Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Home In Progress
LeisureHome & GardenEducationHow ToArtsDesign

Home In Progress

Dan Hansen/RepcoLite Paints

Welcome to Home in Progress—the weekly show from RepcoLite Paints where we dig into the projects and little fixes that make home life better. Paint colors, design tricks, flooring, plumbing, yard work—you name it. If it happens at home, we’ll talk about it. Think of it as helpful advice with a sense of humor, always leaving you with something useful and a smile.

Play
Open in
  • 29 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 41 min
  • English

Episodes 29

NewestOldestLongest
All20Unplayed20In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • #481
    Yesterday · 40 min

    How to Stop Swirl Marks From a Random Orbital Sander

    Original Air Date: October 17, 2026 Episode Number: 481 Episode Summary Two topics this week. First, a follow-up to last week’s interview with Jean Stoffer and Grace Start. Jean mentioned that she fell for British kitchens because they had furniture, coziness, and a sense of being a room people gathered in rather than a wall of boxes. That sent Dan down a rabbit hole and into the work of English designer Johnny Grey, who challenged the whole idea of the fitted kitchen back in 1980 and spent a career designing kitchens around the people in them. Dan covers where Grey’s thinking came from, what separates a fitted kitchen from an unfitted one, and the specific ideas that show up in his work: furniture instead of built-ins, designing for eye contact, soft geometry, counter heights matched to the actual cook, and a kitchen that looks like somebody lives there. Second half is random orbital sanders and the little pigtail swirls they leave in wood. Dan spent years assuming those were unavoidable. They aren’t. The sander wasn’t the problem. Timestamps [00:00] -- Show Preview [00:41] -- British Kitchen Inspiration [04:47] -- Johnny Gray Origins [07:02] -- Fitted vs Unfitted [10:49] -- Furniture First Design [13:17] -- Conversation and Comfort [16:28] -- Humane Ergonomics [17:59] -- Lived In Kitchen Style [19:29] -- Orbital Sander Setup [20:22] -- When Sanding Is Worth It [21:08] -- Lead Paint Safety First [22:18] -- Why Orbital Swirls Happen [25:10] -- Stop Skipping Grits [27:30] -- Move the Sander Right [29:52] -- Light Pressure Slow Passes [32:00] -- Start On Stop Off [34:12] -- Dust Collection Matters [35:31] -- Corners Curves Hand Sanding [37:04] -- Final Hand Sanding Check [37:34] -- Inspect With Raking Light [38:13] -- Pro Tools And Wrap Up Where This Came From [00:41] Last week’s guests were Jean Stoffer and her daughter Grace Start from Jean Stoffer Design. The whole conversation is worth hearing, but one piece of it stuck. Jean described needing a kitchen in her own house more than thirty years ago, going looking for ideas, and finding what she wanted in British magazines. She said those kitchens were thought of differently. More of a gathering space, closer to a keeping room, with actual furniture in them and a coziness that American kitchens did not have. Her description of what we had instead: boxes screwed up on walls. She sat down at her drafting table with those magazines and a magnifying glass to work out what exactly was making the difference. Dan wanted to know too, and went digging. Johnny Grey [04:47] One British designer kept turning up. Jean never said whose kitchens she was looking at, only that they were British, so this is not a claim that she was studying Grey’s work specifically. But his ideas were getting a lot of attention right when she was looking, and they line up closely with what she described. What makes Grey interesting is the size of the question he was asking. Not where the fridge goes and where the stove goes, but what kind of life do the people living here want this room to make possible. Where that came from. Grey grew up in a big family in London. If you wanted to find his mother, you went to the kitchen, which was small and dark and in the basement. He remembers peeling potatoes down there at a counter built for somebody much taller, which turns up again later in his thinking. The family later got a cottage in the country and that kitchen was not much better: hard wooden chairs, almost no counter space, no heat. He and his brothers and his mother still sat in there for hours reading and talking and working. That’s the part worth sitting with. Nobody gathered in those rooms because somebody designed a beautiful gathering space. Both kitchens had plenty working against them. People gathered there anyway, because that’s where family life was happening. Which raised the question: if people are drawn to this room regardless, what happens when design actually tries to help? Could people be more comfortable? Pitch in more often? Could the room make time together easier? Fitted and Unfitted [07:02] In 1980 Grey wrote a piece for the Sunday Times in London titled “Why This Awful Fixation With Fitted Kitchens?” The response was large enough that it reshaped his career, and the Unfitted Kitchen followed. A fitted kitchen is what most of us picture. Built-in cabinets along the walls, counters running across the base cabinets, uppers above, appliances slotted in, the whole thing coordinated as one system. That’s not a bad idea, and Grey wasn’t throwing it out. The thinking behind it is efficiency: good prep space, convenient storage, surfaces that clean easily, and a short trip from refrigerator to sink to stove. Anybody who has cooked in a kitchen that fights them knows those things matter. What Grey wanted was the same level of design attention paid to everything else that happens in the room. He argued the kitchen may be the last place in the house where people genuinely gather and talk. Food is one of the ways we show affection, and it sets the rhythm of a day, so the room is not really a place to make meals. It’s where family life happens. His evidence is worth repeating, because he heard it over and over from clients. When people described their dream kitchen to him, they almost never mentioned cabinets. They described a table set by a window. A view. A fireplace. Conversations around a table with family. The cabinets and the appliances were secondary every time. Fitted kitchens are built for storage and efficiency, and almost none of that effort goes toward the thing people actually describe wanting. What an Unfitted Kitchen Looks Like Furniture first [10:49] Think about what makes your living room feel like yours. A hutch from your grandmother. A bookcase. A chair you would never get rid of. Things with legs, things you’d load into a truck if you moved, different shapes and woods, a little history. Now count how many of those things are in your kitchen. For most of us the number is zero. The kitchen is the one room we don’t furnish. We install it. Furniture brings three things: Feeling. One piece changes the whole room. An old dresser holding the everyday dishes. A chair in the corner. This is exactly what Jean was describing in those British magazines, a room you want to settle into. Flexibility. Cabinets get screwed to the wall and stay there. Furniture moves, changes jobs, changes rooms, and comes with you. When the kids grow up or the way you cook changes, the kitchen can change too instead of locking you into a design that no longer fits your life. Storage. Not more than a wall of built-ins, but enough to give back what you gave up, with each piece assigned a job. A dresser with open shelves for everyday plates and glasses. A tall cupboard for food. A work table with drawers keeping pots and pans near the stove, and the tools you use daily hanging where you use them instead of buried in a drawer. Designing for conversation [13:17] Picture someone walking in while you’re making dinner and telling you about their day. You’re facing the wall, working at the counter. You turn around, say something, turn back, keep chopping. We all have conversations like that and we’re used to them. Grey’s question is whether the room could make that easier, and whether it could make the conversation itself better. Eye contact during conversation builds trust, increases the sense of connection, and helps manage turn-taking. You can see when someone understands you, when they’re about to speak, and when they need a second to think. If design can create more chances for eye contact without pulling you away from the work, that’s a real win. So in his kitchens the cook faces into the room whenever possible, and the work happens in the middle of the space on narrow islands or work tables rather than lined up along walls. The islands are long and thin on purpose: on a narrow island, two people working across from each other are close enough to actually talk. Comfort and soft geometry. A kitchen should be comfortable enough that people linger. A chair matters. A window seat. A spot in the sun. A sofa if the room can take one, which is not off the table. Soft geometry is his term for rounding things off. Picture the corner of an island jutting into a path you walk fifty times a day, then picture that corner curved. He uses curves to make the routes through a kitchen more comfortable, and leaves breathing room instead of treating every available inch as a spot for one more cabinet. The evening kitchen. While you’re cooking and cleaning you need bright, usable light. When the work is done, the lighting should change with the activity. Overhead lights give way to a lamp or softer light near where people are sitting. Picture your kitchen with every overhead blazing, then picture a soft glow around the table while you finish a cup of coffee and keep a conversation going. Humane ergonomics [16:28] This is where the potato peeling comes back. Grey worked at a counter that was the wrong height for him, and it made the job harder and less pleasant. So rather than accepting that there is one standard counter height for every human being, he builds work surfaces based on the elbow height of the person actually doing the cooking. He also varies heights around the room on purpose. A low table where a grandparent and a grandchild can work together. Standard counter height for prep. A higher ledge where someone can lean and talk. The kitchen gets built for the people using it instead of being standardized so the people have to adjust. A kitchen that looks lived in [17:59] Before fitted kitchens, people assembled a kitchen over time. A table here, a cupboard there, a dresser from a grandparent, things collected over years. Grey wants that back, and that means things don’t have to match. His view is that a kitchen done in one material and one color top to bottom is dull, and that a mix of colors and textures actually lifts your mood. Color, pattern, and even a little clutter, as long as it’s things you actually use, are what make a room feel like a home. Coming next week: how to apply these ideas to the kitchen you already have, without ripping out cabinets or starting a major renovation. Random Orbital Sanders [19:29] Picking up the furniture refinishing series. A few weeks back we covered how to decide whether an old finish needs to come off at all. Today assumes you’ve decided it does. Lead first [21:08]. Before sanding anything, test for lead-based paint, and test the layers underneath the one you’re working on, not just the top coat. Kits are inexpensive. Do it. The swirls [22:18]. Random orbital sanders leave little pigtail swirls in the wood. They show up in stain, and at the right angle they show through paint. Dan sanded a set of kitchen cabinet doors years ago until they were flawless to the touch, primed and painted them, hung them, caught the light wrong, and there the swirls were. He spent years telling customers at the store that this was simply the cost of using an orbital sander, and sometimes steering them to hand sanding instead. That was wrong. About three years ago he ran into information that overturned it. The sander isn’t the problem. The technique is. Everything below has been in use for three years and the difference is not subtle: swirls essentially gone. Don’t skip grits [25:10] Sandpaper smooths wood by scratching it. A coarse grit removes material fast and leaves deep scratches. A finer grit removes those and leaves shallower ones. Jump from 120 straight to 220 and that very fine abrasive has to erase every scratch the 120 left, which takes far longer than you expect. It’s easy to end up with a surface that feels beautifully smooth while deeper scratches are still in there, waiting to appear the moment you stain. Work the ladder: 120, then 150, then 180, then 220. Each grit has a smaller job to do. Yes, that means buying the in-between discs. Buy them. On the numbers, if you’re new to this: lower is coarser. 80 grit is more aggressive than 120. The higher the number, the finer the scratch left behind. How you move the sander [27:30] Dan’s old method was to bear down hard and run it back and forth across the surface quickly, on the theory that he was getting double duty, a sanding block that also spins. That is a recipe for swirls. Light pressure [29:52]. Let the sander do the work. Your hand is there to guide it. If you’re pressing hard enough to slow the motor or stop the pad from spinning freely, back off. Extra pressure interferes with the motion the tool is designed to make. Go slowly. About one inch per second, so roughly twelve seconds to cross a one-foot section. No timer needed. Just give the tool time to work as it travels, and keep the passes orderly and overlapping. Keep it flat. The temptation when you spot a stubborn mark is to tip the sander so the edge of the disc attacks it. That digs hollows, rounds over edges you wanted crisp, and leaves fresh scratches that show in stain. If an area needs more work, go back a grit and sand the whole section evenly, or work that detail by hand. Start on, stop off [32:00] Dan’s confession: he used to run the sander up to full speed in the air, enjoy the way it kicked in his hand, and drop it onto the surface so the finish flew off in every direction. Then at the end he’d shut it off and press it down hard to stop the spinning disc. Both halves of that are wrong. Set the sander flat on the surface, then turn it on. When you’re done, lift it off the surface before switching it off. That keeps a free-spinning disc from landing at an angle where it can grab or skip, and keeps you from stopping the pad in one spot and gouging the wood. Some newer sanders have a pad brake that makes an off-surface start less risky, so check your manual, but start on and stop off is the rule for most of us. Dust collection [34:12] Sanding makes dust, old finish clogs the abrasive, and a loose particle trapped between the disc and the wood will drag around and carve a far more obvious mark than the abrasive itself. That is a large share of what those swirls actually are. So dust collection is not just about keeping the shop clean, it’s about the finish. Use the collection system on the tool, and better yet pull the bag and connect a shop vac, which most sanders are set up for. Also vacuum the wood between grits so you’re not carrying coarse particles up into a finer pass. What the sander can’t reach [35:31] Don’t ask a round pad to do corners. Use a sanding block by hand, or pick up a finishing sander, which has a square or rectangular head. For contoured pieces like trim, a foam sanding block will follow the curve better than any powered sander. There are also foam interface pads, a soft half-inch pad that attaches to the Velcro deck with your disc on top of it, which lets the disc flex around curves and contoured edges. Finishing up [37:04] For a piece you’re staining, a light final hand sanding on the flat areas still beats anything the machine can do. Use the same final grit, go with the grain, and treat it as tidying up faint orbital marks after the power tool did the heavy lifting. Inspect before you stain [37:34]. Put a work light down low and shine it across the surface instead of straight at it, then walk around the piece and change your viewing angle. A swirl that’s invisible under ceiling lights becomes obvious when light skims the surface. Fix it now. Fixing it after the stain is on is a different kind of project. If you do this regularly [38:13]. A professional-grade machine is worth considering. Better dust collection, better balance, lower vibration, and a good abrasive system make long sanding sessions much easier to tolerate. Festool is the brand that enters that conversation, and RepcoLite is a Festool dealer. Not every location has the tools on hand, but any of them can get you information and start the conversation. Resources Last week’s full interview with Jean Stoffer and Grace Start, episode 480 Johnny Grey Studios, the designer’s own site, including a timeline of the Unfitted Kitchen’s development: https://www.johnnygrey.com Johnny Grey’s top 10 tips for kitchen design, The Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/johnny-grey-s-top-10-tips-for-kitchen-design-1.1009889 Background on Grey and the Unfitted Kitchen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Grey Grey’s books include The Art of Kitchen Design (1994), The Kitchen Work Book (1997), and Kitchen Culture (2004) Past episodes: repcolite.com, click the Podcast tab on the homepage. New episodes post Thursday, two days ahead of the Saturday broadcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #480
    October 8 · 56 min

    Jean Stoffer & Grace Start Interview: The Established Home, Kitchens, and Old Houses

    Original Air Date: October 10, 2026 Episode Number: 480 Episode Summary Dan sits down with Jean Stoffer and her daughter Grace Start, the mother-daughter team behind Grand Rapids based Jean Stoffer Design, Stoffer Home, and the Magnolia Network show The Established Home. They cover how Jean got into design with no formal training, how a failing kitchen in her own house sent her to British magazines with a magnifying glass, and what happened when a new appliance technology, a growing national interest in kitchens, and a design contest win all landed at once. Grace explains how she went from teaching preschool to asking her mom for a part-time job, and both talk about what each of them turned out to be good at. There’s a long stretch on the career decisions Jean turned down when her kids were small and what she thinks of those choices now. Then the business side: the Wealthy Street store, going online, building a virtual cabinetry business during COVID, and Grace’s vanity line. They get into how the Magnolia show came about and why it ended after three seasons. Finally, old houses, what you find behind the walls, why constraints make for better design, and how they approach a kitchen. They close on their three books, including one out for pre-order now. Timestamps [00:00] -- Welcome and Guests [01:14] -- Jean Finds Design [03:58] -- Kitchen Design Breakthrough [07:05] -- Sub Zero Contest Win [08:31] -- Grace Joins the Firm [10:42] -- Mother Daughter Strengths [15:00] -- Faith Family Priorities [20:40] -- Store Online Expansion [23:49] -- Virtual Cabinetry and Vanities [28:04] -- Magnolia Show Origins [29:39] -- Landing the Pilot [31:24] -- Building a TV Season [32:10] -- Filming Reality Check [33:29] -- Why the Show Ended [34:46] -- Getting Used to Cameras [37:20] -- Old House Surprises [39:35] -- Constraints Spark Creativity [42:38] -- Kitchen Design Basics [44:53] -- Trends and New Tech [47:36] -- Guiding Client Choices [50:01] -- Books and New Releases [54:14] -- Where to Follow Them [54:54] -- Final Takeaways How Jean Got Into Design [01:14] Jean studied business and started on the administrative side of a design firm. Design had not been on her radar growing up. In her parents’ house a home was supposed to be warm and welcoming, a place where people felt connected and accepted, and what it looked like was not really the point. Working around designers opened up the idea that a house could be beautiful and warm at the same time. She and her husband Dale had just bought their first place, which gave her somewhere to try it. Her training was light: a drawing class at a community college, back before computer drafting. The rest was observation, study, and looking hard at photographs to understand the mechanics behind them. She started as a decorator picking furniture and wall colors. The kitchen that changed things [03:58] Then they moved into a house whose kitchen was falling apart. That sent her looking for what a kitchen could be, which in the early nineties in America was still mostly boxes screwed to a wall. She found the answer in British magazines. Those kitchens were gathering spaces with furniture in them, closer to a keeping room, with a coziness and beauty that American kitchens did not have. So she sat at her drafting table with the magazines and a magnifying glass and worked out exactly what made them different. It came down to flush inset cabinetry, which almost nobody was building at the time. The hard part was finding a cabinet maker who would do it. She got it built, installed it in her own kitchen, and that was the start. The timing mattered. This was right when Sub-Zero introduced a way to panel an appliance so that it disappeared completely, no visible grill, no visible hardware, nothing projecting past the cabinetry. Panels on fridges had existed. Full disguise had not. That technology, a national shift in how people thought about kitchens, and Jean’s own interest all arrived together. The contest [07:05]. A few years in, she entered a Sub-Zero kitchen design contest with 35mm photos of a 1938 reproduction kitchen, and won, she thinks largely because it was so different from everything else. The celebration was at a resort in Arizona, where she met designers whose work she had studied, including Mick De Giulio out of Chicago, and found them talking about her work. Grace Joins [08:31] Grace grew up around all of it and never once pictured doing it. She went to Calvin College, married, studied education, and taught preschool at Zeeland Christian. Then she and her husband bought their first house, had their first child with a second on the way, and seeing a home as her own space changed how she looked at the work. Jean had also just moved to Michigan from the Chicago area. Grace asked her mother for a part-time, flexible job doing whatever needed doing. Jean hired her with no experience. What each of them is good at [10:42]. Jean’s gift turned out to be the analytical side. Kitchens have right and wrong answers, fractions of an inch, mechanicals, appliance integration, lighting schedules. She loved that. The subjective work, fabrics and paint shades and whether the flower on a textile is the right size, she did not enjoy and did not feel good at. Grace was confident with exactly that, early on. Grace makes the business case too. As a one-woman operation, Jean was winning awards but always relying on another designer to finish the house, which meant she could rarely photograph a whole project and call it hers. Doing the full house, plus the arrival of social media, is when things took off. Both describe the same trait: a willingness to try things they do not know how to do yet. As Grace puts it, they both suffer from “how hard could it be.” Jean notes they have since hired people who are much better at spotting the pitfalls, which has been a useful guardrail. The Decisions Behind the Business [15:00] Jean writes in Establishing Home about turning down career opportunities when her kids were young, including ones that looked like they could have catapulted the business. Her youngest was about two at the time, with three older. She describes it as something she could not settle with a pros and cons list, because the consequences could reach into the next generation, so she prayed through it and got what she describes as a clear answer, which she tells in the book. Looking back she has no regrets. She knows her four kids, she was present at every stage, and she says those relationships are the foundation that made going into business together possible at all. A family business only works if the family works. Grace points out how much of this she did not know at the time. She was a kid on the way to soccer practice. Hearing later what was being weighed and given up changed how she thinks about her own choices with her husband and their four kids: you do not burden children with the big decisions, you just put them first. Dan’s note on this: there is no guarantee that the sacrifice pays off professionally the way it did here. The relationship part is the part that always pays. Growing Beyond Design Work [20:40] The store came from several needs at once. The team was working out of Jean’s small house with samples under the beds, contractors and clients coming and going. They needed office space, a meeting room, a place where people could actually see and touch the cabinetry, and inventory to finish their own projects with. All of that became the store on Wealthy Street. Jean had to keep reminding herself for months that the retail side was never going to cover the building on its own, because it was also the office and the showroom. Online came next, driven by people asking. Followers would see something in a store post and have no way to buy it short of driving to Michigan. Cabinetry and vanities [23:49]. The bigger move was figuring out how to deliver their cabinetry nationally. Kitchen design is an in-person business, and when COVID made everything virtual they put their heads down and spent months working out how to do it remotely. It was Grace’s idea, and Jean’s initial reaction, by her own account, was that it would never work. It has become the most important piece of the brand. There are now Stoffer Home Cabinetry showroom partners in the Miami area and just outside New York City, plus designers across the country specifying their cabinetry. The vanity line came from Grace’s frustration as a designer. The options were full custom or a handful of large retailers whose designs did not match the British-leaning look they wanted. They built five designs in three-inch increments with their catalyzed, durable paint finish, so a client who wants a genuinely nice vanity without going full custom can order one made to order. The Magnolia Show [28:04] Several unconnected things lined up. Jean’s son John, the family photographer, had shot for Magnolia Journal and been to Waco. Instagram was taking off for design and they caught the wave early. Joanna Gaines was following Jean and occasionally commenting, and the new network had a specific vision for encouraging, time-well-spent television. The pilot [29:39]. They were offered one episode of a show called Point of View: A Designer’s Profile, each episode following a different designer. Theirs followed the kitchen in Jean’s own home, The Madison. After the edit, the network came back and asked for a show of their own. What a season actually took [31:24]. Eight projects running simultaneously, each one scoped to start and finish inside eight or nine months, all close enough geographically to manage, and every one approved by the client, the contractor, the production company and the network. Filming ran about 120 days per season spread across the year, condensed into eight episodes of roughly 42 minutes. They had to step back from the full custom business and bring in designers to cover other clients. Nothing could be shared publicly until each reveal aired, and by then they were already filming the next season. Why it ended [33:29]. After three years, the kind of full-home custom work they want to do takes much longer than nine months, and they could not keep both going. The network was also dealing with a changing television landscape, and the show was expensive to produce. Neither of them regrets it. Both describe the crew as genuinely good to work with, and the show as a catalyst for a lot of growth. Old Houses and Constraints [37:20] Jean on surprises: a wall that turns out to be bearing, with studs knocked out over the years, still standing only because the plaster was holding it together, which means pouring a foundation down in the basement to shore it up. But the good surprises are the point. Old homes have a uniqueness that makes spaces you would never think to build new, and that is often what takes a house from pretty to exceptional. Part of it is the guardrails. You are only allowed to do certain things, whether because of historic status or zoning or the structure itself, and Jean loves working inside that. Constraints and creativity [39:35]. Most of us hit a constraint and read it as a dead end. What Jean describes is the opposite: having to solve the problem takes you somewhere you would not have gone. Grace lives in a log home, which she offers as a case study. You cannot move a log wall. Enlarging one window meant dealing with nails driven through three courses of logs, which took a chainsaw and several replacement chains. Her best find came in their first house: demoing a wall and discovering a solid five-foot-wide pocket door that somebody had framed in. Dan’s contribution: an attic full of original doors from his 1928 house, pulled off and hauled upstairs by a previous owner who swapped in new ones. Plus a tiny bathroom where the previous owners had installed a triangular corner toilet, which solved the space problem so well that he used to make guests come look at it. How They Approach a Kitchen [42:38] It starts with a questionnaire that has grown longer every year as they learn what people need to think about. Then the space itself, which Jean calls the biggest issue. Aisle width, and whether this is a one-person kitchen or a family kitchen. Enough counter space and storage where you actually need it. Appliances scaled to the household, since a family of five and an empty nester do not need the same refrigerator. Get a solid floor plan and the finishes become the icing, which is where self-expression belongs. Keep those from being too trendy and the kitchen lasts. Trends and tech [44:53]. Jean has now watched trends leave and come back, including some she was glad to see go. Her approach is to take the best of a trend and keep it classic rather than designing fully into it, which is how a kitchen ends up dated. She balances that against staying open to what Grace and the younger designers bring. Grace’s take on appliances and technology: be a student of the space, then a student of the client. If a client asks about induction, know induction, lay out the pros and cons, and let them decide. When a client wants the wrong thing [47:36]. Grace’s answer is that pushing back builds trust. People hire you for expertise, and saying yes to everything signals that you do not really care. Being methodical about it, even saying you need to take it back to the office and think it through, makes clients feel taken care of. Jean adds that clients often answer the questionnaire carefully and then see something online mid-project and change direction. Sometimes that is real growth and sometimes it is a detour, and the job is helping them compare the two honestly. Books [50:01] Establishing Home is Jean’s memoir and design book, written with September Vaudrey. Her journey from part-time receptionist to award-winning firm and a national show, with design tips and photography alongside the story. Dan listened to the audiobook, read by Jean, over a weekend, and recommends it. We Are Home When We’re Together: Trusting God Through Life’s Changes is the children’s book Jean and Grace wrote together, for ages 4 to 8. It came out of Grace’s family moving into what they thought would be a vacation rental and ended up being their home, and the different ways each of her four kids handled the move. Grace took a sabbatical in January and wrote it as a poem. The illustrator, Mike and Lindsey, was someone Jean found on Instagram. The Purpose of Home: Beautiful Spaces for Gathering, Hospitality, and Everyday Grace is the new coffee table book, out for pre-order now and releasing April 6, 2027. Five Stoffer family households, structured around the rhythms of a single day, from breakfast in a log cabin to lunch in Michigan to coffee in a downtown apartment to aperitivo in Chicago. Each chapter has an essay, design insights, a recipe from that table, and a scripture. All the photography is John’s. The concept was his idea. Where to find Jean and Grace [54:14] They specifically recommended Instagram and the Stoffer Home YouTube channel. Final thought [54:54]. The idea Dan keeps returning to is guardrails. Every house has things you have to work around, and working through those limitations is often how you find something you would never have thought of otherwise. Resources Jean Stoffer Design Stoffer Home Jean’s Instagram Grace’s Instagram Stoffer Home on YouTube, which Jean and Grace named as the best place to follow their work Establishing Home: Creating Space for a Beautiful Life with Family, Faith, and Friends (Tyndale Refresh, ISBN 9781496460417), hardcover and audiobook read by Jean. Order here We Are Home When We’re Together: Trusting God Through Life’s Changes (Thomas Nelson, ISBN 9781400254316). Order here The Purpose of Home: Beautiful Spaces for Gathering, Hospitality, and Everyday Grace (Thomas Nelson, ISBN 9781400260232), releasing April 6, 2027 and available for pre-order from any bookseller Past episodes: repcolite.com, click the Podcast tab on the homepage Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #479
    October 1 · 40 min

