These are the 10 essential tools for DIY projects I think you should own. And today on the podcast, Will and I talk you through each one. What cordless drill should you buy? Find out now:

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Essential Tools For DIY Projects

Here is our list based on a Washington Post article with links to purchase these tools

1. Claw Hammer
2. Six In One Screwdriver
3. Cordless Drill
4. Level  Small Level  24″ Level
5. Needle nose Pliers
6. Channel Lock type pliers
7. Allen Wrench Set
8. 5 in 1 putty knife
9. Staple Gun  Cable Staple Gun
10. Tape Measure

Eric: Hey, how are you doing? Thanks for downloading the show. This is GardenFork Radio. Its an eclectic DIY podcast. We talk about basically whatever comes into my head or my friends’ heads and they email me and go, let’s talk. So today we’re gonna talk about 10 essential tools for DIY projects every homeowner should own and three they shouldn’t. And the guy who sent me this list as well from the weekend homestead. Welcome sir. How are you doing Eric? I’m good. We had some microphone problems. So, we just fixed them. It’s super great now. So this is typical of how we’ll and I work well, has some great ideas. He emails to me, them to me and we talk about them and we talked about 15 things you could do when you’re stuck at home. And we got such a great response from that. We did a second show. those would be previous ones in your podcast player or on the website. And now we have 10 tools essential tools for DIY projects because you may be, are still stuck at home. And thinking about some projects,

Will: the Washington post had a great article. I know a bunch of people had said, you know, these lists of stuff to do is awesome but you know, I’ve just bought a house or I’m just moving into an apartment or moving out on my own and what kind of tools should I have in my house to do all this stuff that you guys are suggesting to do? So I thought the Washington post article was kind of a, a good summary of it and I figured we could debate out some of the pieces. Cause I know there’s some items like the cordless drill where everybody has an opinion of, but I know you and I might have different opinions and everybody else will, but it’s kinda nice to talk about them.

Eric: And believe it or not, people have different opinions on claw hammers, which is the first one.

Will: You know the claw hammer thing. I will say this, and this is something for all of the items on the list. When you’re going to buy them, you’re and you’re standing at the home improvement store or if you’re going to buy it online, there’s usually the really cheap one and the super expensive one and there’s usually one in the middle. I usually go with the one in the middle cause I’ve learned that if I buy the really cheap, whatever it is, I end up replacing it a year later or wherever and now I spent twice as much because I’ve had to buy two really cheap ones. If you go with the middle one or even the high end one, in some cases it’s always better than just buying the cheapest one you can find.

Eric: Yeah, you get what you pay for. we’re going to talk about that actually a little bit later in the show with a different item on different topic, but claw hammers. What I have discovered is people will buy the shiny big, I think it’s called a carpenters hammer. It has a very long neck or throat or handle and it’s made by S swing. A lot of times it’s shiny stainless and it has a blue rubbery grip. and Donna and you really need to have some strength and control to use a hammer like that.

Will: I’ve actually found,

Eric: you know there’s different types of handles. There’s the metal handle, the fiberglass and the wood ones, the mid price one at like the orange store or the blue store. Those guys, they usually have the rubber handle with the fiberglass neck and then it’s a mid size lightweight hammer, which if you’re going to use it a lot during the day having a heavy hammer versus a light hammer, you will notice the difference and in all reality, the price difference between the really expensive one in the mid price one, there’s a pretty significant difference between them and you. The middle price one is probably the one that would work for 90% of the folks out there. If you’re doing it for your job, you probably want the higher ed one. Yeah, I have the, it’s red has a red fiberglass handle on with a rubber pad around it and a decent size head and I’ve had it 15 years.

Will: I actually tell people when you’re going to buy a hammer, buy two of them because ultimately you’ll be using it for something and then you have one somewhere else or wherever. And it’s always nice to have maybe one in the drawer in the house and one out in the garage or the shop. So you’re not going back and forth. They’re not that expensive and they won’t break the bank.

Eric: Yeah. I actually, that’s where I get my steps and now as I’m in the garage, which is separate from my house, probably like 60 feet away and I have for every project I do in the garage, I have to run to the house about four times.

Also on the GardenFork Radio podcast: Will and Eric discuss whether to buy a new or used tractor.

Will: That happens a lot. you want to talk about number two on the list? Screwdrivers?

Eric: Yeah. I have strong opinions about this.

Will: Let’s hear it. What do you got?

Eric: I have a six and one and I’m very happy with it.

Will: I will tell you this, there’s a store called Harbor freight, which a lot of people have around. And if you watch their flyers, they have a six and one that they do. If you buy a certain number of dollars worth of tools or stuff, you get a six in one for free or for 99 cents. I bought a handful of those and I threw one in the drawer in the kitchen and there’s one down by the furnace and there’s one in my car and, and I kind of just toss them around places and they seem to work really well in a pinch for almost anything before you have to go to the toolbox to actually get your good screwdrivers.

Eric: Let’s talk about what a six in one or a four and one is, it’s a, it’s a screwdriver with a handle and the shaft pops out and you can flip it one 80 and pop it back in again. And then each of those ends has a tip on a double double at a double pointed tips. So on one side it’s Phillips small, you pull that out and flip it, it’s a slotted small and then you take the whole shaft out and flip it and then change the tip out and it’s Phillips large and slotted large. And then each of those ends of the shaft that pops in and out has a hexagonal, a dye. It has a hexagonal space in it and those are nut drivers. So you can tighten up a nut with using just the shaft and on a foreign one, that shaft is the same size, a six and one. It’s two different sizes. So you’ve got Phillips large and small, slotted large and small and two different essentially wrenches box wrenches on one thing.

Will: Do you want to hear the interesting hack that you can do to six and one of course. so if you go to Harbor freight, they have a Star tool and it’s called a T like 25 and the other side is a square end. So you know the piece that you swap in and out with the screwdriver heads. What I found is the Harbor freight one fits right inside of the small end. So actually I have Phillips on one end, Flathead. Then I have Starbucks and square in one of my six and ones that I use for electrical work because sometimes you need that square head. Sometimes they have the star head and so on and it’s, you know, 50 cents or a dollar to get that piece and now all of a sudden you can deal with four different types of screws. And in two types of headsets.

Eric: I did a little job for my neighbor and there was no way I would take his money. No, her money, their money, sorry. and like a week later, they gave me a Harbor freight, gift card.

Will: I, I, I think Harbor freight has a little bit of everything and I think they’re, you know, it’s, it’s kinda middle of the road tools. Some of them are really cheap, but a lot of them, if you need a onetime tool type place, it’s kinda my go to place to get something like that.

Eric: Yeah. I mean we’re going off track cause that’s what we do in garden fork. But will and I both have the same Troy-Bilt log splitter and Troy bolt is a sponsor of garden fork. But what I don’t like about it is the, to level out the trailer hitch under the, of the log splitters. A little flip out, kind of like a little kick-out piece of a steel, like a U shaped piece of steel and it’s, it’s clunky. So we’ll went and bought a regular is called a trailer Jack. A trailer.

Will: It’s a trailer tire or trailer wheel or something like that. It’s a single wheel, like a plastic wheel on a metal bracket.

Eric: Right. And it has, it’s for when you take your trailer off your car, you flip that down, it has a little wheel and it rolls around and you can lift it up and down with a little crank. Well at Harbor freight they’re on sale for $18 you know, and I’m like okay this isn’t a daily driver, it’s for my log splitter. So I went and bought that the other day. So

Will: for me the biggest one is like I can set that thing in my, in my pole barn and I can push it around or if the wife needs to even move it around instead of having to lift the tongue and try to move it. Cause the log splitter is heavy, it’s tongue heavy. Having that wheel on there, my kid can push it around it so easy. So I mean it’s one of those things where if you need to move it out of the way, it makes a big difference on moving it on a smooth surface. Yeah.

Eric: All right. So back to reality number four,  more of our essential tools for DIY projects.

Will: Well actually let’s do number three. Number three first.

Eric: Oh, I want to skip the controversy.

Will: Let’s do that one at the end. Let’s do number four levels. So you’re hanging pictures, you’re hanging shelves, you’re doing things that you know in the house and you need to put on the wall. Having a good level, especially one that has mag like a magnetic strip on it works really good. There’s small bullet ones, they come and you know there’s longer ones that are three foot and four foot. I think most people can get away with, you know, a three foot level, a plastic one and a nice bullet level. And you can do pretty much anything around your house.

Eric: The smaller levels I call a torpedo level. Yup. Yup. this is actually a non, not discrete plug for the garden fork. store on Amazon, but I have a whole tool section on the the garden fork store and Amazon and I have my favorite a torpedo level that has three magnets built into the one side and there is no magnets on the other and I love that level. And then I have a two or three foot one that’s plastic because you’re going to drop that one off a ladder and if it’s metal and you drop it, you can, it can become unlevel.

Will: Well the thing on the, the one with the magnet too, like we were hanging a television and trying to keep that on the metal Mount at the same time as you’re trying to level it with that magnetic, you just stick it right to it and you can move it around and let go with the level without trying to balance everything. And it made it super easy to do that.

Eric: Here’s the problem with levels is if you live in an old house and you hang something that’s level, it may not look right on the wall.

Will: That is a good point.

Eric: I, you know, my house is 120 years old and nothing is level or square and you put something up and you’re like that, that doesn’t quite look right. So I don’t tell anyone, I just move it a little bit on the wall and I suck it in.

Will: I will say one item on the, on the level and the older homes that I learned was when we’re using the chop saw and cutting trim that you cut trim and it’s nice and perfectly square. Then you go to put it in there and you realize, okay, now I got to hand cut it or kind of shape it a little bit to make it look right because the floor might not be lovable, but your board is perfect. And so then you end up having to kind of rig it a little bit to make it work. So that stuff is okay if you have to do that in your house. It’s, that’s what happens when you have older properties

Eric: yet. Also, I have never checked the accuracy of it, but a lot of smartphones have a level built in as an app.

Will: I’ve used that and actually they have something else now too. The iPhone has a tape measure built in, which we’ll get to later on the list. That’s one of the items on there. But the level app now also has a tape measure in it too.

Eric: Oh cool. All right. Let’s talk about number five.

Will: Needle nose pliers or players in general. I mean to be able to grab onto something and to you know, fix something or if you have to reach in somewhere to get something small that you dropped in there. I mean that stuff happens. Something with a good rubber handle on it. Usually they have a cutter built in the middle, so if you have to cut some wire or something like that, it’s kind of built in. What do you think I need on those players?

Eric: Yes. And don’t buy cheap ones. Buy ones with really nice thick rubber handles. Because I use needle nose for electric work. And you may, you you’re ideally everything is turned off but if there is something turned on and you’re in there with an Allen wrench, I mean not, I don’t want to say needle nose. If they’re the thickly insulated pliers it’s the less chance of you getting zapped.

Will: Absolutely. Which brings me to the next item on the list which I think is your favorite item, which is a pipe wrench channel locks. I see you using them all the time in the videos. Especially like when you did the the heater video. I know you had them there talking about pipe wrenches. Why do people need pipe wrenches?

Eric: Well you all need a three foot pipe wrench. I ha I own two of them. They’re amazing. They’re the technology is probably 200 years old and you get such a tremendous amount of leverage out of one. If you get a small one, like a 14 inch pipe wrench and then you have what you call a cheater pipe, but usually like an inch and a half piece of plumbing pipe that’s three foot long. You have a multi tool. You can get a nut. Like if you own an old tractor and need to get a nut off there, you can just Hern on that thing and get it off. And then on a PO, a channel locks channel locks is a, is a commercial, it’s a brand name. It’s kind of like Xerox. When you say photocopier, I don’t know what their generic name is, but I just call them channel locks and buy a high end brand. They’re the, the, the, even the mid range channel locks. I find they jump out of the channel when you’re trying to really, really grab onto something. But they’re great for piping a nut. You can’t get off. They’re super nice.

Will: Well the other nice thing too is they’re adjustable so they fit almost any size. So if you can’t find the right thing to grab, if it’s a 10 millimeter or a 12 meter or whatever it is, channel locks, it doesn’t matter. You just said it, grab it in and you know, give it a turn. The other thing it works well for is if you have, if you can’t get in somewhere where you can’t get a pipe wrench in a smaller channel, Aqua works good for tightening up a looser leaky pipe. If you have one or you know, if you’re doing something with your gas, if you’re a little bit more advanced, you can do something with your gas lines and things like that. If you have to tighten a nut for that or even working on your automobile, it works good. So, you know, it’s, it’s kind of an all around tool that I always have in my toolbox cause there’s always somewhere where I can’t reach or something’s too tight or I don’t have the right tool. A channel locks or a pipe wrench can probably get it.

Eric: Yeah. When you’re under your sink of the bathroom vanity or the kitchen, the channel lock is great because if you have one, they’re all friction connect connections under there, the drain connections and you can tighten one up because you’re not going to have the exact size, wrench to get onto all those nuts. And the channel that comes into play there and it works really well. If you still have a leak, you can take apart the plumbing underneath there and then get some Teflon pipe paste. It’s kind of white, it’s not cheap, but it solved a lot of problems when I’ve had to put or re put together drain pipe underneath the sink

Will: when we bought the resort, the a Teflon tape, a pace that you’re talking about in fixing all of the plumbing connections, I went through seven containers of that stuff. If that tells you how much plumbing he did. So that’s a, it’s a, it works great. I mean one container, keep the lid tight and possibly put it in a plastic bag and it’ll last for a long time. You just got to keep it so it doesn’t dry out.

Eric: And the key thing there is people think, ah, like friction fit or compression fit piping. It’s not about the threads, it’s about the mating surfaces. So underneath your sink, it’s all about the mating surface ceilings. So put the Teflon paste around those surfaces, not on the threads because you put it on the threads. It’s not going to do anything

Will: and less is more in that scenario. Don’t over cake it on, cause I’ve seen it before where people go crazy with the amount on there and that actually can cause more problems than good. I mean you have to put enough on there but don’t think that, Oh I have to make it so that you can’t even see the connection and more because there’s so much paste on it.

Will: I’m talking about Allen wrenches. That’s number seven on the list. if you have any toys or if you have any gadgets in the house or anything along those lines. A lot of things need Allen wrenches these days are the little hexagonal wrenches and you can easily get a small pack of them, a metric one and a standard one and it’ll cover 95% of all the things that you’d ever want to open up or get into

Eric: the Allen wrench sets that I really like. on your average everyday carry kind of thing. Are the kinds that fold out like a Swiss army knife?

Will: Yes, absolutely. The ones in the bags that are all loose, I can, I ended up dumping the whole thing out. Then spreading it on the table and then finding the one that I’m looking for versus the one you’re talking about. You just flip out the one and if you’re too big you just go one down. If you’re too small, you just go one up and it’s easy to know which ones are cause they’re always in the right order.

Eric: And also when you flip it out, the, the case that it is in that kind of Swiss army knife case serves as like a tea bar. I know, I don’t know really what it’s basically a handle to turn the Allen wrench giving you more torque.

Will: The one thing you do have to be careful on is if you put the wrong size Allen wrench in the hole and you give it a turn. If it’s too small, you can round out the whole on an Allen wrench. So you have to be really cautious to make sure you get the right one in the hole. Because if you’re like, ah, it’s just a little too small, if you start turning it that little bit too small can slip and it’ll round out the, the hole that you’re actually trying to tighten or loosen from.

Eric: And also you need to have them because there’s metric and SAE metric nuts and bolts out there. So I done that sounded stupid. Get metric Allen wrenches and SAE or what’s that called? Imperial or USA measure ones is what I mean, you know, it’ll, it’ll save you one day. You’re going to need to take something apart, especially like TV mounts on the wall. I think all that stuff has Allen keys and if you really want to up your game, you can buy sets of Allen wrench, Allen keys or wrenches that are a socket set. And so essentially you turn your socket wrench into a big Allen tool, which is nice. Allen wrench.

Will: Perfect. next one on the list. This one is another one for you, Eric. A putty knife. I, I, I saw this on the list and I’m like, I know a guy who knows a lot about putty. Nice.

Eric: Yeah. I would suggest everyone buy what’s called a five and one which is a putty knife that looks like it has a regular metal putty knife edge. And then all of a sudden there’s this moon carved out of the side of it. And then the of the putty knife has a little point on it and the other end of the putty knife has this blunt thick end, so you have a scraper, you have a little pointed Digger tool, you have a screwdriver or a paint can opener and then the half moon thing is used when you’re painting to strip paint or get paint off of a paint roller. When you want to save all the paint, you want to clean up the roller, you use your five Oh one to go along the paint roller back into the can.

Will: I never knew that. I always wondered what that little half moon cut out of that was. I never knew it was taking that off of there. I thought it was for maybe like scraping quarter round or something like that.

Eric: The things you learned from me.Will

Will: that right there is the price of admission on the show, right?

Eric: Yeah. It’s funny how people don’t know that. But I also have some putty knives that are plastic because their sacrifices will like if I know like if I’m working with rooftop tar, I use a plastic putty knife because there’s no way I’m getting all the roof tar off this thing and it doesn’t have to be perfect cause that’s roof tar and that gets to be this point where I’m like okay we’re just going to throw this roof tar putty knife out and it goes.

Will: Yeah it’s, it’s pretty amazing. Like the, the little plastic ones even. And we can just slide paint brushes in here cause paint brushes wasn’t on the list but getting a little pack of like this one inch to two inch chip brushes I think is what they’re called. And just having a couple of them laying around. You’d never know. Like the other day one of the boys was pushing one of their plastic containers at toys and they went up against the wall and basically gouged a little section in there where we have textured walls. So all I did was go downstairs, get a chip brush, dip it in the paint that I had, repaint the spot and it was good as new. But to even have a small pack of those, I mean they’re 50 cents or a dollar, you don’t have that with your putty knife. You can fix things and then if you need to touch up paint, it’s always good to have a couple of those around and you can just throw them away when you’re done.

Eric: And Harbor freight sells, those brushes in bulk.

Will: Yeah. I think you can get like a pack of like 24 of them for what, 10 or $15? Yup. Something like that.

Eric: I get the three inch wide ones cause there is a lot of times I need to slap a lot of paint on like primer really quick and they’re perfect for that.

Will: Sure. Moving on to number nine of the essential tools for DIY projects, the staple gun, lots of different types of staplers out there, but I think the T series is what it’s called is probably one of the best ones. Kind of all around the big, it’s usually silver and in color and it can fit all sorts of different styles. It’s not like a stapler that you’d use at your house to staple paper together. This is, Hey, I need to put some screen on somewhere or I need to put some paper or plastic up on the wall or something like that. A little bit more heavy duty stapler is always good to have.

Eric: Yeah. I, these are actually in the, the garden fork store on Amazon, so I’ll, I’ll link to the store and you can go through. Don’t cheap out on them. I’ve, I’ve inherited some cheap staplers and I just threw them the recycle. I have two different staple guns. I have the traditional one that does a regular rectilinear staple and then I have a cable staple gun that puts out a looped staple for running wire or a, I use that for my garden. Trellises. I have a couple of videos about making my DIY garden trellises and the the cable stapler is great for looping twine on a raised bed or, well you have to have taught, you’ll have to watch the video won’t you? Oh so yeah, two different staple guns.

Will: There is a one other staple gun you will see in the stores. You don’t use it very often, but it looks kind of like a handle of a hammer and then there’s a straight stapler on it and it’s used for hanging plastic. We’re actually using that right now to put the insulation in the plastic vapor barrier up in the office that we’re building at the resort and you just hit the wall and it puts the staple in kind of like you’re swinging a hammer but it leaves a staple behind when you’re done hitting, you probably don’t need that one unless you’re going to be doing construction then that one is worth its weight in gold

Eric: or if you’re roofing, that thing is handy for laying down tarpaper.

Will: Absolutely. Oh actually you can use it for anything on the tarpaper for that matter. I mean, if you’re building something or lining the inside of a box or a planter or something like that, you know, that works really good for that. It’s just if you’re going to be doing those types of projects, that’s what that one is used for. VCA, if you’re having to be in the home improvement store online. Yeah. All right. Let’s talk about tape measures. I don’t think you can have enough tape measures. I think I own at least a dozen of them.

Eric: Yes. Buy more. There you go. Thank you.

Will: Did there go? All right. Next thing on the list, but I’ll tell you this on the tape measures, I usually get the standard ones. I know that Harbor freight always at the same time, they’re doing the six and one free giveaway. Occasionally they have the tape measure. I throw it in the car. I’ve got one in the tool box. I’ve got one in the drawer in the kitchen there. They’re just handy to have around because you never know like, I gotta measure this or I’m running to the store, or whatever it is. They work for anything and they’re usually fairly inexpensive.

Eric: So I have a story about tape measures. My plumber and friend car mine who I would love to have on the show. I don’t know if he would come on and, and he goes, Oh, I just, I just started watching YouTube. I’m like, okay, car mine. He’s a real Brooklyn EIT. He’s great. But in mine, I mean I pay him and he, you know, fixes my boiler and on my hot water heater. But if he’s in the neighborhood, he’s a one man band. He doesn’t like to work with anyone. But if he’s in my neighborhood and he needs help with a water heater, I’ll go over and help him and I won’t take his money because, you know, I’m just, I’m like, you know, okay. It’s, I get to see someone, my friend, we get to give each other a hard time. But the last time I helped him, he swung by the house later on and put in my mailbox because I had made a comment, he used a tape measure and it had a really rigid tape and it had a metal tip on a magnetic tip on the end. And I was like, wow, really nice. So he went to Lowe’s and bought me this tape measure and I will try and link to it in the show notes, but it’s my favorite tape measure now has a really, it’s a wide tape, easy to read numbers cause I am older now with a magnetic tip. So you can, you can take the tip and hit up a pipe and then walk, you know, 15 feet away and see how far away you are and that magnet sticks. And I really like that.

Will: Can we talk a little bit about technology?

Eric: I thought we’d talk more about water heaters, but sure.

Will: Hot water heaters. no. So I just found this out and I’ve tested it and it actually works pretty good. So Apple and they’ll in the last upgrade or last couple upgrades, they have the level app, but then that also has a measuring app where you take your phone and you turn on the measure and it makes you move your phone certain directions so it can get the orientation and then you push a dot on the screen and you move your phone along like you’re measuring and it’ll measure on the, on the screen and then you hit the button and stop and it’ll take a picture with the measurement on it. So if you needed to measure something from your house or you need to grab a quick measurement because Hey, a four foot shelf will fit in there and you take a shot of it. Then when you go to the home improvements where you can look at the picture and go, Oh yeah, that was 48 inches or 40 inches and it keeps the information on there. It’s free on your iPhone. I don’t know if Android has it, but I’ve used that a dozen times and I’ve tested it. You can’t do like find carpentry work with it, but if you need to get a rough measurement of Hey is that 20 feet or is that 28 feet, it’ll be easily able to grab that information for you.

Eric: Wow. I have to play with that.

Will: See you learn something while I’m on the show. Yeah. Should we talk about the last topic, the caustic one? Cordless drills. Yes. That’s the last item on the list. I will say there’s a lot of brands. There’s a lot of opinions. There’s a lot of styles of cordless drills. I’ll let you go first. Eric, what do you think of cordless drills?

Eric: Smaller is better.

Will: I actually have a black and Decker one. I’m just going to use the brand cause it’s the only one I know. But it was a really, it was inexpensive. It was, you know, $20 or something like that. And it has the tip where it has a Phillips and a and a, Flathead on it. And I throw it in the same drawer with the six and one and the tape measure. Because if you have to do something really quick, like take something apart or put something together, it’s very easy. It holds a charge. There’s no batteries to it. The batteries built into it and it works really good for a little odd projects. Once you get past the, I need to do something really quick, I’d project to something better. I would suggest buying a better drill. But I agree with you Eric. Smaller is better and lighter is better if you can get it right,

Eric: right. It’s, it’s, it’s like the guys that drive Hummers they have like the biggest cordless drill you can buy and it’s like a 24 volt and it’s got a huge battery on the end and when you gotta you gotta put that on your belt or a throat, try and throw it in your pocket. Going up a ladder. It’s a pain. And I have a BOSH 12 volt impact driver and drill driver. It was a set, of course it’s on the garden fork Amazon store. It’s like $120 for the two of them. But I think the key thing is for any kind of cordless one except for that little one in your toolbox is the batteries are separate because the batteries will crap out before the tool does. and I, mine are 12 volt and they work amazing. I’ve dropped them off of ladders, I beat them up all the time. And I think if you buy cheap here, like we’ve talked before, the batteries or the drive mechanism in the tool’s going to crap out. So this is something where I think spending $100 or more is a good thing.

Will: Yup. The utility drill that I was talking about, the inexpensive one is kind of the, I need a quick something or other, but if you’re actually going to do a project, I agree 100% with you. Lee, I, had a drill kit that we had bought a number of years ago. It was one of those, you know, you get six of them and they’re with a circular saw and all this, all the batteries are interchangeable from the yellow brand. And I was using that and I thought it was great. It had an impact driver and then I had some problems with the battery so I ended up getting and buying a new set of drills because it was just a similar kit to what you had. I could not believe the weight difference between the drill that I use today that lasts just as long as the one that I had four years ago to today. Like we put a deck together at the resort and use those really heavy drills and I’m thinking, Oh man, you would not believe how tired you get by lugging that thing around. And now that I know what the weight of the new one is, the one that you’re talking about, amazingly different. So I can’t stress it enough that you get what you pay for when you buy a cordless drill.

Eric: Yeah. I mean Harbor freight has them for really cheap and it’s, and I’m like, Nope, Nope.

Will: Like I said, having the one simple one in a drawer that has the battery built into it for the quick things is nice. But if you’re really going to do real home improvement stuff or real DIY projects, step up to a least a hundred dollars category, you know, and you can watch your sales because they happen to go on sale very often. It’s a, it’s a category that the home improvement stores like to use as a, what I call a price point leader where they use that as a way to kind of get people into the hobby cause they know if you buy a cordless drill you’re probably going to have to buy some supplies at some point to, you know, screw together and do things. So they use them as a, a loss leader a lot of times.

