The House That Wisdom Built - EP 09: Make Nice, Then Make Dust

Demo Day gets all the glory—but before the dust flies, there’s some serious groundwork to be done. In this episode of Building Brews & BBQ, Vince and Nathan walk through everything that should happen before the sledgehammer swings. From permits and site prep to managing neighbors and expectations, this one’s packed with the kind of wisdom that can save your project—and your driveway.

You’ll hear:

• Why Demo Day is more emotional than most people expect
• How to protect your floors, walls, and sanity
• The real reason to host a “Donuts & Demo” event (and how it helps keep the city off your back)
• What happens when you don’t pull the right permits (hint: red tags)
• Pro tips on asbestos, mold, utility shutoffs, and avoiding DIY disaster
• The difference between building with the neighborhood vs. against it

Plus: How one simple idea from a fellow builder—inviting the neighbors in for donuts—might be the best investment you make all project long.

Send us your favorite demo clip, and let us know—would you show up for donuts and destruction?

Building Brews & BBQ
Instagram: @buildingbrewsandbbq
YouTube: YouTube.com/@BuildingBrewsandBBQ

Hosts:
Vince Longo
longocustombuilders.com
Instagram: @longocustombuilders

Nathan Walters:
massarossa.com
Instagram: @massarossa

Produced by:
Michael Newman
michaelnewmanfilm.com
Instagram: @michaelnewmanfilm

Transcript

Vince (00:00)
Welcome back to another thrilling episode in our series, The House That Wisdom Built. I'm Vince, one of your hosts and- I'm Nathan. And we're here to take you, the listener, through the entire building cycle, whether you're renovating a home, building a home. And this is the fun part, right? Yeah. We just got done doing what I call the monotonous, long drawn out phase of planning, budgeting.

getting those contracts figured out with your builder or contractor. And you've gone through all the hard part. You've done the heavy lifting. We're hoping that you've got at least 85 % of the items that go in your home picked out up to now. That's always the goal before you physically start construction. But you know what today is? That's right. That's right. Yeah, that's Chip's favorite day ⁓ and whoever's getting their house built.

Nathan (00:49)
Demo Day? Demo Day! Well, that's Chip's favorite day,

Miss Chip. Chip off of Fixer Upper. Yeah, they're still doing stuff.

Vince (01:00)
Are they still around? Holy

smokes. I thought he retired. Well, no. Should. Anyway, so here we are at demo day. And that's really important if you're renovating a home, right? Yep, that's You know, it's not gonna be so much, I think we'll just start today with talking about what that looks like in a renovation. What does demo day? And you know, it's not just about bringing a sledgehammer in day one, right? There's some things you gotta do day one. And I wanna bring the homeowners up to speed on that.

before you start putting a sledgehammer through the wall. Kind of like if you're demoing a house, like an infill. Most cities, Oklahoma City where you are, or here in Atlanta where I am, if you're buying a house in the city limits, you're probably going to be tearing it down. So what does that look like? I wanna explain to the listener, Renault, new tear down. And then there's a little bit, and I'll let you, cause you're really good with this, talk about what do you do? There's not really a demo day.

on new construction or site work, but that's a whole nother thing. But maybe in lieu of that, what are the few things you should be thinking about, i.e. what demo day looks like? Maybe it's site preparation or something like that.

Nathan (02:13)
Yeah, how about I'm gonna let you, cause as the, ⁓ as the audience knows here, I don't do as much renovation as you do. You do much more renovation and flips than we do. We've done a few in the past, but I'm gonna let you kind of actually lead us through what you're looking for on either demo day or site tear down day. Is it permitting? Is it, what is it that you guys are having to do to then get ready for construction started?

Vince (02:40)
Yeah, that's actually a good point, because like we talked about a little bit before, what does that look like? Well, here's what it looks like, right? First, it's really, in my opinion, and doing this for over 35 years in business, 25, it's emotional, man. Yeah. You wouldn't think it is, but people that have lived in their house, if you're the listener and you're gonna do a massive renovation of your house, it's one thing if you're doing, I'm gonna fix up this bathroom or paint these rooms, but if you're really transforming the space, it does get emotional. And so I always...

say, hey, take a minute, get pictures in the space, do whatever it is that gets you emotionally, mentally geared up for what's coming because it's a storm coming, right? yeah. And so ultimately what I say is, okay, demo day emotional two is site preparation. We always think, hey, take out the sledgehammer, right? And early on in planning, we're budgeting. Like we talked a lot about budgeting, even for the unknowns, you know, things that

we talked about floor covering and things like that. Well, on your demo day, the first thing you need to do is start protecting all of those surfaces that are not gonna get demolished, right? And what does that mean? Okay, it sealing off areas. Whether you're doing the zip system to seal areas off, ⁓ whether you're doing floor covering, we'll start, and I think it's a great practice, is we start with a RAM board or even better,

because Ramboard is really thick. can get it at your big box stores. It's a little bit more abrasive on the backside. So sometimes what we'll do is we'll start with a brown builder's paper. Don't use the red rosin paper like they used to use under hardwood floors, because it has a bit of an oil to it. So we'll use a builder's paper. It tears easy, but it's a good base coat. We put that down, then we Ramboard over it, right? For that surface protection, it helps with spills, things like that, because...