    The Mystery of the Kitchen Cabinets Nobody Could Reach

    Original Air Date: October 1, 2026 Episode Number: 479 Episode Summary Dan opens with two questions: what's the weirdest thing in your house that you've never been able to explain, and what's the strangest thing you've ever found in one that you weren't looking for? Then he spends the full episode on his own answer. His first house was a 1928 place in Zeeland, bought in 1999, and it came with kitchen cabinets mounted so high he needed a ladder to reach the second of four shelves. Nobody could explain them. Converting a dingy basement room into a workshop turned up canning lists penciled on the wall for 1940 through 1944, and newspapers from October 1943 lining the shelves. There's a screwdriver found inside a wall, a map scribbled behind fake cabinet doors, and a nighttime dig in the backyard that turned up nothing. Ten years in, a woman in her eighties knocked on the door, walked through the house her father built, answered the cabinet question in one sentence, and later mailed back something she'd taken with her when the family moved out. The show ends somewhere it usually doesn't: with the case for appreciating your house exactly as it is. Timestamps [00:00] -- Weird House Quirks [01:19] -- My 1928 Zeeland Home [03:00] -- The Sky High Cabinets [05:46] -- Basement Workshop Plans [09:24] -- Canning Lists Discovery [14:03] -- Sponsor Break [14:22] -- Newspapers From 1943 [16:41] -- A Winter Day Reflection [18:55] -- Sponsor Tease [19:09] -- Paint Is The Project [19:32] -- Basement Finds Revisited [19:52] -- The Wall Screwdriver Story [20:17] -- Cabinet Door Treasure Map [22:23] -- Night Digging Misadventure [24:04] -- Visitor From The Past [25:32] -- Lightning In The Dining Room [26:29] -- Porch Sleeping Tradition [27:04] -- Why The Cabinets Were High [28:50] -- A Gift From Texas [30:13] -- Ceiling Globe Time Capsule [31:50] -- A House Full Of History [34:27] -- Superman Comic Wall Find [36:51] -- Homes Hold Our Stories [38:19] -- Appreciate Your Home [39:25] -- Share Your Weird Finds [39:41] -- Final Sign Off Two Questions to Start [00:00] What's the weirdest thing in your house? Not something you did, something that was already there. A door that opens the wrong way. A patch in the floor where something used to be and nobody knows what. You wonder about it for a while, then you stop seeing it and just live with it. And the second one: what's the coolest or strangest thing you've ever found in a house that you weren't looking for? Behind a wall, under a floorboard, in the middle of a renovation. What did you think when you found it? Did it tell you anything about the house, or about the people who were there before you? Most of us live in a place that had a whole life before we showed up, and we almost never think about it. The House in Zeeland [01:19] Built 1928. Bought in 1999. The previous owners had finished the entire main level before the sale and it was a major selling point: wallpaper in the dining room, original trim cleaned up, some of it stained and varnished in the bedrooms, new crown molding, new carpet. The screened front porch was the part Dan misses. Three seasons a year he was out there, coffee in the morning and a book late into the evening, hearing dogs and conversations up and down the block while still having his own space. The cabinets [03:00]. Two walls of the kitchen had normal uppers and lowers. The third wall had uppers only, mounted so high that Dan could stand under them, jump, and not come close to hitting his head. Reaching the second of four shelves took a ladder, no exaggeration. The top shelf might as well have been Everest. Everybody who walked in noticed within seconds and everybody had a theory. Dan's working theory for years was that the original family was simply enormous. They weren't. The answer came about ten years in, and it came from the daughter of the man who built them. The Workshop and the Canning Lists [05:46] A year or so after moving in, Dan wanted a project. The upstairs needed more work than he was ready to take on, so the dingy basement room with a workbench and floor-to-ceiling shelves became the one. He was working the RepcoLite Lakewood store in Holland at the time, having the same conversations with customers that he has on the radio now, about making a space exactly what you want it to be, and this was his turn to do it in his own house. A workshop is never just a workshop. It's where maintenance happens, where Pinewood Derby cars get built and painted, where dollhouses get glued and wallpapered for Christmas, where bookcases come together. The writing on the wall [09:24]. While cleaning, Dan swung a work light into another corner and caught pencil writing he'd walked past repeatedly. Thick cursive, hard to read in bad light. He leaned in genuinely expecting something along the lines of five paces west from the giant maple. What it said was 1940, and under it: four quarts of pickles, five quarts of peaches, eight quarts of green beans, on down the wall. More lists followed for 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944. Pickles, beans, tomatoes, peaches, jam. Standing there, he started picturing the shelves across the room loaded with Mason jars two and three deep, and the work it took to fill them. Kids coming down for a jar of peaches. The pop of a lid when the seal breaks. He's fairly sure those kids snuck peaches, on the grounds that he would have. When he painted the room, floors and walls, he left every section with writing on it untouched. Newspapers From 1943 [14:22] Turning to the shelves, Dan found the top ones lined with newspapers from October 1943. Not pristine, not valuable, and he sat reading them for a couple of hours. American troops pushing through Italy. Bombers over Germany. Alongside the war news, ordinary ads and local stories. That day [16:41]. A Saturday morning in December. Snow coming down hard with a storm on the way, piling up outside the window. A space heater running, a work light hanging from a hook, Dan on the top step of a stepladder so he could reach the shelves. The people who canned all that food had read this same paper, probably holding it in the same spots his hands were in. The difference is he knew how it all turned out and they didn't. Every story they read ended with an unspoken "to be continued." Did they have a son in the fighting, a nephew, a grandchild? Did he come home? What he does know is that they kept going, because he had their canning lists from the years after. That was the day it landed: this wasn't just his house. More Finds in the Walls [19:32] The screwdriver [19:52]. Found inside a wall during electrical work when the boxes came out. Somebody dropped it and either fished for it or never knew where it went, and spent an afternoon looking. The map [20:17]. A run of cabinet doors in the kitchen was fake, hinged and nailed over ductwork. Dan assumed they were painted shut. When he finally popped them off during a painting project, expecting bonus storage, he found writing on the wall behind them. This one actually was a map: directions, coordinates, west, east, a number of steps. He believed it completely. He has joked about this before but has never quite admitted how literally he expected to find buried treasure in his own yard. The dig [22:23]. He followed the instructions exactly and went out at night, reasoning that nobody would see him. In hindsight that's backward. A man digging in his yard at two in the afternoon is doing yard work. A man digging at midnight is a different story entirely. He found nothing. The visitor later supplied the obvious answer: the instructions marked the property corner. The Visitor [24:04] A Saturday knock, about ten years in. The neighbor, and with her a woman Dan didn't know who was in town for the weekend and had grown up in the house. Her father built it. Dan, who describes himself as socially awkward and nervous about unexpected visitors, got out of the way and let her walk through. The dining room [25:32]. Three big windows above the table. During dinner one evening, with her mother, father and brother at the table, lightning came in through a window, crossed the room along the wall and left through the kitchen. She pointed to the corner that had been scorched black afterward, wallpapered over by then. Storms at that house felt different from then on. The porch [26:29]. It had been her brother's room every summer and into the fall, because his upstairs bedroom was unbearable in the heat. She said porches up and down the block usually had somebody sleeping on them through the summer. The cabinets [27:04]. Dan finally asked. Her answer took one sentence: when the house was built, a large chest freezer sat against that wall, and her father hung the cabinets high enough that the lid could open fully without hitting them. The freezer eventually left. The cabinets stayed. The reason got lost, and for decades people stood in that kitchen inventing theories. The Globe [28:50] She said she'd send something as a thank you, and Dan assumed it would never arrive, mostly because he's the kind of person who promises to mail things and doesn't. A few weeks later a small package came with a note. Inside was a glass globe from a ceiling fixture, the one over the light in her bedroom the entire time she lived in the house. She'd taken it with her when the family left. She wanted it back in the house. A House Full of History [31:50] That house was built ten years after World War I ended and a few years before the Depression. It stood through World War II, Korea and Vietnam. At some point in the mid-sixties, Beatles records were bouncing off those walls. It went through the seventies and eighties. Dan's family bought it in 1999, started raising five kids there, and watched the Tigers go to the World Series in 2006 standing a few feet from where lightning had scorched the dining room decades earlier. Every house is like that. Either it has a past you didn't live, or you're the start of the story and somebody else will be walking those halls at three in the morning with a baby long after you're gone. The Superman comic [34:27]. The whole segment started because Dan read about a contractor who found a copy of the first Superman comic in the walls of a house he'd bought for around ten thousand dollars. It sold for $175,000, and would have brought roughly $75,000 more except the back cover tore during a tug-of-war with a relative right after it turned up. The plan was to open with his own small find and then move on to the spectacular ones. What he realized while writing it was that the canning lists were the valuable part, at least to him. They connected him to people who were gone long before he existed, and made clear that the house would go on adapting to other people after him. What the walls hold [36:51] Your rooms are recording your story, and they were important to people before you and will matter to people after. No matter how imperfect the house is, no matter how much you'd change it, it has dignity because of the role it plays. The woman who toured the house never once complimented the beautiful main-level updates the previous owners had made. Dan isn't sure she even saw them. She was walking through the house as it was seventy years earlier, warts and all, and she loved it. Appreciate your home [38:19]. This show spends most of its time on updating, improving and painting, and all of that is worth doing. But when the money isn't there, or the time or the energy isn't, a low-level guilt sets in about everything not getting done. So for one week: appreciate your home for what it is, not what it could be, and for what it's been to everyone who's called it home and everyone who will. Projects and paint come back next week. Your turn [39:25] Got a quirk in your house nobody can explain, or did you find something unexpected during a project? Send it to radio@repcolite.com. Dan would like to read them, and if enough come in they'll turn into a segment. Resources Researching Your Own Home, Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University. A Michigan-specific walkthrough of deeds, building permits, assessor records and census records for tracing who lived in your house: https://www.cmich.edu/research/clarke-historical-library/explore-collection/explore-online/michigan-material/aladdin-company-bay-city/researching-your-own-home Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, Library of Congress. Block-by-block maps of most Michigan towns showing building footprints, materials and additions over time: https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/ Archives of Michigan and the Michiganology digital archive, for vital records, county records and local history: https://www.michigan.gov/archivesofmichigan The Action Comics No. 1 wall find, reported in 2013: https://www.cbr.com/action-comics-1-found-in-wall-of-house-sells-for-175000/ Past episodes: repcolite.com, click the Podcast tab on the homepage. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #478
    September 24 · 40 min

    Do You Have to Strip Old Furniture Before Refinishing It?

    Original Air Date: September 26, 2026 Episode Number: 478 Episode Summary This week on Home In Progress, Dan starts with elastic waistband jeans and gets from there to an architectural idea worth borrowing. British architect Alex Gordon argued that good buildings should have long life, loose fit and low energy. That middle one, loose fit, is the useful one for homeowners. It means leaving room for change, and Dan looks at what that means for theater rooms, garage conversions, outdoor kitchens, mudroom lockers, closets and aging in place. Then the show picks up the furniture refinishing series with the question people skip: does that old finish actually have to come off? Dan walks through the painting path and the stained wood path, the denatured alcohol test, why shellac changes your primer choice and when stripping is genuinely worth it. The episode closes with fall exterior painting, including moisture content, surface temperature and dew point, plus how to pick your painting window on a cool fall day. Timestamps [00:00] -- Welcome and Sponsor Intro [00:08] -- Elastic Waistband Epiphany [02:46] -- Loose Fit Design Principle [04:40] -- Remodeling for Flexibility [08:27] -- Aging in Place Upgrades [10:01] -- Repurpose What You Have [10:27] -- Refinishing Strip or Not [14:21] -- If You're Painting Prep [21:44] -- Wood Look Stain Decisions [25:43] -- Refreshing Clear Coats [27:58] -- Shellac vs Poly Options [33:11] -- Antiques and Final Tips [33:58] -- Fall Exterior Painting Guide [35:26] -- Moisture Temperature Dew Point [39:18] -- Best Fall Paint and Wrap Up Long Life, Loose Fit, Low Energy [02:46] British architect Alex Gordon, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects in the early 1970s, argued that good buildings need three things. Long life means it physically lasts. Low energy means it doesn't take absurd amounts of resources to keep running. Loose fit is the interesting one. It means a building works for the life happening in it right now, without being built so tightly around one use that it can never become anything else. People change. Families change. Technology changes. A house should be built or remodeled with the assumption that what you need from a space will not stay the same. Preserve possibilities [04:40] None of this is an argument against customizing your home. Build the theater. Build the outdoor kitchen. Build the gym. The question to ask is how permanently you need to customize a space in order to get what you want out of it. The theater room. You could build permanent risers, fixed seating and cabinetry designed around one screen. Fifteen years later, when movie night isn't a thing anymore, turning that room into an office or a bedroom means tearing half of it apart. You can get a fantastic theater instead with dark paint, blackout shades, great seating, lighting, speakers, rugs and removable acoustic panels. Underneath all of it, the room is still just a room. You can make a room incredibly specific without making the architecture incredibly specific. The garage. Converting a garage into living space makes sense for some families. But pulling the door, framing in the opening and adding permanent walls, plumbing and flooring is a real commitment. If what you actually want is a gym, insulation, heat, lighting, flooring and movable equipment may get you there while the garage stays a garage. The outdoor kitchen. A patio with good lighting, power, a grill and movable prep space does a lot of the same work as a masonry kitchen with built-in appliances and plumbing. One of them leaves you more options later. Small projects too. Dan nearly built an elaborate mudroom locker system a few years back. Life got in the way and it never happened, and now the family doesn't need it. Adjustable shelves, movable hooks and flexible storage hold backpacks now, sports gear later, then dog supplies, then something else. Same with closets. Permanent shelving that suited a previous owner becomes a project to undo. Adjustable brackets take five minutes. Smart technology. There's a difference between adding smart technology to a house and building a house around one generation of it. A smart thermostat, bulb or plug-in speaker is easy to swap. Whole-house lighting, motorized shades and automation systems can involve proprietary controllers, keypads and wiring buried in the structure. The house may last 100 years. The technology will not. Keep the permanent infrastructure flexible enough that the tech can change without the house changing with it. Aging in place [08:27] Loose fit isn't only about a room changing jobs. Sometimes the room stays exactly what it is, and the person using it changes. The bathroom is still the bathroom, but mobility, grip strength or vision may be different in twenty years. Blocking behind shower walls. The walls are already open during a remodel. Adding blocking now gives you the option of grab bars later. Curbless shower. It looks great today and is far easier to use if mobility changes. Lever door handles. Convenient now, easier to operate later. If you plan to stay in the home, think about how you may eventually need to use a space, not just how you might want to. Discover possibilities [10:01] Look for flexibility in what you already own. We get attached to labels. That's the dining room, that's a dresser, that's a china cabinet. The dining room can be an office for a few years. The dresser might work better in the entry. The china cabinet can hold games. Sometimes the value comes from simply letting a room or an object change jobs. Refinishing Furniture: Do You Have to Strip It? [10:27] This continues our furniture refinishing series. Earlier weeks covered how to tell if a thrift store or estate sale find is worth bringing home, and the safety concerns around lead-based paint. Assuming lead isn't present, the instinct is to sand or strip everything to bare wood. That's a fine foundation, but it's often far more work than the piece requires. Dan watched three videos recently where experienced people described two-hour jobs that became two-day sanding projects. Nobody regretted it. Nobody enjoyed it. Before you start, answer one question: what do you want the piece to look like when it's finished? Painted, or stained wood you can see? The two answers send you down different paths. Path one: you're going to paint it [14:21] If the existing coating is sound, meaning it isn't peeling, flaking, bubbling or lifting, you usually don't need to remove it. Do the prep instead. Test for lead if the piece is painted. Kits are inexpensive and easy to use. Test all the layers you can get at. Test for shellac if the piece is clear-coated. Put a little denatured alcohol on a hidden spot, like the inside of a leg or underneath the top. If the finish stays hard, it's likely lacquer, polyurethane or something similar. If the alcohol softens it, makes it sticky or starts dissolving it, you very likely have shellac. Clean it thoroughly, then scuff-sand with 180 to 220 grit. You are knocking down the gloss, not sanding through the finish. Go gently on veneer. A lot of old furniture is a thin layer of nice wood over a cheaper core, and a power sander can go right through it. Prime. Over lacquer, poly or a similar hard finish, STIX from Insl-X is a great choice. It's a waterborne acrylic-urethane bonding primer built for glossy, difficult surfaces, and it cleans up with soap and water. If it's shellac, switch primers. Traditional shellac contains a little wax, and wax causes adhesion problems for some coatings. Zinsser B-I-N, a white pigmented shellac, will bond over it. B-I-N is alcohol based, it smells strong and cleanup is less convenient, so it isn't Dan's everyday primer. This is exactly the situation where it earns its keep. Path two: you want to see the wood [21:44] Here the next question is whether you like the color of the wood that's there now. If you don't like the color, you're probably headed to bare wood so new stain can penetrate. One exception worth knowing about is gel stain, which can go over a sound existing finish and behaves more like a translucent color coat. It can darken a piece without stripping, but layering translucent tones is unpredictable, the color you need on top is often not the one you'd guess, the grain gets partially obscured and even application takes some skill. Stop by your nearest RepcoLite and ask before you commit to that route. If you like the color and the finish is just dull, scratched and tired [25:43], you may be able to keep what's underneath. Run the denatured alcohol test. If the finish isn't affected and it's still firmly attached, clean the piece extremely well, scuff-sand it so the new coating has something to grab, and test the new finish in an inconspicuous spot first. Oil-based polyurethane is an obvious choice. It's easier to apply than the waterborne version, it bonds well and it's durable enough for wood floors. If the alcohol did soften the finish, you're dealing with shellac [27:58]. Shellac has an unfair reputation as fragile. It gives wood real clarity and warmth, it dries fast and it's remarkably repairable, because fresh shellac softens and merges into the old shellac instead of stacking as a separate layer. What it doesn't do well is stand up to alcohol, heat, prolonged moisture and heavy use. So let the furniture decide. Guest room dresser, bookcase, display cabinet, lamp table. Shellac is still an excellent finish. Clean it, repair it, refresh the shellac and you're done. Kitchen table, coffee table, daily-use desk. You need more durability, which means polyurethane. You can't scuff-sand and go straight over waxy shellac with poly. Either strip to bare wood and start clean, or seal first. Zinsser recommends a coat of Bulls Eye SealCoat, a dewaxed shellac, as a barrier between old shellac and polyurethane. We carry it. One caution on antiques [33:11]. If you have reason to believe the piece is a genuinely valuable antique, don't automatically strip anything. An original finish can be a real part of its historical and monetary value. The beat-up finish you think you're fixing may be the thing a collector wishes you had left alone. Fall Exterior Painting [33:58] We've had a lot of wet weather this fall, so there are two questions before you open a can outside. Is it warm enough, and is the surface actually dry enough? Moisture comes first [35:26]. If it rained yesterday, there's no magic number of hours. Wood doesn't dry on a clock. A quick rain followed by sun, a breeze, low humidity and mid-60s temperatures is nothing like an all-day soaking followed by a humid, cloudy stretch. Different sides of the same house dry at different rates, and the shaded north side can still be holding water while the south side is ready. Use a moisture meter. They aren't expensive and they're easy to use. Benjamin Moore's guidance is to get wood below roughly 15 percent moisture content before painting. Check several spots, especially shaded and lower areas, exposed end grain and any repairs. Without a meter, the wood at minimum needs to look and feel completely dry, but after wet stretches like this one, measuring beats guessing. Then temperature. RepcoLite's rule of thumb is 40 degrees and rising. There are quality exterior paints rated lower, but 40 gives you a safety margin. Remember that surface temperature is not air temperature. A shaded wall runs colder than the air, a dark wall in sun runs warmer. An inexpensive infrared thermometer helps when you're pushing the season. Then dew point. That's the temperature where moisture starts condensing onto surfaces. The general industry guideline is to keep the surface at least about five degrees above the dew point. This matters most in fall, when temperatures fall off quickly late in the day. Picking your window. A 55-degree forecast doesn't mean you have all day. At 8:00 the siding may still be wet with dew. By 10:00 or 10:30 surfaces are drying and warming, and that's your start. In the afternoon, the question isn't whether it's still warm enough, it's how much drying time is left before temperatures drop and humidity climbs. On a typical cool fall day, starting around 10 or 11 and wrapping up around 2 or 3 beats squeezing out every last minute. Element Guard [39:18]. Benjamin Moore's Element Guard is built for exactly these conditions. It resists rain as soon as 60 minutes after application and can be applied at surface temperatures as low as 35 degrees. That's real insurance against a pop-up fall shower. It isn't a license to ignore conditions, though. Cold and humidity slow drying no matter what's in the can. Fall is still a good time to paint outside. Check the wood, watch the rain, watch the dew point, start after the morning moisture burns off, quit early enough to let the paint dry, and leave yourself margin instead of painting right up against every limit on the label. Resources Alex Gordon and the origin of "long life, loose fit, low energy," RIBA president 1971 to 1973: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Gordon_(architect) RIBA Journal on Gordon and the 1972 conference paper where the phrase appeared: https://www.ribaj.com/intelligence/different-times-familiar-context/ Benjamin Moore Element Guard product information and brochure: https://www.benjaminmoore.com Insl-X STIX bonding primer, Zinsser B-I-N and Bulls Eye SealCoat are stocked at RepcoLite. Stop in with your piece and we'll talk through it. Past episodes and show notes: repcolite.com, click the Podcast tab on the homepage. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #477
    September 17 · 40 min

    How to Paint an Ombre Wall

    Original Air Date: 09/19/26 Episode Number: 477 Episode Summary This week on Home In Progress, Dan covers paint store tools you've probably walked past without a second look, and explains why each one is worth having. They include FrogTape (green and yellow), the painter's five-in-one tool, a brush comb, the Handy Paint Pail, the Wooster Pelican Pail and the Wooster Sherlock system. Then he gets into ombre walls, a painted gradient where one color slowly melts into the next with no hard line between them. He explains what the look is, where it works and which direction the colors can run, then walks through the full process from choosing colors to blending wet paint. The episode wraps up with a fall list: jobs to get on the calendar now, plus a few fun things to do before the season gets away from us. Timestamps [00:00] -- Show Preview [01:09] -- FrogTape Clean Lines [03:28] -- Yellow FrogTape Delicate [04:29] -- Five In One Tool [05:28] -- Brush Comb Care [06:15] -- Handy Paint Pail [07:24] -- Pelican Pail Combo [08:28] -- Wooster Sherlock System [09:32] -- Ombre Walls Explained [10:02] -- Color Capping Context [10:59] -- What Ombre Means [15:20] -- Where Ombre Works [16:29] -- Ombre Direction Choices [18:50] -- How To Paint Ombre [19:27] -- Ombre Recap Practical [20:43] -- Ombre Wall Basics [21:36] -- Choose Three Colors [23:20] -- Prep and Base Coat [24:04] -- Map the Color Zones [25:23] -- Blend Like a Pro [28:55] -- Corners Tape and Edges [29:57] -- Practice and Dry Time [33:14] -- Fall Checklist Begins [33:51] -- Chimneys Apples Gutters [35:21] -- Trips and Winter Prep [37:20] -- Historic Homes and Furnace [38:36] -- Last Fall Fun and Wrap Paint Tools You've Walked Past [01:09] Some of the most useful things in a paint store don't look like much on the shelf. Once you know what they do, painting gets a lot easier. Green FrogTape. FrogTape has PaintBlock Technology along its edges. When latex paint touches that edge, the water in the paint makes it react and form a tiny barrier, so paint doesn't creep under the tape. You still need a clean surface, a firmly pressed edge and a light hand with the paint, but the lines come out much sharper. Through the end of September, RepcoLite has 1.5-inch green FrogTape 3-packs for $12.99, which works out to about $4.33 a roll. Yellow FrogTape [03:28]. This is the same clean-line technology in a delicate surface tape. It's made for freshly painted surfaces that have dried, and for wallpaper. Regular tape on those surfaces can pull paint or damage the paper when it comes off. Five-in-one and seven-in-one tools [04:29]. They look like oddly shaped putty knives, but each part has a job. The flat blade scrapes and spreads patching compound. The pointed corner digs out and opens up cracks before you patch them. The half-moon curve squeezes paint out of a roller cover while you wash it. Some versions also open paint cans or have a flip-out screwdriver. Brush comb [05:28]. This is a small steel comb you run through the bristles while cleaning a brush. It separates the bristles so water gets deeper in, and it pulls out paint that has built up near the ferrule. That buildup slowly ruins a good brush. A comb costs very little and adds years to a brush. Handy Paint Pail and Handy Paint Cup [06:15]. Both are hand-held containers for cutting in. A magnet on the side holds your brush, so it doesn't sink into the paint when you need a free hand. They clean up and can be reused. Wooster Pelican Pail [07:24]. It's a similar idea with a brush magnet, plus an angled roll-off area for mini rollers up to about 4.5 inches. You can cut in, stick the brush to the magnet, roll a section and go back to the brush, all from one pail. Liners are available. Wooster Sherlock System [08:28]. These roller frames and extension poles lock together. You don't thread anything, and nothing spins loose while you work. You can swap frame sizes and change pole length in a few seconds. Ombre Walls: What They Are and Where They Work [09:32] A couple weeks back we talked about color capping, which uses two or three related colors with deliberate, visible transitions as you move up the room. Ombre (ombré) does the opposite. The colors blend into each other like a gradient, with no stripes or bands. On a well-done ombre wall, you can't point to the spot where one color stops and the next begins. You can use shades of one color, which is the easiest and most subtle option, or blend between different colors. Because the color keeps shifting as your eye moves across the wall, you get depth and movement that a single color can't give you. Soft, related colors feel calm. Bolder colors make it dramatic. Where it works [15:20]. The wall behind a bed, a dining room wall, one big living room wall, or a kid's room. Some versions online look like the night sky just after sunset. You can wrap a whole room in it, but blending across corners gets tricky, and Dan thinks one wall is usually plenty. Direction [16:29]. Dark at the bottom and light at the top is the most common choice. It puts visual weight down low and makes the ceiling feel lifted and airy. Flip it, with dark at the top, and you get a much more dramatic room. Look at examples online before you decide. How to Paint an Ombre Wall [18:50] No sprayer needed. Regular wall paint, rollers and brushes will do it. It takes more technique than rolling two coats, but most people can pull it off with a little practice. Choose three colors [21:36]. Pick a light, a medium and a dark. Start with color chips, then get Benjamin Moore color samples and try them on foam board or the wall. Blended colors can expose undertones you didn't expect. For a first try, pick colors a couple of steps apart on the same chip. Prep and base coat [23:20]. Fill holes, sand, clean the wall and tape off trim and neighboring walls. Paint the entire wall in the lightest color, top to bottom, and let it dry 3 to 4 hours. Map the zones [24:04]. Divide the wall roughly into three horizontal zones. Don't tape the zones off. Light pencil marks are fine if you want a reference. Roll the medium and dark colors. Put the medium color across the middle and the dark color along the bottom. The edges can be wavy, and this paint doesn't need to stay wet. You're just establishing the zones. Blend [25:23]. Put each color in its own container, like a Handy Paint Pail or Pelican Pail, with its own brush, and keep a few clean brushes for blending. Start where dark meets medium and work about 2 feet of wall at a time. Brush fresh dark paint in a 6 to 12 inch band along the top of the dark zone, then fresh medium paint right above it. While both are wet, use a clean brush to blend across the line with loose diagonal strokes, around 45 degrees. You're softening the line where the colors meet, not erasing either color. Move to the next 2 feet and blend it into the section you just finished. When that transition is done, repeat the process where medium meets light. Corners and edges [28:55]. Feathering right into a corner is fiddly. Tape the adjoining wall. If that wall has fresh paint on it, use yellow FrogTape so the tape doesn't pull the new paint off. Practice and dry time [29:57]. Practice on a scrap of drywall or foam board first. You'll learn how wet the paint needs to be, how much pressure to use on the brush and how wide you want the blend. Know when to stop. Once the paint starts to set up, more brushing just drags half-dry paint around and leaves marks that show every time sunlight hits the wall. If you can't blend fast enough, a little Floetrol extends the working time of latex paint. It isn't a cure-all, but it helps. Tried an ombre wall? Send pictures to radio@repcolite.com. Fall Checklist: Jobs and Fun Stuff [33:14] Chimney [33:51]. If you plan to use a fireplace or wood stove, have it swept. If it hasn't been used in a while, have it inspected too. Apple picking. Pick a Saturday and an orchard. Try not to walk out with $150 worth of apples. Gutters. Start clearing them now and keep at it as the leaves fall, so water moves away from the foundation. Charlevoix mushroom houses [35:21]. Earl Young's stone homes have curved roofs and huge boulders built into them. Charlevoix has a self-guided route. Most of the houses are private, so enjoy them from the street. Snowblower. Change the oil and make sure it starts. Repair shops have room in their schedules now. They won't in late November. Sprinkler winterization. If someone blows out your system, get on their schedule now. Historic home tours [37:20]. The Meyer May House in Grand Rapids is a restored Frank Lloyd Wright home with free tours. The Hackley and Hume Houses in Muskegon are Queen Anne Victorians from the lumber era, and their Flashlight Tour is October 9. The Felt Mansion near Saugatuck is also worth a visit. Furnace. Change the filter and make sure it runs before the first cold stretch, when everyone else finds out theirs doesn't. Last fall fun [38:36]. Go to a high school football game. Have the bonfire you keep talking about. Get out to Lake Michigan for a walk or a sunset while you still can. Bring in leftover paint. Water-based paint doesn't survive freezing. Move it from the garage to the basement for the winter. Resources Ombre wall tutorials: Pretty Handy Girl, How to Paint an Ombré Wall Technique. A bedroom gradient from Benjamin Moore Kendall Charcoal into Revere Pewter, blended with a mixed in-between gray, a sponge and a dry brush. https://prettyhandygirl.com/paint-ombre-wall-effect/ HGTV, Paint an Ombre Wall. Very close to our method: a light base coat, three zones and a dry brush held at an angle. It also mixes half-and-half colors to fill the gaps between zones. https://www.hgtv.com/how-to/home-improvement/paint-an-ombre-wall Studio DIY, DIY Colorful Ombre Wall. A bold multicolor version. Its tip is to widen the blend area if you want a slower fade. https://studiodiy.com/diy-ombre-wall/ Semigloss Design, How to Paint Ombre Walls. A two-color version that uses a spray bottle to keep paint workable, and shows why side-to-side blending looks better than up-and-down. https://www.semiglossdesign.com/how-to-paint-ombre-walls Olive & June Home, How to Paint an Ombre Wall in 5 Easy Steps. A roller-based approach, with honest notes on how hard the edges are. https://www.oliveandjunehome.com/blog/how-to-paint-an-ombre-wall Fall outings: Hackley & Hume Flashlight Tour, October 9. https://lakeshoremuseum.org/event/flashlight-tour-8/ Meyer May House, Grand Rapids. Check the house's website for tour times. Charlevoix mushroom houses. Search "Earl Young mushroom houses self-guided tour." Find past episodes at repcolite.com. Click the Podcast tab on the homepage. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #476
    September 10 · 40 min

    What Color Makes a Small Room Look Bigger?