Eric: Perfect. Hey, would you like more of garden fork or more of Eric, would you like to get it in your email inbox? I send out just about every week I send out a little email about Eric’s world and new stuff I posted. I even talk about podcasts I’ve listened to or just interesting stuff and usually almost always at one picture of the Labradors and Regan Charlie, you can get that by signing up for Eric’s garden fork email newsletter thing. There should be a link in the notes to the show. Just scroll down to the description of the podcast in your app and I’m hope it’s a clickable link. It should be or go to garden fork.tv and on almost every page at the top of the page should be a sign up. If you’re on a mobile device, you might have to tap on the little, there’s a little menu bar and then hopefully there will be a signup or scroll the bottom of a post and you can sign up. There should be a link in the app here. More of Eric. It would be fun to have you along for the ride. It’s kind of more brain dump Eric. Cool stuff. All right.

Eric: All right, so that’s our 10 things. Snap. Now we have some things not to buy.

Will: I will say this, I wasn’t in too much favor of the, not to buy. I think the not to buy lists from the Washington post article was more about safety than anything else. Yeah. I mean the three items they have on there are a table saw, a circular saw, had a Hacksaw, which I could see people, if you were doing woodworking, buy yourself a nice table saw. If you’re doing some outside projects, you know, buy yourself a circular saw and if you’re doing some inside stuff, a Hacksaw, it makes sense. But don’t buy them and not respect them because those types of tools will definitely be dangerous very, very quickly and you can hurt yourself pretty badly on them. So you kind of need to know what you’re doing. So the first 10 items were kind of the, everybody should have something like that to do work if you’re really going to get into it. I think these products are products you should look at. But if you’re a first timer, I don’t think that it’s a wise choice. I guess. What are your thoughts?

Eric: Yeah, I actually have a serious craftsman table saw and I actually use it as a work service rather than a saw

Will: pretty expensive table.

Eric: I have two layers of cardboard on it. And then it’s my work surface. Actually a lot of videos you’ve seen where I got junk Lingle over something that the saw is underneath that too. I think a circular saw is a good thing to buy with a little bit of practice and a awareness that it can, you know, cut your finger off. I, you can build a lot with a circular saw.

Will: Let me ask you this question. And this is a hot debated question. cordless or corded?

Eric: I have a corded one. I, I’m not familiar with the cordless ones.

Will: So I, I will say I have a cordless one and if you need to do a lot of cutting, let’s say you’re building a deck, get the corded one because you’re going to go through batteries. But if you’re building a shelf in the garage, having a cordless one is nice. And if you’re looking at the drill kits and the drill sets like we just talked about, a lot of them will have it where you can get a circular saw, a jigsaw, and let’s say two drills for $199 or something like that. Along those lines, those kits are really good if you’re going to really take the next step up from just fixing a couple of things, your home to actually building things. But if you’re going to do some big projects, I’m going to frame a building or I’m going to do a deck or something like that, having a corded circular saw, just the torque on it, not having to go constantly replace batteries, those types of things. But if you’re doing a couple of little cuts, the circular saw probably can get most people buy.

Eric: Neat. Well that, that’s, I think that was pretty good. We, yeah, we have a couple more things to think about. And then I actually wanted to talk about a subject I felt very strongly about, but we’re gonna save that for the after show for our garden fork supporters, our garden fork patrons. And that’s my experience with buying a solar charge controller. But, we have a couple of reviews and some viewer mail. Would you like to hear that? Yeah, let’s go through that quick. I’m not quite sure if I read this one already, but it’s by, it’s a iTunes review from Sven hard and it says done is better than perfect. FiveStars Hey, Eric and friends, I’ve been waiting for a good time to sit down and write a proper review about garden fork and what it means to others and myself and I figured out and I figured done is better than perfect. So just start right spin. I seem to always listen to your podcasts when I’m on route to do something that might be stressful in your podcast. Offers me some relief when I’m that kind of moment. Wow. We’re like, what’s that kind of thing on YouTube that that kind of a SMR? Yeah.

Will: Okay. Everyone close your eyes, take a deep breath. Think of the wilderness,

Eric: listening to his shows, like hanging out with friends and solving the world’s problems over a cup of coffee, which is son, which sometimes gets a little mad sciencey, but I love it. Yay. Keep up the good work. Oh, that’s from Steve, not spin. And then this is a new one. I know. one of my favorites. Five stars from D S U dancer. Huh. I love Eric and friends, eclectic, DIY cooking, fixing, doing gardening, et cetera. I’m always learning something and getting a new perspective when I listen to podcast or watch the YouTube videos. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge. There you go. Awesome. I also got a, a couple of emails. I have a email list which you can sign up for. you can go to the website, garden fork.tv. There’ll be a sign up right at the top of the website page or there’s links in the show notes here, but Peter sent something.

Eric: The a garden fork sweatshirts and tee shirts were on sale for a couple of days last week. And I put out an email about that. And Peter said, Eric, you need to put a prominent link on your website for these. I told my cousin about it and she wants one. I had to search all, Oh, I had to go into my email trash to find this newsletter I sent. So he, he deleted my email. But when you go to the site, I, there’s a couple of links across the top and the menu bar and it says merge. And I thought everyone knows what merge means, but they don’t. So I’m going to change it to w do I change it to clothing or sweaters or what? What would be a good word will,

Will: t-shirts. Sweatshirts. Okay. That was easy. I mean, are you going to get coffee cups?

Eric: Eventually

Will: it gives the garage gift store, maybe the garden fork gift shop. I want an airport. Pick up your key chains on your way out.

Eric: Yeah. And then I got a one from Carl. Hello. Eric. Although done is better than perfect in some situations. I’m sure you will agree that some things must be done to the best of our ability. Well, listen to this, recently I found myself in a trauma center with a subdural hematoma, which had to be drained by a neurosurgeon after a 12 foot fall. Wow. I’m glad he did not follow your advice but performed the procedure perfectly.

Will: Yeah. Sorry.

Eric: Yeah. Oh, I completely agree with that.

Will: Oh wow. That’s a, that’s definitely a definitely got to do that one. Perfect.

Eric: Yeah. Oh, and Oh, you wanted to do a couple of followups when we were talking about projects. Yes, go ahead. Will you, it’s your list. So,

Will: Oh, I’m lost now. I closed the list. I thought we were done a chalkboard paint. Oh yeah. So the chalkboard paint piece, you guys did a video on that. can you do that with any color or do you have to use black or is black just kind of like, because it’s always a black truck report or

Eric: any color you want. Yeah.

Will: How does that hold up? Did that, you know, hold up pretty well writing on it and then erasing it. Does it ever flake off or anything like that?

Eric: It hasn’t flaked off. It’s on a couple of walls around the house and we have written on it and then you, you can just wipe it off with your shirt sleeve basically. it’s not, I’m, I don’t really have a complaint about it. It just works really well and it’s kind of fun to, in some places you wouldn’t expect to find a chalkboard on the wall with something nice written on it, you know?

Will: Yeah. The nice thing too is you could paint an area on your wall and then if you have some trim board or some extra boards laying around, you could make a framer on the outside of it to make it look like a picture. So it’s actually the wall, but then it’s got the framer on the outside where you can store the chalk and all that kind of stuff. I’ve seen people do that and that’s pretty neat.

Eric: You’ve been on Pinterest too long.

Will: Actually. My wife watched your video and then she sent me something on Pinterest. So that’s a, I’m guessing I’m going to be doing this very soon with the boys here at the house.

Eric: Well speaking of the boys, you actually had a project to add to our previous podcast about the fish tank.

Will: Yeah. So a lot of people were talking about, you know, if they have their kids at home because of school and, and, and that, stuff. And one of the things that we did was we went on YouTube and we went on the internet and we looked up things about fish tanks and you know, my son kinda got into learning about what type of fish and you know, about the science of the water and what goes well together and doesn’t, and we did a bunch of research and then, actually Amazon has a number of, tanks cause a lot of the stores aren’t open right now. We actually got a fish tank delivered to us with some of the stuff and we put it together and like he’s been testing the water every day and learning about the science of how the water works.

Will: And if you want a fun, easy project, I think we maybe have 40 or $50 total into the tank to get started. But you know, it’s going to take a couple of days to get going and it kind of gives them something to do over and over again. So if you’re stuck at home with the kids are looking for an easy weekend project. I hadn’t had one since I was a kid, but it was one of those things where we spent a little bit of money, but there was so much research and so much learning, they kind of went along with it and it’s fun. It was something to keep the kids occupied with. So that’s the only reason why I had it on as a suggestion point.

Eric: Cool. Fish tanks. Yay. And you know, you’ve posted some pictures of that on the weekend. Homestead, Instagram feed. I know.

Will: Yup. Yup. We’ve, I’ve got some up there and we’ll probably, we’re at this point right now where the plants are in and we have to let them sit for two weeks and we’re learning about how plants work underwater. And then, you know, when things start to go back to normal, we’ll get a fish, you know, and put them in there and we’ll move on to the next part of it.

Eric: Yay. All right, there you go. I think that’ll keep you guys busy. You can go shopping on the garden fork Amazon page and buy your stapler, your level, your cordless drills,

Will: and then post your projects online. I’d love to see what you guys are doing. It was so cool when people took the 15 list and posted on the garden fork discussion group, Hey, here’s what I did in my kitchen, or here’s what I did in my garage. If you guys are using these tools, post some of your projects would be interesting to see what happens.

Eric: You can see the cleanest, most organized refrigerator ever.

Will: Absolutely. I still, that’s like the gold standard for refrigerators on the garden fork discussion group.

So there you go, let me know your thoughts on what are the essential tools for DIY projects you think people should have? Thanks!

 

After getting lots of feedback and more ideas of what to do while stuck at home practicing social isolation, Will and I have more DIY ideas for you.

Audio Player

More Things To Do At Home During Social Isolation

• Detail your car microfiber towel or Swiffer
• Clean the inside of your windshield put Rain X on your windshield
• Change the wiper blades and air filter
• Remove the haze and fog from your headlights
• Sow grass seed in late winter early spring
• Clean your kitchen stove
• Clean your outdoor grill
• Scrub out your microwave oven
• Vacuum behind the couch, wash the cushions and pillows.
• Organize the loose screws and bolts from previous projects
• Clean and prep your bike before the warm season
• Clean your computer keyboard
• Catalog the photos on your phone and computer
• Order seeds for the garden

Listen to our first show on this topic, 15 Things To Do At Home.

Hey! Thanks for downloading the show. Welcome. This is garden fork radio. It’s a DIY, eclectic DIY channel that I have. I also have a YouTube channel of the same name with, I just do interesting stuff and I make videos about it and I talk about it. And today the most interesting person in the world is here. We’ll Wallace from the weekend homesteading.

Will: How are you doing buddy?

Eric: I’m here. Cause you called and said get on Skype.

Will: Yeah, it’s time to go. It’s a Monday. Here we go.

Eric: You’re lying. You’re like 10 cans of Red Bull without even drinking.

Will: So I actually haven’t even had any caffeine today, which is kind of strange. I’m really trying hard to kick the soda habit and I’ve made it so far through the day without having one.

Eric: That’s good. We, our last episode together was 15, 15 things to do when you’re stuck at home and it got such a great response and we got a bunch of suggestions from you all on our garden for our Facebook discussion group or by direct email that we thought we do a followup show because we both had more ideas as well after the fact. Right.

Will: It was amazing how many people either reached out through the apps or through social media and just like even some people were posting their projects, like they are like, Hey, we took our homework and we did it and here’s the pictures of the end result, which was was pretty cool to see.

Eric: Yeah. Kristy posted on our garden fork Facebook group. The link to that is in show notes, but just if you type in garden fork discussion group, it should show up in Facebook. But she has a picture of her open refrigerator, which is a pretty big deal for people. Thanks for the recent podcasts on household tasks to accomplish while sheltering in place. I’m D scaling the coffee maker and I cleaned the fridge. My husband started seeds. Cool. Huh.

Will: That is very cool. That is the nicest, cleanest refrigerator ever. Actually. It makes me feel like I need to go clean my refrigerator.

Eric: Yeah. Everything’s lined up and stacked, you know,

Will: Almost organized by category even.

Eric: And then you got a nice one that you sent to me, right?

Will: Yeah. I don’t have it on my computer right now, but I do it up here in a minute. Oh, go ahead.

Eric: From Carrie, I just wanted to say how great the latest, the last podcast you shared from garden for not sure what you two did different, but it was great to hear your back and forth. I really liked the fact that you didn’t drone on like most have about the virus and instead just Sarah shared some fun, easy ideas. It was like listening to two guys sitting in the garage with beers talking about weekend plans and I hope you get your squirrel. Hmm.

Will: I have a squirrel issue that I’m dealing with right now. So,

Eric: Oh, we have bears.

Will: I we had some electrical cords laid out in the, for some items and I went out the other day to start picking stuff up because the snow starting to melt and one of the electrical cords, my nicest one was true to all the way through and in two pieces. So now instead of a nice hundred foot one, I have like a 20 foot and an 80 foot.

Eric: That’s an expensive squirrel.

Will: Yes it is. It’s very much so,

Eric: But anyway, Carrie who follows will on social media wrote that to Will. So we had some special, a karma the last episode.

Will: It seems like it. Let’s see if we can repeat it again.

Eric: All right. So what is one of your stay at home projects?

Will: So somebody had messaged me and said, you know, you guys talked about the house a lot and one item that you guys didn’t touch on is things to do in the car, you know, cause you have your cars and I don’t know if you’re like me, but we have little kids and it’s full of Graham crackers and pretzels and food and anything else that ends up in the car. And one of the things that they came back with as they said, maybe talk about some of the things you can do to your car. So that was kind of one of the items I thought we kind of covered today is a project you could do in your house.

Eric: Yeah, I used to work on cars. So

Will: Yeah, I mean almost, we’re not saying, Hey, take your engine out and rebuild it or anything like that. But stuff like, you know, replacing your air filter, you know, maybe replacing your windshield wipers. How about something simple like vacuum out your car, you know, that would be, you know, some simple things that people can do that you might not normally have time for, that you might be able to do now because of, you know, being at home and looking for things to do.

Eric: If you don’t have a like a indoor, outdoor, wet, dry shop vacuum, maybe your neighbor does and they’ll roll it down the driveway and then you can go meet the shop and roll it to your house. And a deep clean on the car is, is, is a cleansing experience.

Will: I will say the one, the one trick that I learned from a guy was take a a rag and spray some window cleaner on it and actually wipe the inside of your windshield. Everybody washes the outside of their car, but you never realize how much builds up on the inside of your windshield. And it’s like all of a sudden you’re driving down the road in high definition when that inside of the windshield is clean.

Eric: I’ve actually watched a video of how there’s actually YouTube channels about detailing your car. And he was like, here’s the best way to clean the inside of your windshield. Cause I actually am kind of neurotic about that because when I drive at night I can see the glare on the inside of the glass. He uses a microfiber cloth and I think an ammonia based cleaner when you know window cleaner. But the way he contorts himself to get the whole windshield because you can’t get your hand down where the bottom of the windshield meets the dashboard. Usually if I can find this video I will post a link to it. But if you go, if you just type in car detailing wash your windshield, clean your windshield, there’ll be a couple of very interesting ones there. But yeah, it’s brilliant to clean the inside of your windshield and the non-fee, the microfiber helps eliminate streaking.

Will: The a one trick or hack that I’ve seen is if you have one of those like Swiffer dusters for your house or like a feather duster to put the microfiber cloth on there and tape it to it. And then make it kind of like a attachment and you can actually reach further up into your windshield without having to contort your body to get in there.

Eric: Oh wow. Well you just might’ve invented something there.

Will: There you go. The other one too is like a lot of people are worried about like, well what does my car need for parts? A lot of the websites out there, like even Amazon now you can type in the make and model of your vehicle and then when you type for, let’s say air filters, it only brings up the air filters that would be compatible with your car. So it’s really easy to find, you know, the windshield wiper blades and the air filters and you know, some of the consumable parts of your car are really easy to find on some of the shopping engines nowadays.

Eric: Yeah. Costco sells some pretty high end windshield wipers too, and you get what you pay for with windshield wipers and you know, if it’s pouring down, dumping rain at night, you want, you want to be able to see what’s going on. And if you cheap out on your windshield wipers, well you’re, you’re going to regret that if you haven’t already.

Will: Not to do a brand type pitch or something like that. But what is your experience with the rain X products? We use it on our stuff all the time and I think it’s worth its weight to, you know, put that on your vehicle. What are your thoughts on that?

Eric: Oh, I think it’s great. I just forget to do it. Now’s a perfect time. Yeah. So any other car suggestions,

Will: That’s all I had for cars. You know, it was interesting to have the feedback from people on it, on things that I hadn’t even thought of. Like, you know, the replacing your windshield wipers, I guess. You know, that’d be a great time. Now that winter is over for most States.

Eric: Yes. So I’m detailing, cleaning out your car, windshield wipers, take a look at the cables that are going to your car battery. If there is this white powdery stuff or corrosion you can try and replace themselves to clean them. But you could also have a shop do that as well. And that will go a long way, especially when it’s cold. Radio Rick who is a former police officer has told me many times how he’s helping out a co, a motorist and he opens the hood and the cables would just kind of come right off the battery because of all that deterioration. So look at that now and save you from being towed home.

Will: You know, somebody had a video online, I can’t remember who it was about possibly getting the Hayes off of your headlights also.

Eric: Yeah, I don’t know who did that, who would do that? That’s good

Will: Video though. I mean that was, that was great. I never thought of doing that before, but it’s definitely a lot cheaper than buying new headlights.

Eric: Yeah, the your plastic headlight lenses now are basically sandblasted as they go down the road. And also I think also UV the UV sunlight contributes to fogging those lamps as well. And you can buy a kit. A, I’ll link to one I used went from three M and you are basically wet sanding the lens down to clear plastic again. And it works really well to the point that it’s a very popular YouTube video of mine and will help me re edit it for a Facebook friendly format and it got like 20,000 views when we put it up there.

Will: It’s amazing. I would’ve never thought that would be a popular thing, but boy it really took off.

Eric: So you can order that kit and then clean your and the kit will last longer than just two headlights. So you could, maybe you could do both of your car as well. If you have two cars, that’s a two car to pure person family. Sure. Ah, I want to move out into the yard and this is late winter, early spring, which is a perfect time to work on those hard parts of your yard that the grass is all beat up maybe where you rode your quad through in mud season and tore up all the, all the grass. That doesn’t happen ever. No, not at all. It’s grasp grows better and cool weather anyway and right now your, your yard isn’t getting a lot of traffic but it is getting quite a bit of moisture. So late, rough up the soil with a metal rake, lay down grass seed, don’t bury grassy, does not grassy needs to be on top of the soil to sprout, but it needs to be in contact with the soil. So you spread it out, you know, you’re like, you’re kind of like pretending you’re feeding the chickens. Instead you’re putting a grass seed and walk over it with your shoes. So it, you’re, you’re pressing the seed into the top of the soil and then cover it with straw or they have that kind of mulched up straw that doesn’t germinate and water, if it dries out water at and your grass will grow.

Will: One tip on that that I learned from somebody is do not use fertilizer on top of it. Usually if you fertilize on top of grass seed, it actually can inhibit it from growing or potentially even kill it because the grass has to start to establish itself before it’s strong enough to take fertilizer.

Eric: Yeah, the nitrogen is just too high. Yup. Wow. There you go. Another one I saw actually a friend of mine posted on Facebook, but he finally cleaned his stove

Will: Like in his, in his house. Yeah. You know if you’re talking about outside stuff, how about cleaning your gas grill? I mean it, it’s fairly simple to take apart, you know, get the garden hose out and a little bit of like an SOS pad or some kind of steel wool pad and you know, go to clean out the inside of it and it’ll make your burners last a lot longer. It’ll make your grill last a lot longer and if you’re going to be at home cooking out, especially since the weather’s getting nice is always kind of a fun thing to do.

Eric: Exactly. Also spiders like lay eggs and build webs inside the tube, the burner tubes and clog up the jets of your gas grill. And if you get out your pancake air compressor, because I keep talking about that or your canned air. I like the pancake compressor where some eye protection and ear protection cause those compressors allowed. You’re going to blow junk in your eyes, but if you blast it all out, your gas grill works so much better and it will last longer too.

Will: Getting that material out from the inside that holds the moisture against the metal is really what causes all the rust to start accumulating on the inside of your grill. That and if you do a good job cleaning your grades, you know, taking them out, flipping them over, cleaning them off really well. Those small particles that build up on there don’t end up in your food.

Eric: Yeah, you’re scraping the seasoning off the great.

Will: Yup. Hey, you know what? There is a place to have a little that inside of your gas grill, but at the same point, sometimes he gets to a little bit overboard and that’s when you run into problems.

Eric: Hey, would you like more of garden fork or more of Eric? Would you like to get it in your email inbox? I send out just about every week I send out a little email about Eric’s world and new stuff I posted. I even talk about podcasts I’ve listened to or just interesting stuff and usually almost always at least one picture of the Labradors and Regan Charlie, you can get that by signing up for Eric’s garden fork email newsletter thing. There should be a link in the notes to the show. Just scroll down to the description of the podcast in your app and I’m hope it’s a clickable link. It should be or go to garden fork.tv and on almost every page at the top of the page, so would be a signup if you’re on a mobile device, you might have to tap on the little, there’s a little menu bar and then hopefully there will be a signup or scroll the bottom of posts and you can sign up. There should be a link in the app here, more of Eric. It would be fun to have you along for the ride. It’s kind of more brain dump Eric.

Cool stuff. All right.

Eric: We were talking about things to do in the kitchen and someone suggested on Facebook in addition to the things we suggested was to scrub out your microwave oven.

Will: Like the, the ceiling of it.

Eric: Yeah, the whole, if you look at that thing close, it’s it’s like a Petri dish. You know,

Will: I was actually embarrassed to say that the upset you know, I clean out the, the, the, the turntable and you know, the stuff that you can see. And then one time I kind of looked up in the microwave cause ours is fairly low and looked and there was all sorts of stuff stuck to it and I’m like, Oh, how long has that been there? So yeah, it happens. It’s melted. The

Eric: Microwave.

Will: Yup. 75 things. I’m Mac and cheese in the microwave that have exploded actually now have still leg tights hanging from the top of the roof.

Eric: One thing I actually just did was I moved the couch away from the wall and I vacuumed behind it.

Will: Did you find any change in the couch cushions? Yes. Why is that? I don’t know. I invited all of my friends over and have them sit on the couch and then when they leave I lift up the cushions and see what kind of donations we get.

Eric: I found like eight quarters and I’m like, how does this work?

Will: That’s nice. That’s like a four games of Pac-Man right there.

Eric: I also vacuum the couch. If you have a a cloth couch. Some vacuums actually have a small upholstery brush, but you can just take the, the dust nozzle usually has a little brush thing that you can go onto it and just sweep it back and forth and you’ll be blown away at how much dirt you get off of a couch.

Will: When, when we used to have dogs one of the things, the tricks we do is the lint roller that you’d normally use on your pants or your sweater or something like that. Using that to take the dog hair off of the cushions if you have a cloth cushion really makes a huge difference too.

Eric: Yeah. I actually, we have some throw pillows on the couch and I wash them because you’re, you’re falling asleep on them. You’re, you know, the oil from your hair is getting on there and people just forget that. I mean they change the sheets on their bed but they don’t change the sheet. That’s essentially wrapping around your couch pillow. And I also wash the pillow, the stuffing part as well. This is more information that you need to know but

Will: Okay. Well if we’re going down this rabbit hole, let me ask this, how do you dry them to make sure that they end up drying out completely? Just hang them outside or put them in the dryer or what do you do?

Eric: I hang them in the basement near the furnace. Nice. I stretch them cause they’re cotton. Usually I stretch them. If you put them in the dryer they shrink and get all wrinkly.

Will: Gotcha. You want to talk about the garage a little bit? Yes. So one item that somebody had sent me was, you know how you like you do a project and I am guilty of this, I don’t know if you are, but I am, which is you get done with the project and then all the miscellaneous screws and parts just kind of get thrown in a bin and all that kind of small stuff keeps piling up. And my wife calls it the project graveyard where you know, all the stuff that didn’t get used in the project goes to pile up and we’re actually spending some time going through that stuff and getting a little bins to organize it or you know, peanut butter jars and so on and just kind of organizing that stuff in the garage. Cause I always say I’m going to get to it someday, but I always am too busy. Well now I have time on my hands, so we’re kind of getting back to that stuff. So that could be something that people can work on.

Eric: I have some old metal hubcaps that are kind of small, but they’re from one of my pickup trucks and they make great parts holders. When you’re working on a project and at the end of the project there’s some leftover screws and washers and stuff and they end up cluttering up my work bench in the garage and I should go do that. I should just reorganize all that stuff and put the all the lock washers in one place and all the nuts and bolts in one place and that would save me time going forward. When I, and I have a lot of time on my hands right now,

Will: A little hack to on those somebody showed me was take a magnet, you know like a refrigerator magnet, one of the little bit bigger size ones and stick it in the bottom of that. So when the hubcap is upside down, you’re throwing this stuff in there. Anything that’s small kind of works its way to that magnet and then it doesn’t slosh around in the bin and it kind of makes the whole bowl almost a magnetic bowl to keep all your parts in.

Excellent. Excellent.

Will: There’s the price of admission focusing.

Eric: You had a suggestion of bike maintenance.