dirty little secret, what's gonna happen? People are gonna spill stuff. Even though you say no drinks without a cap on it, they're gonna be drinking something and accidentally step back and kick it over. And so you want that moisture protection. And then what we like to do is we get a masonite board. It's about an eighth inch. You can get it again at the big box stores or your suppliers. And it comes in sheets, four by eight, and you can get them a little bit bigger now. But that hard board, they also call it, will lay out.

and taped down in high traffic areas. People coming in and out on top of the RAM board. So we'll go that step further. Is this a little overkill? Yeah, it is until you got to fix them. That's right, exactly. And so we'll recommend doing that, but you're gonna spend, you know, you're gonna spend at least $600 or $700 on that stuff. Oh yeah. But, so we'll typically take that in a demo. We'll take that whole first day and it is literally just site prep. Yeah. You know, then,

Nathan (05:17)
So you're ripping out wood for that you can't

Vince (05:36)
then the fun starts. But what I always say before that, you've gotta make sure you've got, you we talked about pulling a building permit. Yep. You know, surely you've submitted a draw to the builder or the contractor to make sure that they're ready to go. Those things are in place. Did you ask the questions, did the subcontractors get their permits in place? That's right. And then one big thing that I'd be remiss, that a lot of homeowners miss, and this is incredibly important because what...

If I could say what's the biggest tip I could give a homeowner renovating their home, especially if they're dealing anything with electrical, mechanical, plumbing, framing structure is you pulled that per building permit. It's different between each municipality if they require a pre-construction meeting. At the city level, even for a renovation. So they say before you start,

Nathan (06:26)
Really? Yeah, I see.

Vince (06:33)
they want to come out and tour the project with you to see if there's anything that could cause concern, code issues, or anything else. Because you could get into a situation really fast where you start demo or you start construction thinking you don't have to talk to the city until you call in that first inspection. And then what happens is you get pinched, they shut you down. didn't, you didn't do the proper procedure and you start off on the wrong foot.

with the city or county you're in. So you've got to do your due diligence as to the process, the inspections. And that's huge when you get started. Not saying it's happened to us in the past, but yeah, you get anxious, right? And it's important to have those meetings with the city. ⁓ did you get all your asbestos and mold testing? ⁓ Did someone come out? Cause sometimes permitting a city doesn't catch that. ⁓

But then all of a sudden you open a wall and there's an asbestos, you the old flues from the old furnaces were all asbestos. And now all of sudden you've exposed an asbestos pipe. Yeah. Project. You know, do you as a homeowner know how to identify what is asbestos, what different products in the home are asbestos? You've got piping, you've got the old flooring back in the 60s, 70s, the tile floor had asbestos in it. So that's big. What happens if you uncover something and you see mold?

Nathan (07:33)
yeah, first...

the whole

Vince (07:58)
Yeah. How do you identify mold? So asbestos, mold, things that you wanna learn and just know, know, Home Depot and the big box stores have mold tests that you can check things with. Yeah. You know, doing those things so you're not stirring up those areas. Right. And that's all getting in to the- To the rest of the The rest of the house, and you're breathing that in. The other big thing is before you start demoing into a wall, there might be electrical lines in that wall. those breakers turned off? Yep. Right?

Is water shut off? Where are those things? So when you do accidentally throw your sledgehammer through the wall to have fun with everybody, you hit a plumbing pipe and the water's not. Understanding ahead of time, how do we turn that water off and where? So these on a Renault, these are the big things, but other than that, you know, is your dumpster there? Are they putting the dumpster on the driveway? If so,

Nathan (08:37)
Yeah, and the water's not off.

Vince (08:52)
Do you have something under it to protect it? Because dumpster companies will ruin a driveway, lickety split, rolling out those metal wheels across.

Nathan (09:00)
rolling in it and then what you're throwing in it's leaking out the bottom of it or whatever.

Vince (09:05)
a

good point. That's good point. you know, that's some of the biggest things on demo day ⁓ on a renovation. Now the fun part, hey, the fun part is taking a hammer to the wall. Yeah, get it there. Yeah, but make sure you pre-mark the walls, because I've seen it. I've come into a house, dude. I've come into a house and we didn't mark it and we told the homeowner, yeah, have a whack at it. They were going after the wrong wall.

Nathan (09:15)
Yeah, it all added.

the wrong wall wrong bathroom wrong all

sh-

Vince (09:31)
Not the wrong bathroom, but the wrong one. We had to fix it. Well, thank God it was just sheetrock, but...

Nathan (09:35)
Man, had a kid, I know this is off subject a little bit, but something like that that happens in any profession, we had a kid back when we played basketball, had to go in for ankle surgery, they performed surgery on the wrong ankle. Kidding. Yeah, same thing, didn't mark it and had it marked and didn't put wrong one, just put an X, they thought X was where they were supposed to have the surgery, actually X marks the spot, but it wasn't, X was for don't do the ear. Holy smokes. No.

Vince (10:01)
I thought that was Wibesdale. No!