    Original Air Date: 9/12/26 Episode Number: 476 Episode Summary This week Dan tackles one of the most repeated pieces of color advice in home design — "dark colors recede, light colors advance" — and asks why it so often fails in real rooms. Digging into the perception research behind the phrase, he untangles two things the rule quietly conflates: a color fading into the background versus a surface actually appearing farther away. From there he works through seven common room situations — low ceilings, long narrow rooms, dark rooms, walls as backdrop, boxed-in rooms, ceilings as a feature, and color capping — showing how to pick color by starting with the room and your goal instead of a rule. The episode opens with part two of the furniture refinishing series: checking an old piece for lead before you sand, scrape, or strip. Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and Color Questions 00:44 Lead Paint Testing 04:07 Dark Colors Recede Myth 07:58 Research on Room Perception 11:19 Recede vs Spaciousness 14:07 Contrast and Lighting Effects 18:44 Practical Room Scenarios 22:25 Low Ceilings Look Higher 23:48 Fix Long Narrow Rooms 27:24 Brighten Dark Rooms 29:46 Walls as Backdrop 32:08 Small Rooms and Drenching 34:30 Make Ceiling a Feature 35:58 Color Capping Guidance 37:11 Key Takeaways and Wrap Test for Lead Before You Refinish Anything [00:44] Part two of the furniture refinishing series. Last week: deciding whether a thrift store or Marketplace find is worth bringing home. This week: the question to answer before you touch it with sandpaper. Why it matters during refinishing. Intact lead-based coating buried under newer paint, left alone or simply painted over, is a relatively low-exposure situation. Scraping, sanding, or grinding changes the picture — that's when you turn the coating into chips and airborne dust that can be inhaled or spread through the house. The older the piece and the more layers on it, the better the chance lead is in the stack somewhere. Test all the layers, not just the top one. That dresser may have been painted white five years ago with modern latex, with a coat from the '70s under it and something much older under that. If you're sanding through the stack, you need to know what's in it. Clear finishes count too. Paint gets most of the attention, rightly — but lead compounds were also used as drying agents in some older oil-based varnishes and related finishes. On a genuinely old piece, don't assume a clear finish is nothing to think about. Kits are cheap and simple. Lead test kits are inexpensive and widely available online — basic screening tests where you expose the coating, follow the directions, and watch for the color change. If it tests positive. Stop treating it as an ordinary refinishing project. A dust mask and a sander is not the plan. There are specific lead-safe work practices for these coatings, and the EPA publishes homeowner guidance on them. You can still do the work yourself — just understand how to protect yourself and your family first. Why "Dark Colors Recede" Keeps Failing [04:07] The segment started as a nagging doubt. In last week's color capping discussion, Dan cautioned against automatically putting the darkest color on the ceiling of a small, low, dimly lit room — which runs against something the show, and designers generally, have said for years. The honest problem: he's been in plenty of small rooms with dark ceilings and dark walls that felt small, not expansive, and others where a dark ceiling genuinely did feel farther away. If it's a rule, why is it hit or miss? Where the idea came from. It isn't invented. Perception research supports it — much of the early work involved objects against backgrounds, where lighter shapes come forward and darker backgrounds fall back. A cream sofa against a deep navy wall is the everyday version: the sofa, the artwork, the lamp grab your eye, and the navy settles behind them. Where it breaks. A wall or ceiling isn't an object against a background. It's one of the surfaces that defines the size of the room. What the Research Found in Rooms [07:58] Researchers eventually studied room surfaces directly, using virtual rooms where physical dimensions stayed fixed while the lightness of individual surfaces was manipulated. 2010: lighter ceilings appeared higher than darker ceilings. 2018: the work broadened to all the surfaces defining a room. Brighter side walls made rooms appear wider; a brighter far wall made the room appear deeper. Darker versions consistently shrank the estimates. So the traditional rule says dark recedes — but when researchers measured where people thought a room's boundaries actually were, brighter surfaces read as farther away. Two Different Meanings of "Recede" [11:19] The word is doing double duty, and that's the whole problem. Meaning one — it takes a back seat. The navy wall behind the cream sofa recedes in the sense that it's no longer what you're looking at. Real effect — but it doesn't mean your brain has decided the wall is five feet farther away. Meaning two — it looks farther away. A different claim, and the one the research doesn't support for room-defining surfaces. Separate the two and the contradiction dissolves. That navy wall can function as a background behind a light sofa while a lighter color on the same wall would make the room read as slightly deeper. And a dark color doesn't automatically become the background anyway. Put that same navy on a single accent wall in an otherwise light room — light side walls, white ceiling, white trim — and it's a large dark rectangle in a bright space. Your eye goes straight to it. Same color, opposite result. What Actually Decides It: Contrast and Lighting [14:07] Contrast. Whatever stands out from its surroundings gets your attention. In the first room, the light furniture and art stood out against the navy, so the navy became background. In the second, the navy stood out against everything, so it became the focal point. Whether a color reads as backdrop or star depends on what you put next to it and what else is competing for attention. Lighting. Light hitting a dark wall directly keeps it present — you see the roller texture, the corner, any sheen reflecting back. It's dark, but it clearly isn't going anywhere. Move the illumination out in front of it, in a flatter finish, so the furniture and art are lit and the wall sits in softer light, and it becomes far less visually distinct. That's when it falls away. Same overhead: a ceiling lit brightly enough to show its texture reads as close, whatever the color, while softer light up there starts to feel cavernous. One counterweight. Lighting research also shows brightly illuminated light walls increase the overall sense of spaciousness. Receding is not the same as feeling open. The takeaway on the rule itself: it's trying to do too much. One small rule is being asked to predict something an entire room creates — color, contrast, lighting, furniture, ceiling height, windows, sight lines, even clutter. Which is why the lab studies help: strip the variables out, change only lightness, and lighter ceilings look higher, lighter side walls look wider, lighter back walls look farther. Dark rooms can absolutely feel spacious — the paint just isn't doing that work alone. Seven Room Situations [18:44] Start with the room, not the rule: what do I want color to do here, and what am I working with? 1. You want a low ceiling to look higher [22:25] The cleanest case. Stay relatively light overhead — this is where the research is strongest. Lighter walls help too; a light wall color with a very light ceiling is the strongest combination for apparent height. You can put color on the ceiling, it doesn't have to be stark white — but be cautious about letting the ceiling read as perceptibly darker than the walls. Green walls with a soft pale green ceiling gives you color overhead while keeping the ceiling light, which is the part actually working for you. 2. Long, narrow room you want to reproportion [23:48] Too narrow? Keep the two long side walls relatively light. Lighter side walls appeared farther apart in the research, and they also bounce more light back into the space, softening the shadowed edges that make a room feel like a tunnel. Want it to feel longer? Keep the far wall relatively light — a lighter rear wall appeared farther away. Want to visually shorten it? Flip it. A deeper color on that far wall makes the boundary feel more present and closer. Worth flagging: a lot of design advice says a dark accent wall at the far end makes a room look deeper. When researchers measured perceived depth directly, that isn't what happened — the lighter rear wall consistently appeared farther, the darker one closer. That's lightness in isolation, though. A brightly lit, clearly defined dark wall feels right in your face; the same wall in softer light can fall back. Lightness pushes perceived depth one way, darkness the other, and the rest of the room has its say. Already painted and disappointed? Before repainting that dark hallway wall, try changing the lighting or adding contrasting furniture or artwork in front of it. The color may be fine — it may just need help. 3. A room with little natural light [27:24] North-facing, small windows, hallway, basement. Stay toward the lighter end. Paint doesn't create light, but it reflects and distributes what you've got, so lighter walls and a lighter ceiling work with you here. That doesn't mean grabbing the starkest white you can find. A white that's beautiful in a sunny room can look cold and dingy in a dim one. Benjamin Moore recommends warmer off-whites for low-light spaces — Swiss Coffee, Acadia White — and soft light colors work too. The point is keeping enough lightness to use the illumination you actually have. Sample before you commit. 4. You want the walls to be the backdrop [29:46] Beautiful furniture, artwork, a fireplace, architectural detail you want noticed. This is where deeper colors genuinely earn their reputation — Hale Navy, Vintage Vogue, and Soot all make strong backgrounds behind lighter furniture, art, metals, and fabrics. But if your furniture and art are dark, don't assume a dark wall becomes the background automatically. You need contrast from somewhere else: light the furniture more than the wall, reframe artwork in a lighter wood or a metallic, or change the wall's sheen so it falls back. For a wall to work as a backdrop, the stars of the room have to stand out from it. 5. Small room that feels boxed in [32:08] Two goals hide in this one. If you want it to look as large and airy as possible, lighter is the safer direction — that's what the research supports. If it's a tiny powder room that's going to be tiny regardless, and what's really bothering you is being aware of every wall, every piece of trim, every break in the surface, color drenching is the better tool. Paint walls and trim the same color, maybe the doors, maybe the ceiling. Reducing contrast between surfaces means that instead of reading wall / baseboard / door / casing / wall, the room becomes one continuous composition. The color doesn't have to be dark for this to work. Palladium Blue (HC-144) is a soft, airy blue-green with enough color to stay interesting without weighing the room down. Healing Aloe (1562) is a pale, muted green with a soft gray quality. Or go deep with Vintage Vogue for something enveloping and dramatic. Same technique, completely different results. If less chopped up and as open as possible is the goal, still drench — just pick lighter colors. 6. You want the ceiling to be part of the design [34:30] The opposite problem from situation one. Ten or twelve feet, a big vault, a tray ceiling, good crown molding — height you want to use rather than fight. Go deeper: Chelsea Gray (HC-168), Regent Green, Hale Navy. A deeper ceiling color makes a cavernous space feel more intimate, and the contrast sets off detail overhead. The reverse works too. Want color overhead but not a focal point? Keep the wall-to-ceiling relationship subtle — a medium blue on the walls with a softer, lighter blue above. Less contrast draws less attention. 7. Color capping — how dark should you go overhead? [35:58] No single answer. A large room with good natural light and real ceiling height can carry the classic progression, getting deeper as you move up, and it can look terrific. An eight-foot ceiling in a small bedroom with one window is where Dan stays cautious. Soften the steps rather than making each shift dramatic — a richer color on the walls and crown while keeping the ceiling toward the lighter end. There's nothing sacred about the darkest color ending up overhead. Color capping is a design idea, not a law. Three Takeaways [37:11] Don't accept a design concept as a hard rule. "Dark colors recede" sounds good and is demonstrably true in certain respects, but lighting, contrast, and the room itself determine how much of it actually happens. Receding and looking farther away are not the same thing. A dark color can drop into the background without making the room read as larger. The research is fairly clear that lighter colors give the impression of wider, higher, more open spaces — despite a lot of blog posts claiming otherwise. Start with the room, not the rule. Too narrow? Too long? Too dark? Too chopped up? Do you want the walls to disappear behind the furnishings, or the ceiling to be the star? Once you know the job you're asking color to do, these principles become tools instead of rules to follow blindly. Resources Benjamin Moore colors mentioned Low-light rooms: Swiss Coffee, Acadia White Walls as backdrop: Hale Navy, Vintage Vogue, Soot Color drenching, lighter: Palladium Blue (HC-144), Healing Aloe (1562) Color drenching, deeper: Vintage Vogue Ceilings as a feature: Chelsea Gray (HC-168), Regent Green, Hale Navy Product mentioned: Benjamin Moore Waterborne Ceiling Paint in ultra flat. Available in all Benjamin Moore colors and holds its dead flat finish even in stronger colors — which matters overhead, where an ultra flat reduces glare, hides imperfections, and minimizes lap marks. If you're going to the trouble of putting real color on a ceiling, use a product that makes a good finish easier to get. Lead-safe work practices: the EPA publishes homeowner guidance for working with lead-based coatings. Lead test kits are widely available online. Color help: color experts are on hand at every RepcoLite to help with your specific space. Past episodes: repcolite.com Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin MooreWhat Color Makes a Small Room Look Bigger?

  • #475
    September 3 · 40 min

    Furniture Flipping for Beginners: 6 Things to Check Before You Buy

    Original Air Date: 9/5/26 Episode Number: 475 Episode Summary Dan kicks off the Labor Day weekend with color capping — the emerging trend of using multiple shades from one color family as you move up the walls to the ceiling — and five things to think through before you try it. Then he launches a new multi-week series on refinishing and flipping secondhand furniture, starting with the skill that comes before any of the sanding or stripping: how to walk through a thrift store, antique shop, or flea market and tell whether a piece is actually worth bringing home. Six things to check before you buy, a hard look at what paint might be hiding, and how to figure out whether the piece you just found is worth more than you paid for it. Timestamps [00:00] -- Labor Day Welcome [00:56] -- Color Capping Trend [02:07] -- Five Color Capping Tips [06:08] -- Tools and Deals [07:55] -- Furniture Refinishing Series [11:07] -- Thrift Store Worth It [13:11] -- Check the Bones [18:33] -- Break and Tease Next [20:33] -- Spot Solid Wood [21:59] -- Veneer Red Flags [22:50] -- Painted Piece Reality [26:42] -- Hardware Swap Magic [28:10] -- Pick Beginner Projects [31:53] -- Sniff Test Check [33:13] -- Is It Valuable [34:08] -- Research Maker Marks [35:03] -- Reverse Image Search [37:38] -- Restore or Paint [38:51] -- Wrap Up and Sale Color Capping [00:56] Color capping is a way of using multiple shades from the same color family in one room, typically getting deeper and richer as you move upward and onto the ceiling. Picture a soft dusty blue on the walls, a deeper blue on the crown molding, and a rich navy overhead. It doesn't have to run light to dark — you can reverse it — and it doesn't have to be three colors. Two works. More works. Benjamin Moore has been talking about it and it's showing up steadily on design blogs and decorating sites. Five things to keep in mind before you try it: Undertones matter. Three greens are not automatically three compatible greens. One may lean yellow, another blue, another grayed-down and earthy. The easiest fix is to start with a single color card and pull your graduating tones from it. If you're pulling from separate cards, hold them together and compare undertones directly. Distinct, but not disjointed. The shades need enough separation to read as intentional without looking like they don't belong in the same room. On a card with graduating tones, two or three shades apart is a good starting point. However you land on your colors, sample them. Benjamin Moore color samples let you get real paint on the wall, the ceiling, the trim, or a foam board and see the colors at scale, next to each other, in morning light and evening light. Let the architecture pick your transition points. Crown molding makes this easy — walls in one color, crown in the next, ceiling in the deepest. Picture rails, beams, and tray ceilings all work the same way. Anything that naturally divides one surface from another gives you a logical place to shift. Without those elements you can still do it, but you have to create the break yourself; roughly two-thirds up the wall is a reasonable rule of thumb. Think hard about the ceiling color. A deep navy, charcoal, or dark green overhead can be gorgeous in a dining room with ten-foot ceilings — rich and intimate. That same ceiling in a small room with eight-foot ceilings and one north-facing window can read as smaller, darker, and more closed-in. That may be exactly what you want, but make it a deliberate choice rather than a photo you saw online. Look at room size, ceiling height, and natural light, and sample before you commit. Don't be intimidated. It looks sophisticated, but mechanically nothing new is happening. You're painting walls, trim, and a ceiling — just in different colors. The hard part is color selection, and there are color experts at every RepcoLite location who can help. Ceiling paint note. If you're putting any color on a ceiling, Benjamin Moore Waterborne Ceiling Paint is the product to use. It's a dead flat and it stays dead flat when it's tinted, which is unusual — most ceiling paints don't hold that. The flatter the finish, the more forgiving the application. September Deals [06:08] FrogTape is on special all September at RepcoLite — $13 for a three-pack of 1.5-inch tape. It's the product to reach for when you need crisp lines between colors, which color capping demands. More on FrogTape next week. Benjamin Moore Regal Select Interior is 20% off at all RepcoLite locations through September 14. A New Series: Furniture Refinishing [07:55] Over the next several weeks, Dan is doing a running series on refinishing and flipping furniture — finishes and when to use which, prep decisions like whether to strip or just sand, tools, tips, and techniques. It won't take over the whole show every week, and it won't necessarily appear every week. Furniture refinishing is one of the best gateway projects in DIY. The investment is low — a dresser, table, or cabinet from a thrift store, estate sale, or garage sale, or something already sitting in your basement — and with a fairly small set of tools and products you learn skills that transfer to projects all over your house. Plenty of people who now do all their own painting and remodeling got started by refinishing a single chest of drawers, and some turned it into a business. Is This Piece Worth Bringing Home? [11:07] Before any of the actual work comes the skill of standing in front of a piece at a thrift store, flea market, or Facebook Marketplace pickup and deciding whether it's worth your money. A former guest on the show — a professional refinisher — once grabbed a great-looking piece off the curb with a free sign on it, got it home, and realized in seconds that it wasn't wood at all. It was particle board with a convincing printed grain. It happens to people who do this for a living. Six things to check: Check the bones. Is the piece solid or wobbly? Are the major joints tight or separating? Do doors open and close smoothly, do drawers slide, are the drawer bottoms intact? Pull a drawer out and look at the underside. Look at the joinery — dovetails signal real effort and a much stronger drawer than corners that are stapled together, and irregular hand-cut dovetails suggest real age, real care, or both. Confirm the back panel is properly attached. Look for warping, rot, and water damage; minor versions are usually fixable, serious versions are a different project entirely. And check the feet. Dan once bought an ornate carved desk, inspected everything, and discovered at home that large chunks were missing from the back feet — right where they'd be visible in his space. On wood filler and "stainable." The epoxy putties and wood fillers used for repairs like that say "stainable" on the container, and most people read that as "will match." It doesn't mean that. It means the product will absorb stain — not that it will take stain in the same way, at the same rate, or in the same color as the real wood around it. Dan's repaired feet always read slightly lighter than everything else. If you're painting the piece, repairs are far less of a problem. If you're staining, assume the repair will show. Identify the material. Solid wood, veneer, or engineered? Solid wood and veneer can both be refinished. Engineered material with a printed grain can be painted with enough prep, but you're not working on a lasting piece of furniture. Check the edges and corners: on solid wood the face grain continues around onto the edge, while veneer shows a thin seam or a separate banding strip where the sheet stops. Veneer is genuinely workable despite what you sometimes hear — minor issues are easy to fix — but heavy lifting, bubbling, loose edges, or large missing sections make it substantially harder and slower. Painted pieces need extra scrutiny and lower expectations. Sometimes paint is there because somebody got tired of everything looking like wood, and stripping it reveals beautiful grain underneath. That's a real and genuinely thrilling outcome, and it will make you say the universal line — why would anyone have ever painted this? — roughly a hundred times. But paint also covers a multitude of sins: major repairs, or grain so unappealing that someone painted over it on purpose. Dan stripped a desk expecting treasure and found cheap wood with terrible graining that looked worse stained than painted. In the store, look for smoothness across large flat surfaces, or rather for spots that aren't smooth or uniform, which can signal putty repairs underneath. Beyond that, have a backup plan. If you'd be happy pivoting to a painted or partly painted finish, buy it. If the room truly requires stained and varnished, understand that you're gambling. Don't let the hardware throw you. New hardware transforms a piece. Dan passed on a chest of drawers a couple months back because he disliked the large wooden knobs, saw it again after someone else refinished it and swapped in brass, and was floored by the difference. He'd had no trouble picturing the refinishing — it was the hardware he failed to imagine. Hardware is easy to change in nearly every situation. Ask how complicated the refinish will be. Look at the shape, the detail, and the existing finish. A worn clear coat is one project; layers of old paint are another. The older the piece — particularly the further back from 1978 you go — the more likely lead-based paint is in the stack. You can test for it at home and there are steps to work safely, but have that conversation with yourself before you buy, not after. Good first projects are dressers, straightforward nightstands, simple tables, and basic cabinets: flat surfaces, simple trim. Heavy carving, slats, spindles, turned legs, deep moldings, intricate corners, complicated veneers, or upholstery combined with wood finishing all raise the difficulty considerably. And it is completely fine to walk away from a great deal. A piece can be a bargain, and beautiful with the right work, and still be the wrong project for you. The sniff test. Open the drawers and put your face in there. Cigarette smoke, old-house smell, animal smell — these can usually be dealt with, but often only with specialty products that seal the odor in. Worth knowing before you load it into the car. Is It Valuable? [33:13] Every so often, especially with an obviously old stained-and-varnished piece, the question surfaces: what did I just find? Most thrift store furniture isn't especially valuable, but the exceptions are real and people turn them up regularly. That's worth ten minutes of investigation before an orbital sander touches anything. Look for a maker's mark. Check inside drawers, underneath, on the back, inside cabinets — anywhere a manufacturer might have left a label, stamp, number, or mark. Look it up on your phone. A mark usually tells you who built it, roughly when, where, and sometimes which furniture line, and searching it often surfaces what comparable pieces are selling for. A mark isn't proof of value, though — plenty of mass-produced furniture was marked. Try a reverse image search. No maker's mark isn't the end of the road. Photograph the piece and run a reverse image search through the Google app on your phone or desktop to find visually similar pieces. Read the hardware and construction. Old brass pulls, wooden knobs, and unusual hinges can suggest age. So can hand-cut dovetails, unusual joinery, and unusually good veneer work. None of it is definitive on its own — hardware gets swapped in both directions constantly — but it's evidence worth weighing. Age alone doesn't equal value. Dan bought an old children's desk for RepcoLite to refinish, found a maker's mark, and learned it was mass-produced by Sears in the early 1900s. Genuinely old. Bought for $25, worth maybe $60. Meanwhile newer categories — Arts and Crafts furniture, Art Deco, mid-century modern, and specific designers and manufacturers — can be worth a surprising amount. The rule of thumb: if something about the piece makes you pause and think this might be more than an old dresser, spend ten minutes on it before you strip, sand, or paint. Restore or Paint? [37:38] Dan's take, which he acknowledges is the controversial part: yes, some pieces hold their value only in original condition, and that's a real consideration. But many pieces won't work in your actual home unless they're stripped, refinished, or painted. If you want that dresser in a soft yellow because that's what the room needs, and you're not planning to resell, preserving a value proposition you'll never realize — while the piece sits there not doing what you wanted it to do — doesn't make much sense. If you're flipping for resale, or the piece turns out to be genuinely significant, rethink it. Otherwise, unless it's the desk Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration on, make it what you want. Resources Benjamin Moore Regal Select — 20% off through September 14: https://www.repcolite.com/product/regal-select/ FrogTape September special — $13 per three-pack, 1.5-inch Benjamin Moore Waterborne Ceiling Paint — for tinted ceilings All past episodes: repcolite.com — Podcast tab, or search Home In Progress on any podcast platform or YouTube Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #474
    August 27 · 40 min