Will: Yes. So, you know, it’s starting to get nice outside and you know, you can go for bike rides and things like that. I think that like, give you example of the state of Wisconsin said it’s okay to go for walks and go for bike rides, but nobody really, they usually dig out their bikes and just get out of them and start riding. But before you go out, maybe do a little bit of maintenance on it, you know, fill up the tires, grease some of the parts, you know, check things to make sure you know, they’re there, there’s nothing broken, you know, do that on your bikes and on the kids’ bikes. And then it can be a fun thing to do as a family together, you know, and go for a bike ride.

Eric: Yeah. Because that, you know, the minute the kids want to go out and they discover that there’s a flat tire or something, it’s like just kind of pours cold water on the project.

Will: Well that and even maintenance on a bike, I mean, if you feel uncomfortable about doing DIY projects or you know, turning a wrench on some equipment and things like that, starting with a bicycle is actually probably one of the easiest things to maintain. Cause you really can’t do anything wrong to it. It’s you, you only can make it better. It’s very difficult to make it, you know,

Eric: Worse yet. A little chain lube goes a long way. Just make sure it’s not splatting all over your kid’s pants. But I guess kids don’t wear pants on bikes probably.

Will: Yeah, mine do. They’ll wear jeans every once in awhile, but it’s, it is important to go and, and, you know, just tighten all that stuff up. That, and it’s a safety thing. And I’ll be honest, we do it as a actually a family and you know, my son always wants to work on little projects and things like that. And that’s kinda one of those ones where you can kind of get, do it together and get them into the idea of maintaining their stuff and kind of show them a little responsibility towards their stuff. And then, you know, hopefully that’ll pay off in the long run

Speaker 4:
You hope.

Will: Absolutely.

Eric: I had a couple ideas with computers. Let’s hear it. One is to clean your keyboard, which is kind of like the microwave oven of the computer.

Will: Do you ever use canned air on there and all of a sudden like stuff is flying out of the keys? I’m like, I don’t remember having Chinese food. When did I have Chinese? Oh, that was about like month and a half ago. And there’s like a little pieces of rice or food coming under the keyboard. I’m guilty of it. I’ll say I am,

Eric: I use a vacuum and I use the dust nozzle, which is the smallest gizmo that the vacuum has and I run it across the keys and try and get into the corners as much as I can. I’m reluctant to blow into the keyboards, like the idea of sucking stuff out of the keyboard. And then I go ahead.

Will: I was gonna say most keyboards nowadays are actually sealed compartment keyboards. So back in the old days when there used to be spaces around the keys, you’d have a scenario where you didn’t want to do that were blowing into it. But if you have something that’s within the last probably five years, most of those are sealed because most of the manufacturers are trying to make sure that you don’t get moisture in your keyboards. So if you have older stuff, vacuum in and out as best. If you have newer stuff using the canned air or the vacuum, either one of them will work

Eric: Or your pancake air compressor,

Will: You and the air compressor. Here we go. Huh.

Eric: You can also, I also take Windex on a kitchen towel and I cleaned the keys and it’s amazing how your keys actually wear a different color a while ago.

Will: I will say warning on that, do not use something that is very harsh because I made that mistake and I have a keyboard that is missing a number of the letters on the keyboard. So you definitely have to remember where your keys are at that point.

Eric: I mean Windex works simple green. I think I’ll work.

Will: Definitely do not use acetone. I’m just saying.

Eric: And then inside the computer maybe you could go through and catalog all those photos that you dumped on there from your phone.

Will: Isn’t it amazing how many photos and how much video you collect on your computer from your phone? I looked at it and we have, I mean we do a lot because we do blogging and things like that, but I think 5,000 photos from the last year on my phone.

Eric: Yeah. Yeah. I should probably outsource that.

Will: I dunno why I have like 17 photos of pancakes, you know, just for like one meal. Like I was trying to get the perfect shot of the pancake, so took 17 different versions. I kept one of them and ain’t never deleted the other 16.

Eric: So that is my additional list.

Will: Yeah, that’s, that’s, that covered a lot. I mean there was a lot of good feedback back and forth and I’m really happy to see that, you know, people are looking at the list and going at it and, and doing some things to better themselves. I mean, a couple of people even made comments about the online courses that they’re taking, or Hey, I’m going to try learning a language or I’m going to do these types of things to even better themselves. It doesn’t necessarily always have to be a DIY project or fixing something on your house or cooking in your kitchen. Sometimes you can do something for yourself.

Eric: And if you do want to do the gardening thing our friend Erin from the YouTube channel, the impatient Gardner, so type that in the inpatient Gardner has a brand new video about starting your spring garden.

Will: It was awesome. I mean, it really covered a lot of the questions that I’ve had about what I should do with my garden. So it’s great.

Eric: She knows all the names of the plants.

Will: That is very impressive. Like she’s like, Oh, this is the genus. Such a shock. And I’m like, ah, I see that as the red flower. Sorry.

Eric: I’m like, that’s a Brown eyed sees Susan. She goes, no, that’s a rude Becky. I hurt a blip. Blow blow, you know?

Will: Yeah. And I’m even one further back then. It’s the green plant that grows in my yard.

Eric: Our neighbor gave us some Dahlia tubers last year and we plant. I just threw him in. I’m like, ah, okay. You know, and they’re phenomenal and they’re really easy to grow. You have to dig up. If you’re in the, I’m just looking outside and there’s a snow storm but you have to dig them up in the fall. If you live in an area that gets a freeze, but it’s pretty easy to do and man, are they beautiful? So my neighbor is going to give us some more, but I think we’re going to order some as well. Aaron gave me a link to a good company to order them from. So I’m

Will: I’m amazed at how many online companies there are that you can order seeds and plants from these days. You know, it always used to be, Oh, I’m going to go to the home improvement store down the road or the big box guys and get some stuff there. And there are tons of places where they can deliver it right to you. So you could go online right now, pick a couple of things. And because FedEx and ups and all the different shipping companies and the mail is still going, you can have things to help your projects out, get delivered to your house and away you go.

Eric: Yeah, I love it. High mowing seeds is a pretty cool company that I just discovered from my neighbor who runs a farm market stand. He has a farm in and on the corner of the property by the road. He has an honor system, you know, a shed. And the garlic that I bought from him was phenomenal. And it’s actually his partner who is in charge of the garden and it’s a certified organic garden. So I have to actually give her the credit. Not him. They they’re great people and they have, but they really like high mowing seed. So I ordered some stuff from there. So

Will: You know, some people have been asking me about the Apple orchard and went to plant trees and kind of do that cause that’s one of the things that we did a couple of years ago and it’s been going really well and surprisingly enough those trees were actually, a number of them were ordered from this thing. It’s called stark brothers and you’ll just get this long cardboard box and inside of it will be these basically a stick and a, it’s got a root ball on it that’s got some jelly on it or something like that to keep the moisture on it and you can plant them and away you go. You know and it was pretty amazing by the way, this isn’t a paid sponsorship from those guys, but that is where we got our, a lot of our trees from.

Eric: Cool So let us know. We could do a third show this if you want a it’s radio@gardenfork.tv or you can reach out to will and I on the garden fork Facebook group and Rick from the podcast and Erin from the podcasts are also active in the Facebook group as well. If you have any specific questions, anything else my friend, I think that’s good for today. Alright, go out or stay in and do cool stuff and then let us know.

 

image from Library of Congress

Whether you are self isolating or sheltering in place or just home for awhile, Will and I have things you can do while stuck at home. Listen here:

Audio Player

15 things you could do while stuck at home

1. 1. Test your smoke detectors and CO detectors
   2. Get a couple gallons of paint and a couple brushes and paint a room in the house
   3. Take down your Christmas lights and clean out your gutters
   4. Defrost your fridge/freezer
   5. Organize your pantry and toss out old spices and seasonings
   6. Clean out your garage or basement and find things to donate
   7. Calk your shower
   8. Start Seeds!
   9. Vacuum the bugs out of your lights, change your furnace filter, and clean the compressor on your fridge?
   10. Better yourself. There are 1000s of online companies that are now offering their classes online at a reduced rate.
   11. Run a half pot of white vinegar through your drip coffee maker
   12. Drain you water heater
   13. Change your furnace or air exchange filter
   14. Clean out the lint trap in your dryer
   15. Watch GardenFork videos!

Can I Send You My Cool Stuff Every Week?
Join Me Here

Eric: Hey, how are you doing? Thanks for downloading GardenFork radio. Welcome. This is me, Eric. I am your host. I have a YouTube channel also called GardenFork. This is eclectic, haphazard, whatever comes out of Eric’s brain and today Will Wallus his brain from The Weekend Homestead are here. Welcome sir.

Will: How are you doing buddy?

Eric: I have no complaints. Awesome. We wanted to talk today about what you can do while you’re stuck at home and will typed up this gigantor list. So I once again, I don’t have to do any work. I can just comment on whatever Will’s going to say. So we hope you guys are doing all right. I am getting a little twitchy being at home and this is actually kind of very inspiring for me. The list that you just sent me. So should we just, Oh, I wanted to thank I have, we have three new patrons of GardenFork. They will be getting the bonus after show and we just actually the pre show and the after show. Now I’m putting on our Patreon feed, which you can add into your podcast player. I want to thank Greg G, John D and Tom, so thank you very much there.

Will: That’s super neat. It’s, it’s so cool to see the community grow and just see people interacting with this stuff. I’m, I’m guessing the pre show after show thing that you’ve been posting, how has that been taken by the patrons? Are they liking it?

Eric: I haven’t gotten any hate mail, so

Will: Perfect. That’s, that’s a good thing. That’s a win in my book.

Eric: Well, like see, like I, I get a million emails a day and I’m looking at my inbox right now and there’s one and says Greg and special thanks. And I have the email inbox set up not to show a truncated sentences or anything and that could be spam. I get a lot of very compelling spam and they want me to click on something. So I’m like, is that a thank you from a viewer or is that spam? So

Will: I think we should just, we, I think we should just have everybody email radio@gardenfork.tv and say Hey to Eric, you know, then we can fill his inbox with that kind of [inaudible]

Eric: Not spam. I’m going to change the list preview and see what it does here.

Will: I will tell you, this is the part that amazes me is I don’t get a, Oh, it is, do you want to read it or do you want to proofread it first?

Eric: No, I’m going to read it right here. Oh. And it’s from one of my patrons. Just wanted to say a quick thanks for sharing what you and your friends do. I’ve been listening for years and really love listening to the trials and tribulations that you go through because I can really relate loving the podcasts you do while walking. Oh, I do that for the patrons. It’s, I call it the either the city walk or woods walk. I just talk into my phone. For some reason the free flowing thoughts are very refreshing. Yikes. That’s my comment. Maybe it’s the fresh air. Keep up the good work that’s from Greg, one of our patrons.

Will: Well thank you Greg. That’s awesome.

Eric: Yeah. So we have 15 things you could do while stuck at home. And I actually am stuck at home today and I, I kinda sorta did a couple of these. So why don’t you start off sir.

Will: Well, you know, one of those items is, that’s on the top of the list, which no one will be surprised with because every year I harp on it, especially on the podcast or on my, on my own blog is testing your smoke detectors and your CEO detector. It’s actually a really good time, especially if you’re opening up your house to vacuum them out and clean them out and do those types of things. And it’s, it’s something you should do regularly because to be honest with you, smoke detectors, save lives. I mean, it’s the fire department in me that brings that up, but it’s one of those things, it’s probably one of the easiest things to do. Get some nine volt batteries and just change them out.

Eric: Yeah. And the other thing is, we’ll talk about this on a future episode, but we’ve been saving our pennies for years and we finally could afford air conditioning in our apartment and they had to drill through brick walls. This was way above my pay grade, so we had to hire people to do it and the dust was so that brick dust is so fine. It got everywhere. It got into our smoke detectors and set them off. Wow. So what I did was I took them outside and they’re those 10 year ones where you, you can’t just disconnect the battery. You can hit the off, you can hit the suspend button, I think it’s called, but I blew them out. I have what’s called a pancake air compressor. It’s for a Brad nailer. And I just, I looked it up and it said right at the instructions for the smoke alarms, just blow it out with some, with some canned air, compressed air. And I blew him out and I put him back on their mounting plate and it automatically turns it back on again. And they worked fine. So vacuuming them while they’re in position would not be a bad idea.

Will: Yeah. And if you don’t have a pancake compressor, I mean for a couple of dollars, I think even at like some of the dollar stores, they sell a little cans of compressed air. You don’t need very much to do it. I mean just a couple of shots in there and it it will make the difference. And where you’ll thank yourself more than anything is you won’t be sleeping in bed at three o’clock in the morning and all of your smoke detectors go off and then in your house and you’re trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s a lot easier to do it in the middle of the afternoon when it’s nice and you know, you can get on a ladder and take care of it the right way.

Eric: My friend has the Google nest smoke alarms and when one goes off, they all go off and it’s a little heart stopping.

Will: Does it send an email? Also, I’ve heard that those new ones send emails and text messages and everything. So it’s not just your smoke detectors going off. Your phone is beeping and your laptop is chirping and everything else too.

Eric: Wow. I don’t know. He is, he’s a, has a wired and I purposely have an unwired home, so I will say we’re talking about the dollar store. The dollar store near me has incredibly good dark chocolate for, it’s really good. It’s only a dollar

Will: That is a very odd to come up with, but I could see it.

Eric: So what’s, what’s the next one, sir?

Will: Let’s, let’s move down the list. Actually, this one goes right up the alley of what Eric does, which is maybe get a couple of gallons of painting and brushes and paint a room in your house. You know, there’s, everybody’s always got that one room that they haven’t gotten to or whatever. Maybe it’s a good time to, you know, give that a try. Nice thing is, is with the weather getting nice, you can open your windows to air out the house so you don’t get that smell. And it’s a good project to do to think about stuff or listen to music or maybe a podcast or something like that and you know, do some painting and you can really freshen up your house with a coat of paint. It’s not that expensive and almost anybody can do it.

Eric: Exactly. I have a couple of tips here. If your walls, if it’s, if it’s the kitchen or near the kitchen, you should wash the walls or have somebody who’s a smoker is in that room or in your house or you haven’t painted it in like 10 or 15 years. I would wash the walls and I would use it’s called TSP dash free. It’s a trisodium phosphate alternative. It’s a TSP trisodium. Phosphate is a great cleaner, but the TSP free is a safer one on your skin. So when you literally, you sponge the walls down and then do a clean sponge with just some water, don’t, it’s not dripping wet. And the better adhesion you have from the old paint to the new paint, the longer it’s gonna last and the better it’s going to look perfect. And if it’s a color change, a dramatic color change, I would prime it and I would tint the primer with the new top coat color. So if it’s an orange and you’re going to an off white, I would use what’s called a blocking primer and a, well it’s already white. So yeah, but think about that cause colors can bleed like reds and blues and oranges can bleed through just a generic primer and you get what you pay for with paint. So think about that.

Will: Let me ask you the one question about painting that I had, which was do all those new fancy tapes that they have in the market really work? Or do you just buy the cheapest stuff? What do you mask things off with?

Eric: Oh, you get what you pay for with painting tape. Yeah. The, the knockoff, the blue tape I think is by three M and if you buy the, I’ve bought the knockoff paint and some mom and pop Brooklyn hardware stores and it is junk. It tears it won’t it, you know when you’re unrolling blue tape or masking tape. But it’s sometimes tears weird and you can’t get the roll started again. And I mean it’s $9 a roll, but it’ll save you in time and you know, what’s your time worth, you know exactly. Number three

Will: On the list, take down your Christmas lights and maybe clean out your gutters while you’re up there. I know a lot of people wait until July or June to take down the Christmas lights, but you know, with the weather being seasonably warmer, you know, it could be a good time to do that. And then the other thing is, before the rainy seasons really start having your gutters cleaned out can definitely save you on having any issues in your basement or any of that type of stuff with water.

Eric: Yeah, I don’t understand the Christmas light thing. Especially the ones that are supposed to look like icicles because during the day it just looks like white wire with little clear bulbs on them and they’re hanging from your gut or whatever and they, they look horrible. So

Will: It’s a radio ad, GardenFork.tv for the complaints on that one.

Eric: And I’m cleaning out your gutters. We actually got new gutters on our house a while ago and I opted for the leaf guards on them and I went with a local guy who does, he has his own gutter company with the it’s a one piece gutter. It comes out of the trailer. He’s got a trailer, a little machine in it and it, it basically forms the gutter right there out of a roll of metal. So there’s no, there’s no seams. It’s seamless gutters. That’s what that’s called. And before he brought his gear over, he said, I’m going to stop by your house and see what kind of trees are in your yard and what kind of material is in your gutters now. So I’ll bring the right gutter. Guardmen I got a guard I think is a trade name. But that’s what kind of screening he was going to bring in and it’s worked great. So

Will: I will say too on the gutter guard thing, if you ever wanted to consider doing that, we went to one of the home improvement stores and they have these you know, they’re either 36 or 48 inch plastic snap on gutter guards and I was really concerned that they wouldn’t work very well. So we had a, a property where we needed to put those, put something on there to kind of protect it. And I thought, well let’s just try this for a temporary till we can get around to actually replacing the gutters. Surprisingly enough, four years later, those gutter guards are still up there. It was very simple. They snapped onto the gutters and slid underneath the the drip edge shingle area and a couple zip ties. And we had it done really quickly and I think all said and done, we spent maybe $60. So if you think about how much time and energy you spend on going on the ladder, cleaning off your gutters and all that kind of stuff, if there’s small areas where you need it, that is something to consider. And the best part about it is with a straight edge razor, you can cut it so you can make it any shape or size that you need. So you don’t have to have any fancy equipment to do it either.

Eric: Neat. One caveat. Most zip ties are not UV stable. And so being out in the elements they might deteriorate. And then your gutter guards might become disconnected. Good point. Yeah. Maybe some stainless steel wire that works. You know what, just popped into my head. We were talking about the GardenFork patrons Scott, who’s also a agronomist has been wanting to be on the show and I am horrible at emailing people back as well knows. So Scott, I owe you an email in my defense. Scott went on vacation for a week and I tried to email him and he wasn’t there. How dare I called him? I called him by my other friend’s name by accident.

Will: Yikes. Let’s move on to number four. It’s an easy one. How about clean out your refrigerator and defrost your freezer?

Eric: I just did that today.

Will: You know, one of the things you can do, and I have this later in the list and we can just throw it in there, is you know, vacuum out the compressor on your refrigerator too. Cause there’s a lot of dust and dirt that builds up in there and it hampers the ability for your refrigerator freezer to operate. And you know, if you have the canned air out already do your smoke detectors, you can just use it back there with your vacuum and it does make a difference on your freezer and refrigerator.

Eric: Yes. And there is a coil either on the back of the fridge or in the bottom of the fridge, part of the condenser. And if that’s full of dust, it doesn’t run nearly as well on your electric bill goes higher. Exactly. They make a, you can, if you can’t get your vacuum in there, you can get a Swiffer like a Swiffer or a feather duster in there and knock the dust off and then try and cram a vacuum with one of the dust nozzles in there as well. I actually cleaned out the refrigerator because we I went to the grocery store and they had food today, which was unusual. So I bought a lot of it. And then I was like, what is all this stuff that’s in the refrigerator? And it’s, it’s like half a half open, half empty jars of some are arcane condiment that someone brought for a dinner four years ago and you’re like, Oh. So a lot of things went into compost. I take all the food, I put it in the compost and I wash out all the jars and I put them in the recycle. It’s very important actually to wash your plastic and glass in that before you put it in your recycle. Cause if it’s dirty, they won’t take it.

Will: Well even further than that is if you have glass or recyclables that you don’t wash out. A lot of recycling facilities do hand sorts and then all of those individuals have to deal with whatever is left over in those containers as they go down the conveyor belt for the sort. So some areas of the country have these sort mechanisms where people actually physically sort this stuff. And if it’s not clean, you end up in a situation where all of that is getting all mixed together and then someone else has to deal with doing it and, and, and messing around with it. Take two minutes to rinse it out and then recycle it. Makes all the difference for somebody else down the road.

Eric: Right. It doesn’t contaminate the other clean plastic that is on that conveyor belt thing. Yup. Yeah, I feel much better. I found some stuff at the bottom of the, that it took a long time with soaking and Windex to get off the plastic and I’m like, what is that? The bottom of the fridge? Well,

Will: Going along the same lines, the fifth item on the list is clean out your pantry and maybe toss out some old spices and seasonings you have. You know, I’ve had many of recipes where I’ve made something and you had to buy one specific thing for it. We ended up not making it again. And I actually found some things that I’ve had for five or six years in the back of my pantry that I didn’t even realize was still in there. So, you know, that’s something that you can also go through and clean up.

Eric: Yeah. I I think spices last six months at most, and I’m big on, I go to the local like Indian, Bangladeshi, Pancha, Pakistani, a spice store, and then I put them in a little zipper lock sandwich bags and I think they last much longer that way.

Will: We’ve actually purchased some of the bigger containers of spices, and then we have a vacuum sealer and put the spices or whatever it is inside of there, like in their jar inside of that container, and then vacuum seal it and then throw it in a box. And we’ve actually seen some really good shelf life off of some of the items that we’ve done that way.

Eric: Oh yeah. I also think you should simplify your spices. I mean, I have cumin, coriander, garam masala a nice Curry powder that I like. Some red pepper flakes. Chili powder and that’s about it. I mean, I, I, I lean more toward curries and, Oh, I have some oregano, like an Italian seasoning mix, but I don’t think you got to make it all complicated. I think kind of a base set is a more economical, but that’s just my world. So,

Will: Well the neat thing too is if you do have spices in your cabinet, one thing we’ve kind of done recently is you type it into Google and all of a sudden some recipes pop up using that and then instead of throwing it out, you just use it up.

Eric: Yeah. And if you don’t use it put it in your compost.

Will: Absolutely. We talked about this next one on a previous show, but I thought I’d put it back in there, which is, you know, go through your house and clean out your basement in your garage and find things to donate to people.

Eric: Yes. That’s on T that’s tomorrow for me. I might see your video about it.

Will: Are you going to donate that rolling tool cart you made?

Eric: No, that’s great. That’s one of my biggest viewers lately. Biggest viewers that that has gotten a lot of interest and the followup one as well. So it’s kind of heartening because people have posted even more ideas. So I might have to make a third tool cart video.

Will: It’s amazing to see if you type in tool cart hacks or if you even just follow any of those groups on Facebook or anything like that. Then the idea is that people come up with these things to make, you know, a lot of these folks are doing it for their jobs and things like that. So if they work in a shop, all the little corners that they kind of put together different ways that they store spray paint cans or Mount different things to the outside of it to make their job easier to do can also be easily done at your house to make the things you do around your house a lot easier.

Eric: Yeah. One, one gentleman in the comments works at an aircraft factory and he has a tool cart that has to roll around a very large warehouse. So I was like, I want a picture of that one.

Will: They, they actually have, there’s a group online that’s like, show me your tool cart or show me your tools and you get to see all the different tools that people have that they use, you know, not screwdrivers and hammers and that kind of stuff, but like the very specific tools that they use for like engine repair on an airplane or something along those lines where you would never see this outside of that. But it’s kinda cool to learn how people use tools and what is made to, you know, solve problems when you’re trying to fix things.

Eric: Yeah. Mine my rolling tool card had two chainsaws on it this morning cause there I was cutting trees that fell on the trail and they both bogged down in the high end. Like when they warm up, when you know, you start a chainsaw, you let it warm up for a bit and then when you’re starting to cut like five minutes in my steel, my big saw on the high end that just dies. And then if I let it cool off a little bit and start it up again, it’ll run. But then when it gets running again nicely a dies. So I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with that.

Will: Moving onto the next one, cock your shower, you have a shower in your house that either is leaking a little around the door or has kind of that moldy look it to get a razor blade and a scraper to scrape that out of there and then put a nice new beat, a cock and they’re really freshens up a bathroom and it’s something that almost anybody could do. It’s fairly straightforward and simple.

Eric: The key there is to get as much of the old cock off as possible and they have new brands of cock out that have a anti mold properties built into them cause your, your cock looks as those little black specks on it. That’s it’s mold from being in a bathtub or shower. Yup. My thought was which went straight out of my head, Oh don’t cheap out and buy cheap bathtub cock buy the high quality stuff that has the mold inhibitor in it. It’ll, it’ll save you from having to pull that stuff out in a couple of years.

Will: Well, the other thing too is the difference between the cheap stuff and the expensive stuff is not really that much different. It’s not like, Hey, this is $3 and this is $30 it’s like, Hey, this is $3 or this is $8 so I mean looking at the projects and things like that, it’s one of those things where if you cut the corner on that one, one you could have water leaking in your shower and then all of a sudden now you’re fixing tile or floor or something along those lines versus you know, spending a little extra on the clock and spending a little more time on it. It’ll last you longer and it could save you from having other problems.

Eric: The other thought I have is to buy splurge on a really nice caulk gun. It is. It is a world of difference from the dollar store caulk gun.

Will: I will say this, that that’s one of my weaknesses is I like if we have to do it on a window or something like that, I can do it there, but somewhere where it’s really visible. I usually have Todd or Matt work on those types of things because I just don’t have the patience for it and it just turns out bad. I get it everywhere. I’ll put my hand in it, then I’ll put my hand on the wall or on the shower door and now I’m tracking it all over the house and I have a half hour of cleanup afterwards, so

Eric: The, the higher end cock guns when you let off on the trigger, the the rod that’s pushing the cock out of the tube backs off just a little bit and so the cock stops flowing out the tip.

Will: That right there was worth the price of admission folks. There you go. I didn’t even know they had that.

Eric: I let you behind the door here. Yeah, let you behind the curtain.

