's opening up on Juneteenth, so it's not open yet.

Which is probably why I like the design itself.

There we go.

I'm like that's actually cool looking but

like, I don't know, it just reminds

me like in no Man's Land movies

and there's a lot of buildings that I like that people go what?

How do you like that?

Like some of the brutalist architecture out there.

I love all of it.

This thing just, I don't know, it just doesn't do it for me.

And I guess the other thing that's weird to me and I get it in one hand but it's not really a presidential library.

They're not calling it a library because there's no books in it.

Everything right now.

Yeah, so I get that they.

Oh, it was probably a lot of emails and things like that in the day but usually libraries are places.

This is a hundred percent digital place and it's.

Huh.

I kind of like the old book theory.

I was just gonna say that actually I hadn't really thought about that.

That's happening so much now.

And look at all the incredible libraries in history we've lost.

Whether it was in Rome or whatever.

But.

But I still like that.

Like I still want to see Documents I still want to see.

Yeah, I'm with you on that.

That's.

There's a power surge gonna take out the entire.

Yeah.

Library.

10,000 drive.

Yeah.

Servers down.

Yeah.

It's a bummer to see that piece of.

Really.

Books are art, man.

It's sad to see so much of that go away.

And I still can't sit there and read on like a Kindle or one of those things yet.

I still want to have that if I'm gonna reset and I don't take the time like I used to.

But if I'm gonna take the time and read a book, I want to feel it and go through it, and I totally do.

Yeah.

That's coming from a guy that owns 3, 000 vinyl records.

So that's.

I don't.

You know, my take on that stuff.

Yeah.

I want to.

Bigger.

I have a huge.

Yeah, I got a huge digital collection, but I can't tell you the last time I played anything off of it.

Everything is on vinyl that I want to listen to.

Yeah.

Anyway, back to the.

Anyway back to the giant.

But anyway came up in the news today and I saw it and I was like, wow, they got more built on it.

And I'm still not any more of a fan.

Well, I feel it's important just to point out to our audience just one small thing about your taste.

When I mentioned how I liked the.

The lettering, I didn't difficult to read through.

Sure, it's squirrely, but I like that piece of the design.

And you brought up.

I would have liked it neon.

I would have liked it neon.

I'm just saying we're qualifying tastes here so the people know.

Eric, I think though you could have went through in the art of.

It would have been the neon would have been up there in white and the words would have gone at President Obama's pace of reading it.

Okay.

And each word would have lit up at his kind of that stagger, stutter pace that he has.

He's got his.

He's got it.

I like that idea.

But I do want to say.

Now you're talking about neon from the guy that was just talking about.

I wish there were books in this digital place.

I'd rather have neon over LED every day.

That's the old school, dude.

I'm totally heckle fishing.

I know you are.

But anyway, back to our list here.

One of the other things, too, I want to bring up here before we go out to break again.

Just because you can buy it in the home centers is not.

Does not mean that you can actually use it in your house.

There are so many things in a home center that you can buy that don't meet building code.

Good point.

Think of it.

Now, in my area, in most places in the US you actually have to duct a range hood outside.

Completely outside.

You're right.

Do they still sell what I call the forehead dusters that blow it right off in your face and do nothing but just mix it up?

I don't know why I wish they would ornament.

Yeah.

And same with the flexible plumbing drain pipes with the corrugated flex in them.

Yeah.

Don't get me started.

The ones that you can.

How can you say you're not a plumber without saying you're a plumber when you have that in your cart?

Right.

Not that I haven't used them.

No, I will not.

I will not.

I. I'll leave with 100 bucks for the plastic fittings and then bring of them back before I get the flex one out.

Ah, man.

If I got to get a half

inch, I start over, cut it out and do it over again.

You get all bendy spelling S's with it.

I'm not bagging you on that.

But for a quarter inch, half inch move and.

Yeah.

No, live with it.

No, I do it.

Then you get the inspector that sticks her head under there and goes, Johnny,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I give him a bottle of whiskey and talk about fishing.

And he goes, yep, all good here.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So another one that I've got here too, we'll talk about when we come back.

And we're going to talk about this one.

It's what you use to patch up your forehead that we talked about in the last segment.

Duct tape.

As soon as around the House returns.

Don't go anywhere.