    Hoosier Cabinets: The 1900s Kitchen Storage Genius That Still Works

    Original Air Date: 8/29/26 Episode Number: 474 Episode Summary Dan opens with a vacation story about swimmer's itch, a chatty store clerk, and a deeply awkward attempt to warn strangers on a dock -- with one actually useful tip at the end. Then the main event: Hoosier cabinets. Dan covers what they are, why they were brilliant, how they spread into one in ten American kitchens in the early 1900s, where the name came from, why they eventually disappeared, and why people are hunting them down again today. The episode closes with four design principles pulled straight out of the Hoosier cabinet that apply to any storage or organization project in your home. Timestamps [00:00] -- Back From Vacation [00:41] -- Swimmer's Itch Explained [02:36] -- Itch Attack at the Store [05:16] -- Awkward Dock Warning [12:20] -- Vaseline Hack and Aftermath [13:24] -- Hoosier Cabinets Teaser [14:01] -- Hoosier Cabinet Features [16:25] -- Why They Became Popular [17:37] -- Why Hoosiers Worked [19:11] -- Sponsor Break [19:27] -- Cabinet Layout Tour [21:37] -- Ingenious Built-In Features [25:11] -- Where the Name Came From [27:24] -- Why They Disappeared [28:42] -- Modern Resurgence [30:53] -- Design Principles for Any Space [31:41] -- Four Rules in Practice [39:21] -- Final Takeaways and Sign Off Swimmer's Itch and the Dock Incident [00:41] Swimmer's itch is an itchy skin rash caused by an allergic reaction to microscopic parasites in the water. On most years at Burt Lake -- about 20 minutes south of Mackinaw City, where the Hansen family vacations -- it amounts to maybe 10 or 15 small dots on the legs after a week of swimming. Manageable. Scrubbing off with a towel and showering after swimming keeps it in check. Spraying legs with waterproof sunscreen before going in also seems to help. This year, Dan skipped the sunscreen and ended up with the worst case he's ever had. His legs felt like they were on fire -- not pain, just relentless itching -- and he drove to the nearest store and bought $60 worth of anti-itch creams, sprays, calamine lotion, witch hazel, and Epsom salts. The store clerk was a very enthusiastic talker who wanted to discuss each item, share the story of his childhood poison ivy, and price-check several things by shouting across the store. It was a long checkout. After a couple of hours of applying everything he bought, the itching started to calm down. By that evening he was mostly fine. The Vaseline tip. Coating your legs with Vaseline before swimming creates a barrier that makes it harder for the parasites to reach your skin. It feels strange but not as strange as you'd expect. Dan used it for the rest of the trip and nobody in his family got swimmer's itch after that. He tried to share this tip with two new families he saw swimming in the shallowest part of the lake the next day. The attempt to warn them on a narrow dock involved an unexplained leg-lift, the phrase "I have a message for you," and a display of the spots on his leg that left both men frozen and blinking for an extended period. The warning eventually got through. Dan walked back to the cabin. The Vaseline tip is real. The social execution was not. What Is a Hoosier Cabinet? [14:01] Hoosier cabinets are freestanding kitchen storage units that were made primarily in Indiana from the late 1800s through the 1930s. They are, by most measures, one of the most cleverly designed pieces of kitchen furniture ever made -- and most people today have never heard of them. The basic structure: about four feet wide and six feet tall. Lower cabinets on casters, a work surface in the middle, and shallower upper cabinets above. That much sounds simple. The details are what make them worth talking about. The pull-out counter. The work surface can slide out toward you, adding six to eight inches of workspace when you need it. When you're done, you push it back. But here's what makes it genuinely clever: the drawers directly underneath the counter travel with it. When you pull the counter out, those drawers come with it, so everything you need is still within reach -- not stranded behind where you're standing. The flour bin. Behind one of the upper cabinet doors, many Hoosier cabinets had a large built-in flour storage bin with a sifter and dispenser at the bottom. You slide your bowl underneath, turn a crank, and sifted flour drops right into the bowl. No hauling out a bag, no digging around with a scoop. A separate sugar bin often worked the same way on the other side. The doors. Not an inch of space goes unused. The backs of the cabinet doors are fully utilized -- spice racks, cookbook holders, pie tin racks, hooks, and in some models, baking charts printed directly onto the door interior showing measurements and oven times. The lower cabinet. When you open the lower doors, many models have a shelf that slides or rolls out automatically -- not something you have to dig around in the back of with a flashlight. Pan storage made accessible. The roll-top section. Above the pull-out counter, between the counter surface and the upper cabinets, many models had a small roll-top section that kept counter-level items behind a slatted door when not in use. Counter-level storage, completely hidden when you don't want to look at it. The countertop surface itself was typically porcelain enamel or zinc -- durable, easy to clean, built for heavy daily use. All of that packed into four feet of wall space, on wheels. Why Hoosier Cabinets Caught On [16:25] Here's the context most people don't know: for most of American history, kitchens were nearly empty rooms. Not the way we think of a kitchen today. You had a work table, a sink, maybe a few open shelves. Built-in cabinetry existed but required hiring a skilled carpenter to build directly into the house, and most people couldn't afford it. Built-in cabinets didn't become a standard feature in American kitchens until the late 1920s. That meant the flour was in the pantry. The sugar was in the pantry. The bowls were on a shelf across the room. Every time you baked, you walked to the pantry for flour, back to the table, across the room for a bowl, back to the pantry because you forgot the baking powder. Over and over. Hoosier cabinets were marketed as saving you 1,000 steps. Pull up a chair and don't get up again. Everything you needed for daily baking -- flour, sugar, spices, rolling pins, cutting boards, bread knives, bowls -- was concentrated in one workstation, with a surface to work on included. The number 1,000 may have been marketing, but the concept was real. These cabinets genuinely changed how work happened in a kitchen. About 130 companies eventually made versions of them, most based in Indiana, and at their peak one in ten American kitchens had one. Where the Name Came From [25:11] The origin of the Hoosier cabinet is harder to pin down than you'd expect. Kitchen cabinet patents go back to around 1885, and what seems to have happened is that multiple Indiana furniture companies landed on the same basic idea around the same time. According to the museum in Nappanee, Indiana -- which has one of the best collections of these cabinets in the country -- no one person and no one company gets the credit for inventing them. The name most likely came from one of two sources. The Hoosier Manufacturing Company of New Castle, Indiana was the largest producer and the loudest advertiser. Their brand may have become the generic name for the whole category, the same way Kleenex became the word for any facial tissue. The other argument is simpler: most of these cabinets were made in Indiana, home of the Hoosiers, so they became Hoosier cabinets by geography. Either way, the name stuck and became the universal term for the whole category. Why Hoosier Cabinets Disappeared [27:24] Built-in cabinets. By the late 1920s, houses were being built with real cabinetry integrated into the walls, continuous countertops, proper storage from floor to ceiling. A four-foot freestanding cabinet couldn't compete with a whole wall of built-ins. The fact that Hoosier cabinets sat on legs also became a problem. Dust, grease, and crumbs collected in the space underneath, and that gap was harder to clean than a sealed cabinet base that met the floor. Built-ins were simply easier to maintain. Manufacturers tried to fight the decline with prettier patterns and brighter colors. One company offered a Mediterranean-styled version. None of it worked. By 1935, the Hoosier cabinet was considered old-fashioned. The Hoosier Manufacturing Company was sold and eventually liquidated in 1942. The Modern Resurgence [28:42] Hoosier cabinets are showing up again. People are finding them at antique stores and estate sales, and the market for them is real. A rough-condition oak cabinet in need of work can sometimes be found for a few hundred dollars. Fully restored examples -- cleaned up, refinished, hardware sorted out -- start around $1,100 and average closer to $1,800. If you want to build your own, plans are available online, including from Popular Woodworking and similar sources. Dan recommends searching for Hoosier cabinet videos as a starting point. There's a 12-minute walkthrough in the show notes at repcolite.com from a woman who just remodeled her entire kitchen and says her Hoosier cabinet is still the single best-functioning area in it. Four Design Principles From the Hoosier Cabinet [31:41] These apply to any storage or organization project in your home -- garage, laundry room, bathroom, closet, kitchen, workbench, the cupboard under the sink. 1. Name the one job the space is supposed to do, and let that job do the cutting. The Hoosier cabinet wasn't a kitchen. It didn't try to be. It was a baking and prep station. It didn't hold the good china or the roasting pan you use twice a year. That was the pantry's job. The cabinet knew its purpose, and everything inside served it. The homeowner version: stuff drifts into rooms over time. Someone sets something down, it gets pushed to a shelf, that becomes where the thing lives, and nobody ever questions it. Go stand in your laundry room and look at the shelves. Or check the garage storage. Or the cleaning cupboard. There's probably things there that have nothing to do with what the space is for -- they just arrived and never left. Before you buy more storage bins or add more shelving, name what the space is actually for and move out everything that doesn't belong. It costs nothing and often frees up meaningful room. 2. Get everything the job needs within reach of one spot. The Hoosier cabinet's whole pitch was this: pull up a chair and don't get up again. Flour to the left, sugar to the right, spices on the door, bowls at your feet. The job gets done without walking anywhere. Count your steps tonight while making dinner. Every time you leave the counter you're working at to get something you need -- the pantry, the far drawer, the cabinet over the fridge -- that's a potential design problem. It may be fixable. Not always, but often. And if you're designing or remodeling a space, keep this in the front of your mind when deciding where things go. Put items near where you'll actually use them, not where the drawer happens to be empty. 3. Use the space you've got creatively. Every interior door surface on a Hoosier cabinet is doing work. Spice racks, cookbook holders, racks for pie tins, printed measurement charts. Not a square inch is wasted. Most storage problems aren't really about square footage -- they're about using only part of the available space. Open a kitchen cabinet with spice bottles in it. That shelf is probably set at cereal-box height. Above those three-inch bottles, there may be eight inches of dead air. Is there a way to capture that space without losing access? Could a rack mounted to the inside of the door replace the dead-air shelf and give you more capacity in the same footprint? These questions are worth asking in any space in your home. 4. Borrow the space, then give it back. The pull-out counter on a Hoosier cabinet is the clearest version of this idea. When you need more work surface, you pull it out. When you'd rather have the walkway, you push it back. The space doesn't disappear when you're not using it -- you just return it. Ask yourself where you're short on space only sometimes. A dedicated folding area in a laundry room is one of the most common examples. You need a large flat surface to fold clothes for about 20 minutes a few times a week. The rest of the time, you need to be able to walk through the room. A fold-down surface hinged to the wall above the washer and dryer solves this for around $40 and an afternoon of work. A fold-up workbench along a garage wall works the same way. The Hoosier cabinet managed an enormous amount of storage and function in four feet of wall space. Lack of space is a constraint, not a dead end. Constraints produce the best solutions when you tackle them directly. Resources Hoosier cabinet video walkthrough Museum collection: Nappanee, Indiana Build-your-own plans: Popular Woodworking and similar sites All past episodes: repcolite.com -- On the Radio tab, or search Home In Progress on any podcast platform or YouTube Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #473
    August 20 · 37 min

    The Craftsman Home: History, Architecture, and Color; Plus 3 Vacation Lessons That Apply to Home Projects

    Original Air Date: 08-23-2025 Episode Number: 473 Episode Summary Dan opens with three lessons from the Hansen family cottage vacation -- each one stretched into home improvement territory. Then the back half of the show kicks off a new recurring series on American architectural styles, starting with the Craftsman home. Dan covers what makes a Craftsman a Craftsman, how the style began in Victorian-era England and spread across America through a furniture maker's magazine and a Sears catalog, the architects who took it to its highest form, and how to think about color if you own one. Timestamps [00:00] -- Welcome and Preview [00:33] -- Vacation Lessons Setup [01:50] -- Lesson One: The Space Invader [06:53] -- Lesson Two: Test Before You Commit [08:53] -- Paint, Stain, and Tool Testing Tips [11:41] -- Lesson Three: Communication Matters [14:08] -- Contractor Communication Checklist [17:02] -- Architectural Styles Series Intro [19:13] -- What Makes a Craftsman [20:16] -- Arts and Crafts Origins [24:19] -- American Craftsman Takes Off [27:40] -- Greene and Greene Masterpieces [29:11] -- Why Craftsman Endures [31:40] -- Craftsman Color Palette [35:08] -- Wrap Up and Where to Listen Vacation Lesson 1: Know Your Space Invader [01:50] Every family has one. The person who materializes in the exact spot you're trying to occupy. You walk into the kitchen, scan the room, see that nobody is standing by the coffee maker. Perfect. You set down your book, start walking over -- and by the time you get there, a child has appeared out of nowhere needing a banana or a spoon or anything that requires standing in your exact location. You go left, they pivot. You go right, they cut off the exit. Dan spent ten days at the cottage watching this happen in real time. The home improvement version: this person is a nightmare to paint with. You're rolling a wall with an extension pole and you turn around and catch them in the stomach with the handle. You reach for the paint bucket and they're already dipping their brush in it. You try to cut in the corner and they're cutting in the same corner from the other side. Dan's advice: identify this person before the project starts, and give them a different job. Send them for supplies. Send them for coffee. Let them help from a comfortable distance. This isn't exclusion -- it's project management. Vacation Lesson 2: Test Before You Commit [06:53] Dan arrived at the cottage with a brand-new swimsuit he had never tried on. It was alarmingly short. The elastic gripped him in ways that should not be legal. His family will apparently be telling that story for generations. The home improvement version of this is exactly what you'd expect, but it's worth saying plainly. Sample your paint colors. A swatch under store lighting is not a paint job. Grab a Benjamin Moore color sample -- about $5-6 for a half pint -- and put it on the actual wall or on a foam board you can move around the room. Look at it at different times of day, and especially at the time of day you're in that space most. A small roller like the Wooster Jumbo Coder works well for this; feather out the edges and you can paint right over it later when you're ready. Test your stain on your actual wood. RepcoLite does stain matching well -- other shops send customers here for it. But even a great match needs to be tested on the underside or backside of your specific material before you go all in. The same color formula can look very different depending on how a particular piece of wood absorbs it. Bring a sample of your actual wood when you come in for the match. Hold the brush before you buy. Paintbrushes look similar hanging on a rack but the handles are different -- some more square, some rounded, some heavier, some thinner. Pick it up and hold it the way you'd actually use it. If it doesn't feel right in the store, two hours into cutting in a ceiling isn't going to improve things. Vacation Lesson 3: Talking Is Not the Same as Communicating [11:41] Dan announced the dinner plan -- grilled chicken, salad, mashed potatoes, vegetables, 5:00 to 5:30 -- in clear language, to a room full of people who all nodded. Two hours later someone was pulling burritos out of the microwave. "Nobody told me." The contractor version is just as predictable. You assumed prep work was included. They meant something different by prep. You assumed two coats was standard. The quote was for one. Nobody asked. Nobody confirmed. Now you're having the burrito conversation halfway through the project. A few things to clarify before work starts: Ask what prep includes. "Prep work" on a quote can mean caulking and patching, or it can mean wiping down a surface. Find out specifically what's covered. Ask about coats. Is the quote for one finish coat or two? For most interior and exterior paint jobs, two coats is the right answer. Make sure you're both talking about the same job. Look beyond the price. When you met the contractor, did they listen during the walkthrough? Did they explain their process clearly? How someone communicates during the estimate is usually a preview of how they communicate during the job. Specify the products. You get to choose what goes on your walls. If you want a specific product -- Scuff-X, a specific Benjamin Moore line, anything -- say so upfront. The labor cost to apply cheap paint and good paint is roughly the same. The difference shows up on the walls. Follow up on references. A quick call to a past client tells you more than the quote will. The Craftsman Home: Launching a New Series [17:02] Dan is starting a recurring segment on American architectural styles -- not just what they look like, but the history, the architects, and how to think about color if you own one. The series starts with the Craftsman, one of the most widely recognized and widely loved styles in American residential design. What Makes a Craftsman Home [19:13] If you've had a hard time pinning down exactly what a Craftsman looks like, here's the picture: Low, gently sloping roof with wide eaves that extend out from the house -- you can often see the exposed rafter tails or decorative brackets underneath. A broad, deep front porch supported by thick tapered columns, usually sitting on a stone or brick base. The whole structure feels horizontal, grounded, almost hugging the earth. Materials are natural: wood, stone, brick. Colors are earthy. Inside, you'll typically find a central fireplace and built-in elements -- bookcases, benches, cabinetry. Warm. Solid. Welcoming. Dan admits he spent a year and a half nodding along when his former co-host talked about her Craftsman home without actually knowing what she meant. This segment is for everyone who has been doing the same thing. Where Craftsman Came From: Arts and Crafts Origins [20:16] The story starts in England in the mid-1800s, during the height of the Industrial Revolution. Factories were cranking out furniture and decorative goods in the dominant Victorian style: heavily ornamented, elaborately carved on the surface, but mass-produced underneath -- machine-stamped decoration glued onto flat boards, pieces nailed together quickly. The interiors to match were dense. Patterned wallpaper stacked on patterned carpets, lace, fringe, knick-knacks on every surface. By the 1860s, a group of designers started pushing back. The most influential was William Morris -- known today for his textile and wallpaper designs -- who believed that objects in a home should be honest and functional, made from real materials by real craftspeople. His guiding principle: "Have nothing in your home that you don't know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." That philosophy became the Arts and Crafts movement, which spread across England and arrived in the United States by the late 1800s. The American Craftsman Takes Off [24:19] Americans were equally done with Victorian fussiness and wanted something simpler, more natural, and more affordable. Two forces helped the Craftsman style spread quickly. Gustav Stickley was a furniture maker who deeply believed in Arts and Crafts ideals. In 1901 he launched a magazine called The Craftsman -- and put house plans inside it. For the cost of a magazine, ordinary families could find real architectural plans they could hand directly to a builder. Stickley's magazine ran until 1916 and essentially gave the American middle class a catalog of what a simpler, more honest home could look like. Sears, Roebuck and Co. started selling complete house kits through their catalog beginning in 1908. Pre-cut lumber, nails, shingles, windows, doors, and flooring all arrived by rail car, and a local crew -- or sometimes the homeowners themselves -- could assemble the house in a matter of weeks. Dan records at a studio in Holland, Michigan, and can see one of these catalog-era homes out the window every time he comes in. Quick side note: Craftsman tools, the Sears brand that launched around 1927, share the same catalog but have no actual connection to the architectural style. Completely independent naming. One of those odd coincidences of history. Selling house plans through magazines and catalogs made the Craftsman style accessible well beyond the wealthy -- the growing middle class could have one. That's a big part of why the homes spread so fast. Greene and Greene: The High End of Craftsman [27:40] The most elaborate Craftsman homes -- sometimes called "ultimate bungalows" -- were primarily the work of two brothers: architects Charles and Henry Greene, based in Pasadena, California. Their most famous project is the Gamble House, built in 1908 for the Procter & Gamble family. Rich wood interiors, exceptional joinery, Japanese-influenced details, custom furniture designed specifically to match the house. Worth looking up if you haven't seen it. The Blackburn House and Thorsen House are other examples. Each one blends architecture, furniture, and landscape into a single unified presentation. The Craftsman style spans from affordable Sears bungalow kits to these high-end works. Both fall under the same umbrella, and that range is part of what makes the style so interesting. Why Craftsman Homes Still Hold Up [29:11] By the 1930s, the Great Depression slowed home building, and newer styles -- Colonial Revival, Tudor, Art Deco, Modernism -- took center stage. The Craftsman faded from production but never disappeared. Today these homes are highly sought after, and it's worth understanding why the style caught on in the first place. Practical. The bungalow was an affordable, comfortable home sized for the middle class. Simple to build, simple to maintain. Philosophical. At a time when cities were expanding rapidly and daily life was becoming more mechanical and impersonal, people wanted a home that felt real. The Craftsman wasn't about impressing guests with ornate detail -- it was a quieter statement about valuing simplicity, family, and a connection to the natural world. Beautiful. Natural materials, earthy colors, and handcrafted details gave these homes a warmth that Victorian interiors, for all their grandeur, often lacked. A lot of what today gets called sustainable design or slow living echoes the same ideas these homes were built around more than a century ago. Craftsman Color Palette [31:40] Craftsman homes were designed to blend with the landscape, and the paint colors reflected that. Exterior colors were drawn from nature: earthy greens, warm browns, deep russets, muted golds, soft grays. Trim was typically a darker contrasting shade to highlight the exposed beams, brackets, and porch columns. Three or four coordinated colors were common -- one for siding, one for trim, a darker accent on windows or doors. Interior colors followed the same philosophy: warm, natural tones like olive, terracotta, tan, and cream, chosen to pair well with the oak or mahogany millwork and built-in furniture typical of these homes. None of this locks you in if you own a Craftsman. Color is personal and nothing is off limits. But your home already has an architectural style, and when you work with it -- even loosely -- things tend to feel cohesive faster than when you're fighting against it. RepcoLite can help sort out what works. There's also a full blog post at repcolite.com with a curated list of historically appropriate Benjamin Moore options for Craftsman homes. Products Mentioned Benjamin Moore color samples -- Half pint, approximately $5-6; the right way to test a color before buying gallons Wooster Jumbo Coder -- Small roller for applying paint samples to a wall or foam board; feather the edges and it's easy to paint over later Wooster Sherlock extension poles -- Mentioned for rolling walls; even a short extension makes the work easier Scuff-X -- Mentioned as an example of specifying the product you want from your contractor RepcoLite stain matching -- Available in store; bring a sample of your actual wood for the best result Resources Craftsman home color blog post with Benjamin Moore color recommendations All past episodes: repcolite.com -- On the Radio tab, or search Home In Progress on any podcast platform or YouTube Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #472
    August 13 · 38 min

    Is Your Deck Safe? A Simple Inspection Guide -- Plus Basement Efflorescence and Paint Colors for West-Facing Rooms

    Original Air Date: August 16, 2025 Re-Air Date: August 15, 2026 Episode Number: 471 Episode Summary Four topics this week. Dan opens with a segment on AI, the trades, and why professional painters are on the safe list of jobs that technology won't replace. Then a deck safety segment covering what actually causes collapses and a quick inspection checklist you can run through today. After that, a breakdown of efflorescence -- the white powdery stuff on basement walls that looks like mold but isn't -- including what causes it, why painting over it doesn't work, and how to actually fix it. The episode closes out a multi-week series on room exposures with a full guide to choosing paint colors for west-facing rooms, including eight to nine specific Benjamin Moore recommendations. Timestamps [00:00] -- Welcome and Preview [00:50] -- AI and the Trades [03:07] -- Why Painting Matters [07:11] -- Deck Safety Basics [10:03] -- Deck Failure Causes [14:08] -- Quick Deck Inspection [18:41] -- Basement White Powder [19:33] -- Efflorescence Explained [21:19] -- Fix Moisture and Repaint [24:47] -- West-Facing Color Guide [34:05] -- Best Colors and Samples [38:06] -- Wrap Up AI and the Trades [00:50] Dan opens with a Microsoft study ranking the top 40 jobs most at risk from AI and the top 40 considered safest. The at-risk list included customer service reps, writers, paralegals, web developers, and some programming roles. The safe list: caregivers, cleaners, roofers, pipe fitters, plumbers, plasterers -- and right in the middle of the mix, professional painters. The common thread across all the safe jobs is that they require hands-on work, real skill, human judgment, and a physical presence on site. No matter how capable the technology gets, it can't paint a house. Dan talks about his son Andrew, now in his second summer on a painting crew. He came in with no experience. Within a few weeks he was confidently working off extension ladders. By the end of that first summer he could handle almost anything thrown at him. What struck Dan wasn't just the skill -- it was something Andrew said about how satisfying it is to finish a job and stand back and see the actual before and after. A faded house that looks good again. That's different from the kind of satisfaction Dan gets at work, where some days it feels like moving digital ideas from one folder to another. The broader point: trades are going to keep requiring real people. Dan thinks the human touch is only going to become more valuable as more of the world goes digital. AI might help a plumber or electrician diagnose a complex issue, but somebody still has to show up and do the work. What Causes Deck Collapses [10:03] Deck collapses are genuinely rare -- the US Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates around 6,000 injuries per year tied to deck, porch, stair, and balcony failures. But because decks are elevated, when something does give way, injuries are almost guaranteed. One of the most well-known incidents was a 2003 Chicago collapse where a third-story wooden deck gave way under a group of people. The weight brought two lower decks down with it. Thirteen people died and 57 were injured. The most common failure point is the ledger board -- the board that connects the deck directly to the house. If flashing wasn't installed correctly or has failed over time, water gets behind the ledger and starts rotting the rim joist it's fastened to. Once the rim joist softens, the bolts anchoring the ledger can pull free. The ledger can look completely solid from the outside while the wood it's bolted into is already compromised. In older decks -- especially those built before building codes were updated in the early 2000s following the Chicago collapse -- the ledger board may have been fastened with plain nails rather than bolts or lag screws. Over time those nails can loosen or rust, leaving a deck looking solid while hiding a serious structural weakness. Other common failure points: Railings that aren't fastened into proper framing -- these tend to fail when someone leans their full weight against them Posts that are buried directly in soil rather than resting on concrete footings, where they can rot from below without showing any visible sign Metal connectors -- joist hangers, bolts, screws -- that are rusted, missing, or weren't installed correctly A deck that looks perfectly fine on the surface can be hiding significant problems underneath all of these. Quick Deck Inspection Checklist [14:08] This takes 10 to 15 minutes and is worth doing today if you haven't done it recently. Ideally it's an annual spring task, but any time works. Walk the deck surface. Pay attention to how it feels underfoot. Do boards bounce or feel springy? Are any warped, uneven, or soft? Test the railing. Give it a firm push -- don't lean your full weight on it as the test, but put enough pressure to check whether it's solid. Wobbling or creaking means it needs attention. Check the ledger board. If you can get safely underneath the deck, look where it connects to the house. Is the flashing intact? Are there signs of rot, water damage, or staining on the house wall or the ledger itself? And look at how it's attached -- if you see only nails and no bolts or lag screws, that connection should be reinforced. Probe suspicious wood. A screwdriver or small awl pressed into any wood that looks questionable -- joists, posts, the ledger -- will tell you a lot. If the tip sinks in a quarter inch or more with light pressure, that indicates rot and warrants further investigation. Check the posts. Make sure they're sitting on concrete footings, not buried directly in soil. Look for cracking, shifting, or movement at the base. Inspect the hardware. Look for rusted or missing screws, nails, or joist hangers. Anything corroded should be tightened or replaced with corrosion-resistant hardware. If the deck is over 15 to 20 years old, or was built before the 2003 code updates, or if anything in the inspection looks questionable, bring in a licensed contractor for a closer look. And if the deck just needs a refresh -- cleaning and a coat of wood protector -- stop into any RepcoLite and they'll walk you through the right products. Efflorescence: The White Powder on Your Basement Walls [19:33] If you've noticed white chalky streaks or fuzzy white buildup on your basement's concrete block or poured concrete walls, it probably startled you a bit. It looks like something is growing. It's not mold. It's efflorescence, and it's actually pretty common. What it is. Efflorescence is salt deposits forming on masonry surfaces. Water moves through the wall, picks up mineral salts from the concrete or block as it travels, and when it reaches the surface and evaporates, it leaves those salts behind. Sometimes it's a light dusting. Other times it's streaks or crusty fuzzy buildup that looks pretty alarming. What causes it. Moisture. If you have efflorescence, there is a moisture issue somewhere. It could be coming from outside -- poor drainage, clogged gutters, improper grading around the foundation. It could be coming from inside -- vapor movement through the space. Wherever it's coming from, the moisture has to be addressed or the efflorescence will keep coming back. Dan's own situation: his house had no gutters, so rainwater poured straight off the roof at the foundation. Once he installed gutters, the moisture problem went away and the efflorescence stopped. How to clean it. A stiff brush and plain water handles mild cases. For stubborn buildup, a diluted solution of white vinegar or a masonry cleaner specifically formulated for efflorescence will get it off. Follow the label directions and wear protective gear -- some of these cleaners are acidic. The critical mistake to avoid. Cleaning is only treating the symptom. If you paint over active efflorescence without fixing the moisture source, the moisture and salt will continue working toward the surface and will bring the paint with them. Blistering, peeling, paint failure. Dan learned this firsthand -- he painted over it the first time thinking it might solve things. It did not. He had to deal with peeling paint on top of the original problem. The right sequence. Fix the moisture source first. Then clean the efflorescence completely. Then let everything dry thoroughly. Then repaint. For bare, never-painted concrete or block walls: WaterBlock from Insl-X is worth knowing about. It's a water-blocking product that, when applied to unpainted masonry under the right conditions, can prevent a certain level of moisture from working through the wall. Stop into RepcoLite and ask about it -- there are specific application conditions that have to be met for it to work correctly. Choosing Paint Colors for West-Facing Rooms [24:47] This is the final installment of a series on how room orientation affects paint color. Previous episodes covered north-facing, south-facing, and east-facing rooms. The challenge with west-facing rooms. They're cool, shaded, and a little flat in the morning -- the sun is rising on the opposite side of the house. By mid-afternoon and into early evening, dramatic warm golden light pours in, carrying strong amber and orange undertones. That subtle beige you loved at noon might look orange by 5pm. The soft gray you chose can suddenly read pink as the afternoon deepens. It's a lighting personality shift that makes color selection genuinely tricky. The two questions that matter most. When do you use the room most, and what kind of feeling do you want to create there? Since you can't always find one color that works beautifully at every hour, focus on making it right for when you're actually in the space -- and just make sure it's livable the rest of the day. If you use the room mostly in the morning: West-facing rooms are at their flattest and coolest early in the day. To counteract that, a little warmth in the color helps -- a gentle warm beige, a soft taupe, a warm greige. Not Tuscan-sunset-level warm, because that will feel overwhelming when afternoon light arrives. Cooler colors also work for morning rooms; just avoid anything too gray. Lighting matters here: bulbs in the 2700K to 3000K range add a soft natural warmth that makes a shaded morning space feel inviting. Daylight bulbs sound appealing but tend to read too white or stark. If you use the room mostly in the afternoon: This is when western light is at its boldest -- warm, direct, full of amber and orange. The goal is balance. Cooler tones (blues, greens, purples, neutrals with cool undertones) help calm the intensity without making the room feel cold. If you prefer warmer colors, choose ones with a neutral or gray base rather than anything golden or saturated. Soft putties, earthy blushes, colors with muted depth are good candidates. Dan's example from his own home: a yellow with cooler undertones in a west-facing room. They picked it without even thinking about the exposure. It works perfectly because the cool base keeps the color from getting overwhelming when afternoon light warms it up -- it lands exactly where it should rather than turning garish. Test samples at different times of day. Benjamin Moore color samples (half pint, around $5-6) make this easy. Paint it on the wall or on foam board you can move around the space. Look at it at 9am, noon, 3pm, and 6pm. Choose the color that's right when you're most often in the room and acceptable the rest of the time. Benjamin Moore Color Recommendations for West-Facing Rooms [34:05] All of these are also available in a blog post at repcolite.com. Cooler tones -- for calming afternoon warmth: Moonshine -- barely-there gray with quiet coolness Silver Chain -- more richness without feeling heavy White Heron -- soft white with cool undertones; won't yellow in golden light White Wisp -- similar to White Heron; soft white, cool undertones Warmer tones -- for brightening flat morning light: Edgecomb Gray -- warm but not too golden; one of Dan's favorites Pale Oak -- subtle creamy look; great for shaded spaces Hazy Skies -- walks the line between warm and cool with a soft earthy base Bold and dramatic -- especially for evening use: Silvery Blue -- fresh and clean as afternoon sun comes in Catalina Blue -- similar feel; fresh and clean Casbah -- rich earthy blue that grounds a room and absorbs light beautifully Trim and ceiling (works with all of the above): Chantilly Lace -- clean, bright, perfectly neutral Products Mentioned WaterBlock from Insl-X -- Water-blocking product for bare, unpainted concrete/block basement walls; specific application conditions required; available at RepcoLite Masonry cleaner for efflorescence -- Available at RepcoLite; ask in store for the right option Benjamin Moore color samples -- Half pint, approximately $5-6; the right way to test colors before committing Wood protector / deck stain -- For decks that pass inspection but need a refresh; ask at any RepcoLite Resources West-facing room color blog post: repcolite.com Blog posts on north, south, and east-facing rooms also available at repcolite.com Find the Show Episodes available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #471
    August 6 · 43 min