Eric: Hey, would you like more of GardenFork or more of Eric? Would you like to get it in your email inbox? I send out just about every week I send out a little email about Eric’s world and new stuff I posted. I even talk about podcasts I’ve listened to or just interesting stuff and usually almost always at least one picture of the Labradors and Regan Charlie, you can get that by signing up for Eric’s GardenFork email newsletter thing. There should be a link in the notes to the show. Just scroll down to the description of the podcast in your app and I’m hope it’s a clickable link. It should be or go to GardenFork.tv and on almost every page at the top of the page, so would be a sign up. If you’re on a mobile device, you might have to tap on the little, there’s a little menu bar and then hopefully there will be a signup or scroll the bottom of post and you can sign up. There should be a link in the app here, more of Eric. It would be fun to have you along for the ride. It’s kind of more brain dump Eric.

Speaker 3:
Cool stuff.

Will: All right, let’s go onto the next one. This one I know that you have a bajillion videos on that people can go and look at. But if you’re at home with your kids or you’re at home by yourself, start seeds, you know, do some seed starting, have some plants going. That kind of thing is a good weekend or afternoon project. If you’re around the house and you have time.

Eric: Also Erin from the weekend homestead has some excellent videos on seeds and she just posted one where she, it’s kind of an overview but she’s down in her basement and she’s kind of making fun of how it looks like a house of horrors. And I don’t think it does. I think it looks like a, a place where she’s growing stuff. But couple of key things. Don’t over-water your seeds. I think that’s the biggest cause of failure and they need more than you think. Putting them in a window, you’re just going to make them what are called leggy cause they’re going to keep trying to grow to the window. I have some videos about making some inexpensive grow lights and if you go to the Costco sells and led shop light, it’s usually on sale for $19 a and just put that smack on top of your seedling tray. That’ll help a lot.

Will: One correction, it’s Aaron from the inpatient Gardner. I’m will from the weekend homestead.

Eric: See, well this explains from my patron Scott is why I messed up his name in the last email, which is,

Will: Hi Aaron. Hope everything’s good.

Eric: She actually, we just heard from her, she’s going to be on the show, but she is slammed much like a lot of people are. The camera operator worked remotely about 14 hours yesterday, so it was pretty crazy.

Will: It has, I mean we’ve tried to set this up and it’s been, just trying to get everything lined up is, is always tricky, but you know, we made it work.

Eric: Yeah. All right. What’s next?

Will: All right. How about this one? Vacuum out the bugs out of your lights. Change your furnace filter and clean up your, basically around your utility area, like around your water heater and around your furnace. You know, that type of area?

Eric: Oh, totally. Yeah. If you can clean that out, everything, the furnace runs much more efficiently

Will: Then an in for a lot of folks in the United States, this is kind of that season when your furnace isn’t running very often, you know, in the middle of summer, the air conditioning is running, so your furnace is running. In the middle of winter, your heat is running, but in the summer and the fall, you usually, or the spring in the fall, you usually have a couple of days where it doesn’t run at all. So it’s a good time to go through and change those filters and make sure everything’s there. Because if you don’t change your furnace filter, which I think I’ve told this story many of times, where at the resort the furnace wasn’t running very well and there was a furnace filter in there. So I pulled it out and then I looked inside and there was another furnace filter on top of that. Once I pulled that one out and then I looked inside and there was another one, so somebody didn’t realize the furnace filters were falling down and they had three of ’em on top of each other, and I don’t want to say they are the same color as a black sweatshirt from the GardenFork website, but it was pretty close.

Will: So it makes your furnace work really hard. We changed that out and it’s amazing how much more efficient the equipment is over at the resort.

Eric: You’re like, Oh yeah,

Will: Well I couldn’t figure out why it was running all the time and we didn’t have that. And so we started kind of working through the troubleshooting on it and I was like, Oh, there’s no furnace filter in here. So I was going to put one in until I kind of got in there with a flashlight and that’s when I realized I saw one. I’m like, Oh, there’s only one in here. And then I started pulling them out and there’s actually three of them, so

Eric: Oops.

Will: At that point in time, it kind of made itself a HEPA filter if you’re ever seen. Those really thick ones.

Eric: Oh yes. Also if you have four stair air conditioning, there is a coil in the furnace somewhere and you can clean that as well. That sometimes takes a professional, you could at least hit the top of it in the bottom of it with a shop vac. Just to get the dust off of there would be very helpful.

Will: One important thing about your furnace, especially if you’re working on it or cleaning anything out, there’s usually a light switch on a box. It’s attached to the side of your furnace. Or you can go over to your breaker and your furnace is normally on its own circuit in your breaker. Make sure that that’s turned off before you start reaching your hands inside there. There should be safety mechanisms to make it so the furnace doesn’t run while it’s open, but as an extra precaution, other flip that switch or hit your breaker to make sure that nothing happens while you’re working on it to keep yourself safe.

Eric: Yeah. Is it unplugged?

Will: It’s a big deal.

Eric: Oh yeah. Okay. Next one, sir.

Will: This one is better yourself. There’s today, there’s thousands of online courses and companies that are offering their classes at reduced rates or even free. So whether you need to find educational stuff for the kids or you want to do something to better yourself there, besides the mountain of stuff online and on YouTube and in podcasts, there’s a lot of companies that have professional educational stuff that’s now at exceptionally reduced discounts.

Eric: So my local library closed and they sent out an email and one of the things they mentioned was that they have a, a subscription to the great courses library of online classes and the great courses I’ve, I’ve heard them advertise on podcasts. I’ve seen them advertised in the New York times, and these are like Harvard ranking professors and experts teaching, I think they’re like college level classes or, and I’m like, Oh my God, I gotta go, I gotta go find out about that. So through your library, you may have access to really cool stuff. The other thing I have access to through the library is using an app called Flipster. I couldn’t read a ton of print magazines on my iPad. There’s a food and wine. There’s Bon Appetit, there’s time magazine, there’s some people magazine. I had to read the people magazine and see what was going on with the monarchy.

Eric: You know, the one, the one kid’s moving to Canada, you know, and they write very compelling headlines. So, but yeah, you could, you can take an online class and, and for free. So go to your library’s website and see what online media they offer. Also, my library offers two different kind of artists in a F, you know, kind of art film. They’re like, they’re not like Netflix, but they have art artists movies. And that might, you are documentaries and you might find that as well. But go to your library’s website and see what they offer. It’s kind of amazing

Will: Actually to kind of go to the other side of it. If you have kids in the house, I know that I’ve preached for many years, let’s get the kids off the devices and get them outside. But one of the things that you can do is, you know, if you have to spend time with the kids inside for whatever reason, you can’t go out. I think it’s like Scholastica and some of the other scholar

Eric: [Inaudible]

Will: Companies that make the documents and things like that, that are used in schools these days are now offering their complete libraries for free online. So we actually downloaded a whole bunch of stuff about mathematics and things like that. And there’s worksheets and fun things you can do at home to kind of go through with your kids and keep them busy when you’re stuck at home with them. Also.

Eric: How cool is that? Huh? Fun stuff. I mean the internet sometimes scares me, but then the internet is, is just blows me away. So

Will: The part that it was actually kind of neat that I saw was not to talk about YouTube for a second, but the number one trending video is, there’s a band called, I think it’s called the Dropkick Murphys, I think is the name of it. Yeah. Their main concert got canceled for some reason. So they ended up doing their show, they set up some cameras and they recorded it and streamed it live for anybody to go see for free. So on st Patrick’s day, here they are instead of playing to an arena in the city they were in instead, they just did a concert for free for everybody. And it sounds like there’s more and more artists that are going to be trying to do that over the next couple of weeks and months, which is kind of a neat thing.

Eric: That is great. I love that. I watch a Stephen called bearer of the late night, Stephen called bear. And he they closed down the show. I mean they didn’t have an audience. They just had some of the people that work on the show in the audience. And it was like, it was such a different experience cause you’re just used to the, I mean, at least when I do my standup comedy, I like to work with the audience. Right. So when does that start? Yeah. And then the next one he did, he did from his house because everyone’s supposed to stay home. And so he did it in the bathtub. He was wearing a suit in the bathtub with a bunch of bubble bubble bath. Is that what that’s called? Bubble bath? Sure. It was a different experience. He, he pulled it off. But man and audience really helps. I’ve, I’ve done some public speaking and I become a different person when I’m in front of an audience. So it’s interesting. Very cool. Oh, there’s some awkward silence there.

Will: No, I was sorry I was looking at something that’s my fault again. I get distracted again. I was looking at the next one and thinking like, okay, should we, what should we talk about here? The next one is one that I know nothing about because I’m not allowed to drink coffee in our house, which is, Oh geez. Yeah, I know. By the way, I have committed, and I’ll say this on the air to all of the GardenFork folks and hopefully my wife is not listening, but I am committing to try to break my soda habit over the next 30 days.

Eric: Oh, that would be good for you.

Will: Yes. But number 11 is run a half a pot of vinegar through your drip coffee maker for some reason. I don’t know why you need to do that. It doesn’t make it taste any better, but sorry.

Eric: Well, there are minerals that build up in the reservoir and the little tubing of your hot water. It’s a hot water maker. Basically it’s what a coffee maker is and that can build up and then clog up the plumbing basically. And I don’t know if it really sterilizes it, but why white vinegar is a very effective cleaner for some things and it just feels like you’re doing something right. You know?

Will: Let me ask you this. So those Keurig coffee makers are very, very popular these days. Are you supposed to run the vinegar through those also?

Eric: I think so. I think those Kerrick things are ecologically not great. I’ll just say I don’t have one so I don’t know. But they are again, just a hot water maker. After you run that vinegar through, you should run several, fill up the whole thing with water and run clear water through cause you want to get that vinegar taste out of there before you make coffee for your significant other.

Will: Good to know. I’ll make sure I do that before hand so my missus doesn’t come up to me and be like, what’s wrong with the coffee maker?

Eric: Huh? Huh?

Will: How about this one? This one’s an easy one. Drain your water heater. So a lot of times water heaters will have sludge buildup, especially the ones that the tanks, if you have a tankless water heater, you don’t have to do this. But if you have an older water heater in your house turning off the system flipping the levers on the top that turn off the water to feed it and then drain the water out of it gets a lot of the stuff that kind of builds up on the bottom of your water heater, which impedes the ability for the heater to actually heat the water in there. And all you have to do is take a garden hose and either pointed towards a drainer out a door or something like that, or even into a bucket if you needed to and then turn that knob on the bottom of your water heater warning. The water will be very hot. So you know, you might want to protect yourself a little bit, but ultimately getting that gunk out of the bottom of your water heater will make your water here lasts a lot longer and a lot of people don’t really think of it. They just think of that machine that sits downstairs and makes hot water but never really do any maintenance to it.

Eric: Yes, you’re a domestic water, I call it a hot water heater. And I get yelled at on YouTube for that, but it’s basically a giant pasta pot with a burner on the bottom of it and there is a water can cause the interior lining of your water heater to degrade even though there’s this rod called an anode rod rod in there, which you can replace also. But that Russ, that material that falls off the sides of the tank starts to build up at the bottom like sediment at the bottom of a pool, a pool or something and that inhibits the heating of the water and it degrades the tank even more so at the boy bottom of the tank is a valve that you can drain, which you have to be of. If it’s a plastic vow, you have a less expensive water heater and it can be tricky to reclose that valve if there’s a bunch of sediment that has gotten stuck in the valve. But what you can do is you can just unscrew that valve and screw in a brass one and you’re good to go.

Will: Those brass ones are pretty inexpensive too. I mean it’s not a 50 or $40 fix. It’s probably less than $10, depending on which one you get.

Eric: Let’s say nine bucks,

Will: $9. Next one on the list. Pretty simple. If you have a house that has an attic, maybe put a ladder up, go up through the scuttle hole and just run a flashlight around and see if any new critters or anything is living in your attic. You know, sometimes you can look and see that, you know, a squirrel’s got in there, bees or any of those types of things and you want to double check to see if there’s anything there or any issues or drips or things like that. Cause even just looking up there, I’m not suggesting crawling around your attic, but just poking your head up there and taking a look around. You can definitely see if there’s things happening, especially if you live in an area where they might have ice dams or those types of things that could damage your roof.

Eric: Yeah. And you can see that if you’re, if you just have installation laid into the bays you know, between the roof. Joyce, basically, if that is not like a nice pink or yellow color, if it’s black or gray if it’s blown in cellulose, it might be great by its manufacturer cause it’s paper. But pay attention to changes in color cause that can suggest a moisture or like a animal has been soiling there and you have a bigger problem. You could also have bats. So look up at the roof sheathing as well and see if there’s any little friendly animals wedged up in there.

Will: That’s always a fun one, but it’s an important one to do because you just want to make sure that that part of your house is also, you know, taken care of.

Eric: If you have bats you need to call I a licensed animal. I can’t remember the word is, but basically someone who knows what they’re doing. I mean, bats are very important in our ecosystem, so don’t just do something uncool with them. All right, so, Hmm.

Will: Last two here. A simple one, a lint trap on your dryer. Clean it out and maybe clean out the port on the outside of your house. I know you’ve got some videos about taking care of your dryer and stuff, which are very helpful for folks.

Eric: I am stunned. I’ll go to someone’s house and they’re like, you know the dryer, it just doesn’t drive very well and all I do is pull out the regular lint thing that’s on the top of the dryer and it’s, I can barely get it out of the slot. It’s just so full of stuff.

Will: Did I ever tell you, and I may have not said this one on the air, on the radio short may have been an after show beforehand, but when at the resort there’s a big commercial dryer and you know we’re running and get halfway through the season. I’m just like, this thing just is not drying. People were complaining, Hey, I put my dollar in there and I take my stuff out and I still wet and I opened up the underneath and then there’s this door that you have to open to get the trap out. And I unscrewed the screws and it was so heavy. It fell, landed on the ground and this thing that looked like a pillow, like literally probably four inches thick by maybe 24 inches by 15 inches in size, slid on the ground and slid out from underneath there. It literally was four inches of lint that had built up in that thing over the last probably 10 years.

Eric: Wow.

Will: I change it out and amazingly enough, it instantly worked better.

Eric: Also the lint in the tube that goes from your dryer to the outside, if that builds up, it can be a fire hazard in addition to your dry or just not running very efficiently. So [inaudible]

Will: An easy one on that one too is on the outside of your house, there’s, if you have, let’s say vinyl siding, there’s usually a little box with a flap that kind of opens and closes. You can just go outside, open up that flap, and a lot of times you can even reach in there and get all this stuff. As it gets closer to the end of the run, the temperature starts to drop and then it can build up material at the end of the run as it’s coming out of your house. And that’s actually where most of the buildup happens either in turns in the run, which most people don’t have too many turns in it. Or at the very end of the run is where it actually starts building up the most.

Eric: Yeah. And you can buy essentially it’s a flexible rod or it looks like a couple pieces of metal cabling that have been twisted together. So it’s like a springy, flexible thing with a this is so technical with a, with a flexible brush on the end and a hand on the other and you can buy wrenching this thing around, you can get through almost the whole thing. You might have to take it apart. And one of my videos, I actually take the piping, the dryer vent exhaust pipe apart because it went up through these Joyce. But it makes such a huge difference.

Will: Do you want to hear the easy life hack for this one? If you wanted to go cut the corner on the price, a toilet brush actually works really well. You take the cover off of the outside, put the toilet brush in your hand and reaching as far as you can and just kind of run it back and forth and pull everything out. Then run your shop back in there and vacuum it out. And you can usually get a lot of the material out if it’s a shorter run.

Eric: Oh, that’s excellent. That’s excellent.

Will: Raise out the toilet brush after you’re done. By the way, we’re inside out because people get angry in your house. If you do that and you put it back and it’s not clean. I’m just saying, not saying from experience, but maybe that did happen.

Eric: I will link to my dryer vent video, which was actually all shot on an iPhone. So those of you thinking you need big equipment to make YouTube videos. It was a spontaneous video and we shot the whole thing with an iPhone. So

Will: Actually that ties right into the number 15, which is spend some time watching GardenFork and you can learn a whole bunch more about stuff you can do to your home.

Eric: Exactly. That’s it. Just watch GardenFork, don’t do anything. That should be number one. It is surprising to watch what trends when and it’s it right now it’s like crockpot videos.

Will: I, the Instapot videos that I’ve seen online, there’s a lot of people who are like, Hey, I’ve had this thing for a while and I’m going to start using it at my home since I’m going to be cooking at home a lot more. And the number of people who are looking at that kind of stuff is definitely spiked. Also,

Eric: You can make a no knead bread with a slow cooker and an instant pot is a slow cooker. So yeah,

Will: Some, somebody told me that the new Instapot so I’m a Sufi kinda guy. I post a lot of stuff online about stuff that we’re serving. And someone told me that the newer InstaPot’s within the last year have a setting for doing Suvi. So you might not even know you have a Suvi device in your house. It might be just sitting on your counter and you might just not know what that button does.

Eric: I actually bought the new instant pot because it had the [inaudible] setting.

Will: How does it work? Does it work? Pretty good.

Eric: I haven’t used it yet. I want to make a video, but a, I have a friend who thrives on not buy anything new. They only want to buy things from a yard sale that are used. And they were like, I w I so badly wanted an instant pot but I haven’t found one at a garage sale. And I’m like, I’ll sell you my old one. And so I sold them the old one for I think a third of the purchase price, but I was like, okay, now I get to buy the new one.

Will: And, and I told you that the new one, there’s an adapter too. You can turn it into an air fryer also if you wanted to do that.

Eric: Right. I am. I am not enamored of the AirFryer thing, but

Will: It’s really just a convection oven. I mean, most ovens do the exact same thing as an air fryers, just air fryer because it’s moving the air around the item and cooking at a high temperature. It just does it faster.

Eric: Yeah.

Will: As I just wrecked that entire industry in one shot. Sorry about that

Eric: Already. One, if you have some ways to stuff to do while you’re stuck at home, let us know. It’s a radio at GardenFork. Dot TV or we’re going to do another show next week. Same kind of theme. Just taking advantage of this time at home and getting stuff done. I, I was kind of feeling kind of bummed out the first couple of days that we had to do this. And then I went out in the woods and cut the, I cleaned up the trail with my chainsaw and my quad and I’m like, Oh, Oh, I could do this. So sometimes you just gotta get yourself out the door and once you start going you fight that inertia and you’re actually creating some momentum. So when I say go out and do cool stuff, that’s really what I’m talking about.

Will: It’s kinda neat too because once you get a couple of things done, I don’t want to say it charges you up to do the next thing, but you know, even if you looked at this list and wrote a couple of the things down and you did them, and then at the end of the day you kind of looked at what you did around you. That sense of accomplishment really is a good thing. People, you know, just for their self being and everything else. I mean, I’m not here to be all woo hoo, you know stuff about that. But I would say that, I mean, if you have a list of five things and you get them done and you sit down to dinner and you think to yourself, look at all these things I accomplish today, even if they’re small things, there’s something beneficial about running that pencil through that item on that list and saying, yep, I got that one done. And checking things off of the list as you do. It, it makes you feel better. I honestly enjoy working at the resort, looking at the things that we do and the list helps you have direction and then when you accomplish them, it feels really good to cross things off.

Eric: I ordered a new brake shoes for my tractor so that’s going to be a video and something I can do while this time where we have to stay at home.

Will: Yeah. It’s, you know, one of those times where if you have extra time on your hands, I know we all have busy lives and things going on and sometimes putting a moment of pause in and going out and you know, doing things that might take a little bit extra time, there’s, there’s a sense of accomplishment that comes along with it and I can’t recommend it enough.

Eric: I feel much better having cleaned out the fridge cause I can actually, I actually found some things that I’m going to cook tonight. I’m like, Oh look at these potatoes and I forgot about them.

Will: That’s what we’re doing with the spices right now. Kind of like, Hey, what could we do with this? Oh I never knew these. We went together and then all of a sudden now we have, I don’t want to say new things that we have in the, in the mix, but you know, you kind of get into a rhythm of you kind cooked the same things over and over again cause you’re kind of comfortable with cooking them and when you try new things, all of a sudden you’re like, Hey, that really tasted good.

Eric: Yay. All right, so let us know your thoughts. It is radio@gardenfork.tv. You can find we’ll at the weekend homestead, which is on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. And will and I are going to hang out a little bit more. We’re going to have a little bit of an after after show for the GardenFork patrons. But thanks. Thanks so much for listening. And I got a couple of really nice emails lately, which I will read it. But I’ll see if, I dunno if they, people want them to be read. But it was very heartening to get those, those emails. I just want to say thank you very much for that. So go out and do cool stuff. You got the time now ready? Let’s go.

Photo by Warren Lemay, public domain https://flic.kr/p/23pL8K6

Wondering how to buy a tractor? Erin, Will, and I talk about our experiences buying a new vs. used tractor, and the pros and cons of both.

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So you want to buy a tractor but aren’t sure if you should buy a new or used tractor, right? Today on the GardenFork Radio podcast, we talk about how Will and I bought our tractors. Will bought a new tractor and I bought a used tractor. There are pros and cons to buying either way. Plus we talk about how to avoid Craigslist scams.

Subcribe to GardenFork Radio on iTunes here.

Listen to more episodes of the podcast on the website here.

Eric: Today we’re going to talk about how to buy a tractor and whether you should buy a new tractor or a used tractor. And to answer this question, I called the Wisconsin cheese mafia. I have Erin from the inpatient gardener and I have well from the weekend homestead on the line here. Hello.

Will: Hi Eric. Hi Eric. How are you doing?

Eric: We’re great. Everyone is listening. We couldn’t quite get the technology to work so it might not be superb podcast quality, but the content is worth listening to. I think

Will: it’s that collect call to Wisconsin he had to make, it was just, it just didn’t work, you know, technology wise, the string and the tin can.

Erin: Okay.

Eric: Erin, you’re not taking the bait here.

Erin: I, I have nothing to add to that. I, I feel like I’ve, I’ve sort of at fault here. It was really me who started the technology problems. So I’m just going to sit here and be quiet about it.

Eric: But you had the brilliant idea to do this show because you texted me and you said basically, how did you buy your tractor? And I said let’s talk about it on the podcast.

Erin: Yes. So I’ve been waiting, waiting to have this conversation cause you haven’t answered my question yet. So I’m, I’m, I’m looking forward to hearing what the answer is. As much as all your listeners.

Eric: Well just withdraw many thousands of dollars in cash out of your bank account and hand it to some guy that you barely know and you’ve bought a tractor.

Erin: Well see that’s what I was feeling like he wasn’t, I thought there must be a better answer than that. So that’s what I’m coming to. You tracked your experts for.

Eric: Well basically Erin, why don’t we start with Erin, why don’t you start it with why you’re thinking about buying a tractor and for everyone. I bought a used tractor and I think we’ll bought a new tractor so we can offer different experiences and we as we answer your question,

Erin: perfect. So basically I wish we would have bought a tractor 15 years ago because I, we keep, we have thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and the number of times we’ve needed a tractor, so we have either rented them or borrowed them from neighbors, although our neighbors tend to like to drive their own tractors. So when you asked them if you could borrow their trash or what really happens is they spend their afternoon using their tractor at our house and it, it is kind of an awkward situation because now it’s not just their stuff, it’s their time. And so that gets a little weird to keep asking for that favor over and over and over again. So, you know, we are sort of at this situation where it’s like, well, we can either go another 10 years and look back and say, boy, now we wished we would have bought a tractor 25 years ago.

Erin: Or maybe it’s time for us to think about getting one. And I mean, I need it for a lot of like big garden projects, but you know, we have, so we’re on like just under an acre and a half, which is like just big enough to like probably need one for various projects including like dealing with trees and all that stuff and like just a little bit small to be like, well maybe we don’t need one. It’s kind of that InBetween sized piece of property and stuff that we do things on. So we really started looking into it because you know at some point you go, they’re not cheap to rent and we have rented them for projects before and you start thinking, boy, you know, I know it’s one of those things that I think once you have it, you would use it more often than you currently use one in one way or another. So that’s sort of where we’re at.

Will: Can I ask a question just to kind of get an understanding of what you’ve used it for before or what you plan to use it for because that ultimately will tell you what tractor to buy and what features, sizes, that kind of stuff that you would need to know to make a good decision on which one would work.

Erin: The main thing we’ve used it for in the past and the main thing I see us using it for in the future is sort of front loader type of deal. a big bucket, to move materials, soil, mulch, you know, bulk materials around the yard is the big thing that I’m seeing. But also I’m also sort of moving around like if we take down a tree or something, moving that stuff around. things like that are the main thing that I see us using it for. But I can see one of those things where if you get one, you know, I’d be a situation where you add like the snowplow attachment onto it. And so instead of snow blowing our driveway, we could start, you know, doing like a mini plow situation, that kind of thing.

Will: You know, one of the big things on tractors is there’s, there’s really a couple of different things they’re used for lifting and hauling. Like you’re talking about pushing and then there’s a number of attachments that attach usually to the back of the tractor called three point attachments where you have things that spin. So blades, augers, you know, that type of stuff. Do you plan on doing anything like that down the road or even adding like a mini excavator or anything like that?

Erin: I don’t see that probably happening. I mean maybe, but I don’t really see a use an obvious use for that at this point.

Will: Okay. Cause I mean that’s, that really kind of defines the horsepower of the tractor. Like if you said, Oh I want to move up a bale of hay on my mini farm, you might be looking at a different tractor because maybe the bales of hay are wet or something like that and they weigh 700 pounds. So you want something they can pick up that much versus kind of the things you’re describing fall more into the light duty side of it than kind of the heavy duty. And that’s one of the big mistakes a lot of people make when they buy a tractor is they think, okay, I need to buy a 50 horsepower gigantic machine that does all these things. And in all reality, you never even get close to using the potential of it. And because of that you end spending way more than you need to on the tractor. I agree. Void spending way more than I need to.

Eric: So I what I, my thoughts with, before coming on the show, my thoughts were, kind of laying out the advantages of buying a new one versus a used one. I mean, the, obviously it’s price, but, we’ll, why did you, did you buy a new one?