Now let's let John and Eric play you out with stories from their band Dudley around the House.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us.

We've been talking about those DIY fails and Johnny, this week, I saw this last week, actually, I saw a contractor fail that was pretty much bigger than many of the homeowner fails that I've seen out there.

So it happens.

I've seen them.

Yeah, this was a bad one.

And this is about knowing the materials that you're working with in Southeast Portland.

Here in my area, a Trader Joe's Store had to close because somebody decided to go in there, peel up some flooring, it appears, and decided to do some grinding on the black tar mastic that was holding that tile flooring down.

And guess what?

They had black dust all over the store.

And the black dust, after they brought it up to the department of the DEQ here, environmental quality guys, they tested it and went, yeah, that's asbestos.

Which.

Dude, that black tar mastic is full of.

It is full of it.

Oh, man.

How do you.

And you imagine what that cost?

And then when you told me about this, that's why I asked if it was.

And not pointing fingers or anything, anybody can make a silly mistake, but that sounds.

I'm 22, I'm starting a contract company, and I'm maybe not old enough.

And it's a general generational thing, Right?

Like, you and I know there's asbestos in that old black mastic.

If you're 22, you're like, I don't know, there's some goop under here, right?

Yeah.

Grind it off.

I'm just saying.

Honest mistake.

But then I'm going to say, how did you not think to contain that when you were first off, if you're

working in a store anywhere, we got fresh fruit, you got open stuff.

Why are you not doing some dust control stuff anyway?

Why?

That's what I mean.

Why is that not contained completely?

Like one speck of dust?

Get your wall partitions and plastic out and get busy, kid.

Yeah.

So the DEQ, the store says that the store had since February 15, but undergoing a renovation project which included flooring work.

But they said enough.

Earlier, an asbestos survey by the store's contractor did not turn up asbestos, but the survey did not examine all the different flooring materials.

Oh, see, no, that's not.

So now it's a totally honest mistake.

I don't know the situation at all.

What could have happened is they could have cut that little piece of flooring out.

It didn't have the flooring down there, didn't have any glue on.

They sent it off.

Totally honest mistake.

That's fair.

That's fair.

I'm gonna back off on that one.

Still gonna contain the dust, but I'm gonna back off on the asbestos.

Ouch.

And if you saw the black mastic, you should have just assumed

they sent for testing.

They did.

They didn't send it all for testing.

And so that's where the error occurs.

Do you blame the tester?

Do you blame the guy that tried the test and it said, no, I

don't know, I'll bl the grinder in his hand.

They should have known better.

What's your take there, Johnny?

I'm a 30 year contractor.

You tell me there's not asbestos because there's some of that masic that doesn't have asbestos.

I have not.

I've never had the black stuff.

Not test to have asbestos in it.

I've never tested the bu.

So you never tested any.

What are you talking about?

Yeah, but only on my own properties because I don't care.

And I just grind it.

Sin sans respirator.

Yep.

It's no worse than the cigarettes, right?

That's what you're saying?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's my take.

I just look at it and go, first off, that block dust shouldn't have been around in the store.

Second of all, I think anybody run on that grinder should have went, hey, let's ask a few more questions.

Right?

Are we sure?

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, yeah.

I'll give you.

I'll give you a second opinion backing on that.

Okay.

Okay.

So anyway, here's the thing.

At the same time, when you're a contractor and the test says no, you're like, cool, we just saved.

Right?

Right.

Y and I got a better Christmas coming.

So that's my contractor mentality that kicks in, Right.

Hey, man, we ran the test and you knew as a contractor that you're going to make an extra x thousands of do.

You're like, hey, test said, no, it's a go.

So then that's a general mentality now.

Has to probably pay for the store being closed.

You're going to lose profits on a per day basis.

So there's expenses there.

You're now probably replacing just about everything in that store because I bet you it's cheaper to toss a product away than it is to clean it on that side of the packaging.

I'm not saying it's not a dice roll with that kind of mentality.

I'm just saying that's the general $2 million dice roll.

The mentality of a contractor, Right?

You're like, we got the test set.

It's okay.

Yeah.

I'm sure there's more to this story that we'll probably see play out in court as days go on.

I was just gonna say it's gonna be a long fight because I didn't know there was a test when you first told me about this.

So, yeah, now it's in.