    Old House, Real Problems: Pet Odors, Pest Damage, and Learning to Paint for the First Time

    Original Air Date: 08/08/26 Episode Number: 471 Episode Summary Dan's son Caleb stopped in to pick up primer and ended up on the radio. He bought his first house -- a 1901-era fixer-upper -- and has spent the past several months dealing with cat smells in a crawl space, a squirrel that chewed through wiring, a dead possum under the floorboards, and the humbling experience of learning to cut in a straight line for the first time. The back half of the conversation covers paint choices, color coverage, the trades versus college, and what it's actually like to be six years into a career as an electrician. Timestamps [00:00] -- Meet Caleb the Guest [01:33] -- First Walkthrough Shock [03:04] -- Cat Smells and the Crawl Space [04:21] -- Enzyme Cleaner Fiasco [07:02] -- Sealing Odor Hotspots [09:26] -- Squirrel in the Ceiling [12:54] -- Dead Possum Discovery [15:22] -- First Time Painting Lessons [19:27] -- Color Choices and Coverage [22:13] -- Choosing the Wall Color [23:06] -- One Coat vs. Two [23:47] -- Ceiling Paint Lessons [25:50] -- Vanity Makeover Plan [27:16] -- DIY Confidence Tips [30:27] -- Trades Talk Break [31:09] -- Back in Studio [31:36] -- Living With Messes [34:05] -- Skipping College [37:24] -- Why Trades Work [40:39] -- Trade Life Humor [42:27] -- Wrap Up The House [01:33] Built somewhere around 1901 -- "early 1901" on the listing, which Caleb says basically means they don't really know. Good news on move-in day: the electrical had already been updated, which mattered a lot to an electrician who knew exactly what that job would have cost him. The first thing visible when you walked through the door was a dining room painted in the brightest Barbie pink either of them had ever seen. Online listing photos had made it look like a warm sunset. In person it looked like Pepto-Bismol. That was the cosmetic problem. The real problem was the smell. Cat Smells and the Crawl Space [03:04] Three confirmed cats, possibly four, had been using the dirt crawl space as a litter box for three or four years. The crawl space starts at about two feet of clearance and drops to six to eight inches near the outer walls -- full belly-crawl territory. Caleb suited up with a respirator, goggles, a painter's suit, and a child's garden rake with four metal prongs that he says will remain in a place of honor in the basement indefinitely. It goes with him before the fishing poles if there's ever a fire. He went through the crawl space with enzymatic cleaner -- but the first jug he bought was formulated for outdoor use, and it didn't make a dent on the smell. He went back to the store, found a cat-specific enzymatic formula, and ended up buying about eight small spray bottles to fill a pressurized sprayer. That worked. A dehumidifier finished the job on the residual musty smell -- now when you open the basement door, it just smells like a normal old stone basement. On enzymatic cleaners: Use a formula specifically designed for the type of odor you're dealing with. Outdoor or general-purpose formulas may not be strong enough for concentrated pet waste. Cat-specific formulas are made for exactly this situation. On crawl space odors: Garden lime thrown down on a dirt crawl space can help neutralize pH and absorb lingering smells after the source is removed. Sealing Odor Hotspots [07:02] There was a small alcove near the stairs where foam gym flooring had soaked up years of cat urine. Caleb pulled it up and needed to seal the subfloor underneath before putting anything new down. The right product for this kind of situation is a shellac-based primer like BIN -- it seals odors and dries fast. Dan didn't have any shellac on hand, but he did have an old can of oil-based polyurethane that tested out fine, and for a clear coat application it worked well. The key advantage of a clear coat over a pigmented primer in odor situations: pigment can leave microscopic paths for odor to work through. A clear film seals more completely. Caleb put new subfloor down over the top and sealed that too. Squirrel in the Ceiling [09:26] The home inspection had flagged a squirrel living above the breezeway entry. The smell coming out of that space was serious enough that Dan wasn't sure it would ever clear up. Caleb got the squirrel out, sealed the entry point, and eventually pulled down the ceiling to assess the damage -- and found something more significant than anyone expected. The squirrel had chewed through the outer jacket on two sets of wires, exposing bare copper hot, neutral, and ground conductors. There was visible charring around the wiring. The breaker had tripped on one of Dan's early walkthroughs; at the time nobody knew why. The wiring had apparently been in this condition long enough that it's surprising no fire resulted. Caleb rewired the affected circuits and closed everything up properly. Point worth keeping: if animals get into a wall or ceiling space and stay there, wiring damage is a real possibility. It's not just a smell and mess problem. If you know or suspect animals have been living in a structural space, the wiring in that area is worth checking before you close it back up. Dead Possum Under the Floor [12:54] After the squirrel situation was resolved, the entry still smelled. As the weather warmed up, it got worse. Caleb pulled up a damaged section of subfloor near the breezeway door, expecting to find the water damage he'd spotted -- and found a dead, decomposing possum that had apparently gotten in through the same entry point as the squirrel and not gotten back out. He called his best friend, who arrived with a square shovel and leather gloves. The possum got a burial in the backyard. The subfloor was treated with enzymatic cleaner, the entry point sealed, and the floor rebuilt. Dan's contribution to the discovery call: asking whether Caleb was sure it was dead, and suggesting he try touching its eye to confirm. Caleb reported there was no eye. Dan agreed that was probably a reliable indicator. First Time Painting [15:22] Caleb had essentially never painted before -- Dan had handed him a brush with no paint on it as a kid and sent him into another room. This house was his real introduction. The biggest struggle was cutting in at the ceiling line without tape. He and his brother Andrew started by eye on the first room and the difference in their speed was immediate and obvious -- Andrew was moving at several times Caleb's pace, and Caleb's edges were rough. The key things Caleb took away from the experience: A good brush matters more than most people realize going in. People often reach for tiny brushes thinking more control, but a quality full-size brush is easier to work with, not harder. Practice builds speed and confidence faster than expected -- Andrew went from nervous to confident within a month of his first exterior painting summer. And the work itself is harder than it looks when someone skilled does it in front of you. Andrew ended up painting most of the house -- the kitchen, dining room, living room, and upstairs. Caleb handled a fair amount of the cutting in and ceiling work. Color Choices and Coverage [19:27] Caleb's fiancée Melanie handled all the interior color selections, which Caleb describes as a great decision. Dan had expected conservative colors based on Caleb's personality and was surprised to get a list of deep, saturated choices -- a near-teal green, dark forest tones, rich colors throughout. His instinct was that deep colors would require multiple coats to cover the lighter existing walls. They used RepcoLite Optima, and the coverage surprised Dan enough that he brought it up on air. Deep colors don't naturally hide better just because they have more pigment -- the colorant system and the base paint matter. Optima's combination of formula and colorant system delivered coverage close to what you'd hope for after one coat, and two coats finished the job cleanly. The favorite room is the living room, painted in Yorktown Green -- a deep blue-green Benjamin Moore color that reads almost like a rich teal. They had originally planned a different color and switched at the last minute. It turned out to be everyone's favorite. One Coat vs. Two [23:06] Even when one coat coverage looks surprisingly good -- and in this case it did -- two coats is always the right call. The second coat evens out color uniformity, improves sheen consistency, eliminates lap marks and differences between brushed and rolled areas, and builds the film thickness the paint was designed to have. Durability depends on having enough coating on the surface. Ceiling Paint Lesson [23:47] Caleb chose a creamy, slightly warm off-white for the ceilings rather than straight white. Dan went with bright white on his own ceiling at home and regrets it -- it reads as plasticky and a little harsh compared to a softer white. The warmer ceiling tone makes the rooms feel finished rather than clinical. Dan says he's living with it but won't make that choice again. Painting angled ceilings with a hip roof is harder than flat ceilings. The angles create back strain and make it difficult to track where you've been. On flat ceilings, working in a consistent grid pattern and watching for the shine of wet paint to see where you've covered is the practical method. Vanity Project and Ebonizing [25:50] Caleb is in the store today to pick up primer for a bathroom vanity he's painting. He had tried ebonizing the wood first -- a technique where you soak steel wool in vinegar for two days and brush the resulting solution onto bare wood. On raw oak it reacts with the tannins and can turn the wood dramatically dark almost instantly. Dan confirmed it works well on bare, unfinished oak. The problem: Caleb's vanity drawers had an existing finish on them. He tried sanding it off but couldn't get enough removed for the reaction to work. The project got shelved for a couple of months. Now he's going with paint in a warmer brown tone -- color TBD pending a conversation with Melanie. DIY Confidence and Watching the Whole Video [27:16] Caleb's advice for first-time homeowners going into projects they've never done: do your research, ask people who've done it before, and then just start. The confidence builds faster than you expect once you're in it. Dan adds one specific lesson from his own experience: watch the entire YouTube tutorial before you start, not just the section that seems to cover your specific problem. Step six often contains something that makes steps one through five make sense. The urge to find just the relevant part and skip ahead is strong and frequently costs time later. Trades: Skipping College [34:05] Caleb went straight from high school into an electrical apprenticeship, now six years in and working for Walters Electric. The decision wasn't difficult. He didn't want to sit in a classroom for four more years and wanted to be doing something physical and practical. A childhood memory of wearing his grandfather's tool belt -- Dan's father had worked at an electrical supply store -- pointed him toward electrical specifically. No college debt. He's had to learn to save money like everyone does, but without the loan payments that come with a four-year degree, he's been building toward things like the house from the start. Why Trades Work [37:24] The electrical field keeps changing -- new switches, new systems, new technology -- which means there's always something to learn and the monotony problem most people worry about going in doesn't really materialize. The physical nature of the work pays off in a different way than a desk job. Caleb notes his brother Andrew came into his first summer of exterior painting as a lean kid and by the end of that summer was moving extension ladders in ways that seemed physically improbable. Working in the trades also means regular contact with people from plumbing, HVAC, and other skilled fields -- which gave Caleb knowledgeable people to call when the toilet in his new house turned out to have never been properly secured to the flange, and when the squirrel's wiring damage needed a second set of eyes. Thick skin helps. Being one of the shorter guys on a crew means someone is going to notice when you need a second ladder to reach the first ladder on top of the van. Products Mentioned Enzymatic cleaner (cat-specific formula) -- For concentrated pet odor; cat-specific formulas significantly outperform general or outdoor versions; available at pet supply stores Garden lime -- For neutralizing pH and absorbing odors in dirt crawl spaces Dehumidifier -- For residual basement moisture and musty odor Oil-based polyurethane (clear coat) -- Used to seal subfloor against pet odor; clear coat seals more completely than pigmented primers BIN Shellac-Based Primer -- Dan's preferred product for sealing odors into subfloors and wood; dries fast, seals well RepcoLite Optima -- Interior paint used throughout the house; strong coverage on deep and saturated colors Vinegar + steel wool (ebonizing solution) -- DIY wood treatment; works well on bare, unfinished oak; does not work on finished or sealed surfaces Find the Show Episodes available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #470
    July 30 · 40 min

    Cleaning Moss and Lichen Off Your Roof (Without Wrecking It) -- Plus a Plain-English Guide to Urethane

    Original Air Date: 8/1/2026 Episode Number: 470 Episode Summary Three topics this week. Dan opens with a paint science segment answering a listener question about urethane and enamel -- two words that appear constantly on paint labels and mean different things than most people assume. Then a full two-segment deep dive on moss and lichen: first, how to safely remove them from different types of siding, and then a step-by-step walkthrough of how Dan cleaned his own roof, what products he used, and what the warnings are. He closes with a quick listener question about painting over old glossy trim in a pre-1978 home. Timestamps [00:00] -- Show Intro and Promises [02:28] -- Paint Science: Urethane vs. Enamel [07:38] -- Choosing the Right Paint [09:56] -- Moss and Lichen Overview [10:35] -- Siding Segment Setup [11:06] -- What Moss and Lichen Are [12:43] -- Cleaning Brick and Masonry [15:09] -- Cleaning Wood Safely [16:56] -- Vinyl, Stucco, and Pressure Tips [18:27] -- Protecting Plants [19:22] -- Roof Segment Begins [20:02] -- Why Remove Roof Growth [20:14] -- Roof Damage Explained [21:52] -- Dan's Roof Wake-Up Call [23:48] -- Kill It, Don't Scrape It [24:12] -- Hire Out or DIY? [25:03] -- Best Cleaners Compared [29:20] -- Prep and Protect Plants [30:53] -- Rinse, Brush, and Apply [33:58] -- Results and Safety Warnings [36:41] -- Listener Q: Glossy Trim [37:57] -- Lead, Adhesion, and Primer [39:40] -- Wrap Up Urethane vs. Enamel: A Plain-English Explanation [02:28] A listener wrote in puzzled by the word urethane showing up everywhere -- waterborne urethanes, urethane-modified acrylics, polyurethanes -- and wanted to know whether it means something specific or just marketing. He also asked which is more durable, urethane or enamel, and which he should be reaching for. The short answer: urethane and enamel are not competing terms. They describe different things entirely. Paint basics. Every can contains pigment (color and hiding), liquid (what lets you apply it), and resin -- the binder. As paint dries and the liquid leaves, the resin and pigment form the paint film. The resin has enormous influence over how the finished coating behaves: hardness, flexibility, adhesion, resistance to moisture, cleaning, and abrasion. What urethane means. Urethane isn't an extra scoop of durability added to the can. It's a type of chemical connection that can be built into the resin structure itself. When a resin contains many of those connections, it's called a polyurethane. That chemistry is associated with toughness, abrasion resistance, and resistance to cleaners -- which is why you see the word on products for cabinets, doors, railings, and floors. What enamel means. Traditionally, enamel meant an oil-based product with a hard, smooth, glossy finish -- the go-to for doors, trim, and metal. Today it's used more broadly. You can buy acrylic enamels, waterborne enamels, and urethane enamels. An enamel can absolutely use urethane chemistry. They're not opposites. The analogy. Asking which is more durable, a urethane or an enamel, is like asking whether a pickup truck is better than a diesel engine. One describes the vehicle type. The other describes the technology inside. You can have a diesel pickup, just like you can have a urethane enamel. The practical takeaway. For an ordinary bedroom wall, don't hunt for urethane -- just get good washability and the right sheen. For cabinets, doors, or railings, an enamel built for those surfaces makes sense, and it may well use urethane chemistry. For a wood floor, get a polyurethane specifically designed for foot traffic. For exterior siding, hardness isn't even the main priority -- flexibility, adhesion, and weather resistance matter more. The product's intended use matters more than the words on the label. Stop into any RepcoLite, tell them what you're painting and what kind of abuse it'll take, and they'll sort it out. Moss vs. Lichen: What You're Actually Looking At [11:06] Before cleaning anything, it helps to know what you're dealing with, because moss and lichen behave differently from the algae and mildew covered last week -- and they have to be handled differently as a result. Moss is the green fuzzy stuff -- little soft pillows of growth, kinda charming, definitely not good for your house or roof. It grips whatever it's growing on and holds moisture against the surface. Lichen is stranger and tougher. It looks almost painted or glued on -- flat, crusty patches or small leafy, ruffled growths. It can be gray-green, orange, chalky white. Lichen is actually two organisms living together: a fungus that builds the structure and grips the surface, and an algae that makes the food. Together they can live almost anywhere and attach with a grip that's very hard to break. That's the core reason they need their own conversation -- algae and mildew are essentially films sitting on the surface. Moss and lichen are anchored into the surface, into the pores of brick, the grain of wood, down into mortar. Removing them incorrectly can cause more damage than leaving them. Cleaning Moss and Lichen Off Siding [12:43] Brick and masonry. Gently knock off the thickest mounded moss first -- but gently is the word. Plastic scraper, wooden edge, or a stiff-but-not-metal brush. No wire brushes on brick, especially older or softer brick. Nothing mounted on a power tool. Working through the harder outer face of the brick exposes the softer material underneath, which holds moisture longer and becomes even more vulnerable to freeze-thaw damage. You can create next year's problem while cleaning up this year's. After removing loose material, treat remaining moss and lichen with a cleaner labeled for both the growth type and the surface. Wet & Forget is a popular spray-and-leave option -- apply it, leave it alone, and rain carries away the dead material over weeks or months. Make sure whatever you use is designed to kill moss and lichen, not just clean the surface. Wood. Be careful with straight chlorine bleach on bare or weathered wood -- it breaks down lignin, the natural binder in the wood fibers, and can leave cedar blotchy and damaged in ways that don't reverse. Sodium percarbonate (oxygenated bleach -- essentially OxiClean) is gentler on wood and on nearby plants. Soft brush, go with the grain, low pressure, no wire brush. Vinyl and aluminum. More forgiving -- growth doesn't anchor as deep on non-porous surfaces. Soft nylon brush or cloth with a cleaner labeled for that siding type, let it sit, gentle scrub, rinse. Don't spray upward under the laps. Fiber cement. Check the manufacturer's guidance. Keep it gentle and low pressure. Stucco and EIFS. Porous and on the brittle side -- soft wash, right cleaner, low pressure. Older synthetic stucco (EIFS) is especially risky; aggressive washing can force water behind cracks and joints. If the surface is already cracked or failing, call a professional. Plants. Wet down all landscaping before starting. Cover sensitive plants with light plastic, but get it off quickly -- they'll cook under it. Rinse everything again when you're done. Why You Can't Leave Roof Moss and Lichen Alone [20:02] Moss growing thicker around the edges of shingles interferes with drainage and can cause shingles to lift or deteriorate -- creating openings for water to get in. That alone is a good enough reason to deal with it. Lichen is worse on a roof than on siding because it attaches directly to the protective granules on the shingles and can cause irreversible damage as it grips and eventually pulls them loose. There's also a curb appeal issue: moss and lichen-covered roofs read as neglected or failing, whether or not that's actually true. Dan put off dealing with his own roof growth for a couple of years, telling himself it wasn't a big deal. A roofer from Sheriff Goslin Roofing -- who came out to assess the roof's lifespan -- pointed out that the moss and lichen were actively taking years off the roof by pulling granules and giving moisture more places to work. That's what finally prompted action. Hire Out or DIY? [24:12] Before getting into the process, Dan makes the case for hiring it out -- because for a lot of people, that's the right answer. There are companies that specialize in roof and exterior cleaning. If the roof is steep, high, difficult to access, or if heights aren't your thing, hiring a professional is absolutely the right call. A fall is a lot worse than a moss problem. If you're still planning to do it yourself, read on. Cleaner Options for Moss and Lichen on Roofs [25:03] Wet & Forget. Apply per label directions and leave it. The treatment kills growth over time, and rain carries the dead material away over the following weeks and months. No rinsing, no aggressive follow-up. Depending on your roof pitch and setup, you may be able to apply most of it from a ladder or even the ground -- though you have to be very careful not to force water up under shingles at the wrong angle. Dan's roofer confirmed his customers have had good results with it. Oxygenated bleach / sodium percarbonate (essentially OxiClean). This is what Dan used. Mix approximately one pound of oxygenated bleach per two gallons of water. Apply with a pump-up garden sprayer. This is gentler on plants and on the roof surface than chlorine bleach, and it worked well for him. Chlorine bleach solution. Many asphalt shingle manufacturers recommend this for algae, moss, and lichen. A common starting range is roughly one and a half to three and a half cups of household chlorine bleach per two gallons of water -- some guides go closer to a 50/50 mix. Check your specific shingle manufacturer's recommendations before using. Note: all of these mix ratios will also be in the show notes at repcolite.com. Whatever product you choose, test a small inconspicuous area first to make sure there's no unexpected reaction with your specific roof material. Dan's Step-by-Step Roof Process [30:53] This is the process Dan used with oxygenated bleach. Adapt it for whatever cleaner and roof material you're working with. 1. Protect plants and ground. Rinse all landscaping, decking, and anything below the roof with plain water before starting. Cover sensitive plants with light plastic, get it off quickly after, and rinse everything again when you're done. 2. Initial rinse. Wet the roof surface with a garden hose on low pressure. Dan went up on his low-pitch roof and sprayed downward; wet roofs are slippery, so move deliberately. Don't drag the hose across shingles and don't force water up under them. 3. Remove loose moss. Soft-bristled brush, top to bottom, very light pressure. Don't scrub hard or use a stiff brush -- you don't want to pull granules off the shingles. Get what comes off easily and let the cleaner handle the rest. 4. Apply the cleaner. Dan used a pump-up garden sprayer to mist the oxygenated bleach solution across the roof. Let it sit 15 to 20 minutes. Keep it wet -- reapply if needed so it doesn't dry out before doing its job. 5. Rinse thoroughly. Garden hose, low pressure, top to bottom. Don't push water up under the shingles. 6. Final soft pass. Dan ran a soft-bristle broom over the roof one more time after rinsing. A lot of moss that had already started dying let go with very light contact. Results. Lichen began turning to powder and blowing away over the following weeks. Within three to four weeks the roof looked new. Damage spots from the growth were still visible, but the active deterioration was stopped. Safety Warnings [33:58] Never use a pressure washer on a roof. It strips granules, drives water under shingles, can damage the roof deck, and can void your warranty. Garden hose only, low pressure. Don't leave bleach solution on longer than about 30 minutes without rinsing. Eye protection, gloves, proper footwear. Bleach irritates skin and eyes. A wet roof is slippery. Not optional. Rinse landscaping before and after. You are using something designed to kill biological growth. Plants qualify. One treatment may not be enough. Be patient, repeat if needed. Two treatments handles most severe cases. Listener Q: Painting Over Old Glossy Trim [36:41] A listener bought an older house where all the doors, baseboard, and window trim are covered in smooth, glossy paint. They want to know whether they can clean and paint directly over it with water-based paint, or if sanding and priming are required. First question: how old is the house? If it was built before 1978, there's a realistic chance that one of the older layers on that trim contains lead. You don't know for certain without testing, but you shouldn't start sanding anything aggressively until you do. Pick up a lead paint test kit, and if it comes back positive, call RepcoLite before proceeding with anything. Do not sand lead paint without understanding what that involves. If lead isn't a concern, the next issue is adhesion. New paint doesn't stick well to dirty, greasy, or glossy surfaces. Start by washing everything thoroughly with TSP or Dawn dish soap, rinse well, and let everything dry completely. Then scuff-sand with 220-grit -- not to strip the old paint, just to dull the shine and give the new paint something to grip. Wipe down the dust with a damp cloth, let it dry, and apply a quality bonding primer. Stix from Insl-X is Dan's recommendation for this situation -- it bonds to just about everything, including slick or difficult surfaces. Once that primer is dry, you can top coat with any good water-based trim paint. Products Mentioned Wet & Forget -- Spray-and-leave treatment for moss and lichen on siding and roofs; kills growth and lets rain carry away dead material over time OxiClean / sodium percarbonate / oxygenated bleach -- Mix 1 lb per 2 gallons of water for roof treatment; gentler on plants and surfaces than chlorine bleach; available at grocery and hardware stores Chlorine bleach solution -- 1.5 to 3.5 cups per 2 gallons of water for roof use; check your shingle manufacturer's guidance for the right ratio Lead paint test kit -- For homes built before 1978; available at hardware stores TSP (Trisodium Phosphate) -- Heavy-duty cleaner for washing glossy trim surfaces before painting Stix from Insl-X -- Bonding primer that adheres to glossy, slick, and difficult surfaces; the right primer before painting old trim Find the Show Mix ratios for all cleaners mentioned on air are in the show notes at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab on the homepage. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #469
    July 23 · 40 min

    How to Paint Aluminum Siding -- Plus Removing Algae, Mold, and Mildew from Exterior Siding