Will: I’ve actually, I’ve had a number of tractors, so I’ve had to use tractors in one new tractor. So I started out buying used tractors and then kind of, I’ll be honest with you, I kind of would buy them. I do some fixing on them. I use them and it’s interesting thing about tractors is they tend not to lose their value. It’s not like buying a boat where you buy it and it’s $20,000 in the next year it’s 10 because it’s used tractors tend to hold their value. So I had bought a number of tractors where I bought them, worked on them a little bit, used them for a little while, sold them for basically almost what I paid for them or even a little bit better and then bought the next one and kind of kept working my way up to eventually selling the last tractor I had and then getting the one that I have today.

Eric: And the one you have today is a new one, correct? Yep. So there are at least the state I live in, there are, if you are self employed with an LLC, there are actually some tax advantages to buying brand new equipment or leasing brand new equipment. And that if you use that tractor for a business like Erin for your blog, which is a business about gardening, if you leased a tractor, there would be a tax advantage there. I don’t know how great of an advantage versus the price you’re going to pay every month, but that’s something to think about.

Will: Well actually really interesting. The other way to look at it too is like I’ll use the Kubota tractor cause I had a used Kubota and then I bought the new Kubota. The use Kubota was, you know, between 10 and $14,000 to purchase it and I had to pay for it all upfront. I paid it to a guy that I bought it from, used it, and eventually I ended up selling it for the same. I paid for it when we decided, well I don’t want to do that again because sinking that amount of cash in one shot upfront was just too much, especially when we were trying to do the remodel and do to the other things. We’ll come to find out that there are some exceptionally great deals with regards to financing new tractors. And that’s actually the reason why we pulled the trigger on a new one was because I got no interest at all for 60 months on it. And once you divide that larger payment out over a period of time with a very small amount down, it made it very affordable to actually afford a new one. And then it gave you all the warranty. It gave you basically everything new. There wasn’t a lot of things you had to put into it. And then if anything ever went wrong I just dropped it off at the dealership. They took care of it and you know I got it right back.

Eric: The thing to think about with, going to a dealer for the repairs is that you have to get the tractor to the dealer and that usually means trailer so.

Erin: Right. Exactly. Cause that’s the other thing we don’t have is a trailer or frankly a truck capable. At least at this point. We have trucks, we can, we have trucks in the family but we don’t have one like currently.

Will: Yeah, you’d be surprised at what you can pull a trailer with. Cause I mean we had a Ford Explorer for a long time and a single axle trailer and we were able to pull our Kubota around because we bought a light duty tractor. You know, that’s, that’s the thing is you fall into all these categories cause you have lawn tractors, which, you know, a riding lawnmower is. So there’s a riding lawn mower, then there’s a riding lawnmower tractor. And then there’s the subcompact tractor, which is a size that we got. And then eventually you get to the mini tractor that mid size, the large, and then the big farm equipment. And now the higher you go up on that list, the heavier they get. So what we looked at was our tractor was 3000 pounds. Well to put that on a trailer and pull it somewhere that’s, you know, like pulling a boat around or something like that. So if you have a vehicle that can pull a boat, you can probably pull a small to mid size tractor easily on that trailer. A lot of people think, Oh, the weight on them is exceptionally high when you’re on the lower scale and doing light duty stuff. The other thing that’s nice about it is the tractor’s usually a lot lighter.

Erin: Yeah, there we go.

Eric: Let me walk you through my experience of buying a used tractor. my good friend who’s also my neighbors are a tired guy and he has worked with, outdoor power equipment, backhoes and big machines all his life. And he started out working in farming and ended up working on, he would build roads so he knew he knows a lot about equipment and he goes through Craigslist just to see what’s for sale. And he sent me a link to a, I had been making some noise about maybe, you know, it’d be, it’d be handy to have a, a backhoe, cause I have to hire my neighbor to do things and I’d be like, you know, he’s a great guy, but I kind of want to do it myself. But the price was always kind of prohibitive. And he sent me a link to a John Deere 10 50 tractor and it’s a nine, 1985, John Deere 10 50, which is considered a compact utility tractor.

Eric: I don’t think it’s compact at all, but, and it was $12,000. And I’m like, okay, that’s a lot of, that’s a lot of money for me. But then I was talking to two of my buddies up there are also weekenders and I’m like, they were both like, wow, I’d be great to have a backhoe. And I’m like, well, why don’t we buy this thing and split it, you know? So, neither of none of us really knew that much about tractors. So I worked with my neighbor who does know tractors and we ended up, and I looked at the tractor several times that I met with the guy and he lived probably about 50 miles away and he was like, look, I’m moving to Maine. I have to sell one of these tractors. I’m going to sell this one. But it had a backhoe, it had a front end loader.

Eric: It was in very good shape compared to other 30 year old John Deere 1050 that I’ve seen. Actually my neighbor who I always used to hire has the same tractor and it is really beat up. So we bought it. And so for $4,000 I had a tractor instead of laying out the $12,000 but with that came a little bit of a bumpy road with my other two friends and we’re still friends, but it ends up that one of them I didn’t realize, didn’t really know how to drive or use a tractor. And we ran into some bumps with that. And then suddenly one day the clutch started smoking and burnt out. And that added some tension as well because it was a $3,000 repair. I got the repair done by a neighbor who fixes farm equipment. That’s his business. He works out of his barn.

Eric: Everyone takes their tractors there. He gave me a deal because he’s, he’s my neighbor. I, you know, but, it caused some tension within the people that bought it and I didn’t, I was like, we should just have tractor school, you know. So we went over how to use the tractor. But the flip side is that that bump has smoothed out. Each of us uses the tractor when we need it. And it only costs us a third of what, the tractor would cost individually. And a lot of times I see people have tractors in their yard and 90% of the time they’re just sitting in the yard.

Eric: So if you have somebody you trust or you have it up front, it’s possible to buy it with someone else. We’ve, we’ve kinda gotten over the bumpy part now, but it was, it was a little bumpy.

Erin: Can I ask, did you have any kind of, do you have any kind of like formal contract or anything about it or did you guys just kind of, is it all very, you know, handshake friendly kind of thing in terms of whatever, how, who gets to use it when, or anything like that? You guys have anything formal on a piece of paper?

Eric: Well, I did it. I sent an email to each, to the group an email. The three of us said, look, you know, we’re gonna have to share this. We’re on all wanted on weekends. So I think it’s only fair that people ask like a week ahead. we’re gonna split all the maintenance three-ways there’s going to be more maintenance than you think happens. Parts for it are expensive. Like we have to put new brakes on it. The brake shoes are $400. I’ll put them on. It’s, it’s like a Volkswagen, you know, you just put them on. But, and then we have a running total that I email everyone, you know, a two gallon container of hydraulic fluid and we have a 30 year old tracker. So it leaks. Hydraulic fluid is, it’s like $30 and we probably go through three of those in a summer, you know, so we just keep a running total and every once in a while they just hand me some cash cause I, I buy all the parts in the maintenance and everything. So

Will: I would say that’s a lot of hydraulic fluid to be going through. I think with all of the equipment we go through maybe a gallon and a half between four different pieces of equipment in the year.

Eric: Well it ends up we had a hydraulic hose that was leaking. Oh. So and we didn’t realize it. I mean I actually love working on the tractor so, but if, and there’s going to be some other hoses we have to replace. The other thing I found was we have a backhoe and a front end loader and it also came with a, a set of forks, which are for people don’t know what that is. It imagine you’re eating fork has two tines on it and they just stick out front and they’re adjustable across the front end of the tractor so you can lift up pallets, but we use it for lifting up trees and logs and stuff. Both my friends live on dirt roads and if a tree falls, we’d go over with the tractor, we cut the end of the tree off, we lift it up and we’d dump it off the side of the road and then later on we’ll go cut it up. So we have all found that you never run out of uses for a tractor once you own it.

Erin: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking is exactly what happens is that, is that I just feel like we’d be using it. We’d find a lot of things that would be really helpful to have it for if we owned one and had one sitting there. You know?

Will: Can I give one word of warning. When you’re looking at tractors though, try, you know, don’t buy the first one you find like look at, get a piece of paper and you know, fire up Craigslist or however you’re going to shop for this and just start looking at different ads you and do that for maybe 30, 30 days at minimum. And what you’re going to learn is you’re going to learn the vernacular that people use and you know, what features come with what and which ones are a good deal and not, and just kind of keep watching because I will tell you in the tractor world, there is a lot of scammers out online and if you see a $20,000 machine and they are selling it for $5,000, either it’s broken or it’s a scam. And there’s a lot of that kind of stuff out there.

Will: So you know, one thing you can do to like if you go to look at a tractor, ever look at things like the hoses, are they leaking? you know, when you go there, I actually check and put my hand in the engine to figure out if it’s warm because a warm tractor starts much easier than a, cold tractor. So did they fire up the tractor and run it for 20 minutes before he got there? And then when you get there they go Roman and start your up like look there’s no problem but you didn’t know that they had the jumper out there and all these other things to get it going. Not saying that people are doing that kind of stuff, but it happens, you know, are the safety equipment features on the tractor disabled. You know, sometimes they take off the rollover protection or the PTO shield or you know, that kind of stuff where somebody had modified the tractor and now all of a sudden you’re buying something that potentially is not even safe to use. So that happens a lot too. So you just kind of have to know what you’re looking at and know what’s a good deal and not a good deal on. The only way to figure that out is by looking at a bunch of tractors. Yeah,

Erin: good to know. We’re seeing a lot of ads. I have looked at Craigslist a little bit and I’ve been seeing a lot of ads from dealers who are selling, you know, use tractors, on Craigslist. is I see a lot of that if you either like so far I found really, really crusty, really old. I mean, I don’t know if you can tell much by looking at a tractor, but they don’t, they don’t look like they’re, I’ll tell you that. And then a lot of used ones that are being sold through dealerships. Is that a, is that a reasonable way to go, is to buy a, you know, a used tractor through a dealership? Or is that probably not. I mean, I’m sure it’s not as good of a deal as if you bought it from a private individual in most cases. But, is that a good option to consider?

Will: Actually one comment I’d make on that is, you know, buying from a dealer. If you’re just buying the tractor, it’s usually just a tractor. That’s what you’re buying and you have to buy all the implements separately. When you find private parties, the price is probably the same on the tractor as you would find at the dealership, but maybe they have a backup blade forward or maybe they bought this snowblower attachment. When dealers sell tractors, they usually strip off all the extra attachments and all the extra stuff, so you just get the basic unit because then it’s less likely to come back for a repair because instead of the tractor just being defective now the snowblower could be defective or whatever, so when you buy from a dealership, you usually get a good deal on price, but usually it doesn’t have any extra bells and whistles with it versus a private party where you might get all the other stuff that they’ve accumulated over the years of owning the tractor when you buy it.

Eric: That’s what we got actually, because I looked at the John Deere 1050, sells about $12,000 at a dealership or a used implement dealer. But ours came with a backhoe, a rebuilt backhoe with all new hoses and new seals. the front end loader, which is in good shape and a set of adjustable forks for 12 grand. And the backhoe alone is like three or 4,000 on the used market. I’m pretty sure. So you take all those implements and it seemed like a much better deal. I will, I do want to comment on the scams they are, if you see something and it’s too good to be true, it is there. They have these beautiful pictures of a, a mid range Kubota and it’s like $9,000. And you email them and they email back and they go, send me your cell phone number so I can call you or send me your email address. And they immediately try and get you off of Craigslist because Craigslist allows an email exchange that, I would keep up, I would not leave. And I, so I think I sent one of them my cell phone number and he texted me and he goes, Oh, I’m, I’m out of the country right now, but if you wire me the money, I’ll have my friend bring the tractor over to you.

Erin: Yeah, I ran into that same thing when I sold, was selling my car on Craigslist too. Same deal where I got those people who were like, Oh, sometimes my Craig’s, I don’t get the emails from Craigslist, so make sure you email me at this other email address or call me or whatever. So,

Will: right. So you can always say, go ahead. I was going to say, I will say this though, on Craigslist for tractors, I have been successful three different times selling tractors and four different times buying tractors and devices off of them. In fact, one of them, I bought the Kubota tractor and the guy had a box blade and a back blade and a tiller and all these other implements and he’d put it all together and sold it all. I brought it home. I got the tractor up and running and the couple of issues that were wrong with it and I sold it for the same amount that I bought the entire kit for. So now the tractor rolls off the driveway and goes away. And now I’ve got, you know, $4,000 worth of implements that when I bought my next tractor. I just put them on that next one. So that is something that does work really well when you’re buying from private parties. You just gotta watch out for the ones that are way too good to be true.

Eric: Right? I mean, that’s, it’s like with anything, but they are out there and, it’s always a shiny picture of a tractor and they’re like, I’m like, nah, this ain’t, this ain’t the real deal. There are, I’ve had overwhelmingly positive experiences on Craigslist. I actually helped my neighbor who helped me buy my tractor. He has sold two tractors through Craigslist

Will: can I make one other suggestion on buying and selling that a lot of people don’t think about, but actually the Facebook marketplace is become a great place to buy tractors because the person who’s usually on Facebook is actually the person and they usually have an account and everything associated with it. So there’s a lot less scammers with regards to it versus Craigslist where it’s a lot more anonymous. And actually I bought in some implements for the skidsteer through Facebook, for the, for over at the resort. And it actually has turned out to be a really great transaction.

Erin: That’s great. Can I ask you guys about brands? I mean, I know some of the big brands for tractors, I know Kubota and John Deere and you guys will use those until you guys had mentioned. But you know, I know some of the big ones, are there, you know, is there some brands that you know, are definitely not something that if I’m looking at, especially if I’m looking at something that’s used that’s maybe not there for the long haul, or is it, is that less important when I’m looking at these things and some of the other just general condition type stuff?

Eric: I know two brands that are good. Yanmar is a Japanese brand and actually my John Deere tractor was made in Japan by Yanmar, Y. A. N. M. a. R. I have a Yanmar three cylinder diesel engine in my John Deere tractor. And my tractor was made in Japan and shipped over. John Deere only makes the larger tractors now in the United States,that’s what I’m told. And then from India is a brand called Mahindra and they sell more tractors worldwide than anybody else.

Will: And they’ve actually been in business for 40 years. Did you know that?

Eric: Yeah. And I see Mahindra more and more in my area. And then there are some, Chinese brands that I don’t know much about, but I have seen a couple of people buy them.

Will: I would say one other, one other one to throw into the equation too. And for your application you might want to look at what’s called a mini skid steer. it sounds daunting and I think they’re called landscape skidsteers. Basically it’s a skid steer, but you stand on the back of it to use it and it has

Erin: i did one use of those ones

Will: amazingly enough, I found them for ridiculously good prices on Craigslist and it uses such a small footprint that it works really good in people’s garages. That’s one thing that a lot of people forget about is they want to buy the tractor with the big bucket on the front and all the big tires and everything else. And then they look at their property and they’re trying to figure out where to park it or where to put it.

Erin: Right.

Eric: That’s a huge thing actually with my buddies. We have a standing agreement that the tractor is always under a roof because if you leave any, I think you will leave any machine out. It’s going to degrade much faster than if you put it under cover and out of rain. And also UV sunlight, UV sunlight degrades your all the hydraulic hoses, you know. Exactly. So you get three car garage now, Erin.

Will: Yeah. Well do you have any fences on your property?

Erin: No.

Will: Cause a lot of people don’t put into the equation either. Like I want to use this in my backyard, but your gate’s only 48 inches wide and you just brought a tractor that’s, you know, 60 inches wide. Oh right. That would be a problem. Now you have a part of your,

Erin: Oh for sure.

Eric: Yeah. It’s kinda tricky. I am, I, I would suggest buying a tractor that has a backhoe, but it, it might not be exactly what you need, but if you want to put, if you want to put in a tree that has a big ball or you want to put in a bunch of smaller bushes, it’s actually a lot of fun to dig the holes with the backhoe.

Speaker 1:
Yeah, I bet it is.

Eric: So any more questions?

Erin: Formation? yeah. Well yeah, who’s got a, he’s got a tractor you feel like selling, so no, that was really helpful. Thank you guys very much. I appreciate that a lot. So I mean I just, just out of curiosity, I’m assuming, I mean do you guys find yourself finding uses to use these all the time? Well beyond probably the purpose you originally bought it for? Is that true? I mean, I’m just trying to judge for sure to make sure that making this kind of purchase is something that is really going to be valuable for us. And my thought is we’re going to find more things to use it for with them, we think. And I’m curious if that’s been your experience too.

Eric: Oh, I think so. Yeah. It’s, I actually have, I’m going to put in drainage along my driveway and I know I don’t have to call one of my neighbors and pay them $70 an hour to dig a trench. You know, I can just, me and my buddies are like, Hey, get the tractor out. Okay. You know, we do it.

Will: one side of it, and it might be a little bit more of a cavalier attitude about it, but I’ve never been stuck with a piece of equipment. So one of those scenarios where I, I bought a piece of equipment and I’ve used it and found all these different things and then I decided to upgrade to something because I want to do something else. I usually get at least 95% of my money back, sometimes 100% of my money back when I’ve gone to sell the tractor or to, you know, sell it to the next party after even using it for a short period of time. So you might buy something, decide to use it, find out it’s not the right thing. A lot of people are really afraid, Oh, I’m going to lose a ton of money by trying to sell this or move on. We’ll tractors, like we said in the beginning of the show, hold their value. So even if you buy it, find out that it doesn’t do what you’re looking for. It only does like 50% of the stuff you wanted to do to get out of it and get into the next thing. It’s a good way, you know, start with something small, figure out how you use it, and then as your need grows, you can always sell that device or that tractor and then buy the next size up. Try that for awhile and kind of figure out where the sweet spot is.

Erin: That’s actually a really compelling argument because when you start adding up how much you can conceivably spend on renting these things for a day or a weekend, you know, that’s, that’s a lot of money and you know, that adds up very quickly. If you’re looking at a situation where you, these things keep their value so well that if you used it for awhile and when you’re done using it, you’re able to sell it for 95% of its value. You’re probably ahead

Will: one other thing to put in the equation too is the of the tractor on how you take care of it versus you know, the next person and so on. You’d be surprised what a pressure washer will do to the value of a tractor. I’ve bought a tractor and it was in really bad condition. You know, we did some grease cleaning in the engine compartment. We fixed a bunch of leaky pieces on it just to make it nicer for ourselves. And then when we went to sell it, you know, we were able to get actually an extra $500 out of it just because it was in a much better condition. You know, spray painting some of the rust up and you know, fixed it up. I actually found a John Deere three 18 tractor when we were kind of prepping for the show. I was like, I’m going to see if I can find something that might fit into what Erin might be looking for. I found them as cheap as $1,000 and as high as $5,000 and the main difference is how did it look like the $5,000 one, the wheels were new. The outside of the housing was all new. Everything else, the thousand dollar one looked like a rusty pile. I mean it basically worked, but you could easily buy something like that, have it work and just fix it up as time goes along.

Erin: Great idea.

Eric: Wow. Now it’s excited. It’s like this vicarious thrill of helping Erin buy a tractor.

Will: I think everybody should leave a comment or send you a message and just throw in their ideas. Cause I mean I’m guessing there’s a bunch of people talking to the radio right now cause talking about tractors is like talking about pickup trucks. Some people like forward, some people like Chevy tractors. It’s the exact same thing.

Erin: Yeah, I’d love to, I’d love to hear some feedback from people on it.

Eric: My other, my other thought was if you buy a used tractor, do not take it to the dealer for repair cause they’re just, they’re just going to nail you. I mean it’s like if you buy a used Subaru, you take it to your local foreign car mechanic, you don’t take it to the Subaru dealer. And I would just ask around, maybe you know some of the local ag store, the local feed store, Hey do you know anyone that works on tractors around here? Cause that person might have a few tractors that he’s bought and fixed up and, and sells them on the side to make additional money or it’s just good to know them to fix your tractor. Or they might even know some tractors that are for sale. Word of mouth is, I think the best way to buy one.

Erin: That’s a great idea. Good deal.

Eric: All right, we have dead air here. We’ll start talking.

Will: Sorry I had him muted. I was coughing. I thought you were chugging another one.

Erin: Well you guys are, you guys are a font of knowledge on tractors so thank you for sharing that information. That’s quite helpful.

Will: I would say slow and steady is the best way to go with regards to it. Every, if you just jump in and buy something blindly, there’s a good chance you get burned. If you’ve looked at a certain model number that you know fits your fancy, you know, just flipping through online and go Oh the John Deere three 18 is a model that I like, you know, search it for a couple weeks and see what comes up. Springtime actually is a really good time to buy tractors cause a lot of people when the snow goes away and Wisconsin, they’ve got stuff in the yard they want to get rid of or they’re cleaning out the barn. You know there’s a lot of estate sales and interestingly enough I’ve actually picked up implements at a state sales and they’d been ridiculously good deals because let’s say a farm you know is shutting down or getting split up or changed or whatever and they’re selling off the equipment. It’s kind of like used furniture. Sometimes the equipment people are just trying to liquidate it to get rid of it cause the tractor is long gone, but they’ve got all the implements laying around and they got nothing to use them for. So they’d rather have the cash.

Will: All right. So I feel like I should hire you guys to buy a tractor for me.

Eric: Just pay for my airline ticket. I’ll be there.

Will: Right. Okay. No, we can’t let Eric come back to Wisconsin. Sorry, I just, that’s part of the rural Eric. Can I come back to Wisconsin?

Eric: All right. So, everyone, do you have some tractor experience or tractor thoughts? It’s radio@gardenfork.tv would be the best way to get hold of us. And you can find Erin at her fabulous YouTube channel, the inpatient Gardner, just amazing information there plus her website and we’ll, we’ll just post a new videos to his YouTube channel, the weekend homestead. And we’ve talked about the pine cone cabin, but you have a video and a live stream about the pine cone cabin there. Right.

Will: I was surprised at how many questions we got with regards to that cabin. It kind of, it was interesting how it got a little louder.

Eric: Yeah, we can talk about that in the after show, which is the part of the podcasts, the garden fork patrons get, but for the moment email us radio@gardenfork.tv and we would love to hear guys. So drive safe and go out and do cool stuff. Thanks for listening.

Want to remove wallpaper from a wall? Serena from the YouTube channel ThriftDiving joins me to walk you through the process. Getting wallpaper off the walls is messy, but its not beyond your skill set. Listen here, then read through the materials list.

Audio Player

Some of the tools we talk about to remove wallpaper

• Wallpaper steamer
• Wall Scraper
• Best Putty Knife 5 in 1 Tool
• Canvas Drop Cloths  Large 9 x 12  Runner 4 x 15
• Skim Coat Knife 8″

You can rent a wallpaper steamer, but consider buying one if you have a large room or several projects to do. I bought one and used it on several projects, then gave it to a friend who also had to remove wallpaper.

A good wall scraper and a 5 in 1 tool make for easier wallpaper removal. Be careful with the wall scraper, the blade is sharp and you can ding into the drywall or into your hand!

A quality skim coat knife will make your life much easier. Do not buy a cheap one. I prefer a flexible stainless steel 8″ knife.

Flavor Paper is the company I mentioned that makes custom wallpaper in Brooklyn.

Here is Serena’s excellent video on how to remove wallpaper, she also has written on her blog about wallpaper removal and wall repair.

Eric: Hey, how you doing? Welcome to garden fork radio. Is this your first time here? It’s what I call eclectic DIY. Somebody recently described it as haphazard, so maybe haphazard DIY, but it’s me and my friends talking about what I think we hope you think are interesting things as well. It ranges from how to fix stuff, to electric cars, to recycling, to gardening, to cooking. Really kind of, it’s like a, it’s like a big world out there and we talk about it. So welcome. This is your first time. If it isn’t, you already know what you’re here for, right? It’s more of Eric. So today I have on the show, my friend Serena, who I met last year when I went to the Troy-Bilt headquarters in Cleveland, had never been to Cleveland before. I had a really hard time and we met in the lobby of the hotel, me and the, I guess I’m calling him Troy-Bilt ambassador.

Eric: Anyway, as some of you know, I do some projects with him, but Serena was one of the people that was there. She has a YouTube channel called thrift diving and a accompanying website called thrift diving.com and we got to know each other. It was just kind of one of those just, it just blended like boom. Done. There wasn’t that kind of awkwardness are, you know, it just clicked very nicely. We kind of had similar interests and she has so much energy and I thought, Ooh, I could learn from Serena. So, and I really have, she’s brilliant at creating interesting content, interesting videos and really interesting posts on her site. She just has a really nice voice when she’s writing and she’s brilliant at like going to the thrift store and making something out of nothing. Uh, it can be something in your house or something you went across in a thrift store and she knows a lot about wallpaper removing it and also about using spray paint. So Serena and I got together on Skype here and we’re going to talk about how to remove wallpaper and also how to use spray paint. Ready. Let’s go. Hey Serena, welcome to garden fork. Hey, what’s up Eric? It’s 16 degrees here and it’s warmer where you are.

Serena: Yeah, we’re at a nice balmy 30 degrees, which is insane because last week it was 75 degrees. I’m like, it’s January. Yeah. Oh yeah, I’m, I’m not, you know, it’s not that I love the cold, but if it’s supposed to be cold, let’s make sure that it’s cold. Like this is what it’s supposed to be.

Eric: So you’re down near the the DC area, right?

Serena: I am. I’m in silver spring, Maryland, which is, it’s part of what we call the DMV, a district, Maryland, Northern Virginia. So it’s, yeah, we say Washington D C but it’s all this area. [inaudible]

Eric: all right. I’ve driven through there, but I’ve not spent a lot of time there. But yeah, I know it’s warmer than where I am here up in the top of Connecticut right now.

Serena: Yeah. I, I I couldn’t do that. That’s a little too cold for me.

Eric: So you have, um, a really nicely growing YouTube channel with what I think are pretty addictive videos that have a, a very approachable quality. It’s not like you’re not like the, the the expert contractor from this old house, your Tay. I bought this house and you know, I’m doing it all myself and here’s what I’m doing. Yep. And I had two specific things I wanted to ask you about. The first was removing wallpaper and the other one is the right way to use spray paint cause you seem to be really good at both of those things.