Yeah.

Now it's two years in court.

Yeah.

So, you know, it still requires a payment and there's the problem that we run into guys, and it's so much of that.

Like here in Portland, where I'm at in the state of Oregon.

Great example.

When I go to the dump and I've got a truck full of stuff or a trailer full of stuff to go take there, know what your rules are?

Because in my area here, if I have building materials in there, I better have my asbestos survey paperwork with me.

Yeah.

Because if there is drywall with texture, if there is flooring, if there is roofing tar, if there's a bunch of different products in there, if I don't have that, they're going to tell me to go home.

They're not going to let me dump it.

Yeah, they've got.

So if you were doing a.

If you're renovating a brand new building, they still are forcing you to have that.

And the same thing is if you order a dumpster, it's the same thing here.

You're seeing more and more of that out there.

So that testing is getting more and more important.

And like for my house, when I stripped the popcorn ceilings off my old house, I tested it, I went around and got a bunch of samples, took it in.

It was clean.

Yeah.

Awesome.

And the other mistake I see people make out there is asbestos was used, it still is in some building materials.

So it's not really officially banned.

No, that's lead paint.

Yeah.

No, you can.

There's still plenty of things with asbestos.

Think about it.

You know that.

Doing breaks, huh?

Yeah, I was just gonna say car products especially.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Doing brakes.

Most of those brake linings are asbestos out there.

Yeah.

Now you're starting to see carbon fiber.

You're seeing all these different things out there.

Some metallic, you're seeing stuff.

But that's a great example is brake text with asbestos.

That's another huge one out there.

Yeah.

So that's getting interesting.

But just be careful out there.

Any of those products out there, slow down, take the test.

The problem with that dust is though, it can.

If you're not filtering that air, though, that stuff can hang around for years inside the home.

So if you make a mistake and do it, you really have to go through the cleaning in that because that dust can hang around and first time it gets disturbed again, it can be floating around for months in the air.

So it's so fine.

And it's a mineral.

It just doesn't go away.

Are you finished?

Because I'm just thinking back on all the projects I did.

I know you're just.

And I'm just dumb enough to go, I don't care.

Johnny.

In fairness, there were no asbestos rules when you were doing that back in the day.

There probably was.

We just didn't much care about them.

And they definitely weren't what they are today, for sure.

Oh, and you're working in the Northwest, like all those turn of the century homes, there's asbestos everywhere.

You're like, dude, I don't have time.

I got work to do.

You're in contractor mode.

You're just like, no, we got to get this thing done.

We gotta.

Whether it's getting it on the market or getting the client happy or, dude,

my first house, I took out the coal furnace that was in the coal furnace building on the back of the house.

It was this little lean to.

It was wrapped in asbestos.

I wet it down, I peeled it off, I shoved it inside the burner area.

For that.

I closed and latched the cast iron door where you'd put the coal in.

And I backed my truck up against it, pushed it over in the back of my truck.

It was so heavy in my quarter ton truck that it lifted the front wheels off when it fell over.

And I went, ooh, that is way heavier than I thought.

And when I pulled into the steel yard, they grabbed it with the, with the magnetic grappler thing and stuck it.

It lifted off and threw it the back of a rail car and off it went.

But you sure can't do that now.

No, no.

Yeah, no.

And yeah.

No, I got very.

Stuff we just got to be careful with out there, brother.

We just got careful.

No, it's smarter and I'm just not that smart sometimes.

Like we said back then, it wasn't a big deal.

Now it's all over the place.

It's all over the place.

I totally take that.

I want to talk about one that is so common, and I see it all the time because we've been out looking at houses and I see this so often that I go, oh, man, so many people get burned on this one.

We'll talk about 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 everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us today.

Johnny and I have been sitting here talking about, well, those mistakes that everyone seems to make out there.

Diyers Even contractors can make from time to time.

And we're trying to see if we can help prevent those by discussing them here today.

And Johnny, one of the biggest ones that I keep running into I see out there is converting garage space without permits.

Yeah.

And you see it a lot in the older homes, maybe in the 50s that had like the single car garage, you know, the front.

Yeah.

Now it's a rec room or a mother in law or Airbnb, kids living

out there, that kind of thing.