    Original Air Date: 07/25/26 Episode Number: 469 Episode Summary A listener question about painting aluminum siding kicks off the show, and Dan splits the answer across two segments with a detour in the middle: a full conversation on how to identify and safely clean biological growth off the exterior of your home -- algae, mold, mildew, moss, and lichen. The aluminum siding answer wraps up at the end with product recommendations and a strong case for always doing two coats. Moss and lichen get their own episode next week. Timestamps [00:00] -- Show Kickoff [00:30] -- Listener Question: Aluminum Siding [01:44] -- Oxidation and Prep Basics [03:58] -- Wash, Scrub, Rinse [05:42] -- Hand Test and Inspection [07:21] -- Primer or Not [08:11] -- Switch to Algae Topic [08:53] -- Brick Recap and What Triggered This [12:20] -- What Growth Is It? [13:32] -- Algae, Moss, Lichen, Mold [16:16] -- Efflorescence Sidebar [17:29] -- Moisture Causes First [19:01] -- Cleaning Safely Tease [20:01] -- Moss vs. Mold Distinction [21:00] -- Golden Rule: Gentle Cleaning [22:47] -- Pick the Right Cleaner [25:50] -- Prep Before Repainting [27:09] -- Hose, Not Pressure Washer [29:53] -- Why Not Straight Bleach [31:22] -- Protect Plants from Runoff [32:41] -- Fix the Moisture Root Cause [33:56] -- Aluminum Siding Paint Picks [34:45] -- Two Coats Really Matters [36:33] -- Best Benjamin Moore Options [38:54] -- Temperature and Wrap Up Listener Question: Aluminum Siding [00:30] A listener wrote in asking about painting their tan aluminum-sided house a darker blue. They wanted to know what prep was involved, whether one-coat coverage was possible, and what products to use. Dan splits the answer into two segments. The short version on the one-coat question: two coats, always. The longer version on everything else follows below. Oxidation and Prep Basics [01:44] The single most important thing to understand about painting aluminum siding is oxidation. If you've ever rubbed your hand across older aluminum and ended up with white chalky powder on your palm, that's the original factory finish breaking down from years of sun, rain, and weather. That chalk has to come off before any paint goes on. Paint bonds to a surface. If that surface is a loose layer of chalk sitting on top of old factory finish, the paint is bonding to the chalk -- not to the siding. When the chalk lets go, the new paint goes with it. This is the most common reason aluminum siding paint jobs fail, and it's entirely avoidable. A pressure washer alone won't get you there. It'll knock off dirt and cobwebs, but it doesn't automatically remove oxidation. Dan compares it to washing your car with only a pressure washer after an entire Michigan summer of construction zones and dirt roads -- you'll get some of it, but you won't get all of it. Wash, Scrub, Rinse [03:58] Start with a good exterior house cleaner that's built to break down dirt, grime, mildew, and oxidized residue. Apply it, and then physically scrub the surface -- a soft-bristle siding brush on an extension pole makes this manageable. Work in sections so you can scrub and rinse before the cleaner dries on the siding. You can use a pressure washer for rinsing, but keep the pressure reasonable and always direct the spray downward the way rain would naturally hit the siding. Shooting water upward beneath the panel laps can drive moisture into the wall. The pressure washer is a rinsing and help-with-cleaning tool. The scrubbing still has to happen. Hand Test and Inspection [05:42] Once the siding is dry, perform the hand test: rub your palm firmly across the surface. If it comes away clean, you're good to move on. If there's still a chalky residue on your hand, keep cleaning. The surface doesn't need to be microscopically perfect, but you should not be able to casually wipe your hand across it and look like you've been handling powdered sugar. While you're working your way around the house, inspect as you go. Look for peeling paint, corrosion, bare aluminum, dents, damaged panels, and failed caulk around windows, doors, and penetrations. Bare or corroded areas may need spot priming before finish paint -- bring photos into RepcoLite and they'll point you toward the right primer. Loose paint should be scraped away and edges feather-sanded so they don't telegraph through the new finish. Primer or Not [07:21] If the original factory finish is clean, intact, and firmly bonded, you do not need to prime the whole house. No matter what you read online. A high-quality exterior acrylic straight over a clean, sound factory finish is the right call. Primer is for bare spots and problem areas only. Biological Growth: What Are You Actually Looking At? [12:20] Dan took a walk around his own house after mentioning offhand on last week's show that brick doesn't need much maintenance -- "every now and then you clean the algae off." That comment nagged at him all week until he went and looked. His back wall, under two old maple trees, was covered in green growth on both the brick and the vinyl siding on the addition. This week's middle segment covers what to do about it. Before you clean anything, figure out what you're actually dealing with. The growth type matters, and the surface it's on matters just as much. Algae is the most common. Thin, flat, greenish film, usually on shaded or damp areas. Feels slick when wet. Spreads across the surface rather than growing in clumps. Moss is thicker and softer -- you know what it looks like. It holds moisture against the wall, which creates problems depending on what the wall is made of. On vinyl it's mainly a staining and maintenance issue since vinyl doesn't rot, but on wood siding or shingles it can contribute to paint peeling, decay, and eventually rot. On brick, stucco, or stone it keeps mortar joints and damaged areas wetter longer than they should be. Lichen is crusty and firmly attached -- it can be gray, yellow, pale green, orange, or black. It's the toughest of the group to remove because it grips the surface aggressively. On soft brick or old mortar, scraping it off can pull part of the surface along with it. Lichen on roofs gets its own conversation next week. Mold and mildew tend to appear darker, blotchy, fuzzy, or powdery. Efflorescence -- the white, fuzzy stuff sometimes seen on brick or concrete -- looks biological but isn't. It's salt deposits left behind by moisture moving through the masonry. Address the moisture source; don't just clean it off and move on. Dan is covering algae, mold, and mildew this week. Moss and lichen get their own episode next week, including how to deal with them on the roof. Fix the Moisture Problem First [17:29] Cleaning is not a permanent fix if you don't address why the growth is there. Moisture is the cause of all of it. Before mixing any cleaner, look at what's creating the damp conditions: overflowing gutters, a downspout dumping water next to the wall, a sprinkler hitting the siding, shrubs growing too tight against the house and blocking airflow, mulch or soil piled high against the brick, or heavy shade from tree canopy keeping the wall from drying out. If you clean the wall and leave the moisture problem in place, the growth is going to come back -- sometimes pretty quickly. Cleaning Safely: JoeMax [22:47] Start with the gentlest method that will get the job done. Don't reach for the strongest chemical available or fire up the pressure washer first. Inspect the surface before you do anything. On brick, check the mortar joints -- is it solid or loose and powdery? On siding, look for loose panels, open caulk joints, peeling paint, or damaged edges. The condition of the surface determines how carefully you have to work. Also confirm you're actually dealing with biological growth and not just dirt or pollen. If it's just a surface film of grime, mild dish soap, a scrub brush, and a hose will probably handle it without any specialty product. If it's actual biological growth, the product Dan recommends is JoeMax House Cleaner and Mildew Killer. It's a concentrate that combines a mildewcide, bleach activator, and detergents. You mix it with household bleach and water. It kills mold and mildew and lifts dirt and staining at the same time, and it's rated for virtually every surface on the outside of a house -- vinyl, aluminum, painted or stained wood, trim, fences, stucco, concrete, and brick. One product covers everything. For Dan's situation with both brick and vinyl on the same house, that matters. Using it is straightforward: mix per the label, spray on, give it about five minutes to work, and rinse off. Most smooth surfaces won't need scrubbing. Textured surfaces like brick may need a light scrub. Mix only what you'll use in the next few hours -- once bleach is added, it's only good for a short time and can't be saved. Why Not Just Use Straight Bleach? [29:53] Bleach is not a great cleaner on its own. It beads up and runs off rather than wetting the surface and lifting residue. It also flashes off quickly -- it can lighten a mildew stain and evaporate before it actually kills the growth, so the problem comes right back. JoeMax has detergents that let it wet the surface, carry the contamination away, and stay active long enough to do the job properly. Hose, Not Pressure Washer [27:09] For the actual cleaning, a garden hose with a soft-bristle brush is usually the right tool. Natural bristle on brick, soft nylon or cloth on vinyl. High-pressure washing on brick can erode weak mortar, etch the surface, and drive water into the wall. On vinyl, water sprayed upward beneath the laps can get inside -- vinyl is built to shed rain coming downward, not a concentrated jet coming from below. Protect Your Plants [31:22] Don't skip this. Water plants thoroughly before you start -- wet the leaves and soak the soil so the roots aren't sitting dry and ready to absorb runoff. Cover anything especially delicate while you apply the cleaner, but don't leave plastic sheeting over plants in direct sun or you'll cook them fast. Get it off as soon as you can. Work on a calm day to minimize drift. Keep a second hose nearby to rinse accidental overspray immediately. Don't let runoff pool at plant bases or drain into a storm drain, pond, stream, or rain garden. If You're Repainting, You Still Have to Kill It [25:50] If the surface you're cleaning is going to be painted afterward, don't skip the mildewcide step. A mildewcide in your paint prevents new mold from forming -- it does not stop existing growth from working its way back through from underneath. Clean it, kill it, rinse it thoroughly, let it dry completely, then prime and paint. JoeMax handles all the prep steps you need before paint goes on. Aluminum Siding Paint Picks [36:33] Back to the listener question. For aluminum siding with clean, sound factory finish, you want a high-quality exterior acrylic. Two coats, no exceptions. The first coat hides the original color. After one coat you might think you're done -- and on a calm day standing close to the wall, it might look fine. But in afternoon sun, or when you step back, thin areas and lap marks and variations between brushed and rolled sections become obvious. The second coat evens out the color, improves sheen uniformity, and -- most importantly -- builds the film thickness the paint was designed to have. Durability comes from having enough coating on the surface. One coat might change the color; two coats creates the protective film. Benjamin Moore Aura Exterior is the premium recommendation, especially for a significant color change like tan to a rich dark blue. It hides exceptionally well, holds color long-term, and handles strong, deep colors better than most products. Benjamin Moore Regal Select Exterior is a high-quality option with excellent application properties and long-term durability. A strong all-around choice for a full repaint. Benjamin Moore Element Guard is worth knowing about if there's any weather uncertainty. It only needs about an hour before it can handle rain or heavy dew, which matters in Michigan's shoulder seasons when the forecast can change while you're opening the can. Less relevant in peak summer, but a smart pick in spring or fall. All three use Benjamin Moore's Gen X colorant system, which is formulated to work with the paint rather than weakening the base the way traditional universal colorants can. Better hiding, better durability, stronger color performance in deep tones. RepcoLite Endura uses a similar premium colorant approach and will likely offer a price advantage while still delivering strong performance. One final note on aluminum siding specifically: watch the surface temperature, not just the air temperature. Aluminum, especially in a darker original color, heats up fast in direct sun. The temperature range on the can or the tech data sheet applies to the surface you're painting on, not the air around it. Work within that range or you risk adhesion and application problems. Coming Next Week Moss and lichen -- how to remove them safely from brick, wood, stucco, stone, and roofing without damaging the surface. Dan promises it's better info than it sounds. Products Mentioned JoeMax House Cleaner and Mildew Killer -- Concentrate; mix with bleach and water; rated for vinyl, aluminum, wood, brick, stucco, concrete; available at RepcoLite Benjamin Moore Aura Exterior -- Premium exterior acrylic; excellent for deep color changes; available at RepcoLite Benjamin Moore Regal Select Exterior -- High-quality, durable exterior acrylic; available at RepcoLite Benjamin Moore Element Guard -- Rain-ready in about an hour; great for unpredictable weather; available at RepcoLite RepcoLite Endura -- Premium exterior paint with strong colorants; available at RepcoLite Roma Bio Limewash / Roma Bio Mineral Paint -- Mentioned briefly as the right products for painting brick (covered in detail last week); available at RepcoLite Find the Show Episodes available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #468
    July 16 · 39 min

    Points of No Return: The Exterior Surfaces You Can't Unpaint

    Original Air Date: July 18, 2026 Episode Number: 468 Episode Summary Some exterior surfaces are one-way doors. You can paint them -- but once you do, something changes permanently, or close enough to it that you should know what you're signing up for before you start. Dan opens with a story about a pair of jeans he turned into extremely short shorts without measuring first, and uses it to frame a conversation about five exterior surfaces where the same logic applies: brick, foundation, natural stone, decks, and vinyl siding. Timestamps [00:00] -- Points of No Return [00:56] -- Jorts Origin Story [02:31] -- Cut Once, Regret [06:06] -- Neighbor Catches You [07:30] -- Painting One-Way Doors [10:40] -- Brick Painting Reality [14:03] -- Brick Breathability and Options [15:17] -- Foundation Paint Tradeoffs [17:00] -- Moisture and Cracks Warning [18:54] -- Natural Stone Teaser [19:38] -- Natural Stone Risks [21:33] -- Updating Dated Stone [22:40] -- Resale Impact Warning [24:04] -- Why Deck Paint Fails [25:18] -- Stain vs. Paint [27:32] -- Removing Deck Paint [28:57] -- Vinyl Siding Setup [31:58] -- Color, Heat, and Warping [35:04] -- Vinyl Safe Colors [36:41] -- Best Practice Checklist [37:28] -- Get Expert Help [38:21] -- Car Show Wrap Up The Jorts Story [00:56] Dan had a pair of blown-out jeans he decided to cut into work shorts. He eyeballed the cut instead of measuring. Part of his brain told him not to. He ignored it. The resulting shorts were dramatically too short -- Daisy Dukes, his word -- and he wore them up a ladder in the backyard because there was no other option. His neighbor appeared, smirked, and delivered the full measure-twice-cut-once speech. No photos exist. Brick [10:40] Painted brick is permanent for all practical purposes. Stripping paint off brick is expensive and usually damages the face. That means when you paint brick, you're not just picking a color -- you're becoming a painted brick house, likely forever. Two other things to keep in mind: you're creating maintenance that didn't exist before (a painted surface will need refreshing every 5-10 years), and you need the right product. Standard paint can trap moisture inside the masonry, and in Michigan winters, freeze-thaw cycles can cause spalling -- the face of the brick literally flaking off. For a better option, RepcoLite carries Roma Bio Limewash and Roma Bio Mineral Paint. Both are breathable and bond with the brick rather than sitting on top of it. They create a great old-world look and mostly sidestep the moisture problems. Still a point of no return, but a much lower-maintenance one. Foundation [15:17] Same logic as brick. Concrete block and poured concrete are porous and move moisture. Once you paint them, you're on a maintenance cycle. Before painting, address any efflorescence (white, fuzzy salt deposits), persistent peeling, or visible water intrusion -- paint won't fix those, it'll just cover the symptoms. And don't paint over foundation cracks without understanding what caused them. Ayers Basement Systems can evaluate for free in most cases. Natural Stone [19:38] What makes natural stone beautiful is the variation -- every piece is different, the light catches the texture differently, it has depth. Painting it covers all of that. The texture stays, but the richness is gone. Sometimes painted stone looks great. Sometimes it ends up looking a little fake. Worth thinking about before you open the can. If the stone is genuinely dated and you want to update it, a solid color is a reasonable fix -- but if you're planning to sell the house soon, be cautious. There's a portion of buyers who will see painted-over fieldstone as a problem. Since getting that paint back off is essentially the same story as brick, it's their problem too. Decks [24:04] A deck is one of the harshest environments on a property. Rain, snow, sun, foot traffic, patio furniture -- it's brutal on a film-forming coating like paint. When deck paint eventually fails, it chips, cracks, and peels, and refreshing it means scraping and sanding before you can recoat. It's a much harder maintenance cycle than most people expect going in. For most decks, a quality deck stain is a better answer. It wears out by fading, and when it's time to refresh, you clean and recoat. For decks in rough enough shape that you need solid coverage, look at WoodLux or RepcoLite WoodMaster -- both deliver an opaque look but form a thinner, more breathable coating than paint that handles the wood's expansion and contraction better. If you've already got paint on a deck and need to remove it, RepcoLite rents a floor sander that's built for the job. It's still not fun, but it's the best option available. Vinyl Siding [28:57] The point of no return here is color. Darker colors absorb more heat. If the new color you choose is significantly darker than the original vinyl color, the panels can absorb enough heat to expand beyond what they're designed for -- causing warping, buckling, or sagging. Once that happens, it's permanent. Repainting lighter can slow or stop it from getting worse, but won't undo what's already warped. This is not rare. Look at houses in your neighborhood and you'll find examples. Benjamin Moore has a collection of about 75 vinyl safe colors formulated with pigments that reflect more infrared heat, so a darker-looking color doesn't absorb heat the same way a standard formula would. These are a real step forward -- but they're not a blank check. The quality and thickness of your vinyl, your sun exposure, and whether you're using the right paint product all factor in. Vinyl safe colors are intended for use in Regal Select, Aura, or Element Guard specifically. Dan's checklist: check your vinyl manufacturer's repainting recommendations, use a Benjamin Moore vinyl safe color, use it in Regal Select, Aura, or Element Guard, and don't push dramatically darker than the original color if you can help it. Bottom Line [37:28] For any of these surfaces, stop into any RepcoLite before you start. Bring pictures, bring samples, bring whatever you've got. The staff can help you work through the right product, the right color, and the right approach so you're not finding out what you didn't know on the back end of a project you can't undo. Events Car show at Lakewood RepcoLite -- July 18, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Classic cars, trucks, motorcycles, and the Corvette Club. Free admission, Hudsonville ice cream while it lasts. Some construction out front but you can get through. Dan will be there. Products Mentioned Roma Bio Limewash -- Breathable masonry finish for brick; available at RepcoLite Roma Bio Mineral Paint -- Breathable mineral-based option for brick; available at RepcoLite Ayers Basement Systems -- Foundation crack evaluation (typically free) WoodLux -- Solid color deck stain; available at RepcoLite RepcoLite WoodMaster -- Solid color deck stain; available at RepcoLite RepcoLite floor sander rental -- For removing deck paint; ask in store Benjamin Moore vinyl safe color collection -- ~75 colors formulated for vinyl siding; available at RepcoLite Benjamin Moore Regal Select, Aura, Element Guard -- Products where vinyl safe formulations are available Find the Show Episodes available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #467
    July 9 · 40 min

    Painting in the Heat, Dealing with Cigarette Smoke Smell, and Why the Trades Matter More Than Ever

    Episode Title Original Air Date: 07/08/26 Episode Number: 467 Episode Summary A full episode this week. Dan picks up the smoke smell series with fabric, carpet, upholstery, and the full cigarette smoke remediation process -- including the right primer and why it's step four, not step one. Then a long segment on painting in summer heat: surface temps vs. air temps, when to start, when to quit, how to chase the cool shade, bees on ladders, and the best products for the job. He closes with a cement truck taking out his power line, his electrician son saving the day, and a case for encouraging the next generation toward the trades. In This Episode [00:00] -- Show Intro and Teaser [01:16] -- Microwave Fire Story [04:27] -- Wash Smoke Out of Fabrics [06:22] -- Carpet and Upholstery Deodorizing [09:47] -- Cigarette Smoke Reality Check [11:15] -- Deep Clean and Remove Odors [15:00] -- Prime and Repaint Correctly [18:53] -- Heat Weather Painting Setup [19:28] -- Heat Lovers and Painting Risks [21:13] -- Heat Painting Is Fine [21:39] -- Air vs. Surface Temp [23:10] -- Hot Surface Failures [24:01] -- Start Early, Plan Your Walls [25:13] -- Chase the Cool Shade [26:34] -- Infrared Thermometer Hack [27:35] -- Quit Before the Dew [28:16] -- Heat Safety and Breaks [29:11] -- Bees and Ladder Panic [32:47] -- Treat Your Crew Right [33:46] -- Best Paint for Heat [35:27] -- Power Pole Chaos Story [37:32] -- Why Trades Matter [39:41] -- Wrap Up and Events Microwave Fire Story [01:16] Dan circles back to the microwave fire story from a couple weeks ago. His daughter put a cherry pit heating bag -- the kind you warm up in the microwave, no cords, homemade, probably acquired at a flea market in Shipshewana -- in for 20 minutes instead of two. Flames ensued. He hauled the microwave outside in his underwear at bedtime. Kids still love that story. He covered getting the smell off hard surfaces in episode 465 (find it at repcolite.com). Today he's picking up what he didn't have time for then: getting smoke smell out of fabrics. Wash Smoke Out of Fabrics [04:27] Fabrics act like odor sponges. After any kind of kitchen fire or smoke event, the first step is getting everything washable off the walls and into the machine -- curtains, slipcovers, throw blankets, pillows, towels, rugs if possible. No special detergent required. Start with regular laundry detergent and the warmest water the fabric can handle. Don't cram everything into one load -- the fabric needs room to move so the soap and water can actually pull the smoke residue out. The important rule before the dryer: do the sniff test. If it still smells smoky, wash it again. Don't dry it yet. Dryer heat can lock odors in and make them significantly harder to remove. Once it smells clean, then dry it. Carpet and Upholstery Deodorizing [06:22] For things that can't go in the washing machine, start by vacuuming thoroughly. Smoke leaves behind particles and residue that are physically sitting in the fibers. Vacuuming first gives you a better starting point before adding anything wet. From there, baking soda -- plain, unscented -- can help absorb and reduce odors. Sprinkle it on, let it sit overnight, then vacuum it up completely. Dan is cautious about the heavily scented carpet deodorizers because they can mask the problem rather than solve it. For tougher situations, OdoBan (O-D-O-B-A-N) markets products specifically for smoke odors that can be misted onto carpet and upholstery. It neutralizes rather than masks. Follow the label carefully, test a hidden spot first, and don't soak anything. If the smoke smell is light, baking soda or a fabric-safe neutralizer may be enough. If it's strong, actual carpet or upholstery cleaning may be necessary. And if the odor has gotten into the carpet pad or foam backing, surface treatments may only mask things temporarily -- in those cases, replacement may be the only real fix. Cigarette Smoke Reality Check [09:47] Cigarette smoke is the same problem as kitchen smoke, just dramatically worse. Instead of one event, you're dealing with months or years of buildup. Nicotine and tar accumulate on walls, ceilings, in carpet, drapes, cabinets, ductwork, insulation, and unfinished wood. It yellows paint. It gets into everything. It's a big job, and it has to be treated like one. Deep Clean and Remove Odors [11:15] Step 1: Remove what you can. Old curtains, old carpet, old blinds -- anything soft that's holding the odor. If it's reasonable to just pull it out and start fresh, that's usually the easier path. Don't try to rescue things that aren't worth the effort. Step 2: Wash everything down. Everything. Walls, ceilings, trim, doors, cabinets, closets, inside drawers, light fixtures, fan blades, switch plates, outlet covers. Anywhere smoke residue could have settled over years. The choice of cleaner depends on the goal. If you're trying to preserve the existing paint and avoid repainting, start mild -- warm water with Dawn dish soap, gentle enough not to damage the finish. Don't scrub aggressively. Don't soak the walls. Test anything stronger in a hidden spot first. If the odor is coming back after a mild wash, or if you've already decided to repaint, then you're not trying to save the old paint anymore. At that point, a degreaser or TSP substitute can come in. Still: follow the label, protect nearby surfaces, rinse thoroughly, and let everything dry completely before priming. Cleaner residue can cause problems just like smoke residue. Step 3: Replace HVAC filters. If the smell is heavy, it may be worth calling a duct cleaning company and asking specifically about their process for smoke-affected systems. Some use deodorizers or neutralizers after cleaning -- worth asking about before assuming they're not needed. Prime and Repaint Correctly [15:00] This is where most people go wrong. After cleaning, they roll on new paint and it looks and smells fine -- for a week. Then the stain and odor start coming back through. For cigarette smoke and nicotine, you need a true stain-blocking or odor-blocking primer after cleaning and before painting. A shellac-based primer like BIN is a reliable choice. RepcoLite Zip Prime is an oil-based option that will block smoke stains and water stains effectively. It cleans up with mineral spirits, but it gets the job done. It's on sale this month at RepcoLite and is available in spray cans -- which makes it a handy fix if you've got a few water damage spots on a ceiling you want to seal without breaking out brushes and rollers. Dan's caution on water-based stain blockers: they can work in some situations, but with heavy cigarette smoke and persistent odor, don't cut corners. Ventilate well and use the shellac or oil-based products that are built for this kind of problem. The full sequence for cigarette smoke: Remove what's holding the odor Ventilate and filter the air Wash and rinse all surfaces Prime with the right product Paint Primer is step four, not step one. A lot of people skip straight to it and wonder why the smell keeps coming back. When to call a professional: if there was an actual fire (not just a small appliance incident), if there's visible soot beyond one small area, or if smoke got deep into the HVAC system, a restoration company may be the right call rather than DIY. Heat Painting Is Fine -- With the Right Approach [21:13] People ask constantly whether they can paint outside in summer heat. The answer is yes -- with conditions. The problems come from working like it's a 75-degree day in May when it's not. Air vs. Surface Temp [21:39] The most common mistake in hot-weather painting: looking at the weather app, seeing 88 degrees, checking the paint can and seeing a range up to 100 degrees, and assuming everything is fine. The number on the app is air temperature. Paint doesn't care about just air temperature -- it cares about the surface it's going onto. A wall or siding that's been baking in direct sun can run 15 to 20 degrees hotter than the surrounding air. The app says 88, the south wall could easily be 105 or 110. That's the number that matters. Hot Surface Failures [23:10] Paint applied to an overheated surface dries almost the instant it touches. That sounds fast and convenient. It's not. You can't blend edges before they set, so you get lap marks -- visible streaks where one pass overlaps the next. The paint can bubble or blister. And the bigger problem: it doesn't get the chance to bond properly to the surface. A job that looks fine in July can start letting go within a year or two, or faster, because the adhesion was compromised from the start. Start Early, Plan Your Walls [24:01] In extreme heat, start early -- but not before the dew has burned off. A damp surface is a problem too. The rule: start early, but only after the surface is fully dry. Once you start, be strategic. If one side of the house is going to get hit by sun first, and it's still cool, that may be the place to begin -- get to it before it turns into a griddle. If the sun's already on a wall and the surface is heating up, skip it and come back later in the shade. Chase the Cool Shade [25:13] Following the shade around the house sounds straightforward, but the important word is cool shade. A wall that's been in direct sun for three or four hours holds onto that heat even after the shade arrives. Just because a wall is shaded doesn't mean it's ready. Work on surfaces that are dry, shaded, and not overheated. Sometimes that means painting a side of the house before the sun gets there. Sometimes it means waiting until the sun has been gone long enough for the surface to cool down. Sometimes you're jumping around the house and not finishing things in neat sequence. Whatever you have to do -- just finish each section before moving on. Infrared Thermometer Hack [26:34] If you want to take all the guesswork out of surface temperatures, pick up an inexpensive infrared thermometer. They run around $19, and you point them at a surface, pull the trigger, and get the temperature. Dan notes you'll also spend a surprising amount of time scanning random objects around the house just to see how hot they are. Worth it. No more guessing whether the wall is workable. Quit Before the Dew [27:35] At the end of the day, surfaces cool as the sun goes down, and dew can form on fresh paint before it's had time to properly set. Don't paint right up until dark. Give yourself a few hours of daylight after you finish so the paint can firm up before the evening moisture rolls in. Heat Safety and Breaks [28:16] Heat is hard on the painter, not just the paint. Drink more water than you think you need. Wear a hat, sunscreen, and something breathable. Take breaks in the shade. Quick tip when you take a break: drape a damp cloth over your paint tray or bucket. It keeps a skin from forming on the paint and keeps bugs and debris out of it while you're resting. Bees and Ladder Panic [29:11] Working outside in summer means bees. Hornets. All of those things. Dan's son Andrew paints exteriors professionally, and he reports that his entire crew swore bees didn't bother them during the hiring interview, and then spent the summer routinely running around the house screaming and swatting. It happens to everyone. Two important points: if you're allergic, be prepared or hire it out. And if you're on a ladder when bees show up, remember where you are before you react. A full-on freak-out 20 feet off the ground is a problem the bees didn't cause but you will. Work your way calmly down the ladder first. Dan's mother, for reference, would jump. Do not be Dan's mother in this situation. Treat Your Crew Right [32:47] If you've hired painters and they're working in this heat, a cooler of cold water or pop goes a long way. Andrew's crew recently got sent home from a job with drinks for the road. He used a root beer for a float that night while watching the Tigers and was very pleased. The homeowner probably has no idea how much goodwill that created. Best Paint for Heat [33:46] In hot weather especially, the product underneath all of it matters. Good options for exterior work in summer conditions: Benjamin Moore Aura Exterior -- strong coverage and color retention Benjamin Moore Regal Select Exterior -- durable, top-tier performance Benjamin Moore Element Guard -- rain-ready in about an hour, great for unpredictable summer afternoons with pop-up showers RepcoLite Endura Exterior -- excellent color retention, a strong all-around choice Questions on the right product for your situation? Stop in at any RepcoLite and they'll sort it out. Power Pole Chaos Story [35:27] Tuesday morning Dan left for work at 6:30. A cement truck and crew were working across the street. A couple hours later, a text from the neighbor: the cement truck had hit a power pole, ripped the power line off Dan's house, and bent the mast -- the metal pipe that carries the line into the house. He came home to power lines in the yard, a bent mast, a damaged boot, melting ice cream, and a series of calls to the power company, insurance, the cement company, and an electrician. When the power company arrived and said they couldn't reconnect until an electrician fixed the mast, Dan's son -- who is an electrician -- pulled into the driveway at roughly that moment. He repaired it while the power company waited. Power was back on about an hour and a half later. Ice cream survived. Why Trades Matter [37:32] Dan's takeaway from the whole situation -- and really from a pattern of situations over the years: when a skilled tradesperson shows up and knows exactly what to do, the stress level drops immediately. Plumbers, electricians, painters, roofers, car techs. People who can walk into something that's blowing your mind and offer a solution. When Dan was in school, the trades were not exactly encouraged. College was the path, and the trades were treated as the lesser option. He's changed his view on that considerably. In Michigan, the state projects over 520,000 skilled trades jobs with around 45,000 openings per year through 2030. The trades are going to need people, and they're good careers. If you've got kids, grandkids, nieces, or nephews approaching college age and they're not sure what they want to do -- worth having the conversation. Wrap Up and Events [39:41] Car show at Lakewood RepcoLite: Saturday, July 18, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Classic cars, trucks, motorcycles, and the Corvette Club. Free admission, free ice cream while supplies last. More info on the RepcoLite Facebook page or call the Lakewood store at 616-393-0025. Resources and Products Mentioned OdoBan -- Odor neutralizer for fabric, carpet, and upholstery; available online BIN Shellac-Based Primer -- For blocking smoke odors and stains before repainting RepcoLite Zip Prime -- Oil-based stain-blocking primer; on sale this month at RepcoLite; available in spray cans (good for water stain spots too) Infrared thermometer -- For reading surface temperatures before painting; around $19 Benjamin Moore Aura Exterior -- Premium exterior paint; available at RepcoLite Benjamin Moore Regal Select Exterior -- Available at RepcoLite Benjamin Moore Element Guard -- Rain-ready in about an hour; available at RepcoLite RepcoLite Endura Exterior -- Available at RepcoLite Find the Show Home In Progress is on the air every weekend and available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab on the homepage. Dan also posts episode content on Facebook and Instagram throughout the week. About Our Sponsor Home In Progress is brought to you by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore. People often think of paint as just another line item on the supply list. But everything you do, every hour of prep, every stroke of the brush, comes down to the quality of what goes on the wall. The paint is the project. Make sure it's the best. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #466
    July 2 · 39 min