Serena: Well, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things that you can do with the camera to make sure that if you have drips with your spray paint, nobody sees them. But yes we can. We can definitely talk about that for sure. Um,

Eric: I, in my previous life as a contractor, I would run into a lot of jobs where we had to take off wallpaper.

Serena: Mm.

Eric: And it’s not as easy as they make it sound and yet your video, it was, I was like, wow, that worked really well.

Serena: Yeah. Well I kind of find myself being in this position where, you know, every few years or so I’m removing wallpaper. Like when we moved in this, so this, our house is a 1973 homes. So just to give you an idea of the neighborhood is, it’s an older neighborhood. Most of the homes here have wallpaper unless the homeowners have removed them, you know, the new people that have moved in. But there’s a lot of original owners that still live here. So there’s a lot of wallpaper. And when we moved in, we literally had wallpaper and I would say 95% of the home, every room was just covered in wallpaper. And now, thankfully it wasn’t like the really offending wallpaper where you walk in, it’s like, you know, big green flowers and Nope. I mean, it was livable for a short period of time, but it had to come down.

Serena: And I remember when we were doing our research on removing wallpaper, you know, you probably have seen some of these products, like it’s, there’s this little product called a tie, I think it’s called a tiger. It just scores. You’re supposed to do it in circles or like, you know, wax on wax off type circles all over the wallpaper. And then you’re supposed to spray it with water and it’s supposed to magically, well it didn’t, it didn’t happen. Like we tried that and it was just torturous. So I had discovered a wallpaper steamer and it worked brilliantly. I mean it came off pretty good. There was some, you know, I call them Brown paper bag areas, know when you remove wallpaper and you see the, the, the paper of the drywall has been removed. And so now you’ve got the paper, just they’re exposed and, yeah, and so, but, but the thing is, is that not only do you remove the wallpaper, but then you still have all the glue and if you’ve ever removed wallpaper, you’ll know that that glue is, it’s treacherous. I mean, not only are you going over with the steamer to remove, well if you’re lucky, one layer of wallpaper, if you’re unlucky, it’s painted and you’ve got multiple layers.

Serena: Yeah, people do find that as well. Um, but you know, the process that I had discovered that seemed to work for me, it was putting on that steamer, peeling off that layer, but then once all the wallpapers off, going back over with the steamer and then taking maybe like a six inch knife, um, like a putty knife and just scraping that stuff off. Of course, you know, making sure you don’t gouge your walls and you know, now no. One thing that’s interesting though, I will, I will cut to this because some people are saying, well, Hey, there’s a better way. Some people in the YouTube comment to that video and even on another contractor had told me that uh, like wool, light, any of those. Um, what do you call them? Like the dryer, the, I can’t think of the name of it. Like the Washington, no, not the magic sponge, but like the dryer, um, he wants some softener.

Serena: Like the laundry softener. The liquid was for like wool clothing to wash. Yes. Yes. And so apparently it’s not Woolite but it’s any of those brands of like fabric softener. If you spray that, you know, mix it with water spray that he said it just peels off. And I’m like, okay, now I need to find another room with wallpaper cause we got to test that out. I’ve never heard of that. I had never heard of that either. But he, you know, he said that he said it works and the comments of that video, some people said that works as well. So you know, for anyone who’s listening to this, you know, try that. Do, do a little bit of research, Google and find out using fabric softener to remove wallpaper because apparently it works. Now, you know, because I had so much wallpaper, I figured I’m going to go with what I know.

Serena: I’m going to use a steamer. It’s a little $50 steamer that I got from a hardware store and, and that was my process. Apply that steamer, peel off that wallpaper, apply this teamer again and scrape off this glue. And then you want to use, you know, some clear water. I used a little bit of simple green just to help clean that wall and still cleaned some of that glue residue because that’s really important. If you try to paint over this wall and the glue is not completely, um, wiped off, you’ll start seeing little, little spots on your wall, like a little dark spot and ask me how I know, because in my bedroom I’ve got a little lazy with that, that wallpaper removal and, and sure enough I ended up having to go over it, several coats just to try to cover it up. So don’t skip on removing the glue and all of that.

Serena: But the thing that people didn’t realize, um, and that I didn’t realize when removing wallpaper is that, you know when you have those Brown paper bag areas, you have to fill those in with joint compound and it’s called skim coating, right? So it’s basically just taking a knife. You can do a six inch, but you know, it’s probably better to maybe even have an eight inch and you’re just skimming that stuff over those low spots where those paper bag areas are. And surprisingly it fills it in like magic. And once that dries, then you want to prime it and then you paint and you should be good to go. Now if you have multiple layers, I mean it’s going to be more work for someone, but I think the process is still the same and I just, if anybody said, how am I going to remove wallpaper, I would tell you hands down you can’t go wrong with this steamer and you don’t even have to deal with the chemicals because you know some people don’t want to use fabric softener.

Serena: There’s chemicals in there. So definitely the steam, just water you don’t do. Now the, here’s the thing, you just want to make sure that you have something on your floors because all that steam is producing water and you will have puddles all over your, you know, carpet or wood flooring or something. Yes, definitely. Definitely have some towels there and be very careful because there are times when when I’ve reached up over top and I have, you know, gone to pull some of these, this wallpaper off and I’m pulling the steamer back and some of that steam comes up and can burn your hands. So just be very careful. It is. It can be dangerous if it splashes up on you. But it’s, it’s my full proof method for removing wallpaper, getting it out of your house and just making your house just look more modern. I mean, but can we just say though, Eric, that I know there are some people who are listening to this and they’re like, wallpaper is back in style and you know what it is. Did you hear that?

Eric: I know it. I have some wallpaper in my new house, actually. My new old house.

Serena: Yes. I mean, and the thing is, I, I think that wallpaper today, you know, it, it can still be a nightmare to remove, but it is still fashionable. Like people love wallpaper and, and I, and I, I’m not, I’m not gonna lie. As much as I hate wallpaper, I am interested in trying the removable wallpaper. So if it’s something that I can just put up and then peel down, sort of like that old contact paper, I’d be willing to try it. But as long as it doesn’t require me pulling out that steamer again, then I would try it. And small doses.

Eric: So to backtrack a bit before you do the steaming, do you have to do, um, run across that perforator tool that puts a little dimples in it and then steam it?

Serena: No. No, you don’t. I ditched that thing years ago because I realized it didn’t work. So when your wallpaper is just there, um, you haven’t sprayed it with anything, you haven’t done anything to it. You just put that steamer up there, let bubble for let’s say 20 seconds or so, and then it should fully melt that, that glue so that you can peel it off from the wall and you’ll notice the paper bag, the paper bag area that’s occurring when you’re not giving that glue enough time to loosen up because you’re, you’re pulling, I mean it’s, it’s stuck to the paper, so it’s gonna pull it off if you’re not giving it enough steam. So when you’re pulling back and if you realize, Oh, it’s pulling off all this paper from the drywall, then you have to apply a little bit more steam. But just realize that some paper bag areas is normal.

Serena: Like you’re not going to just remove sheets of wallpaper and there’s no skim coating that you’ll have to do, but like that has never happened in my house. You will have to do some sort of skin coding, but I mean the bucket of mud, the joint compound is maybe $6 maybe a little bit more to get the bigger, bigger bucket. But all of that I cover in my video and the walking closet where I was removing this. Yes. A walk in closet was wallpapered this walking closet that had the wallpaper, it’s now painted. Although I, I don’t really like the color. Did you, what do you think of that color that I chose? It’s like a steel blue color. What do you think of that?

Eric: Well, in small doses it’s fine. I mean, it’s, it’s an accent color in a closet, so it’s, you know,

Serena: I know, but you know what? It feels so manly and I feel like the walking closet, I want it to be pretty,

Eric: Oh, I don’t think of that. I’m a guy,

Serena: but I don’t know if I told you that. Well, I did tell you that I’m starting a podcast. I’ve been recording some episodes but I’m, I’m not launched yet. I wanted to have a place that was small enough to like get really good audio. Cause right now I’m in my basement. I, I have my office in the basement and the audio is still a little echoey but in this closet, Oh my gosh, Eric, it’s like a Podcaster’s dream. So I’m redesigning this entire closet and I’m going to have a little two foot area that’s going to be a desk with enough, you know, space for my tablet and a little chair that I refinished that’s also on my YouTube channel. So that’s why I want it to be girly cause I planned to spend a little bit of time in my closet. That’s why

Eric: actually that is a uh, radio reporting trick. Um, I learned about from NPR, they have some how to, they have a whole series on their website about how to re, how to do radio reporting and publishing and if they are on location or if they have a freelancer or if someone’s working late at night, they, they find the coat closet in their apartment or whatever. That’s where they record all the voiceovers. They’ll read the script on their phone and they’re in there with a microphone and all the coats. So

Serena: I love it. It really does work because the audio, and I noticed as I was going back through all the footage of, you know, I took before footage after and all that good stuff and just listening to the footage of myself doing my little intro in the closet when all the clothes were in there, it sounded so good. I was like, wait a minute, I’m, I’m onto something here like this. This really does work. So it’s good to know that it, that it works in the professionals do it.

Eric: Yeah. And it’s, well, you’d be surprised. I mean, I used to work in that world so that there’s a lot of duct tape. So the, um, you were talking about skin skim coating and we use the term a knife and it’s, it’s, it’s a very long putty knife and the more flexible that blade is, I found the easier it is to skim coat.

Serena: Yes, definitely. Now, now I, I, I don’t know if I had told you this, but I’m actually in a carpentry program at my local community college. Did I tell you that?

Eric: We talked about the last time you’re on. Okay. So, which I think is fantastic.

Serena: Oh, it’s so much fun. It’s so much fun. I’m actually starting classes next week and I’m doing a, um, I’m taking another electrical wiring class, which I didn’t think that I would love electrical wiring, but it’s fascinating. It’s not as boring as I thought it was. Oh my gosh. It’s, it’s great. I mean, the things, the things that you learn how to do, um, with wires, I mean, just, you know what it is, it’s, it’s like, it’s like problem solving, right? Like, how do you get these electrons to this particular switch and get it back to a different switch and then get it back? You know, it’s just amazing when you think about the steps that you have to take. And this is what we did in class. Like we had a little board and we had switches and we had a little power supply. And so he would draw a little diagram on the board and it would say, okay, you need two, you need one, three way switch here, one, four way switch and you need to power this light bulb.

Serena: Now I want you to wire it in this direction and figure out which wires you need. And I’m like, Oh, okay. Yeah, it was challenging, but it was fun too. I really enjoyed it. Um, but last semester I took a class on interior repairing remodeling and we, we actually did put up some drywall and these little cubicles that we had built and just using the knives, um, was a lot of fun. I mean, you know, when you’re doing drywall, you have to work up to that larger knife, right? So you’re starting with a uh, with a six inch and then you’re moving to like an eight or 10 and then you’re moving to a 12 and when I had done my, my drywall, I was just using like, like a little six inch putty knife. There was no give to it. But you’re right in the past I’ve used ones that have given, I seem like it seems like it’s a little easier to use, but I also think that people should, you know, try to use the eight inch because you can cover more space.

Serena: And I think that really helps with when you’re skim coating and basically skim coatings, when you’re putting some of this joint compound on the knife and you’re just gliding it over these low spots, all of these paper bag areas or you know, any nail holes in the wall, things like that, that could, could mess up the finish of your paint. And when you’re, when you’re smoothing it over, sometimes I find with a six inch, if you’re trying to work a large area, you, you tend to get those little ripples. So if you switch to an eight inch, you, you get a nice clean skim coat, skim coated area cause you’re generally not going to have, you know any huge areas. But you might have some, you know that are two, three inches and the six inch knife is going to make, give you a little bit of problem. Could give you some problems.

Eric: My industry secret is I take the putty knife that I’m going to skim coat with and I take it on a bench grinder or RightAngle metal grinder and the corners which have a kind of a sharp right angle at the very edges of them. I round them off.

Serena: Very smart. Very smart because yeah, because then you end up, if you don’t do that you will gouge your drywall and then you’re having to go around and fix all your gouges. That’s a, that’s a good idea. You can do the same with just regular sandpaper though, right?

Eric: Well I like to use a stainless steel blades so it um, if you use that kind of blue metal, a putty knife, you could probably do it. But I mean I got to ride on the grinder there anyway and I turn it on and just, you know, Eric power,

Serena: there’s always a good reason to use a power tool. I just look for reasons to pull out my tools.

Eric: Hey, would you like more of garden fork or more of Eric? Would you like to get it in your email inbox? I send out just about every week I send out a little email about Eric’s world and new stuff I posted. I even talk about podcasts I’ve listened to or just interesting stuff and usually almost always at least one picture of the Labradors, Henry and Charlie, you can get that by signing up for Eric’s garden fork email newsletter thing. There should be a link in the notes to the show. Just scroll down to the description of the podcast in your app and I’m hope it’s a clickable link. It should be or go to garden fork.tv and on almost every page at the top of the page, so would be a sign up. If you’re on a mobile device, you might have to tap on the little, there’s a little menu bar and then hopefully there will be a signup or scroll the bottom of a post and you can sign up. There should be a link in the app here, more of Eric. It would be fun to have you along for the ride. It’s kind of more brain dump Eric.

Speaker 4: Cool stuff. All right.

Eric: The other thing we were talking about, I think getting a glue office, the hardest part because if you lay down, you know if you, if you use a primer, well you’re going to put a primer on anyway. You lay a top coat, but if you want to make it the wall look like it’s been painted with a roller and it has kind of a stipple. I mean after you’ve painted a wall with a roller a couple of times, that’s kind of a stipple to it. You can hide some of those little highlights. But yeah, I mean the skim coating is a way to go. And then I actually, instead of using sandpaper, if I have to sand any of the skim coat, I use a damp sponge to cut it.

Serena: Yes. Yes, definitely. And I think if, I think if you’ve done a good job with your skin, and this is the same as with drywall too, when you’re, when you’re drywalling and you’ve applied the mud properly, you, uh, you definitely wouldn’t need any more than just a sponge. Now, in the past, I’ve never been that great when I’ve done, you know, drywall, I’ve removed sections of walls and I’ve slept that stuff on, and then the whole room just looks like a cloud of dust because I have to sand it down. So you’re right. The better the, the job you do with the mud, the less you’re going to have to sand or if at all.

Eric: Yeah. I also liked that you wear a mask while you’re doing all that.

Serena: Oh yes. Yes. I, I learned a long time ago. You have to protect yourself. And I, and even now, there’s times when, you know, I’m doing things in the garage and I’m like, Oh, I don’t have a mask on. Sometimes it’s easy to forget. But even just cutting wood, like in fact last week I was cutting these two by sixes. Um, I’m making new stairs. I have this basement, I call it a wizard of Oz door, but it’s like a steel way type door, but I call a wizard of Oz. It just reminds me of that movie. And it’s a walkout basement. And um, there’s two by six stairs that kind of fit into these little grooves that are attached to the cement wall. And, um, and I’m out there, I’m cutting, I’m using this like amazing, uh, new. I’m in this program with home Depot and so they send me all these tools, I get to test them out to, this thing was just a heavy duty rear, you know, rear handle circular saw and this thing just broke and the dust is everywhere.

Serena: And I’m thinking, this is not healthy breathing this stuff in. And, you know, I think if you’ve been in the industry for a long time and you, you know, even if you have contractors come to your house, I mean, they’re supposed to follow a certain, you know, safety things, regulations. Yeah, exactly. The OSHA regulations, but they don’t, um, hearing protection masks. I mean, even when we were in carpentry class with all of the drywall sanding that we were doing, you know, it wasn’t, he wasn’t adamant like, okay, you need to have your mask on everybody. You know, he was adamant about eye protection for sure. Right. But with the lungs, he was just like, you know, if you want to mask, here are some masks. But it wasn’t like, okay, everybody needs to have this, um, protection because it’s dangerous for you. So I definitely, you know, on my channel, whenever I’m doing projects, I try to be the exemplary, uh, of safety when I, when I remember.

Serena: Um, but it’s become even more ingrained in me to do this because what we do on online, people are following what we’re doing. And I mean, I remember years ago when I would be stripping furniture and I would think it’s really funny because I have, um, you know, stain all over my hands, right? Look at this picture guys, look at all this day and all over my hand. And I would take that and put it in a blog post and now I’m thinking, what in the world were you thinking? Like, you aren’t staining without gloves. This is not funny. This is not healthy for you. So, you know, as I become, um, you know, as I get a little closer to being a licensed carpenter the way I would like to be and, you know, getting more experience in the trades, I’m making safety more important. But you know, there’ve been times, I mean, good example, we had guests about a year ago, we had some, uh, bricklayers come, some Mason masons that came and fixed our, uh, chimney.

Serena: And it was so dusty and I looked out there and nobody had masks on, none of them. They had. Yes, they had handkerchiefs on their face. And so I, you know, I just bought a new set of masks. So I went out there and I’m like passing them out to everybody like here, make sure you, and it was loud. There was, they didn’t have any ear protection. And um, I think sometimes when you’re, when you’re in the trades and you do it all the time, it’s easy to kind of get a little sloppy because this is time is money. You don’t have time to stop and put on the mask and the earring hearing protection. But you know, to me it’s important. Sometimes I do forget, but then I’m like, Oh, wait a minute, hold on. Forgot that. Let me go do that. Important.

Eric: So we were, you mentioned that a wallpaper is on the rise. I actually have a video about me hanging wallpaper and of course something went wrong and I left it in on purpose, you know, cause that’s, it’s the real world. It’s the world of the imperfect, how to, as I call it.

Serena: I want to talk a little bit more about that. Keep the, keep that topic there, but go ahead and tell me what you’re going to tell me cause I have something important to tell you about that.

Eric: All right. Well we were talking about wallpaper on the rise and, and our brownstone down in New York and Brooklyn, we have some acts I their accent wall. It’s wallpaper but it’s in wallpaper. The whole room. It’s just a part of a wall. And um, I can’t remember the name of the company there. It’s from England and it costs a bajillion dollars but it’s beautifully printed cause I have some experience in printing, you know, analog ink printing but in industry city, which is right near my house in Brooklyn, which is this um, set of old warehouses that are, is filling up with internet startups and stuff in a food court and, but there is a custom designed wallpaper company there that has a storefront called flavor paper flavor paper and right. It’s like a open office. They’re designing custom wallpapers for people and then they have these giant printers right there that print that will print out a roll of wallpaper for you.

Serena: Oh, that is so amazing.

Eric: I have no idea how much it costs, but they’re beautiful. Really beautiful wallpapers.

Serena: I’m going to have to look that up. You know what paper, you know, even if you don’t want to put wallpaper in your house, there’s a lot of DIY projects that you can do with wallpaper. If you’ve got a bookcase bookshelf and you want to line the back of it with wallpaper. Um, you know, maybe, maybe it’s not for books, but maybe you’ve got some other things that you want to highlight in your room. Wallpaper can really set that off. And you could also do like the fronts of cabinets or you can do, if you have a dresser, you know, maybe it’s a plain Ikea dresser and you’ve always wanted to kind of jazz it up. You could do wallpaper on the front of that and you could even do scrapbook paper too. I mean, if you don’t want to pay the cost of wallpaper, cause that, you know, as you mentioned, it’s very expensive.

Serena: You can do scrapbook paper and line the front of your dresser drawers. You can also do the do the inside of your drawers too, which is really fun because maybe, you know, maybe the outside is just a basic wood, but on the inside you did something fun. So every time you open it up, surprise, there’s this beautiful, you know, paper inside. In fact, I did that on a project and it got a lot of mixed reviews because I didn’t have one solid color wallpaper, so I did sort of like this patchwork of floral wallpaper, but it’s so cute. And you know, I know I’m looking at the vanity right now. Um, it’s actually one of my, my highest viewed videos on my YouTube channel and you’ll, you’ll be able to see it there. Um, it’s the one with the vanity and I think it’s got maybe 2.1 million views, which is insane.

Serena: Um, but there were mixed reactions. Some people loved doing the lie, the paper liners and the drawers. Some people thought, ah, you just ruined it. But to me, whenever I open it up, I love seeing it and, and honestly to get that to stick. Um, you know, if you’re just using wallpaper or not wallpaper, scrap of paper, you can do something called mod podge. It’s really cheap. It’s like $6 for a bottle. It’s a glue, but it’s also a sealer, right? Because if you’re lining your, you can even line a desk, the top of a desk, if you’re using this, this a wallpaper, I’m probably even wallpaper. But if you’re using, let’s say scrapple paper, you, you don’t want to spill anything on it and then the paper’s ruined. So you can just do maybe one or two coats of, of this mod podge. It’s a deck [inaudible] basically. But the brand name is called mod podge. You can do one or two layers. They’ve got a satin finish and then there’s one that’s glossy. I tend to like the sat in one better and um, and it just seals it in. And so now you’ve got some drawers and um, you know, dresser fronts that just look amazing with these pops of pops of color.

Eric: I would’ve never,

Serena: yeah. And also too, you can line, you can take fabric. I mean, gosh, my mind is going with all these different ideas. You can even take fabric and I’ve done this where I’ve lined, I found these two, Oh gosh, I don’t even know what, I forget what style of of end tables they were, but they were, they were actually bedside tables and I painted them and took some really cool, like a fabric that had French writing on them and I’m mod podge them to the front of these, these bedside tables and look so good. I’ll have to send you a picture of it. You want to link to it. Um, but yeah, but just using the mod podge sealed it in, made sure that it wasn’t going to come up at the corners and you know, protects that fabric so that it’s like waterproof. So just lots of fun ideas.

Serena: Who knew? Yeah. Well we’re almost at a time, but we were going to talk about spray paint a little bit cause I think people use spray paint badly and you seem to quite good at it. Yeah, I, you know, spray paint is the first thing that I had gravitated towards when I started learning how to paint furniture or I should say teaching myself how to paint furniture. And you know, you, you can use spray paint to paint furniture, but I tend to tell people, you know, keep spray paint for the, the like let’s say the planters or you know, if there’s flower, you know, other flower pots or if you want to, you know, any small little thing that you want to paint. I think spray paint is great furniture. I think, eh, stick with the furniture paints for the big pieces of furniture. But in terms of like getting a good finish like you, you have to look at the surface and say, okay, is this going to be a good surface to spray?

Serena: Um, they actually make primers that go in the spray paint. So if you go to like home Depot, Lowe’s, any of these stores, you will actually see spray paints that have primer in them. But you should probably, if you want this to last, if, if, if this is something that you’re going to use. Like for example, a couple of my videos I did play house make-overs, you know those little Tikes plastic playhouses, they’ve done really well on my channel. And if you watch that video, you’ll see some people comment unit and use a primer. It’s gonna scratch. The thing is I was just trying to get the project done so, but if you are spray painting anything that has like plastic, definitely you can rough up the surface a little bit with maybe let’s say like a 100 and no, I would say like a very fine two 20 grit sandpaper.

Serena: You have to be careful because if you’re, if you’re doing something that’s plastic, any of those scratches could come through the paint. But if you don’t want to rough it up, just make sure that you’re using the primer regardless because that’ll help it to stick and then wait till that dries and then use your spray paint. But here’s a little tip. So if you’re a dark spray paint, try to find a primer. That’s a dark, they have dark primer, like a dark gray because what will happen is if you use let’s say a white primer and a dark spray paint, now you’ve got the white coming through and you’re going to have to use more spray paint just to cover all that white. So dark color, dark primer, light color, light primer. And then also too, if you’re spray painting metal, um, I had done some videos with Rustoleum over the summertime and um, if you’re painting metal, you definitely want to get there.

Serena: The, the spray paint, that’s for metal cause it’ll help to prevent, prevent rust and they actually have metal primers too. So keep that in mind, make sure you’re using the right spray paint. But then also to, you know, a lot of times if you’re spray spray painting something your finger gets, I don’t know if you’ve spray painted recently, but your finger gets so tired as you’re trying to spray this paint. And if you’re getting tired in your fingers only pressing down a little bit, it’s going to start sputtering. So I would recommend, I don’t know if other brands make this, I know Rustoleum does. It’s a little handheld trigger that yeah, it just basically just snapped onto the spray paint. So when you pull that trigger, the top, you know, the little thing will come down and spray the paint spray paint for you if you go to spray spray gun.

Serena: Exactly, exactly. And I think that’s good too for people, especially people that might have arthritis in their hands. It’s hard for them to get that, that fine motion of just continuously pushing this little, you know, nozzle spray. So definitely, you know, use one of those little, um, I don’t know the name of it, but you could probably link to it down below in your show notes. Um, that works really well when you’re spray painting. And then in terms of distance, you, you want to keep it back probably about six to eight inches, but do a test first because what I found is that certain spray paints, I don’t know why some of them come out really fast and then some of them just seem like they’re just very low. Like a very light mist. So get a feel for the spray paint before you do it on your actual project.

Serena: And what I would recommend, you know, those lazy Susans that you can put in the middle of your table and when you’re having like guests over and you put the lazy Susan there so you can turn the food. I’m probably aging myself, but in your cabinet you probably have a lazy Susan too, right? Um, if you have a way to easily turn your project, what’s that? Yeah, the thrift store does. Right? Um, and you can even make a lazy Susan too. It’s very simple. It’s just a lazy Susan. You can get to two wooden. Um, if you go to home Depot, they’ve got these little, Oh gosh, it’s, if you look it up, it’s called a lazy Susan hardware and it’s basically like ball bearings and two squares of metal. And you would just take, you know, two pieces wood and just put them together and put that little lazy Susan in the middle.