And I tell you what though, you got to pull permits on this stuff because here's the thing, across the country, generally speaking, and I say generally speaking because there's always someplace out there that does that's a little their own wild west.

But if you didn't pull a permit for it, it's not generally considered living space.

Yeah.

It's not square footage on the sale.

Exactly.

And I've run into this so many times and we've talked about on the show before, but let's say you've got a, an old nice farmhouse that when it was built in the 20s, they pulled a permit on it.

Yeah.

Many places had permits back then.

Even Portland, Oregon had permits back then.

And let's say it was 700 square feet.

In the main living space, there was a basement that was unfinished and an attic storage space.

Well, then it's still 700 square feet.

Come in and buy it.

Right.

And this thing is a 2,500 square foot beauty with a finished basement and an upstairs floor.

And they pay 3 or 400 bucks a square foot or whatever that square footage price is for this property.

And they go to pull their first building permit and they're like, that's storage space up there.

How can you be remodeling a master bedroom suite?

And $10 later, as you bring that up to current 20, 26 code, now you can start working on the remodel.

You know what I think they should do?

Here's just a wild thought.

Sorry to cut you off a little bit.

No, do it.

Why don't we, you know, why don't we just like grandfather it in?

Like, hey, this got done in, you know, XYZ year.

A permit should have cost back then, huh?

Why don't we do that?

Why don't we talk about that?

Come on, city.

Here's, here's the problem though.

You know, here's the problem.

And so I agree with that.

Especially something that was done 30 or 40 years ago.

That's what I mean.

Retroactivate.

Go back to the fees you know how much was it in?

72 when they made the garage into a rec room?

Yeah, right.

No big deal.

87.

Not 87,000.

Come on.

Oh, man.

And you're not wrong.

And so how many times do you see that?

I've seen that.

We had one big problem in the city of Portland is when they did the converting to digital, they lost about eight years with the permits.

So.

Yeah.

So whose fault is that?

You could have pulled a permit and you're not going to know officially if they did or not with that.

Hopefully it shows up in the square footage.

But here's where my problem is though.

They didn't get what their bill of goods as they sold.

Yeah.

And now they have, now they got a loan on a 700 square foot house.

Yeah.

And no one looks for that.

The realtor isn't looking for it.

Honestly, it should be on them.

That's what I'm getting at.

Right.

Like there's a big gray hole right there.

The banks aren't looking for it.

If I was the bank, I'd want to know what I'm buying.

That's my point.

The buyer.

In my opinion, that shouldn't be on the buyer.

Right.

You're paying all those people.

You are paying the realtor, the mortgage company.

Right.

The everybody escrow, all that stuff.

The title company, all that stuff is on them.

So if I gotta go pull an $87,000 permit because you said it was a 2,400 square foot house and I want to redo my kitchen, guess what, man, Somebody else is liable for that.

Beauty.

That is not cool, man.

That's why you pay those people to do that math to me.

I think it should.

I think the double check should be probably, should be probably at the escrow department.

Now I'm saying escrow department.

Some people don't do that.

If you buy a house like a New Jersey, there isn't all of that.

Generally speaking, from what I understand is you actually go to a, go to a lawyer that walks through the rest of the sale.

But in many places in the country here, it's a title company escrow company.

They do all the research to make sure.

Yeah.

The people sounded actually own it.

You know, I mean there's so many other ridiculous disclosure statement stuff.

Right.

And that's not one of them.

I mean, come on, guys.

I mean, come on.

It's a pretty simple thing.

I want to know that and how many people died in the house.

And it should show up in the title search.

That's what doesn't make sense.

Well, but they're not talking to the building department because here's the problem.

A lot of times they're dealing with the tax department.

And guess what?

If you tell the tax man, it's your county assessor or whatever, your city assessor, if you tell them township or whatever, if you tell them you got a 4,800 square foot house, they would love to tax you for that.

Right?

Yeah, good point.

Yep.

Yeah.

What a bunch.

So there's the issue.

I just think.

I just think there's no way that the, that the, that the buyer should have the responsibility of having to do that research and math with all the parties involved that you're paying as a buyer.

That's nonsense.

Yeah, I think that the.

I think even if the realtor should have to look that up and call them and get the thing and then

the somebody has to disclose it.

Yeah.

Because if I get snagged three years down the road, that's coming back on somebody else.