    The Liberty Bell, Colonial Front Doors, and the Real Story of Betsy Ross

    Original Air Date: July 4, 2026 Episode Number: 466 Episode Summary It's the annual Home In Progress Fourth of July Extravaganza. This year Dan covers three topics connected to the Revolutionary era: the Liberty Bell, and how almost everything most people think they know about it is a little off; colonial curb appeal, what colors those front doors actually were, and why any of that matters for your house today; and the real story of Betsy Ross -- not the polished legend, but the full picture of a feisty, independent tradeswoman who kept getting knocked down and kept getting back up. Better than the myth. More American, too. In This Episode [00:00] -- Fourth of July Kickoff [00:34] -- Liberty Bell Origins [01:45] -- Revolution Myths Debunked [03:09] -- The Bell Was a Lemon [04:44] -- How It Got Its Name [05:41] -- Break [06:39] -- Colonial Curb Appeal [08:07] -- Real Colonial House Colors [10:02] -- Paint Forensics Explained [13:23] -- Classic Door Color Palette [16:55] -- Why Door Color Still Matters [18:38] -- Paint Project Payoff [19:23] -- Betsy Ross Legend Setup [19:59] -- 1776 Flag Shop Scene [23:59] -- Meet Elizabeth Griscom [24:38] -- Trade Skills and Elopement [29:16] -- Widowhood and Resilience [31:57] -- Washington Bed Hangings Proof [34:29] -- Did She Make the First Flag [35:51] -- Why the Myth Spread [37:34] -- Real Betsy Ross Legacy [39:31] -- Fourth of July Signoff THE LIBERTY BELL Liberty Bell Origins [00:34] Most people can picture the Liberty Bell -- big bronze bell, long jagged crack running up the side. Most people also have the story at least a little wrong. The bell was not made for the Revolution. It was ordered in 1751, a full 25 years before the Declaration of Independence, for the Pennsylvania State House. The most likely occasion was the 50th anniversary of Pennsylvania's original constitution, a document called the Charter of Privileges, written by William Penn in 1701. It happened to be in the Pennsylvania State House -- the building we now call Independence Hall -- when the Declaration of Independence was debated and adopted. It was there. So was dirt. Nobody's made a monument out of that either. Revolution Myths Debunked [01:45] There's a story that the Liberty Bell rang out to call people to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. Dan loves that story. Historians do not. No evidence supports it, and the general conclusion is that it was made up. The Bell Was a Lemon [03:09] The bell was ordered from a London foundry, shipped to Philadelphia, unpacked, and rung for the first time. On that first ring, it cracked. Two Philadelphia metalworkers -- John Pass and John Stow -- offered to fix it. They melted it down and cast a new one. That one didn't sound right. They melted it down again and cast another. The bell we know today is that second attempt. Three tries, two complete restarts. How It Got Its Name [04:44] For most of its existence, the bell was called the State House Bell or the Bell in the Steeple. The name Liberty Bell first appeared not during the Revolution but in abolitionist circles in the 1830s. People fighting to end slavery noticed a verse from Leviticus engraved on the bell: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all inhabitants thereof." They claimed it as their symbol and renamed it the Liberty Bell. The name eventually stuck. The Liberty Bell, in other words, is named for a fight that came decades after the Revolution ended. COLONIAL FRONT DOORS Colonial Curb Appeal [06:39] In late 1700s New England, a lot of homeowners put their money, skill, and creativity almost exclusively into the front of the house. The face you showed the road. That side got clapboard siding, embellishments around the windows and doors, and paint. The sides and the back were often covered in rougher shingles and left to weather -- going gray, brown, silver in the salt air, depending on the climate. Nobody who mattered was looking at the back of the house. That's where the family went. The important people came to the front. Real Colonial House Colors [08:07] Most people picture colonial houses as white. White is part of the story but not the whole story. In the late 1700s, a clapboard house might be white or off-white if the owner had money, but it might just as easily be red-brown, yellow ochre, gray, or tan -- or just left to weather, particularly on simpler rural homes. The one place that almost always got paint, even when the rest of the house didn't, was the front door. It was the place to make a statement without the expense of painting an entire house. That was true 250 years ago and it's still true today. Paint Forensics Explained [10:02] How do we actually know what colors colonial houses were painted? The original paint is buried under 20 coats applied over two centuries, and old paintings of the buildings can't be trusted -- the artist may have taken liberties, and the pigments in the paintings fade over time. The answer is cross-section microscopy. A conservator finds a protected spot where old paint survived -- behind a shutter hinge, under a piece of molding -- and takes a sample smaller than the head of a pin. That sample gets set in clear resin, polished down, and examined from the side under a microscope. Every coat of paint the building ever wore shows up as its own distinct layer. Count down to the very first one, identify the pigments, adjust for yellowing and fading, and you know the original color. The man who pioneered this in America is Frank Welsh. He's read the paint on Independence Hall, the White House, and Grand Central Terminal, and saved over 50,000 samples in his career. In the 1980s and '90s, Colonial Williamsburg brought him in to study their historic buildings -- and what he found turned everything upside down. For decades, people assumed colonial colors were soft, muted, grayed down. Turns out that look was just old, dirty, faded paint. The real colors were bolder, brighter, and more saturated than anyone believed. Williamsburg has gone back and repainted buildings to match what the science found. The colonists liked color a lot more than we gave them credit for. Classic Door Color Palette [13:23] If you were walking through a New England town in the late 1770s, these are the door colors you'd have likely seen: Deep red-brown. Iron in the soil -- the same stuff that makes rust red -- produced a family of dull, brick-red earth colors. One common version was called Spanish brown. Dirt cheap, in the most literal sense of the phrase, and very common on doors and trim. Deep green. A dark, earthy green was a popular choice for doors and shutters. The classic colonial green door has roots going back to this period, which is part of why it still reads as traditional today. Black. More common as you move into the early 1800s. It looked formal, looked sharp, looked especially good against a pale house. White and off-white. These came from white lead, which was expensive. A crisp white door was a quiet declaration that there was money in the house. What looks like an understated choice today was a statement then. Prussian blue. A rich, deep, slightly greenish blue that arrived as a new pigment in the early 1700s and became a sensation. A blue door said you could afford something special. Vermilion red. The most expensive of all. A brilliant, clean fire-engine red that came from a pigment worth nearly its weight in gold at certain points in history. A truly bright red door was the loudest possible way to tell the world you had money. Why Door Color Still Matters [16:55] When Dan pictures colonial America, he pictures parchment tones -- old paper, brown wood, gray stone, candlelight. Even the red, white, and blue of the flag feels muted in his mental image. But these people cared about color. They cared about curb appeal, they just didn't have the phrase for it. The front door was where homeowners made that statement without the expense of painting the whole house. Two hundred and fifty years later, people still stand in front of the paint display and agonize over a quart of paint for the same reason. The front door speaks before anyone inside gets a chance to. That was true in 1775 and it's still true now. Paint Project Payoff [18:38] If you're looking for a summer weekend project, Dan's case is simple: look at your front door. What is it saying to the world? What is it saying to you? If the message needs to change, stop into any RepcoLite location and they'll help find the right color. It's a quart of paint and about four hours of work. The payoff is big. THE REAL BETSY ROSS Betsy Ross Legend Setup [19:23] Dan sets up the Betsy Ross segment by acknowledging that most people know some version of the legend. Before getting into whether it's true, he wants to introduce the real woman -- because she's considerably more interesting than the simplified version most of us grew up with. 1776 Flag Shop Scene [19:59] Philadelphia, June 1776. A secret committee including George Washington walks into a small upholstery shop, pulls the blinds, and spreads a rough sketch on the table -- 13 stripes, 13 six-pointed stars. The seamstress, Betsy Ross, suggests switching to five-pointed stars, demonstrates with a single scissor snip, and agrees to make the flag. Most people know some version of that scene. The question is whether any of it actually happened. Meet Elizabeth Griscom [23:59] Before answering that question, Dan introduces the real woman. Elizabeth Griscom was born on New Year's Day, 1752, in Philadelphia -- the eighth of 17 children, raised Quaker. Unusually for the time, her father had her trained in a skilled trade rather than just married off. She was apprenticed to a Philadelphia upholsterer named William Webster. Upholstery in the 1700s was the interior design business of its era -- one of the most prestigious and lucrative craft trades going. Upholsterers dressed the finest rooms, made the curtains, furniture, and bedding, imported high-end fabrics, and often worked in the client's home. Betsy Ross was not a humble seamstress. She was trained in the high-end decorating trade. Trade Skills and Elopement [24:38] At 21, Betsy fell in love with a fellow apprentice named John Ross -- the son of an Episcopal minister and completely unacceptable to the Quaker congregation. Betsy crossed the river to New Jersey anyway and married him at a tavern. She was expelled from the congregation and cut off from her family. The trade-off: she and John both knew the upholstery business, so they opened their own shop. At 21, she was in business for herself. That was uncommon for women in 1773. Widowhood and Resilience [29:16] John Ross died in 1775, two years in, leaving Betsy a widow at 24 running the shop alone. She remarried in 1777. Her second husband, Joseph Ashburn, was captured by the British and died in an English prison in 1782. The man who came to deliver that news was a fellow prisoner named John Claypoole. Eventually she married him too. That marriage lasted 34 years and produced five daughters. Through all of it, Betsy kept the business running. Dan's favorite description of her: "a hard-nosed, snuff-loving businesswoman who was fond of storytelling. She wasn't this mild-mannered seamstress just waiting to do some domestic work." Washington Bed Hangings Proof [31:57] In 1774 -- two years before the supposed flag visit -- George Washington commissioned three sets of bed hangings for Mount Vernon from the Ross upholstery shop. Cotton chintz, purple floral prints, edged in green. He paid a down payment in gold coins. Mount Vernon curators confirmed it in 2014 from Washington's own cash records. A fully dressed bed was often the single most expensive piece of furniture in a home. This was high-end prestige work, documented, real, and pre-dating any flag story. During the war, Betsy kept the shop going by taking whatever came in -- mending uniforms, sewing tents and blankets, rolling paper cartridges packed with musket balls for the Continental Army. Did She Make the First Flag [34:29] Betsy Ross made flags. That's documented. A Pennsylvania State Navy Board record from May 29, 1777 shows Elizabeth Ross was paid 14 pounds, 12 shillings, 2 pence for making ship's colors. From the early 1800s there are government contracts for US flags from her shop, including large garrison flags -- 18 by 24 feet, over 100,000 stitches each -- for US arsenals around 1810 to 1811. She made flags for more than 50 years. But the specific legend -- the secret committee, the six-pointed stars, the single scissor snip -- didn't surface until 1870, thirty-four years after Betsy died. Her grandson William Canby presented the account to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, saying he'd heard it from an aunt in 1857. Historians have been through the diaries, the letters, and the records of the Continental Congress. Nothing. No flag committee. No 1776 meeting. No documentation from the time period at all. The conclusion: the first flag story is almost certainly invented. Why the Myth Spread [35:51] The story took hold largely because of timing. The 1876 centennial was approaching and would be held in Philadelphia. The country was hungry for Revolutionary War stories, especially ones that gave women a heroic role. Betsy was the right symbol at exactly the right moment. She was promoted as a patriotic role model for girls and the story spread quickly. It's still commonly accepted today. Real Betsy Ross Legacy [37:34] The legend turned a complicated woman into a sweet, quiet seamstress stitching stars by the window. That version is much smaller than the real person. The real Betsy Ross got thrown out of her church for marrying the man she loved. She buried a husband at 24, then a second, then a third. Every time she got back up, kept her shop open, and kept her family going. She was a tradeswoman in the most respected craft of her day. She decorated George Washington's bedroom. When the country went to war, she became a defense contractor -- flags, uniforms, musket cartridges. She ran her own business for 50 years and handed it to her daughters, granddaughters, and nieces. She didn't need the flag legend. She made herself matter with her own hands over a whole lifetime. Dan's closing point: that's the better Fourth of July story. A skilled, stubborn woman who got knocked down again and again and just kept going. Find the Show Home In Progress is on the air every weekend and available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab on the homepage. Dan also posts episode content on Facebook and Instagram throughout the week. About Our Sponsor Home In Progress is brought to you by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore. People often think of paint as just another line item on the supply list. But everything you do, every hour of prep, every stroke of the brush, comes down to the quality of what goes on the wall. The paint is the project. Make sure it's the best. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #465
    June 25 · 40 min

    How to Get Smoke Smell Out of Your House -- Plus Why Your Bathroom Paint Color Is Making You Look Tired

    Episode Summary This week on Home In Progress, Dan opens with a story about a flaming microwave, a snowbank, and a pair of whitey tighties -- and turns it into a genuinely useful guide on getting smoke smell out of your home. He's then joined by Jeff Mot, manager of the Lakewood RepcoLite, to talk about a car show and ice cream social coming to that store on July 18. Then Dan picks up where last week's bathroom lighting conversation left off, diving into something almost nobody considers: what the color on your bathroom walls is doing to your face in the mirror every morning. He closes with a Hannah SpaghettiO story that leads directly into the case for handy paint cups and pails -- both on sale through the end of June. In This Episode [00:00] -- Show Preview [00:48] -- Microwave Fire Story [02:56] -- Smoke Smell Fixes [03:47] -- Wash Away the Residue [06:40] -- Car Show Tease [07:06] -- Event Basics: Lakewood Car Show and Ice Cream Social [09:11] -- Why Jeff Loves Cars [10:15] -- What Makes Car Shows Fun [13:08] -- Why RepcoLite Hosts [14:50] -- Family Friendly Details [15:22] -- Directions and Construction Note [16:02] -- Bring Your Classic Ride [17:24] -- Rusty Car Banter [17:38] -- Ice Cream Social Details [18:06] -- Event Details Recap [18:43] -- Bathroom Color Cast [24:04] -- Worst Bathroom Colors [26:53] -- Makeup Gone Wrong [31:15] -- Flattering Color Picks [33:25] -- Sample Testing Tips [35:13] -- Cut-In Bucket Story [38:19] -- Handy Paint Pails Pitch [39:54] -- Wrap Up and Sign Off Microwave Fire Story [00:48] Dan's daughter punched an extra zero into the microwave and walked away. Twenty minutes later, Dan spotted smoke, ran into the kitchen, found something spinning around with actual flames coming out of it, grabbed the microwave, ran outside barefoot in his underwear, and threw it into a snowbank. In Zeeland. Around 10 at night. The kids have loved that story ever since. The aftermath is what the segment is actually about. The smoke smell wouldn't leave. Day after day, it just sat there. If that's happened to you, here's how to actually fix it. Smoke Smell Fixes [02:56] Step 1: Ventilation and filtration. Open windows, run exhaust fans, use box fans to push air out. If the smoke moved through the HVAC system, replace the furnace filter -- smoke particles can get pulled into the return and stay there. A portable air cleaner with a HEPA filter helps pull fine particles out of the air. Do all of this first, but understand that ventilation alone almost never fully solves a smoke smell. Wash Away the Residue [03:47] Step 2: Wash everything. The key thing to understand: smoke isn't just something floating in the air. It's made up of tiny particles and oily residues that land on every surface in the room -- curtains, upholstery, carpet, cabinets, walls, ceilings, clothing, all the little cracks and crevices. That's why airing the place out isn't enough. You have to physically remove the residue. Start at the source. If it was a microwave fire, unplug it, remove everything removable, and wash all of it separately. Then spread out: walls, ceilings, cabinets, doors, trim, light fixtures, switch plates, top of the refrigerator. All the surfaces that don't normally get cleaned. Smoke residue is oily, so one pass usually isn't enough -- clean, rinse, change the water, and go again. Cleaners: A mild Dawn dish soap solution works well on painted surfaces. Krud Kutter and Champion are solid degreasers for non-painted areas. After washing, OdoBan (O-D-O-B-A-N) is a cleaner and heavy-duty odor neutralizer that can knock out what remains. Vinegar, baking soda, and activated charcoal are supporting players -- not substitutes for actually scrubbing everything down. Cigarette smoke is a different conversation -- Dan plans to cover that in a future episode. Lakewood Car Show and Ice Cream Social [07:06] Dan is joined by Jeff Mott, manager of the Lakewood RepcoLite, to talk about a car show and ice cream social coming to the store. Date: Saturday, July 18 Time: 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Note: flyers say 11 to 1 -- it's 11 to 2) Location: Lakewood RepcoLite Jeff has been trying to get Dan to host a car show for roughly five years. He owns a 1966 International Scout and grew up around old cars. The event is part of RepcoLite's Summer Stops program -- different events at different store locations throughout the summer, built around community and getting to know customers and contractors better. The Corvette Club will be there with vehicles ranging from brand-new to 1950s and '60s models. Jeff is also welcoming any old cars, trucks, and motorcycles. The appeal of a show like this, Dan has come to understand, is the stories that come with the vehicles -- the restoration history, cars passed down through families, little museums on easels in the parking lot. That part Dan can actually get into. Admission: Free Ice cream: Free, while supplies last, with toppings Bring a classic vehicle: No registration required -- just show up and they'll direct you. If you want to give them a heads-up, call 616-393-0025. Directions note: Road construction on Lakewood Drive limits access to westbound traffic from 120th. You can get in, you can get out, but plan accordingly. Dan will continue reminding listeners as July 18 gets closer. Bathroom Color Cast [18:43] Last week's show covered bathroom lighting and how a poorly lit mirror can make you look worse than you are. Dan adds a second layer: the color on your bathroom walls. He sets it up with a moment from his own week. Walking through the warehouse where he works, he noticed an entire section had gone pink. Bright pink panels had been moved into a spot where they were catching the sun and reflecting it everywhere. Nothing had actually changed -- it just looked that way. Your bathroom walls do the same thing, every morning, to your face. The color reflects back onto your skin while you're standing at the mirror. Most people have no idea it's happening. Photographers call it color cast. Whatever color surrounds you gets cast onto you. Photography studios often paint their walls flat neutral gray to avoid adding a false tint -- they want the true skin tone, then they warm it up with lighting from there. Makeup artists watch for this constantly. A colored wall, a bright shirt, anything nearby can throw a tint onto a face and change the whole look. Bathrooms are especially susceptible because of the combination: small space (you're close to the walls), you're staring into a mirror, and bathrooms tend to be among the more brightly lit rooms in the house. All of that means more wall color gets bounced back at you. Two jobs, not one. Most of the time, when choosing a paint color, you ask how it will look in the space. In a bathroom, you have to ask a second question: how will I look in it? A moody charcoal or a deep, trendy green can look beautiful on the walls and still make the person standing in the room look a little unwell. The room can be magazine-worthy and the color still be wrong for you. That's a distinction people almost never make. Worst Bathroom Colors [24:04] Yellow and yellow-green. Especially anything with green in it. Reflects a sallow, slightly sickly cast onto skin. Cancels out the natural pink and red tones that make a complexion look healthy and awake. Strong reds. A bold red throws a heavy warm cast over everything, including your face. The stronger the color, the more tint it pushes around. Gray. This one surprises people. Photography studios use gray walls because gray tells the truth -- no invented tint. But without warm lighting aimed at you, that truth isn't always flattering. Gray tends to drain warmth out of a face and leave it looking flat and washed out. Given how long gray has dominated bathroom design, a lot of people may be dealing with this every morning without knowing it. Makeup Gone Wrong [26:53] For anyone who wears makeup, a bad wall color doesn't just affect how you look -- it affects what decisions you make getting ready. If the wall casts a color onto your face while you're applying makeup, you're working with inaccurate information. Say the wall makes you look sallow and tired -- you compensate, adjust your color, add more than you normally would. But you're correcting for a problem the room invented. You walk outside into real daylight with makeup calibrated for a wrong starting point, and nothing looks right. Everyone else sees what's on your face. You were perfectly matched for your bathroom wall. That's the mismatch. Flattering Color Picks [31:15] Soft, warm neutrals. Warm whites, soft peach, muted pink, warm beige. These reflect a gentle warm glow onto skin that flatters nearly everyone. It's like standing in good morning light. Muted nature colors. Soft blush, powder blue, quiet sage. Nothing loud or saturated. Muted is the key word. Powder blue. Works well as a pale, soft tone. Push it darker or cooler and it starts chilling skin down -- you look pale and cold. Keep it soft. Dusty lavender. Often flattering because of the pink component in it. Go too purple and it gets cold fast. Warm earth tones. Terracotta, soft clay. Very forgiving on skin. The lighting reminder. Color and lighting are a team. A warm-ish light on a flattering wall color gives you something close to your actual face rather than the room's version of it. Both elements matter and need to be addressed together. The bottom line on bathroom color: you're choosing for the room AND for yourself. It's about how the space looks and how you look in it. How your makeup turns out. How you feel walking out the door. Sample Testing Tips [33:25] When looking at paint chips for a bathroom, add a second question to the usual one. The first: does this look good in my space? The second, the one most people skip: how am I going to look in this? To answer the second question, test. Benjamin Moore color samples run about six dollars and give you enough paint to brush out a large section on the actual wall. Put it up, stand in front of it, and look at yourself in the mirror. See what the color does to you, not just to the room. Check it morning light, midday, and at night before committing. Cut-In Bucket Story [35:13] Dan's daughter Hannah, around age two or three, had been sitting on his lap after dinner while he finished eating. He poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. Hannah talked. He drank. At some point he realized he was chewing. He held the glass up and found gray, murky water with things floating in it -- something that looked like a meatball fragment, something that was almost certainly a SpaghettiO. The pitcher handle had small orange handprints on it. The rim had orange lip marks. Hannah had drunk from the pitcher twice. Twice was enough to completely contaminate the water. The paint point: If you cut in by carrying the gallon or quart can and dipping your brush back into it every time, you're doing the same thing. One dip after the brush picks up a spider web, dirt, or debris -- especially outdoors -- and all the paint in the can is now contaminated. You'll find out when you start rolling the big areas and strange things are coming out of the finish. The fix: pour a small amount of paint into something smaller and work from that. If what's in the cup gets contaminated, it's just a cup -- not the whole can. Handy Paint Pails Pitch [38:19] Handy paint cups and handy paint pails are both on sale at RepcoLite through the end of June. Cups -- smaller, less expensive, good for lighter work. Pails -- hold up to about a quart; liners are available for easier cleanup. Both have a comfortable grip -- the pails have a strap, the cups have a handle. Both beat working from a quart or gallon can that wasn't designed to be held while painting. The standout feature: a built-in magnet that holds your brush when you set it down. The brush stays put instead of sliding into the paint. Dan says it doesn't sound like a big deal until you've used one. Stop in at any RepcoLite location, grab a few. Inexpensive, and they solve a real, annoying problem. Resources Mentioned in This Episode Krud Kutter -- Degreaser for smoke residue on non-painted surfaces; available at RepcoLite Champion -- Degreaser; available at RepcoLite OdoBan -- Cleaner and heavy-duty odor neutralizer for persistent smoke smell Benjamin Moore color samples -- About $6; enough to test a large section on your actual wall Handy Paint Cups -- On sale at RepcoLite through end of June Handy Paint Pails -- Hold up to a quart; liners available; built-in brush magnet; on sale through end of June Events Lakewood RepcoLite Car Show and Ice Cream Social Saturday, July 18 -- 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Free admission, free ice cream while supplies last Classic cars, trucks, motorcycles welcome -- no registration needed Corvette Club will be in attendance (all years) Questions or to give a heads-up: 616-393-0025 Directions note: access from 120th heading west due to construction on Lakewood Drive Summer Stops -- Events at various RepcoLite locations this summer. Ask in any store for details. Find the Show Home In Progress is on the air every weekend and available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab on the homepage. Dan also posts episode content on Facebook and Instagram throughout the week. About Our Sponsor Home In Progress is brought to you by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore. People often think of paint as just another line item on the supply list. But everything you do, every hour of prep, every stroke of the brush, comes down to the quality of what goes on the wall. The paint is the project. Make sure it's the best. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore

  • #464
    June 18 · 44 min

    Bathroom Remodel Planning: Tub vs. Shower, Lighting, Storage, and How to Paint a Bathroom Right