Serena: Because when you put your projects on there and as you’re spraying, you can easily move this thing from side to side so that you can keep going. Otherwise you have to move yourself when you’re spray painting. So that could be a fun project to do. Make a lazy, there’s an, and then you have something to set your projects on when you’re spray painting. Um, and you want to keep it going too. So, you know, definitely don’t get close because then when you’re too close, you get the runs. And if I get runs in my spray paint, I try to just take a little towel, like a lint free towel and just kind of dab them. And if you dab them and then spray over it, you should be able to cover it up. But once it dries and you’ve got runs, you’re not really going to be able to stay on that cause it’ll, it’ll turn very gummy. So you want to catch those runs when you’re, when you’re doing your spray painting, don’t wait till it dries and just keep it at a healthy distance. Wow. That was pretty good for for Oh my gosh. Wow. I know I talk a lot to get a lot out in person.

Eric: That’s, so I actually, it’s kind of my one thought is the whole idea of buying a darker spray paint primer is totally like when you paint a room, I always take the top coat color and dump some into the primer

Serena: [inaudible]

Eric: so I tend to primer with the top coat.

Serena: Very smart, very smart. There was one other thing I wanted to say. I meant to, I meant to tell you this as you were telling your story, remember that comment you said a few minutes ago and you were talking about you, you were, you were putting up wallpaper and you made some mistakes and I said, I want to, I want to tell you something about that. I was going to say that I love, that’s the kind of way that I, I organize my videos. I love that when, when we put ourselves out there and we make these mistakes because you know, we’re, we’re creating content for people to learn from, right? We’re not, we’re not just entertainers. We’re not trying to just, you know, make your evening go faster and just give you something to smile and keep going. We want to teach you something. And so I did a project yesterday, in fact, I don’t know if you’ve seen it on my channel, but it was a chair, like a rocking store chair that I got from the thrift store.

Serena: And um, I was going to refinish this, but I was going to use wood repair markers, no painting, no stripping nose re-staining, anything like that. And the chair turned out beautiful, but I had a little mishap because in the packet of markers there was a little alcohol, a little alcohol pad. And it says, if you put too much marker, can you know, wipe it off? Well I did. I said, well, let me try this out so I can show people how it works. And I took the alcohol pad and I wiped like the entire side of the chair and it started drying out and it looked horrible and I left it in there. You know, and I told people, when you’re using this, make sure you only put this on that little area, do not wipe your entire furniture. And the brand that I was working for, um, to do this using their product, they were a little, uh, they were a little worried that I’d put that in there.

Serena: And I think I, the reason I’m bringing this up is because, you know, if a lot of times brands don’t realize that what may look like a negative thing is actually a positive thing. Like people want to see us make mistakes because it shows them what could happen and what not to do. And so I just wanted to tell you that little story because it was, it was kind of funny when I found out that they were worried that I’d put that information in there and I’m like, they don’t realize that’s a good thing. Like we have to show mistakes because it makes us human. And then it shows people how to use this product without, you know, destroying their pro, their project. It wasn’t destroyed. The chair actually turned out. It’s beautiful. It looks really good. But yeah, I just wanted to share with you keep putting the mistakes in there because people love to see us mess up so that they don’t mess up.

Eric: I saw the thumbnail of that video on your, on your channel. I just haven’t watched it yet. Um, I kind of, I find myself going down a rabbit hole with YouTube on my iPad and then, and I’m like, I got to go back to work, you know?

Serena: Yes, I do that too.

Eric: All right. So we can find you on Instagram and YouTube. Is there any other, any other social places that you’d like to go?

Serena: Well, I’m pretty active on both of those. YouTube is kind of really become my number one, but you can find me thriftdiving.com. I’m putting out blog posts and I respond. I try to respond to every comment if I can. Um, but yeah, I’m like thrift diving is just a community and come check me out.

Better habits can seem hard to create, but today Will and I talk about how average people like ourselves can be better at doing stuff, aka, Getting Stuff Done.

I roll my eyes at a lot of these articles that list out the top 5 ways you can make better habits, or how the Über People of the world get stuff done. Most of us are not able to live on 4 hours sleep and wake up at 4 am to start writing a business plan.

I wake up and have to walk the Labradors. Which I am totally fine with. I like walking the pups with my wife.

So with this caveat in mind, Will and I go through an article on daily habits of high achievers. We talk about those we can relate to and how no one is perfect. Right?

Will does admit to his bad habit of drinking soda, way too much soda.

Will and I also talk a bit about the meditation app that is good for depression, Headspace.

And of course, being solar geeks, we talk more about small solar panel projects, because we can.

Eric: Hey, how you doing? Thanks for downloading the show. My name is Eric. This is GardenFork Radio. thanks for coming back. There’s more and more people coming back. That’s kinda neat. if this is your first time here, this is me, Eric, the kind of eclectic DIY guy. I mean whatever comes into my head, I make a video about, and this is the companion podcast, which is an even more all over the place. it’s not just a woodworking show, it’s, it’s more of a backhoe and solar panel show actually. And speaking of that, well Wallace from the weekend, homestead is here. Hello sir.

Will Wallus: Good morning. How are you today?

Eric: I’m good. I’m intrigued by two projects you’ve done lately, so that’s why I thought, why don’t you come on the show? And then we both read this one article about daily habits that separate high achievers from everyone else. So I am not a high achiever and you are,

Will Wallus: well, I appreciate the compliment. Thank you.

Eric: Or at least you like mainline red bull or something.

Will Wallus: You know, you just got to get up in the morning and decide what you want to be that day and then work on it all day long. And if you don’t make it try again the next day.

Eric: Well that’s the thing I think, I don’t know where I read this, but I’m, you know, I read some of these, some of these minimalist podcasts and you know how to be better. We’re at the world and gets tough done and there’s been this movement, I’m sure. I think a lot of these tips and hacks are just kind of re circulated every 10 or 15 years and this one is don’t have a list of to do things, have one thing to do and get that one thing done. So it’s very similar to your saying get up and start.

Will Wallus: Yeah, I mean, just decide what is the most important thing that you have to do, whether it’s someone’s relying on you or you’re relying on somebody else or you know, something that you have to do because something else has to happen or something you want to finish because you started it the previous day and, you know, just keep working through it and, you know, bring the people in your lives along with you on the journey in it. It, it always works out.

Eric: Yeah. So I struggle with getting things done. I am easily overwhelmed. my sister was visiting and we went to the grocery store. This might be too much information, but I will share it anyway. But I, I cook almost every night. We rarely order food for delivery. I just, I just think it’s important to cook. And my sister was visiting and we went to the grocery store and I never know what I’m going to make. I rarely do. And I just kind of look around and go, Oh, maybe I could do this or this or that. And I kind of started to, I wouldn’t call it a moment of anxiety, but I would just say I couldn’t make a, and my sister didn’t know quite what to do. And she’s like, well, why can’t you just make a decision? I’m like, cause I can’t, I’m just having a meltdown in the grocery store.

Will Wallus: You don’t want to make the wrong decision.

Eric: Right. So I don’t know why I went on this tear, but, Oh, but then there are these people that you read about in the magazines and on the blogs and these new, these life hacker kind of sites about how they get everything done. And I, I think more of us are a hot mess than we are the super efficient people,

Will Wallus: you know, and I know you say that, I can get a lot of things done and I’m, I’m pretty organized. But you know, in all reality, behind the curtain, you’re exactly right. Everybody is a hot mess. I mean, I have things that are going very well. I have things that are not going very well and you’ve just got to, you know, look at things. And I go back to [inaudible] and even looking at this list of the 25 things that they have on the list. Number 25 is, you know, visualize success. I think I said this a dozen times on this podcast and, and when I talk about things in my videos, visualize what the end result is going to be. If you’re going to bake a cake, visualize that cake in your head and think, okay, here’s what that cake is going to be.

How Will does better habits:

Will Wallus: And then work backwards to the point that you’re at and that will give you your to do list of things you need to do to get it done. And then you don’t miss anything along the way. And projects, anything in life really falls back to that one. And that’s probably the one that I, I think about the most is I think about what I want the end result to be or what I’m trying to achieve and then just work backwards from it. And is there going to be variations and deviations along the way? Sure. But as you’re going down that journey to succeeding at whatever you’re doing, you just have to learn to adjust and you can’t be rigid. And because of that, that’s how you can be more successful at, at different things throughout your life. Whether it’d be a big project, a small project, something you need to do in the morning or something that’s a life goal for yourself.

Eric: I’ll read a quote, it’s from inc magazine and I’ll put it in the show notes here. It says, the process of visualization is a key part of my daily routine when I’m in bed, in the shower, excuse me, on my way to work. I’m constantly visualizing important calls, meetings and presentations. By playing out those big moments in my head and picturing myself succeeding, I build confidence and I’m able to perform at my best. And that’s from ELL, grey of Besky who’s the CEO of Maya systems, which I don’t know what that is, but anyway, someone that is successful I guess. But yeah, I, I visualize what it’s going to look like and I think about how I’m going to do it. And then it’s interesting when I’m doing it that that process can change.

Will Wallus: Yeah, and that’s the thing I think with a lot of people get caught up on is they get caught up into all the minutia and the details of different things and then when they get, they get set in a rigid path and then all of a sudden a water line breaks or some part is missing or you know something happens along the way to finishing whatever you’re trying to succeed at and then they get stuck at that point and they can’t get past it. You have to understand that on any journey you’re going to have challenges. As long as you’re flexible in the process of getting to the end of that journey of whatever it is you’ll be successful because you’ll make it through. You won’t get stuck and I think that’s where a lot of people get hooked up on on that one is they’re like, Oh, I met this point and I can’t get any further. Well let’s just work our way around it.

Eric: One of the other things I liked here was start your day switched off. I find there’s a lot of value in getting a process set up each morning to clear my head and tee the day up unencumbered by distraction. I avoid email and phones first thing, taking time off to start the day calmly and I exercise every morning to activate my brain and get energized each day. And that’s something that everyone can do. You don’t have to have a personal trainer for that, you know? I know, I know people look at their phone in bed and I’m not, I, you know, I’m like, I’m not in bed with them, but I just, I can tell because I’m getting messages from them and I’m like, I don’t, I don’t look at email until the middle of the day.

Will Wallus: So here’s a question for you. I think it’s like number one, number four and number nine, all say Tea and you just said the word tea. And I’m thinking, okay, Eric’s getting teed up for the day. He’s making tea. Why do you drink tea instead of coffee?

Eric: Oh, you don’t want to see me on coffee! It’s, the caffeine is too strong. I have found that the caffeine helps, when I have, when I’m feeling depressed, which is often, and we’re going to talk about that actually pretty soon here, but,  I love coffee. I absolutely love how it makes me feel, but it makes me feel like there’s 110 volt extension cord plugged into the back of my neck, you know, and my brain is sizzing, but I’m like , I can’t live that way. So tea has enough caffeine to keep me teed up a bit as for a lack of a better word. But coffee is too strong.

Will Wallus: Interesting. You have a 110 hookup and I have a 220 always hooked up. Right. Three-phase. So,

Eric: and then depressants didn’t work for me. what worked for me was a exercise meditation and a little bit of caffeine.

Will Wallus: Do you still use, I know on a couple of podcasts ago, maybe about a year ago, you were talking about the Headspace app. Do you still use that or do you use an app to do

Eric: Oh, I love Headspace. I’m a Headspace evangelist. It’s changed my life. So yeah, it’s you know, you just have what’s called monkey brain. I call it the hamster wheel. And it, I’m able to, I don’t have to turn it off, but you’re like, you learn to not pay attention. That crap that’s going on, that your brain is cranking out. And you also learned that you as a person are not your thoughts and your feelings. You can, and you learn to let go of those thoughts and feelings instead of them running through your head at 4:30 in the morning. You know? So yeah, the Headspace app is great. It is not cheap, but you know, what’s an hour therapy cost? You know, it’s like, I think the Headspace app is $90 a year or something, its taught Andy who started the app, taught me how to meditate, let me know that it was okay to have thoughts in your head. You’re never going to be, your head’s never going to completely empty. And now they have a whole section on sleep. And I have a friend who can’t sleep at night. Then I’m trying to get them to use the app, but he thinks it’s too like hippy woo, you know? And I’m like, no it’s not. It’s just, you know. So that was a long answer but there you go.

Will Wallus: I’m curious. The article is at 25 simple habits that separate the, the successful achievers from everyone else. I’m curious  if we posted this, what everybody else’s comments would be on which ones they liked. I mean I said I liked number 25 and you were talking about number four and number nine. I’m curious what everybody else’s feedback would be on this.

Eric: Well let’s put this on the Facebook group. I’ll post it in our show notes there and you can all email us radio@gardenfork.tv about that had, if I was more organized, I would have posted this ahead of time before we did the show. But my other thing is, okay, two thoughts here. I have worked with very wealthy people and very famous people in my life and they are just as much train wrecks as everybody else. And then there’s some of them that are laser focused and as soon as I meet them, I can tell that they’re like that because they almost look right through you and they’re moving onto the next thing. it’s very interesting to see that. But I think articles like this are filling space in a magazine or a website and they get a call called a listicle. It has, you know, five ways to be better at this or whatever, you know, and they, they trend very well. They get shared a lot. I shared it with will, you know, and I was like, Hey, let’s do this. So, and that, you know, we’re, we’re not, everyone can do these 25 things and some of them are really like obvious, like get outdoors for physical activity. So we’re reading them, but don’t you in your car or on the, you’re on exercise bike, don’t feel like you have to do all these 25. Figure out what works for you. And share that with us: radio@gardenfork.tv

Will Wallus: I’ll have to say, I mean I’m glad we picked this article and not the 10, things you need to do to get it in the perfect body for the Christmas season. Cause I mean I was working on that one but I’m glad we picked this one instead.

Eric: Well, Rebecca, our dietitian kind of gave us hints about what to do about that. You know,

Will Wallus: I was interested because I posted that a, a piece about the drinking soda in the garden fork discussion group and I thought, you know, I was just trying to do it a little as a joke, you know, cause they just, it’s, it’s my bad habit. I, I have a bad habit. I’d just throughout the day I’ll grab a can of Coke or you know, a Sprite or some type of carbonated beverage and I just drink it. That’s of any of my bad habits. That’s the one I, I have a really hard time breaking and a lot of people had some good suggestions on them and I’ve tried a couple of them this week and it just, it just isn’t the same. I don’t know what it is, it’s just maybe the rhythm or the habit, but you know, when you’re around that kind of stuff all the time, it’s just really easy to pick it up and go. So I appreciate everybody’s feedback on that. But it was a, it’s a habit. I think I’d have a hard time breaking.

Eric: Yeah. Like I try not to eat a lot of sugar and part of that is I just don’t keep cookies and snacks and stuff in the house, so, but yeah, so, anyway, Rebecca is the garden fork dietician. She was on the show last week or the week before. very interesting about eating better and really simple ways to eat better. So do you have, do you want any, you do you have a instant pot recipe for rice and beans? Cause I’m the ones I’m finding I’m underwhelmed by. So I’m curious if you all have something I’m going to hear from. I know we’re going to hear from Kevin who is, the quiet force behind garden fork radio. I liked, I always would get a followup, email from him about all sorts of interesting stuff. So, Hey, real quick here, I was wondering if you wanted to join the garden fork email list.

Now for stuff other than better habits:

Eric: I wanted to jump ahead because on Facebook, on your weekend homestead, Facebook feed and Instagram feed, you posted that you were digging a trench. Was it around a driveway or a building?

Will Wallus: both actually. I have, a garage that was built into a Hill, oddly enough where they did the concrete block around the outside and then the earth was up against the building and then they, they put a roof on top of it and I’ve always had water in that building always. It’s just, it’s, it’s always there and I’m like, okay, we need to fix this. And in the process it’s interesting but we found out that the building had actually never, that concrete block was never attached to the slab. So the earth pushed the block across the slab in some spots, six inches into the building. Yup. Over the years. And when we dug it out and it was a lot of hand digging, I think myself and three other guys hand dug for two days with five gallon buckets, getting the dirt out of there cause you couldn’t get equipment in there. And we found out that the reason why the water was getting in is the earth had filled up along the building and then pushed the building over. So then water was getting underneath the block. So we needed to fix that. So that’s what that project was.

Eric: And you know what’s pushing that is, is the water freezing in the winter? Yup. Because water expands when it freezes and it is very powerful. I had to replace the front wall of my little house upstate. The, the wall just blew in. You know, it just is, it just literally pushed into the basement with cinderblock tumbling and it was like that for years with water running in the front. And that was a lot of work. So I actually have a real fascination with hydrology and drainage and I have a video about French drains, but I was always curious why it’s called a French drain and I can’t really find any, even like Wikipedia doesn’t have much of a background story on that, you know?

Will Wallus: Yeah. I mean really what you’re offering water is the path of least resistance cause it’ll, it’ll take whatever path you have out there. So the idea of a French drain, I don’t know the origins of it, I mean probably somewhere in France or something, but the garden fork historian will tell us that. But the, the idea is basically having a area where water can seep into a place and it has an easy path to get out of that place. And that’s what we did. We dug down 18 inches along the building and then about 18 inches out and made a cavity below the slab all the way around, put some pea gravel in and then put fabric. Most important, you have to put a fabric in there to keep all the little particulates out of it and then put the tube tube in with the, another piece of fabric over the top of that and then just pitched it the right way all the way around the building.

Will Wallus: And then we went all the way along the side of the driveway cause it always flooded along the driveway also. So I wanted to give kind of a little ditch to get the water out of there. And the hope is, is that it dries out that space cause that garage is eventually going to be my shop because I’ve committed and I’ll have it in, in the ether here and garden fork that I’ve committed to building a new garage for my wife next year. So that the deal is, is that I could do some work on the current garage to get the water out of it so I can use it as a shop and a maker space. And then she will get a new two car garage in the spring.

Eric: So let me read from Wikipedia. A French drain is a trench filled with gravel or rock or containing a perforated pipe that surface water and groundwater away from an area, a French drink, and have perforated hollow pipes along the bottom to quickly vent water that seeps down through the upper gravel. French drains are primarily used to prevent ground and surface water from penetrating or damaging building foundations or as an alternative to open ditches, our storm sores for streets and highways. So yeah, basically it’s a trench and then in the bottom of it you put some gravel because the gravel has airspace around it. And then a drain pipe that has usually holes drilled along the bottom third of the pipe. So there’s a trough in there and that is covered with some sort of filter material. They sell like a sock. It looks like a really long tube sock that you can slide over.

Eric: Drain pipe and water seeks the easiest path. So if the water is in dirt and it finds that, Oh, there’s this open space, it will follow that. And you can, most people try and do it like I think a quarter inch per foot or so as far as a pitch and make it go somewhere or you can put it into a dry, well if you’re working with a flat area that you can’t drain away, I mean the drywall is like a three foot wide hole in the ground that’s four or five feet deep and you fill it with a rock that has again airspaces around it or they make dry Wells out of cement and plastic. It’s a big open barrel with a top on it and you will pipe the drain pipe into that dry well. The water collects there and slowly percolates into the soil.

Will Wallus: Interesting item on the drywall. for a person who’s considering it, I suggest taking a five gallon bucket, filling it with water, digging a hole, and then dumping water into that hole. And what’ll happen is you have to see how fast it drains away. If you come back two days later and that water is still there, you’re probably going to have to put a solid floor in that drywall and put a pump in there because the water doesn’t what’s called perk tester perk away from the area that the water is in. So if you are having an interest in doing something like this, a simple test would be dig a hole in the ground, dump some water in it and see how long it takes before it drains away. If it takes a long time, you might have to think of some more aggressive things to do versus if it drains away right away, you, you could probably get away with the easier route.

Eric: So when you dug away from the back wall, the cinder block garage wall, did you then put a waterproofing material on the garage, the cinder block wall before you filled it back in?

Will Wallus: Yeah. Actually I completely forgot to even take photo or video of that part cause we were just kind of cruising along. But have you ever seen the material they use for rubber roofs? You know, I had a big, I have a rubber roof. Okay. So I bought a 20 by 20 sheet of that and then we cut it into, I would say probably 24 inch sections. So now I have these long strips that are 20 feet long and are two feet tall. And what we did was, we hammer drilled along the top of the block and basically put a skirt on the building and then draped that rubber material along the edge of the block. And then along the seam of the foundation down underneath to the bottom of where the French drain is. So then any water that comes towards the building will come down on the wall, hit that and they get directed into the French drain versus directed into the building.

Will Wallus: And then we took something called Roof Jack. It’s this bucket of tar material, which by the way wear clothes that you don’t care about cause you will never ever get this stuff off of there. And we, applied Roof Jack to the underside of the building and then we stuck the rubber material to it and made basically a little redirect on the side of the building. And that rubber was pliable enough that it went around to all of the oddities of the block because after 50 years of that block moving, it’s not nice and smooth. It’s very jagged and, and a wavy and that a rubber just adhered right to it and the roof Jack made it stick and now the whole underside of the building is sealed, which will hopefully keep even more water out.

Eric: I think the material you’re using is called EPD M the roofing material could very well be, it’s also used to line the bottom of a shower stalls and stuff. Have you put it like a tile shower? Stalin?

Will Wallus: Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s an interesting material and the trick with it, and I learned this from the guy at the home improvement store was he said, I know that you’re working in an area that’s kind of cold, leave it in your house and let it stay warm, cut it and then go out and install it. He said once it starts to really cool down and if it gets cold, it gets really hard to cut and it bends and sometimes it’ll crack and it’ll have brittle spots in it if it’s a cold when you put it on. He said if you put it on and it’s warm, it works a lot better. So that’s what we did. We left it in the sunroom for, you know, a day or two to really warm it up and then it just, it kind of just stuck almost like saran wrap to the building.

Eric: Yeah, they use it also to a waterproof around windows. When you’re putting in a new window, you know, you’ve got the w the frame, the two by four frame of the window hall. You put this material all the way around. I learned this from this old house and then you put those slide the window in from the outside and then you put more material around that window and it works quite well.

Will Wallus: Yep. They actually make rolls specifically for windows that are like six inches or eight inches. Why this stuff was huge. I mean it was a two person lift to pick up the container because it’s supposed to cover, you know, 200 square foot roof and we cut it into little strips but you know, it’s it, they didn’t make a material for what we were doing, so we just found a material that would work.

Eric: You know, my other thought here is that you use that kind of black slinky pipe, right? Yup. But I’m on my French drain video people. There are people that complain about that pipe saying that it deteriorates or crushes very easily. And I’ve never seen that. But I’m wondering if anyone out there knows about that or do you?

Will Wallus: Well, I will say that I had that same concern, but the one thing that I looked at was where we were putting this, if you ever looked at any of the pictures that I posted, the space between the garage and the house or the, between the garage and where the earth is, is so small, the likelihood of anybody walking over the top of that space or vehicles driving over it or going through a yard, it’s never gonna happen. So when we got around to the outside where the edge of the building is, and then all of a sudden I went down the driveway, I changed from the slinky pipe to the plastic pipe, the solid stuff where people would be walking. So that then I actually saved myself probably about 30% on the project by putting the slinky pipe in around the area where nobody would walk an old you putting the hard pipe in where people would be. So it’s one of those things where I just, I don’t wanna say cut the corner, but it was one of the things to keep the, the budget in line cause we just, you know, can’t necessarily just make everything super expensive. Sometimes you have to take the easier path and it works just as well.

Eric: Oh the Wikipedia page here is a pretty detailed, I mean usually Wikipedia is like talking about English history or something like that, but whoever, whoever edited this thing did a deep dive on French drains here.

Will Wallus: Someone is a French drain expert out there and they’re like, I’m in charge of the Wikipedia page.

Eric: Yeah. It because literally it was edited on September 20th, 2019 that was the last time it was edited. So that’s like, Holy cow, maybe I should put a link on this page to my YouTube channel.

Will Wallus: You know, I never really thought about using Wikipedia for a DIY projects to look up at history or look at information. You know, I’ll, I’ll do some searches online on Google and stuff like that. But I had never really thought to do a deeper dive into the house. And the wisest, something known how it works before you even get into it.

Eric: One of the footnote references is to a book called guidelines on the construction of horizontal subsurface drainage systems.

Will Wallus: Right. That’s a page Turner. That author really writes some good stuff.

Eric: Yeah, I got that. One of my, nightstands. Yeah.

Will Wallus: Perfect.

Eric: the garden fork radio podcast is brought to you by the garden fork patrons. Those are people that really liked the show and make a monthly contribution. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Patrion before, but that’s the service that we use for this. You can sign up for $3 a month, $5 a month, 10 really whatever you want. if you are strapped for cash, do not send me cash. Okay. But, you know, $3 cup of coffee, $5 is not a latte. I don’t drink lattes. But, anyway, what I do in return is you have my eternal thanks. And I also post some behind the scenes stuff. photos of stuff I’m working on. I have, I call it the woods walk. I’m usually in the woods, but just about every, I do an audio recording, it’s like a custom podcast for my patrons.

Eric: And you can listen to that by email or I think you can do an RSS feed or it’ll show up in the Patreon app, which is I think a really cool app to use to keep up with garden fork and coming when I get my active to set it up is video. So some, some exclusive behind the scenes video stuff of what I’m working. Like I worked with my tractor this weekend and I didn’t make a video about it, but the garden for patrons knew about it, you know, so, so it’s that kind of thing. I moved a lot of, well there was a dead white pine. We cut up and I had to move it and the tractor was working very well for that. Anyway, information about that is in the show notes to the show here. You can go to patreon.com/garden fork and check that out. I would appreciate you considering that. All right, back to the show.

Eric: So the last thing I was thinking about is you were building another little solar system with a insulated battery box.

Will Wallus: Yes. Yes. A solar panel system number two is a one I’m working on right now and my maker space slash garage, there leaks. It doesn’t anymore. It’s been dry ever. ever since we’ve done this. But we also haven’t had any rain cause it’s 10 degrees outside right now. But that’s a whole nother topic. Yes. no. So I, last year I built a box that how’s two batteries in it and I used it to run my solar panel system up in my pole barn where in Wisconsin it gets cold in the winter time and batteries, they don’t mind the cold, but when it gets, you know, 10 degrees outside or 30 below, it gets challenging. So I was trying to think of how do I make a space where I don’t want to heat the whole pole barn, but could I heat a space for the batteries?