Not on me or title company, not escrow like you said.

Dude, you sold me a bad deal of goods.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You had no idea.

Super not cool.

So I think that's one of those.

Anyway.

Sorry.

Got a little heated there.

No, I know it.

No, it's good.

I like it.

When I get you fired up, brother.

It's good.

So there's anyway, there's so many of these things out there, you know, that you should be taking a.

Taking account of these big things.

There's always going to be mistakes that happen.

It's remodeling, it's doing projects.

Stuff happens.

It happens to the best of them.

But really trying to stop these big things from happening are really where you need to do that research.

Yeah.

Again, just being aware, man, doing the research.

Like I said, there's so many tools and resources out there.

I mean you could learn to be a heart surgeon on YouTube.

At this point, I mean, yeah, just do.

If you spend two hours on a Sunday afternoon going, here's whatever you're planning, you will benefit 100 fold.

Like whether it's time, money or agony, you will save on all fronts.

Like, just do some math.

Some areas need a.

Need a permit to put up a fence.

Some people need it to put up a shed.

Sometimes they need it for a deck.

Sometimes if it's a low deck, you don't.

There's a lot of things you should be taking a look at before you start these spring projects out there.

Find out what they deal with it in your area.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Like my old house, I looked at it, I was putting a fence up and I went, I'm going to look anyway.

I know that I'm okay with a six foot fence.

Then I went, oh, I'm going to

put it across the front.

Oh, I can't put it.

So I looked it up and I went, okay, is it going to be a three foot fence or a four foot fence?

What, are they going to force me to do it across the front?

Because my house was far back.

And they said, nope, My, my street, because it was a busier street, was exempt.

As long as I put the fence 10ft back from the property line, I could go 6ft.

I was like, sweet.

Like your house in Tacoma, right?

You know?

Yep.

Well, except you just put that up and just said, come at me.

Am I, I told you earlier.

Like, am I wrong?

I may have broken a few rules along the way or not paid attention to them at the very least, you know, and that's.

Sometimes I'm a contractor, man.

Leave me alone.

Just want to go fishing, hang out

with my dogs from city services and knocked on your gate and put up a sign that said red tag, fix it in 20 minutes.

You'd have been out there with a snap plan and a circular saw and it would have been laying across the sidewalk.

carriage house, that was the great band room.

Do you remember Brad Dorman, the city building inspector that came to my housewarming party?

Yes, I do.

Enough said.

Yep, I get that.

I get that.

Speak of that, I'm getting ready to get into a battle with the city of Cannon beach out there at the beach house.

That's good fun.

We'll have to talk about that on another one here because we're going to Run out of time here in a minute.

But they're telling me that since we're renting that out that we legally can't have a fire pit.

Now, you know what?

You told me this the other day.

And I want to know how they.

What they define as a fire pit.

I mean, what if you just don't make a pit?

What if I just build a fire on the damn grass, throw the solo

stove and throw it down supposedly.

But here's my thing.

I think this is what I'm gonna do.

If I put a solo stove out there and some sticks and some hot dogs, to me, that's a cooking device.

Whether or not the hot dogs or not, this is.

There's got to be better things to worry about than a freaking fire pit in Cannon Beach.

I know it's a beach, but.

I know.

But why does my neighbor who doesn't rent out get to have four fire pits in their front yard but I can't have one because we might rent it out to somebody?

That's where.

You know why?

Yep.

Because people got to get paid, Eric.

Yep.

Absolutely.

It's kind of like hoas.

This is just the city version.

And in Cannon beach, jobs are a little sparse, so, you know, they may make a few things up that, you know, create some additional work.

It's just going to cost me a thousand dollar fine experiment to see if that passes or not.

Or an 80 bottle of, you know, $80 bottle of good whiskey.

Scotch could fix it, too.

You never know.

Beneficial story.

Then you got the inspector showing up at your housewarming party.

Oh, we already had him show up at the housewarming party once, so that could happen.

So there you go.

That's how you do it.

All right, Johnny.

Great time on this hour today, brother.

We got a great hour coming up.

If you're listening on the radio or the podcast, just hit to the next one.

Thanks for tuning around the house.

We'll see you in the next one.

Now let's let Eric and John take you out with their song Walk Away Girl.

Thanks for tuning into the around the House with Eric G. Show.