    Episode Summary This week on Home In Progress, Dan dedicates the whole show to bathroom remodels -- why they're trending, and how to think one through before spending anything. He covers the tub-or-shower decision, storage planning, lighting that stops working against you, upgrades worth baking in while walls are open, aging-in-place choices, and a full closing section on painting the bathroom right. A practical episode worth saving if a bathroom is anywhere on your horizon. In This Episode [00:00] -- Bathrooms Are Trending [02:15] -- Start With What Bugs You [05:04] -- Tubs or Showers First [07:45] -- Freestanding Tub Reality Check [10:43] -- Tub to Shower Conversion [13:41] -- Storage That Fits Life [16:15] -- Smart Storage Ideas [18:31] -- Bathroom Lighting Problems [19:25] -- Why Mirrors Make You Cringe [20:22] -- Fixing Harsh Shadows [21:43] -- Layered Lighting Basics [22:14] -- Mirror Task Lighting [23:56] -- Sconce Placement Tips [24:54] -- Shower and Night Lighting [26:02] -- Bulb Temperature Consistency [28:00] -- Remodel Upgrades to Add [30:44] -- Aging in Place Choices [33:52] -- Bathroom Paint Essentials [37:02] -- Paint Cure and Humidity [39:10] -- Prep and Tight Spaces [41:19] -- Ceilings and Caulk [43:05] -- Wrap Up and Store Deals Bathrooms Are Trending [00:00] Bathroom remodels aren't overtaking kitchens -- kitchens are still the most popular project -- but bathrooms are closing the gap. They're smaller, usually less expensive, and more manageable. And the daily impact is bigger than most people give them credit for. If a kitchen remodel feels out of reach right now, a bathroom is worth serious consideration. Start With What Bugs You [02:15] Before looking at tile or faucets, walk through the bathroom you have and write down everything that bothers you. Not what you'd love to have -- what actually annoys you about the space right now. A lot of renovations look great but feel disappointing because they didn't solve the actual problems. New finishes don't fix a bad morning. Start with what the bathroom needs to fix, then work forward from there. Tubs or Showers First [05:04] The shower or tub is the biggest decision in any bathroom remodel and where serious money gets spent. Dan breaks it into two parts: what fits your life better (some people love a bath; others haven't taken one voluntarily in years), and what fits your existing bathroom layout. Getting swept up in a vision without looking honestly at the space is where projects get expensive. Freestanding Tub Reality Check [07:45] A freestanding soaking tub is a popular idea that can get complicated fast. Most existing bathrooms have an alcove setup -- tub against three walls, drain in place, plumbing at one end. Switching to a freestanding tub means relocating the drain, addressing the floor and walls after the old surround comes out, and making sure there's enough clearance around the tub for it to look intentional. The alternative worth knowing about: deeper alcove tubs, drop-in tubs, or soaking tubs designed to fit a traditional footprint. These can deliver the soaking experience without requiring a full redesign. Even replacing an older alcove tub with a newer one in the same footprint can be a meaningful gain. Tub to Shower Conversion [10:43] If baths aren't your thing, converting a tub surround to a walk-in shower is often a practical fit for what most bathrooms already have. Plumbing can often stay in roughly the same location, the footprint works, and the project tends to line up more naturally with the existing space than a freestanding tub would. One thing to stop and think about first: is this the only tub in the house? Families with young kids need one. Pet owners often do too. Future buyers may care. That doesn't mean you keep it -- just means the decision should be deliberate. Storage That Fits Life [13:41] Storage isn't the exciting part of a remodel, but it may be the biggest factor in whether a renovated bathroom still feels good two weeks after the job is done. Before choosing a vanity, go back to your list of annoyances and ask honestly whether storage is on it -- and whether it should be. The practical question isn't what vanity looks good. It's what the vanity needs to do. Drawers let you see what you have; deep cabinets swallow things. A vanity drawer with a built-in outlet keeps hair tools off the counter. Storage that matches how you actually live beats storage that just looks organized in the showroom. Smart Storage Ideas [16:15] If the footprint isn't changing, there are usually more options than it feels like. Going vertical -- tall cabinets, shelving from counter to ceiling, built-in storage above the toilet -- can add meaningful capacity without touching the floor plan. Recessed medicine cabinets don't have to look like the metal box from 1978; modern versions are framed, mirror-faced, and look like part of the room. And awkward spots -- a dead corner, a gap beside the vanity -- are worth a second look. Better storage organization inside existing space also counts: drawer organizers, pull-outs, a bottom drawer for towels or toilet paper. Build the answer in. Don't assume things will find a home after the remodel if they haven't found one yet. Bathroom Lighting [18:31] Bathroom lighting is often bad in ways people don't fully notice. One harsh overhead fixture, or a row of bulbs above the mirror, creates shadows on the face -- under the eyes, under the nose, under the chin -- that make people look older and more tired than they are. If you walk into your bathroom every morning and immediately want to look somewhere else, the lighting may be a bigger factor than you think. Why mirrors make you cringe [19:25] -- Most bathroom lighting is designed to illuminate the room, not the person at the mirror. A ceiling fixture in the middle of the room does the former. It doesn't do the latter well. Fixing harsh shadows [20:22] -- Light from both sides of the mirror is significantly better than light from above. Sconces on either side spread light evenly across the face, cut shadows, and make grooming more accurate. If side lighting isn't possible, a long horizontal fixture above the mirror is better than a single small bulb. Layered lighting [21:43] -- Good bathroom lighting usually comes from more than one source. General light -- ceiling fixture, recessed lights, or both -- makes the room usable. Task lighting at the mirror is where the real work gets done. One fixture can't do both jobs well. Mirror task lighting [22:14] -- The goal is light on your face, from roughly face level. That's what reduces shadows. A fixture above the mirror alone usually can't deliver that. Sconce placement [23:56] -- Height matters. Too low creates the campfire-flashlight effect. Too high brings the shadows back. Aim for face-level illumination, and let the person who needs the most help from the lighting make the call on placement. Shower and night lighting [24:54] -- A shower with walls that block the main room's light probably needs its own fixture. A dark shower feels less clean and less comfortable than it should. Night lighting is the thing people forget: a dimmer, toe-kick lighting, or a softer secondary source lets you use the bathroom at odd hours without switching on every bulb in the room. Bulb temperature consistency [26:02] -- Cool bulbs feel sterile; warm bulbs can make whites and skin tones look strange. A warm neutral bulb is a solid starting point for most bathrooms. More important than the specific temperature is keeping it consistent across all fixtures. Mismatched bulb temperatures can make the room feel off in a way that's hard to identify -- paint reads differently in different spots, tile can shift color. Sort out lighting before finalizing paint colors or any other choices sensitive to light. Remodel Upgrades to Add [28:00] When a bathroom is torn apart, some things are much easier to add than they'll ever be again. Worth at least pricing out: Heated floors -- bathroom square footage is small, and if the old floor is already coming up, now is the time to ask Ventilation -- a weak or struggling fan should be replaced now, not after it causes moisture damage to a freshly renovated room Outlet placement -- if outlets are always in the wrong spot, fix it while walls are open Shower niche -- easier to build in now than to add later Shower lighting -- while the walls are accessible Blocking for grab bars -- you may not want them now, but blocking costs almost nothing during a remodel and makes installation easy whenever you do Aging in Place Choices [30:44] If you plan to be in the home long-term, a remodel is a good moment to make choices that work better as you age. This doesn't have to look like a care facility. Options have improved considerably. A curbless shower can look modern. A wider shower entry feels more open. A shower bench can feel spa-like. A handheld shower is useful for almost everyone. Slip-resistant tile is smart at any age. Comfort-height toilets are common. Grab bars don't have to look institutional -- attractive options exist that look intentional in the room. And if you don't want grab bars now, add the blocking to the walls. Much easier to plan for during the remodel. Bathroom Paint Essentials [33:52] Even without a full remodel, a fresh paint job can change how a bathroom feels. But painting a bathroom has a few considerations that a bedroom or living room doesn't. Paint choice. The standard answer has long been a satin or semi-gloss for moisture resistance. That's still not wrong. But Benjamin Moore Aura Bath and Spa is worth knowing about -- it's a matte finish engineered specifically for high-humidity rooms. You get moisture resistance without the reflective surface that broadcasts every patch and roller mark. For walls, especially when you want a more elegant, finished look, it's a strong option. Satin and higher sheens still make sense in kids' bathrooms, rentals, or spaces that get wiped down constantly. For trim, doors, and cabinets, Dan still likes a satin or semi-gloss. Paint Cure and Humidity [37:02] One of the most common bathroom painting mistakes: putting the room back into full use too quickly. Fresh latex paint hit with high humidity too soon can produce surfactant leaching -- shiny streaks, sticky spots, or brownish marks on the walls. It looks alarming, but it's not damaging the finish. It can be wiped off. It's also completely avoidable. Give the paint time. Keep showers short for the first few days. Run the fan during and for at least 20 minutes after. Open the door as soon as possible. Use another bathroom if you have one. Prep and Tight Spaces [39:10] Bathroom walls collect soap film and hairspray that prevent paint from bonding. Wash down with TSP or a mild Dawn solution, rinse with clean water, and let everything dry completely before painting. Clear the room more than feels necessary. In a small space, every obstacle is a real obstacle. Take down towel bars, hardware, switch plates, outlet covers, hooks, shelves. Tape the mirror carefully if it can't come down. Behind the toilet: you usually don't need to remove it. Take the tank lid off for extra room, then use a small brush or mini roller to get behind the tank. If there's a sliver behind the tank that nothing can reach, leave it. Nobody sees it. For tight areas around faucets and the vanity, an angled brush helps, and a short-handled brush is worth keeping on hand -- you won't constantly be knocking the handle into the opposite wall. RepcoLite stores carry them. Ceilings and Caulk [41:19] Ceilings. The ceiling over a shower takes more abuse than almost any other surface in the house. If there's peeling paint, scrape it, sand the edges, and prime before repainting. If there's mildew, address it before painting. Don't use a cheap flat ceiling paint over a shower. Ask at RepcoLite for the right product for the situation. Caulk. Bathrooms have a lot of caulk, and not all of it is paintable. Painting over cracked, dirty, or silicone caulk can cause peeling, fisheyes, or areas where paint won't stick. Inspect all the caulk before you start. Replace anything that's cracked or moldy. If caulk will be painted over, use a paintable formula -- pure silicone is excellent in wet areas, but paint won't adhere to it. Wrap Up and Store Deals [43:05] Questions about a bathroom repaint or any paint project? Stop in at your closest RepcoLite location. 80 years in the business -- they know paint. Current store deals: RepcoLite Endura Exterior -- on sale at all RepcoLite stores through the end of June. Up to $38 off per gallon. Ask in store. Handy Paint Pails -- cut-in buckets, on sale now. More on these next week. Resources Mentioned in This Episode Benjamin Moore Aura Bath and Spa -- Matte finish for high-humidity rooms; available at RepcoLite TSP -- For washing bathroom walls before painting Short-handled brushes -- For tight bathroom spaces; available at RepcoLite stores RepcoLite Endura Exterior -- On sale through end of June, up to $38 off per gallon Handy Paint Pails -- Cut-in buckets, on sale now at RepcoLite stores Find the Show Home In Progress is on the air every weekend and available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab on the homepage. Dan also posts episode content on Facebook and Instagram throughout the week. About Our Sponsor Home In Progress is brought to you by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore. People often think of paint as just another line item on the supply list. But everything you do, every hour of prep, every stroke of the brush, comes down to the quality of what goes on the wall. The paint is the project. Make sure it's the best.

  • #463
    June 11 · 47 min

    The Man Who Built Fairy-Tale Houses: Earl Young and the Charlevoix Mushroom Houses

    Original Air Date: June 2025 Episode Number: 463 Episode Summary This week on Home In Progress, Dan tells the story of Earl Young -- a self-taught architect from Charlevoix, Michigan who never finished his degree, never drew a blueprint, and never really cared what the architecture establishment thought of him. What he left behind are some of the most unusual homes in the Midwest: curved stone walls, swooping roofs, fireplaces that feel like the center of the universe, and boulders he spent decades hauling out of Lake Michigan. Dan covers the full story -- where Young came from, how he worked, and what eventually happened to the neighborhood he built. Then he takes six design lessons from Young's approach and applies them to homes most of us actually live in. In This Episode [00:00] -- Opening: Rain, Roofs, and a Dead Sprinkler Pump [01:40] -- Charlevoix, Michigan [02:34] -- The Mushroom Houses [05:15] -- Earl Young: Origins [09:05] -- Breaking With the Rules [13:41] -- Vision and Inspirations [16:39] -- No Blueprints [19:31] -- The Boulder Problem [24:24] -- The Weathervane Restaurant and the 9-Ton Boulder [26:26] -- Fireplace as the Heart of the House [28:08] -- Legacy [29:22] -- How to Visit [32:29] -- Six Design Lessons from Earl Young Opening: Rain, Roofs, and a Dead Sprinkler Pump [00:00] Dan opens with the classic split-brain problem of being a homeowner in summer. He's relieved that rain is coming -- the yard needs it. He is not relieved that rain is coming -- the roof has been suspicious lately. Then, one more thing: the sprinkler pump died. Standard summer. He moves on quickly. Charlevoix, Michigan [01:40] Before getting to the houses, Dan sets the scene. Charlevoix sits on a narrow isthmus between Lake Michigan and Lake Charlevoix. It's a resort town -- the kind of place people drive through and immediately start calculating whether they could afford to move there. It's also the kind of place that, if you grew up on its beaches and walked them long enough as a kid, could do something permanent to the way you see the natural world. The Mushroom Houses [02:34] Charlevoix has a neighborhood most people don't know about unless someone tips them off. The houses there don't look like anything else. Curved stone walls. Rooflines that swoop down low to the ground. Windows tucked into stone like they were always meant to be there. The whole feel of the place is fairy-tale -- which is why people have been calling them hobbit houses, gnome houses, and Flintstone houses for decades. They have an official nickname too: the Mushroom Houses. Named for the way the rooflines spread outward from the walls, sort of like a cap on a stem. Once you know that, you can't unsee it. They were all built by the same man. One man, working from dirt sketches and intuition, over most of his adult life. Earl Young: Origins [05:15] Earl Young was born in 1889 in Mancelona, Michigan. He moved to Charlevoix with his family around age 11. His parents divorced -- which wasn't common then -- and Young spent a lot of time on his own, walking the beaches around town. He wasn't doing anything in particular. He was just out there, picking up rocks, watching water, paying attention to the way the land looked. He fell in love with stones. Big ones specifically. The kind of boulders that Lake Michigan just deposits on the shore like it has nowhere else to put them. Most people walk around them. Young was already thinking about what he could do with them. Breaking With the Rules [09:05] Young went to the University of Michigan to study architecture. He lasted about a year. The curriculum was heavy on classical styles -- Victorian, Greek revival, Roman influence -- and Young had no patience for it. He didn't come to school to copy old European buildings. He went home to Charlevoix. For a while he sold insurance and real estate. He wasn't building yet. But he was watching. He kept picking up rocks. He eventually started building. No firm, no staff, no architecture license. Just an eye for stone, an instinct for how a building should sit on a piece of land, and a willingness to take as long as it took to do things the way he wanted them done. Vision and Inspirations [13:41] Dan identifies three things that shaped the way Young approached his work. The first was Frank Lloyd Wright's philosophy -- not Wright's specific style, but the underlying idea that a building should belong to its site. It shouldn't be dropped onto a lot. It should feel like it grew there. Young took that idea and ran with it in his own direction. The second was his rejection of academic architecture. Everything he'd been asked to learn and repeat in school was exactly what he didn't want to do. The rebellion wasn't just aesthetic -- it was personal. The third was the stones. Young's whole sensibility came from what Lake Michigan left on the shore. The materials weren't a choice he made at a building supply store. They were the starting point for everything else. No Blueprints [16:39] Young did not draw blueprints. When he had an idea for a house, he went outside and drew his plan in the dirt with a stick. He'd sketch the layout right there on the ground, work it out, make adjustments, and that was the plan. His wife Irene was an art teacher. At some point she started translating his dirt sketches and descriptions into actual drawings -- not formal blueprints, but enough that a builder could follow them. The designs came from him. She put them on paper. They worked like that for years. The Boulder Problem [19:31] Young didn't just use the rocks he could find lying around. He hunted for specific ones. When he found a boulder he wanted, he'd sometimes bury it in the woods to keep it safe until he needed it. Or he'd sink it in Lake Michigan and come back for it later. Dan compares this to hiding GI Joes as a kid -- the careful stashing of things you intend to retrieve. Except the things Young was hiding weighed several tons. When it was time to retrieve a boulder, he'd bring in teams of workhorses. No machinery, no cranes in the early years. Just horses, ropes, and however many men it took to move something that heavy across however much ground stood between the boulder and the house. The Weathervane Restaurant and the 9-Ton Boulder [24:24] The clearest example of how far Young would go for the right stone is the Weathervane Restaurant in Charlevoix. He built it. And for that building, he had been saving a single boulder -- nine tons -- for 26 years. When they finally set it in place, the floor sank. The supports weren't adequate for a 9-ton rock sitting on them indefinitely. They had to redo the foundation underneath it before they could move on. Young didn't reconsider the rock. He redid the floor. The Weathervane is still there. The boulder is still there too. Fireplace as the Heart of the House [26:26] Young treated the fireplace as the center of everything. Not a feature of the house -- the heart of it. In a lot of cases the fireplace was the first thing he designed, and the rest of the floor plan grew outward from there. The fireplaces in his houses are big and boulder-built, and they feel exactly as permanent as they look. They're not decorative. They're structural in the emotional sense of that word -- the thing the rest of the room organizes itself around. Legacy [28:08] Young built somewhere around 26 to 28 homes and three or four commercial buildings over his career. His last major project was the Castle House, which he worked on from 1970 to 1973. By then he was legally blind. He designed parts of it by touch -- running his hands over stone and timber to make decisions he couldn't make with his eyes anymore. He died in 1975. His last act, reportedly, was directing the placement of a boulder at the entrance to his neighborhood. Not a plaque, not a sign. A rock. In the right spot. How to Visit [29:22] The homes are private property. You can drive through the neighborhood and see them from the street -- people do that all the time and it's welcome. Just don't go up to the windows. They're people's houses. The Weathervane Restaurant is open to the public. You can eat there, walk around, and see the 9-ton boulder up close. Dan recommends it. Website: weathervanerestaurant.com. Earl Young's personal home is available to rent on Airbnb. If you want to actually sleep in one of the houses, that's how you do it. Six Design Lessons from Earl Young [32:29] Dan spends the back half of the episode pulling practical design lessons out of Young's approach. Not abstract principles -- specific things a regular homeowner can actually do. 1. Snag What Speaks to You [32:29] Dan tells a story about a Cleopatra bust he found years ago. Bought it without knowing what he'd do with it. Then built a whole corner of a room around it -- brass candlesticks, an Art Nouveau painting of Cleopatra by a Michigan artist, pieces that fit the theme. The room came from the object, not the other way around. Young did the same thing with rocks. He found something he loved, and let that be the starting point. Most people wait until they have a plan before they start collecting anything. Young's lesson -- and Dan's -- is that sometimes the piece you can't explain wanting is the piece that tells you what to do. 2. Decorate for Yourself, Not for Resale [35:22] One of the most consistent pieces of advice given to homeowners is to play it safe for resale value. Neutral colors, conventional choices, nothing too personal. Young built houses that violated every one of those rules. They also happen to be some of the most beloved homes in Michigan. Dan's point isn't that resale doesn't matter -- it does. It's that optimizing entirely for resale often produces rooms that feel like no one actually lives in them. A home that reflects you is also a home people can feel when they walk in. 3. Work With the Quirks [37:38] Every house has something awkward. A weird corner. A wall that doesn't make sense. A ceiling that drops in the wrong spot. The instinct is usually to fight these things or hide them. Young did the opposite. He treated the awkward elements as the material. The boulders were awkward -- too big, too heavy, inconvenient to move. He made them the point. Dan ties this to a rule he comes back to often: every room needs a focal point. Instead of fighting whatever's strange about a space, try making it the focal point. Give the awkward thing the attention it's clearly asking for, and let the rest of the room settle in around it. 4. Play the Long Game [39:58] Young saved a boulder for 26 years. He didn't rush. He didn't use a different rock because the right one wasn't available yet. Dan applies this to the pressure homeowners put on themselves to finish a room all at once. Buy everything at the same time, get it done in a weekend, have it look complete. The rooms that usually end up feeling the most right are the ones that were assembled slowly, with pieces added when the right thing showed up rather than when a deadline said it was time. Resist the urge to just fill a room. Wait for what belongs in it. 5. Seek Out Meaningful Local Finds [41:54] Young's materials weren't shipped in. They came from the ground and water of the place where he was building. That's part of why his houses feel so rooted. Dan applies this to furnishings and decor. Mass-produced stuff has its place, but a room full of it doesn't have a story. A piece from a local craftsman, a find from an estate sale, something that came from a specific place at a specific time -- those things add up to a room that's actually interesting to be in. The search matters. What you find while searching often matters more than what you were looking for. 6. Trust Your Instincts [43:42] Earl Young designed some of his best work when he could no longer see it. He was running his hands over stone and timber, making decisions by feel. He trusted what he knew, even when he couldn't confirm it with his eyes. Dan doesn't suggest ignoring advice or refusing to learn. But he does push back on the habit of second-guessing an instinct to death. At some point you have to trust yourself. Young did that for most of his life and left behind a neighborhood that's still drawing visitors a half-century after his death. Wrap Up [46:10] Episode 463. Dan wraps with a reminder to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review if you've been enjoying the show. Resources Mentioned in This Episode Weathervane Restaurant, Charlevoix -- Built by Earl Young; the 9-ton boulder is inside. weathervanerestaurant.com Earl Young's Personal Home -- Available to rent on Airbnb; search "Earl Young Mushroom House Charlevoix" Charlevoix Mushroom Houses -- Drive-by viewing from the street is welcomed; homes are private property Find the Show Home In Progress is on the air every weekend and available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab on the homepage. Dan also posts episode content on Facebook and Instagram throughout the week. About Our Sponsor Home In Progress is brought to you by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore. People often think of paint as just another line item on the supply list. But everything you do, every hour of prep, every stroke of the brush, comes down to the quality of what goes on the wall. The paint is the project. Make sure it's the best. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore Episode 463

  • #462
    June 4 · 40 min

    What Color Should I Paint My House? A Step-by-Step Framework for Getting It Right

    Note: This episode originally aired in June 2025. The RepcoLite Endura sale mentioned at the end ran through the end of that month. Episode Summary This week on Home In Progress, Dan dedicates the entire show to one topic: choosing exterior paint colors without the stress, the second-guessing, or the Smurf house. He adapts a color training that RepcoLite's own Haley developed for store employees, adds a few of his own thoughts along the way, and walks listeners through everything from basic ground rules to architectural styles to brick homes to how many colors are actually too many. Practical, thorough, and worth saving if you've got an exterior project anywhere on your horizon. In This Episode [00:49] -- Sweet Corn Disaster Story [06:20] -- Why Exterior Color Choices Are So Stressful [08:41] -- The Training Framework from Haley [09:39] -- Three Ground Rules Before You Pick a Single Color [13:27] -- Working With What's Already There [20:00] -- Architectural Styles and Their Traditional Color Palettes [25:53] -- Working With Brick [30:08] -- How Many Colors Does an Exterior Need? [33:29] -- Shutters and Doors [34:42] -- Final Tips and Tools [37:43] -- Picking the Right Paint Opening: The Sweet Corn Incident [00:49] Dan opens with a story from his week that he feels compelled to share and equally compelled to forget. Hot dogs and sweet corn for dinner. A deep-in-thought face while eating. His daughter Hannah catching the whole thing and trying not to laugh. Dan catching her. And then, involuntarily, the entire table getting covered in sweet corn. The family was not pleased. The corn was found in unexpected places for weeks. Dan relates this story on live radio to a large audience, which he acknowledges is exactly the kind of decision that defines him. From there, on to the actual show. Why Exterior Color Choices Are So Stressful [06:20] Dan did some research on how other homeowners describe the experience of choosing exterior paint colors. A few real quotes he pulled: "I cried. A lot, actually." "It was the most stressed I've ever been." One person described the finished result as looking "so childish. It was like a Smurf house, and I couldn't afford to have it repainted." It's not an irrational reaction. The exterior of a home is visible to everyone who drives by. Getting it wrong costs real money and time, and it's on display for the whole neighborhood to see. Getting it right matters. The Training Framework from Haley [08:41] This episode is built around a color training module that Haley -- longtime show co-host, now full-time RepcoLite product and color trainer -- recently developed for store employees. Dan adapted it for the show and gives her full credit throughout. What follows is largely her framework, with Dan's thoughts mixed in. Three Ground Rules Before You Pick a Single Color [09:39] 1. Colors Look Lighter Outside Outdoors, with the sun as the light source, your colors are going to look two to three shades lighter than that same color would look inside the home. This is one of the most common exterior paint mistakes. Someone picks a mid-tone gray, it looks clearly gray on the chip, and then comes back to say it looks almost white on the house. The fix: choose colors a couple shades darker than you want the final result to look. It feels counterintuitive, but it's how it works. 2. Scale Changes Everything The exterior of a home is a huge canvas, and colors gain strength at that scale. The "Smurf house" situation almost always comes from a color that looked good at smaller doses but became overwhelming when it covered the whole exterior. Look for toned colors that have some gray in them. They're easier on the eye, feel more sophisticated, and don't overwhelm at large scale. Good starting places: Benjamin Moore's Affinity Collection, the Historic Collections, and the Williamsburg Collection (144 muted tones inspired by 18th century colonial homes). These fan decks are safe bets that scale beautifully on big surfaces. 3. Sample on the Actual Surface Benjamin Moore color samples put real paint in your hands. Use them. Paint a large area -- at least two feet by two feet -- directly on the siding, brick, or whatever surface you're actually painting. Texture affects how color looks, so a smooth foam board won't give you an accurate read. Paint the real surface, then observe it in the morning, at midday, and in the evening before you decide anything. Working With What's Already There [13:27] Before you even open a fan deck, take stock of the materials already on your home that aren't changing. These aren't limitations -- they're clues. Constraints, it turns out, actually help narrow decisions rather than just frustrating them. Research in psychology shows that small obstacles can increase creative problem-solving by nearly 40%. The things that feel like limits are often what give you a direction to push from. Landscaping and Fixed Materials [16:06] Landscaping -- Easy to forget about if you're choosing colors in winter, but it plays a big role. A lot of green in the yard -- hostas, ferns, evergreens -- means you probably don't want a green exterior. The house will disappear into the yard. Lots of white blossoms in spring? Maybe skip white for the body color. Look at the dominant tones in the landscaping and choose colors that complement them, not match or compete with them. Unpainted materials -- Stonework, brick, block foundations all have color. If you're leaving them as-is, they should guide your choices. Dan drives past a house where the stone has a cool bluish tone and the new siding clashes with it. From straight on you don't notice it. From an angle where they meet, it's jarring. Let permanent features inform your palette. Gutters, downspouts, fascia, and soffits -- These can be painted or changed, but if you're not planning to, factor them in. Roof Color [17:36] The biggest and least flexible element on most homes. Roofs don't get replaced often, so their color really matters when you're making paint decisions. As a general rule, the body of the house should be lighter than the roof. Gray or black roof: cooler tones like blues and grays tend to work better. Brown roof: warmer tones like beige, taupe, and red are usually a safer bet. Architectural Styles and Their Traditional Color Palettes [20:00] Style Guides, Not Rules [20:00] Unless you're in a historic district with regulations to follow, you're not locked in to any particular color scheme based on the style of your home. Architecture can guide and suggest. It doesn't have to dictate. Dan's main message going into this section: you've got more freedom than you probably think. Colonial Color Classics [21:30] (Cape Cod, Georgian, Dutch Colonial) Traditional palette: muted classic neutrals for the body -- crisp whites, soft creams, beiges, grays. Usually paired with darker accent colors for doors, shutters, and trim: dark green, black, barn red, or yellow. Victorian Color Freedom [22:07] Lots of options here. More than most people realize. You can go rich jewel tones like emeralds or sapphires, soft pastels, or anything in between. There really aren't many firm rules with Victorian architecture. If you've got a Victorian home, stretch a little and have some fun. Craftsman Earthy Palettes [22:49] (Bungalows, four-squares, Mission-influenced homes) These homes are about warmth, craftsmanship, and natural materials. Traditionally they lean toward earthy, muted colors -- browns, sages, grays. Colors that feel grounded and historically accurate for the style. Mustard and olive accents work particularly well as a way to modernize without losing the character. Ranch and Mid-Century Options [23:53] Mid-century Americana. Earthy tones are most common for the body: beige, taupe, brown, tan. White or brown for the trim. Burgundy or deep green for doors and shutters. That said, ranches in the '50s and '60s could be pretty expressive -- soft pastels on the body with bright doors and shutters wasn't unusual, and it still works on the right house. Working With Brick [25:53] Brick deserves its own section because it shows up across all architectural styles and it's frequently handled wrong. Brick isn't really a single color. It's a texture and a collection of tones that your eye averages into one overall impression. Any painted surface on a brick home -- shutters, trim, doors, foundation -- should take a backseat to the brick. That's the guiding principle. The most common mistake: going straight to white trim. White is too stark against brick. It breaks up the home's natural flow and creates visual tension. The brick is absorbing light while the white trim bounces it back aggressively, and the result just looks wrong. Instead, choose trim colors that recede: dark taupes, browns, blacks, dark blues, teals, greens. These complement the warm orangey-red tones in most brick without competing for attention. The house ends up looking more settled and intentional. If you're committed to lighter trim on a brick home, match the mortar color rather than going white. Mortar is already part of the visual mix that makes up the brick's overall tone, so it works with the pattern rather than against it. How Many Colors Does an Exterior Need? [30:08] No single right answer, but here are some practical guidelines. Two colors -- body plus one accent. Clean and simple. Works well on a ranch or any home where the goal is calm simplicity. Three colors -- body plus two accents. Adds energy and can highlight certain features. Works on most styles. Four or more -- best suited to homes with a lot of architectural detail to highlight, like a Victorian with substantial gingerbread trim. The more colors you add, the more important consistency becomes. Make sure there's enough of any given feature to justify giving it its own color, and then paint all of that feature the same color. Breaking your own pattern looks like a mistake even when it's intentional. One practical note: more colors means more cost and more complexity. It can also make it harder to find a painter willing to tackle all the detail work. Shutters and Doors [33:29] The popular understanding is that shutters and the front door should always match. That's not a rule. It's just a common choice. If you want to simplify and streamline the exterior, painting shutters and door the same color is a solid approach. Or go slightly darker on the shutters while staying in the same color family. Either way gives a clean, pulled-together look. If you want to add some interest or energy to the exterior, vary them -- and don't be afraid to vary them dramatically. Both approaches work. It comes down to what you're going for. Final Tips and Tools [34:42] Don't rush. Nobody makes good color decisions under pressure. Give yourself time to look at samples in different lighting at different times of day. If someone else is pushing you toward a deadline, find a way to slow things down a little. It's worth it. Benjamin Moore Color Portfolio app -- Free, and worth downloading before any paint project. Gives you access to all of Benjamin Moore's fan decks, lets you test colors on stock exterior photos, and you can upload photos of your own home. Even the stock photos are useful for seeing how colors look together and how much lighter they read at exterior scale. Find it wherever you download apps. Limit opinions. If you go to other people for input, pick one or two whose design instincts you genuinely trust. More opinions usually make the decision harder, not easier. RepcoLite staff can help. Every RepcoLite location has people trained and ready to walk through your specific situation. Bring photos, bring samples, bring anything that helps. Picking the Right Paint [37:43] Whatever you decide on for color, make sure the product underneath it is worth the work you put in. Benjamin Moore exterior products: Aura Exterior -- top-of-the-line performance and durability Regal Select Exterior -- also top-tier Element Guard -- rain-safe within an hour of application; a solid option for early spring or late fall painting when weather is unpredictable Gen X colorants -- the colorant system used across Benjamin Moore products; enhances durability and color retention, helps exterior paints resist fading, cracking, and peeling Benjamin Moore color collections mentioned: Affinity Collection Historic Collections Williamsburg Collection (144 muted tones inspired by 18th century colonial homes) RepcoLite Endura Exterior -- Made in Holland. Available in flat, satin sheen, semi-gloss, and a new low luster finish (between flat and satin). Tinted with a high-performance colorant system comparable to Benjamin Moore's Gen X. Find the Show Home In Progress is on the air every weekend and available anytime at repcolite.com -- click the On the Radio tab on the homepage. Dan also posts episode content on Facebook and Instagram throughout the week. About Our Sponsor Home In Progress is brought to you by RepcoLite Paints and Benjamin Moore. People often think of paint as just another line item on the supply list. But everything you do, every hour of prep, every stroke of the brush, comes down to the quality of what goes on the wall. The paint is the project. Make sure it's the best. Home In Progress | RepcoLite Paints | Sponsored by Benjamin Moore Originally aired June 2025

Showing 1–20 of 29 episodes