Will Wallus: And what I did was we built an insulated box that had, insulated a foam, two inch paneling in it on the bottom of top and all the sides and basically made a miniature Yeti cooler, if you’re familiar with that brand of super insulated cooler. And then I have sealed batteries that don’t off gas that I put inside of that box. Well now I have those by those batteries contained in a small space. I’m trying to think, well how am I going to heat that little space cause you don’t want to put something that has a flame in there and everybody because then you have to deal with fuel and so on and batteries warm. Yup. So I came up with this little trick and so far it’s been working really well for us, which is actually stealing something from garden fork. You guys had a video about using the seed, starting electric mat.

Will Wallus: And so I bought one because I was going to start some seeds and I never started them ever because they just, for whatever reason, I never got to it. And, I had it in the garage so I hooked it up to what’s called a kilovolt or a kilowatt, which is this little meter that reads how much power something’s using. Cause when you have something in solar you will always need to make sure you know how much power is being used and what the draw is because you don’t want to overuse your system. So I plugged in the seed starting mat and I let it run for a couple of days to see what the test results would be of how much power it used. And it didn’t use very much power. So then I took an idea from another garden fork post that you guys had about thermostatic switches, which is an electric switch that only turns on when the temperature falls below a certain temperature.

Will Wallus: And I put the seed starting Matt and that together and put it inside of the box. And then I put it out on my driveway for a week in January in Wisconsin. And I put a little thermometer in there that read the high temperature and the low temperature inside and out. And what it did over that week was it was 10 2030 below outside, but the average temperature inside the box over that week was 30 degrees. Oh cool. Now I have a super insulated heated space and I looked at the power usage and it was less than a 10 watt light bulb. So in all reality, that box was able to hold the temperature and my batteries had so much power in them and my panels would refresh it at such a rate that I would never run out of power because ultimately there would always be some sunlight to charge a little bit to make up for the light bulb that would be used inside of that space. And so I’ve been, I’ve now had batteries that stayed above temperature for the last year in my pole barn. Fast forward to today. Now I’m making the second version of that for a project I have out in the woods called pine cone camp. I’m putting power out there and I’ve kind of come up with a new design for the box to do basically the same thing.

Eric: Sweet. Yeah, I saw that and I was like, I don’t know, I just kind of am big into solar. So I was like, Ooh, Ooh. Another thing to build.

Will Wallus: Well, here’s the interesting trick on this one is I wanted it out in the woods and I was trying to figure out a way, do you like clad the outside of the box with some metal or do you, you know, put a some vinyl siding on it or something to protect the box? Because the one in my pole barn, it never gets wet or rainy or anything like that because it’s inside the building. This one would be outside in the elements and I happen to be walking through Costco and I saw one of those, I don’t know what they’re called. LifeProof or lifetime benches that you’d put like your cushions in for your patio furniture.

Eric: Oh yeah, those outdoor I D they’re from this, they’re from the boating community. They’d been transferred to the backyard. They’re like a waterproof storage tub.

Will Wallus: Yeah, it’s like a a a locker, like a, a little bench locker thing. And I measured the inside of it and I figured out that I could fit the battery box and the equipment inside of that box. So I bought one and I’m modifying that plastic box cause that’s for the most part Rhoden proof for the most part. Yeah. And I’m putting the plywood box with all the installation, everything inside. So out in the wilderness it’ll just look like there’s a random LifeProof box, you know, sitting out in the woods and when you open it up inside will be all of the components for the the solar panel. And then I just trenched in from underneath where all the wires go out to the building. So it just looks like a little yard box out there. But actually houses the heated battery container for the solar stuff.

Eric: Well good for you man. Soon you can. You can put your electric meter and just live out there alone.

Will Wallus: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someday. Huh? Probably my wife likes to use the hairdryer and that’s just, that’s challenging.

Eric: Yes it is. The lights dim in my house on that thing turns on. So, so a, I think people have reached their destination here, but we do have a new iTunes review. Let’s hear it. You can, write a review right from the podcast app. If you have an iPhone. I’m not sure if you can do it from an Android phone, but, I think everyone has an iPhone, right? Right. Anyway, it’s by, okay. A and I read the, and I wonder who O K eight is at Oklahoma eight or O K eight is what’s that call where they like kinda like the license plates. They’re trying to spell out a word and using the letters and numbers and stuff. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. You’re talking about, sorry. It says down to earth and informative. Five stars by O K eight.

Eric: I absolutely love this podcast and videos Eric and friends provide an entertaining and easy to listen to show every week. It’s rare to find a podcast my kids can also listen to in the car. I’ve had to edit out some stuff. So, my five-year-old even talked to her kitten guard, sorry, my five year old even talked to her at dinner, kindergarten class about the process of making maple syrup solely due to Eric’s videos. There was a big heart there. Keep up the great work. Yeah, there you go. Neat. That’s awesome. So we’re spreading the word that kindergarten classes, those are future listeners of garden fork.

Will Wallus: That is, you know, it’s amazing to know where your stuff goes. Like you post something online and you get a response from somebody in it and you look at it and you’re like, well, I would’ve never thought that would end up there. But you never know where stuff goes. It always ends up in great places. So

Eric: the maple syrup questions are starting to come in.

Will Wallus: I can’t believe that. I mean, we’re not even to Christmas yet, usually. Isn’t that something that happens in January?

Eric: Right. But I mean, I’m even thinking about it like I want to fine tune my reverse osmosis system, you know, so I’m going to email the guy that wrote the how to about it and I’m going to ask him questions.

Will Wallus: That’d be interesting. I’d be interested to see how that works and how that system, if it really cuts down on the amount of time you spend, because you can spend a lot of time boiling down maple syrup outside and you know, people get into it and they get, Oh I got 700 gallons of SAB. Like, okay, but you know how much boiling that is you have to do. So hopefully that system, you know, knocks that down a little bit and make it easier for folks.

Eric: Oh yeah, I’m well I hope it will cost a couple of dollars there. All right, so there you go. Radio at garden fork dot GV search for us on Facebook. There’ll be all the links for my world and Will’s world in the show notes here and go out and do cool stuff. All right, thank you.

photo source: Wikimedia DoD photo by Lance Cpl. Claudia Palacio, U.S. Marine Corps/Released. Pinterest exercise bike image by Tom Chapman via flickr, creative commons license

Let’s learn how to make furniture with Erik from the urban homesteading website & podcast Root Simple. Erik joins me to talk about beginning furniture making, how he started, organized his workshop, learned woodworking, uses SketchUp and now makes Stickley American Craftsman style furniture. wow.

My friend West Coast Erik (aka Erik Knutzen) has been on the show a few times, and its always fun.

Erik and Kelley’s Root Simple website     The Root Simple Podcast

The Brooklyn Makerspace I am taking classes at FutureWorks MakerSpace

Podcast Transcript:

Eric: Hey, welcome. This is GardenFork Radio. I’m already messing up the introduction here. So Hey, welcome to GardenFork Radio. Thanks for downloading the show. It’s me, Eric, with my eclectic friends. We talk about how to do stuff, DIY, cooking, gardening. I also have a YouTube channel of the same kind of stuff. If this is your first time here today, my friend Erik from Root Simple is here. This is West Coast Erik, welcome sir. We have an amazing Skype connection here. I’m in New York and you’re in LA and it sounds like you’re next door. Yeah, it’s pretty cool technology, isn’t it? If you’re thinking about starting a podcast, just email me radio@gardenfork.tv and I will show you how it’s pretty simple. And if I can have a podcast, everyone can write. So you also have a podcast called the Root Simple podcast and a website called Root Simple.

Erik: Indeed. We’ve been a little sporadic with the podcasts lately, which is why we’re having you on our podcast.

Eric: You’re just using me. So today I wanted to talk to Erik about -I actually subscribe to his email – You can sign up for his email alerts on his website to when he posts new things on his website. And while I’ll let you tell the story, basically it’s gone from some simple handyman work to building an, is it a Stickley mission chair? A Stickley American craftsmen chair? This amazing looking chair you built.

Erik: Yeah, thanks. It was one of my projects and maybe a few weeks ago that I just finished, which was a yes, a Stickley bow arm Morris chair.

Eric: Wow. It’s a beautiful, I mean, I’ve seen them. I have some Stickley knockoffs, which I sent you a picture of and they’re great. I actually, one of them is my meditation chair. The rocker is my meditation chair. But I, you know, so start from the beginning. You, you were renovating your house and you had to make some trim or something. Was that it?

Erik: Well, I’ve been renovating this house since 1998 actually. So it’s been a long haul and I’ve always been kind of a mediocre handyman, let’s say. And you know, the, this work, this, this house rather, really required a lot of work. It’s almost a hundred years old now and it when we got it was in really horrible condition. So kind of the first wave of that was we had to actually hire people to work on the foundation and do some other stuff and you know, I fix things here and there. I even put in a a wood floor actually in the living room the maybe 15 years ago now, but I decided, I guess it was three, maybe four ago now, that I really wanted to specialize in, in woodwork and, and kind of up my skill level so that I could actually make furniture as well as work on some of the trim carpentry and some of the more challenging jobs around the house.

Erik: And I got to say, and I like you, I’m got a lot of eclectic interests, but I just decided, okay, I’m going to focus on this for a while on this one skill in seat at, well, it’s, it’s hard. I mean, you know, I, my, my gym is right next to the central library, so I often will like pop over there and look at all the, do it yourself books and I had to really just like, okay, you’re not allowed to look at this other stuff. You’re just gonna look at the woodworking and carpentry section of the library and focused on that for awhile and see what happens as well as take some classes. So I did that too. Where were, where are the classes offered? Well, luckily for me, there’s a place called Community Woodshop that’s just a short hop away from our house.

Erik: And it’s one of these places where they have classes, but also you can rent time in the shop. I didn’t end up doing that. I ended up putting together my own shop, but the classes were really, really great. They had a basic safety class that I took that was actually a lot more informative than I, I thought it would be, about how not to lose a finger. But also actually learned how to use all the tools. They went over that too. So it was very informative. And then I took another class where we made a simple mallet and that, you know, that was a, there were a number of skills that you learned doing that. And then I took a make a small box class and kind of took it from there.

Erik: And then I started working in my own little shop and building my own little shop at home.

Eric: Does the making of the box was, was that like a dovetail joint box or a simple like Morrison were called mortus and tennon joints are just corner joints or, yeah, it was a, what’d you call them?

Erik: Miter joint, but reinforced with what’s called a spline, which would be easier to show than to explain. But basically it’s a mitered joint with this reinforcement. It actually was a box within a box. So the class was, you know, it was, you know, not really about the object itself but about learning skills. In this case it was, it was how to use a table saw and how to use a few hand tools along with that to get this thing to fix because it would fit rather cause it was pretty intricate. Wow. And that’s the thing about making furniture is that the, the tolerances are a lot smaller than like framing a house or something like that. Not to denigrate, that’s a skill in itself. But this is a little different.

Eric: This might be why they call a chop saw, a chop saw.

Erik: Right. So I learned like, okay, chop saw is not for thinking boxes with you use a table saw for that. I actually learned a way to, to make this kind of like slid like device for the table saw to cut on 90 degree, perfect 90 degree angles. I was one of the things I learned in that, that box class,

Eric: I’ve seen people make those sleds in some of the woodworking videos I’ve watched make the gentleman was channel called Make Something Youtube channel has built that. And I was often curious why it just looked like an easier way to push the wood through the table saw, but it actually does something.

Erik: Yeah, it, I mean there’s different things that makes woodworking confusing is that there’s 10 different ways to do everything. A chop saw just isn’t accurate enough unless you, there are like very super expensive chop saws from Fest tool, which is a, you know, German toolmaker that makes one that will actually make an accurate 90 degree cut. And then table says, come with this little attachment thing that you can use to make the same kind of 90 degree cuts, but they’re actually not very accurate. So you have to make this sled thing because you know, if you’re putting together a box, it’s got to fit. It’s gotta be perfect or won’t fit together. And so this sled thing ensures that you get that perfect cut.

Eric: So then you built a shop in your garage but, and you don’t have a very big garage. It’s not like this giant layout.

Erik: Yeah, no. And that, that was super challenging too because I had to figure out, okay, what, what am I gonna build? What tools do I need to do this? And then how do I squeeze it into this weird, we have this 1920 houses that has a 1922 car model. Model T cars I learned are very small. They’re the size of a sub compact car. So that’s kind of what I have is two a two car garage, but a very small two car garage and the houses on the Hill and the garage is right on the sidewalk, which is a fun actually kind of a fun part of it cause I get to meet the neighbors and chat and, and meet all the dogs being walked and all that. That’s kind of a fun part of my little shop.

Eric: I would be bumping by a lot. Hey.

Erik: Exactly. Well, that’s, that Kelly accuses me of not really doing woodworking there, but just, you know, chatting with people. But so I had to set the shop up and it’s very small. So I have to make careful decisions about what goes in there and out, you know, to be honest, I wish that I had done this when we bought the house because it’s been handy to like know where every tool is so that when I need to fix something I can just grab it. And then also to have like a proper wood a work bench for woodworking, which is just, you know, a substantial wooden table with hold downs and vices, but specifically for woodworking. And that’s been super handy, not just for making furniture, but for working on doors and windows and all the other things you have to do when you own an old house.

Eric: Well, didn’t you use SketchUp to try and lay out this in the garage?

Erik: I did use SketchUp and a SketchUp course is a really handy tool that is free or there’s a free version, I should say. And it’s a three D modeling program. So I’ll tend to use that when I’m laying something out in the house or I want to visualize something or even when I’m just making a box and don’t want to, you know, kind of make mistakes with the, with the construction I’ve had as a, as a teacher I had here recently said, always have a plan, I think was that like, yeah, exactly. But it’s good advice when I’ve tried to wing these things is that’s when bad things happen. But yeah, I use SketchUp to, to lay out this a very small space and, you know to be honest, it, the first pass not quite right. So I had to redo things a little bit, rejigger things, got a few more tools, so had to do it again.

Erik: And I’m actually, it’s close. It’s not quite exactly the way I want it yet. So I’m gonna work a little bit more on some layout and maybe remake things. I’ve, I’ve found actually, another thing is that if the workshop is attractive and inspiring, I, I want to be down there working. So I’m going to tweak it a little more to make it a little, I don’t know, a little more. I mean it’s already, it’s nice, but I want to make it a little nicer. And then like people started hanging out there, which is neighbors will come in. I’ve actually, people have come over for like a beer and stuff. So I thought of like, you know, why don’t I make it so it’s even a little bit more hangout, a ball as well as being a functional space.

Eric: I’m curious about the SketchUp. I looked at it and of course got overwhelmed immediately, but was it hard? How did you learn? Did you, were they are the video, do they have tutorials or you went to YouTube or,

Erik: Well as usual, I jumped right into it and got frustrated and, and then realize, Oh, you should watch the tutorial videos and there’s a series of tutorial videos and if you want to learn it, you really should just sit down and it takes a few evenings, but it’s not super hard to use and sit down and watch those videos, play around with it. And it’s become a very handy tool. Now I will say I’m big on drawing on paper cause I’m old. So I often, if I’m sketching out an idea, I’ll draw it on paper first and then I’ll go to SketchUp. And you know, SketchUp, what, what SketchUp does, which is really nice, is give you precise measurements for things so that then you can take it down to the workshop and make your cuts and know that you’re not gonna come out with one side being too long and not fitting.

Eric: Could I use SketchUp to design my newer, my, this theoretical plywood boat I’ve been talking about for three years and then output like instructions to cut it, the plywood out on a CNC machine.
Erik: That’s something I don’t know. Super well. There is a friend of mine who’s, who does architectural rendering and he knows all about that and he’s done CNC stuff, but I have not done CNC stuff. So I think there’s some extra steps to do. And I’m, I don’t know whether the free version or not will do that or not. It might. I’d have to, I’d have to look that up. So I don’t really know.

Eric: There’s a Makerspace here that I just discovered that is about 13 blocks from my house. Hello. And I’m going to take a welding class there, but they also have a, a CNC machine on a four by eight table and you have to be super qualified to use it, but you can also hire one of the people that works there to run a file for you. You know, you show up at the plywood, hand them them, hand them the file on a thumb drive and they’ll burn. They set it all up and go, you know, run the machine. So I’m very intrigued. My idea is to design a, a simple plywood boat and then have the cut file. People could download it and take it to their local Makerspace.

Erik: That’s cool. I now know there’ll be a video. I’m sure.

Eric: There’ll be several. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was my, so I am fascinated by SketchUp. I just have to sit down. I have to, I guess I have to have a real motivational reason for learning it. And right now I don’t, but who knows, that’ll check a change tomorrow.

Erik: Well, I mean one thing is that I need to do too as I have done full renderings of various rooms in the house and I’ve thought about doing the entire house so that when it comes time, I’m even after just moving furniture around or something, it’s kinda handy cause you can see what it’s going to look like before you lug the stuff around. So I it, it, it’s probably a good idea if you get into it to just do a, a SketchUp drawing of the whole house that you have or your apartment or whatever. So,

Eric: So we, we’ve, we’ve built our nice shop. It is beer friendly, the shop now

Erik: Hopefully what happens next? Well, what happened next was I am obsessed with an arts and crafts furniture, which is, which is, here’s the thing about it, which is funny is it’s out of fashion right now and is really expensive if you want to buy actual antiques. Yes. So I thought, well, why, you know, why spend the money on something no one wants, why not try to make it yourself and all these pieces of furniture in the public domain. Now there’s books, there’s plans online, you can download them. So it’s, that’s what I started doing. So I built my little mallet at th the class, then I built a box, like I said. And then the next thing I did was I made a little tiny Stickley taboret, it’s called a little side table on your site. I thought that would be a good first project cause it had a few joints, a mortise and tenon joints in it and around tabletop.

Erik: And you know, I had to learn how to finish it, which was actually one of the more challenging parts of the project. But I thought it wouldn’t be a good first project and it turned out okay. Not perfect, but okay. Did you use the quarter sawn Oak? Yeah, so that’s another thing that with this particular style of furniture, it’s all quarter sawn white Oak, which I guess I could explain. It’s a way of cutting the wood that leaves a very straight grain and also reveals this kind of, it’s called, they’re called megillah. Larry rays is this very pretty pattern on the wood when you cut it that way. And this particular style of furniture is all basically all white Oak, which actually makes it easy when I go to the lumber yard because I’m not, you know, confused by all the choices. I can just go straight to the white Oak pile and start looking through that and work just with, and I’ve kinda gotten to know how that particular wood behaves, which is actually generally it’s pretty easy to work with because it doesn’t expand and contract a lot.

Erik: And it’s pretty predictable, not always, but it’s fairly easy to use and it looks really, really pretty, I think. And th this particular furniture is really dependent on that Ray pattern, right? It’s all about the Ray pattern. If you try making it with some other wood, it, it ends up looking kind of crude, honestly. What kind of problems, challenges did you run into at the finishing of that? Oh my God. All kinds. So I was doing some Stickley pieces and [inaudible] was a famous furniture designer from around 1900 in your neck of the woods. And he had actually a very, very complicated finishing method that I’m not sure everyone, they were towed at trade secrets too, so I’m not sure people know exactly how he did some of his pieces. One method was by fuming them with ammonia. So you take ammonia and you, you put the furniture in a box or a, a plastic tarp with a bowl of ammonia and that darkens the wood.

Erik: So I tried that actually the little table I fumed and it came out okay. But it’s, it’s a difficult process. It’s not, it’s predictable and you know, it’s a little nerve wracking cause you put all this work into the piece and then fume it and you were, you know, you worry like in my fuming get enough and not fuming it quiet and not, and then it still needs to be tinted too. So he would tint the pieces, he would fume them and then finish them with shellac and wax. And I ended up doing it in a, miraculously it turned out okay. Wow. But I don’t like lurking. It’s kind of, ammonia is dangerous. I was working with janitorial ammonia, so it’s kind of weak. Yup. I didn’t really want to use the full strength stuff cause that stuff is super dangerous. And I ended up finding a method thanks to find woodworking magazine, which is a really tremendous resource on how to do this with basically with dyes and commercial finishes.

Erik: So a multistep process that I’ve been using instead of using ammonia. Although lately I started doing some English style arts and crafts pieces, which just use oil. So just the natural wood, which I kinda like because it’s a lot easier and I like the sort of lighter color to it. So I might do some more of those in the future. And fewer of the American style darker pieces. So is that oil, is that like what they called Danish oil at the hardware store? Yeah, Tung oil, I think I use, I remember that. Yeah. Tongue oil is what I use for, I just did a chair, an English style chair by the architects. CFA. Boise is kind of a weird, quirky chair with a woven seat. And of all the pieces I’ve done, that’s the one I’ve been the happiest with. Making a chair is super challenging.

Erik: But one of the things that I enjoy about is, is that in my small shop, you know, a chair is a smaller piece, so it fits on my tiny work bench and it’s just a little easier. I’ve been to maneuver. Yeah, I did a dresser and a China cabinet and a bookshelf and all those pieces are worse, super challenging just because of their size. They don’t fit on my work bands and you know, trying to spin them around and they’re super heavy too because it’s all solid Oak. So yeah, I’ve been enjoying the smaller pieces.

Eric: So, and you, I mean, you have not been doing this for years and years and years. You just, you, you took a couple of classes and you kind of took on a ran with it, but you’re not, you have, I mean you, you’re very talented, all sorts of things. But this sounds, you’re making it sound very doable.

Erik: It is very doable. So I would recommend, yeah, take a few classes. I, you know, if a talented woodworker would look at my pieces and see all the flaws in them honestly, and I see the flaws in them. Most people don’t see them. But yeah, take a few classes and then I, I’ll mention fine woodworking again because they have a website that’s behind a pay wall. But it’s more than worth it if you want to do this kind of thing because they have hundreds and hundreds of articles going back to the early 1980s that, that you can access once you, you know, pay for the monthly subscription. It’s not that much. I can’t remember what it is, but they also have hundreds of videos too, and they have editors, so it’s they’re pretty careful about the information that they put out if they make mistake to correct it, that kind of thing. And so it’s, it’s really high quality advice and as it’s been in addition to the classes has been super helpful. I’m actually going to take another class to, I am taking a hand tools class that fine woodworking is putting on in San Diego. So I’m looking forward to that because I actually use a, I use power tools and hand tools together. I kind of replicated the way they made these pieces in the 19 hundreds. So that’s a, so I do a little of both.

Eric: So to circle, talk about hand tools, you had a post, which I just sometimes surf your site and I try and find the random article. So it’s all random. You should have just a random post generator there.

Erik: Whatever’s online, whatever crazy thing is on my mind.

Eric: But you got rid of your pegboards in your shop for specific tool holders. And I’m like, I’m like, no, no, no, no. I want to be able to move it all around again. But

Erik: Yeah, so this one of the more controverts you’ll pose it actually cause there are, there are pegboard adherents. I had a, there’s a friend of mine who visited my shop in its pegboard phase named Fred Frederick Federico Tibone, who’s been on this on, on my podcast. And he’s like a, he’s a artist, super, super talented guy. He teaches the shop classes to, to, to young people actually. And he looked at my pegboard and, and he kinda said, ah, do you like that? Pegboard and because here’s the thing about pegboard is I know there are better forms of pegboard, but I had the stuff from the big box store. And honestly, when you go to take a tool off of it, often the little hanger thing would fall out and they’re just not very sturdy. And some of the hand tools are pretty expensive.

Erik: So I need to make sure they don’t fall off the wall. And I in find woodworking at an article on making specific holders for all your tools. Again, it’s easier to see than to describe, but basically you a take a tool and you draw out the negative space for the tool and you make a hanger a specifically for it or a shelf or with a lip and that kind of thing. And it’s more flexible than you would think because you can always pull the, unscrew the holder off the wall plywood wall and make another holder. If you got another different size tool or something like that or add to it, it’s it’s more flexible than you would think. And it’s, it’s sturdier so stuff doesn’t fall off. You know, again, some of the God, the hand planes are super expensive. I don’t want those to fall off the wall. And then the other thing is it looks nice too, which is again, part of like wanting to be in the space, working it, it needs to be pleasant. So I liked that part of it too.

Eric: And it’s like, it’s a beer conversation piece.

Erik: People, people, their eye goes straight to it. It’s where they’re like, wow, this is super organized. Even though, like right now I’m finishing up a bunch of projects and there’s a bunch of scrap wood laying around and crap all over the place. But yeah, the people’s eye goes straight to it. That, you know, I don’t know. They think you know what you’re doing even when you don’t.

Eric: Yeah. That’s how I live. So, so, so to basically paraphrase all this and wrap up, you, you, you’ve always been kind of handy, but then you started, you took some classes and then you started small. We went bigger and now you’re a fine craftsmen.

Erik: I wouldn’t say

Eric: That. I’m working, I’m working up. I progressively, and I have to say it has paid. It is really paid for itself because when it came time to redo this house for the second time first of all, I couldn’t find people to do work. So I had to do it all my, a lot of it myself. So framing the walls making door openings from scratch replicating the molding, making a window completely from scratch and framing that out putting into new hardwood floors. So while I had to invest in education and also invest in tools, I’m pretty sure they’ve paid for themselves at this point. And I like to think of it as like an old wooden ship would always have a place for the car from dirt to work. So every old house needed, it’s the same thing. Wow. I’d never thought of it that way. But yeah. So I can buy new tables on, just tell my family I’m saving the money. But yes, but it’s actually true. Alright, so roots simple.com or the podcast is roots simple. And if you go there probably within a week, you’ll hear me making a very important announcement on the roots that I have yet to tell my own audience. Exclusive. All right. Thank you for your time, sir. Thank you.