Nathan (10:03)
Happened in our, happened in back in the olden days. Man. You will. That's wild. I got something for you to backtrack a little bit. Cause ⁓ as this audience knows how we met was being in a builder 20 group. ⁓ Tell us about what you maybe have added with neighbors that we picked up from one of our builders ⁓ out in Arizona that we saw him do something that you're doing on Renaults. I've never done it on new construction.

but it has me thinking, man, if we're kind of in between some people, this is maybe something that we should do, but kind of run us through that.

Vince (10:39)
Yeah, that's a good point. And you know, and that's a great transition. You're a real pro at this. Yeah. I practice. You slept at a holiday inn last night. Sorry about that. I wasn't ready for you. No, it's funny. When Nathan comes to town, a little sidebar, we're great friends. And so he stays at my house. In fact, he just told us the other day he wasn't going to stay anymore, well, last year, unless we outfitted a room to your liking. That's right. So we actually physically had to build out a room.

in the basement of the house to his liking, because you like that it's cool down there. Yeah, that's right. Because it's Atlanta, hot. Uh-huh. And how did we do on that room design?

Nathan (11:19)
Well, let's give even more of a backstory on this dirty little secret as Vince would say, ⁓ Vince and his wife want the house to be a ⁓ cool 80 degrees at all times, it feels like. I remember the first time staying at his house, sleeping in the room thinking, man, man, it's hot, so hot. So they have a basement that they had a spare room in and their basement is always super cool. I started busting on them saying, hey, Hotel Delongo.

needs this room to be finished for me. And sure enough, they did, and they did a phenomenal job. It's moody, it's dark, it's cold, and I went down there and slept like a baby last night. That's why I'm so good at the training.

Vince (12:00)
Exactly. way, listen, little did you know, I was prepping you to have a good night's sleep so we could cr-

Nathan (12:06)
So we could crush the podcast. Yeah, that's good. I appreciate that. So, but tell me, tell me about that though, because I think that's a great idea even for me to implement. It's just being thoughtful. And I know it makes way more sense if you're demoing definitely in tight quarters. I usually build on bigger lot. So it's never been a thought, but it's still something that's smart to do.

Vince (12:28)
That's right, and you're exactly right. And I honestly think that if you're doing, you know, to put a cap on the renovation demo, if you're doing a major reno where you're adding an addition, popping the top, which means building a second story, you're doing something that's really affecting the outside, your neighbors are going to be affected. That's right. You know, the bigger the reno, the more vehicles are gonna be there, the more intrusion into your neighbors. You know, you build a lot in brand new neighborhoods.

where you might have three or four in a row going or whatnot. This, you're going into an existing neighborhood where people are used to living every day and used to, ⁓ what do they call that? A regiment or, they do something every day and all the same routine. and it was the ours.

Nathan (13:14)
for sure.

Vince (13:19)
I did not stay at a holiday in last night. No.

Nathan (13:21)
He

was in an 80 degree room, it's not okay.

Vince (13:24)
And so you're messing with the neighbor's routine. Yep. In a big rental. It's the same thing if you're doing a teardown infill house, or if you're building on a vacant lot in a neighborhood that's already established, right? so in Atlanta, we do a lot of infill teardowns, which they're tight lots, and we're re gentifying the neighborhood and rebuilding. we got this idea, and you heard this idea in the past, we got this idea from Nathan Anderson, he's our builder, our builder 20 grew out spec.

spectacular builder in Scottsdale. so I've kind of stole that idea or just borrowed it. He said, okay. But it's demo and donuts. That's what they call it. You can do demo and donuts, invite all the neighbors over to watch it come down. You have stuff for the kids in neighborhood, maybe coloring books and crayons that they can take home with them, juice boxes and stuff like that. You have coffee and donuts.

for the, you know, if it's in the afternoon, you can have a nice beverage. Like, you know, we're drinking coffee here, but you could have some wine and beer. some Miller Lights. That's right, Miller Lights. Yeah. Your favorite. My thing. That's right. And so it was a spectacular idea. Now, why do you do that, right? Because you're like, whoa, why would I want? Well, here's the thing. You get the neighbors involved. They get to know you. You have a set of plans there. You're open. You explain to them what you're doing, what you're building. ⁓

Nathan (14:30)
only say.

Vince (14:49)
they're gonna wanna meet you, the homeowner, our listener, because they're gonna be either a new neighbor or they wanna just be part of it, they wanna be in the know. And what we found over the years, if you do that, you're building a rapport so when something isn't quite right, you know, there's something they don't like. Somebody is parked in front of their house, they feel like they got a flat tire because of a nail that was left in the street. They're gonna call you instead of going right to the county or city, because I don't know if you know, but...

Nowadays, ⁓ if you have a problem, your neighbor has a problem and they call the city, the city comes out, the first thing they do is they shut you down. They red flag you, right? Yeah, red tags. Red tags, yep. They'll do a stop work earlier on us here. And it's your guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. And that's how the cities work, it's horrible. ⁓ And so you then can't get any work done. so instead of doing, and also by the way, it's easy for,

people to do that in the community because it's anonymous. You know, no one, you know, they don't want retribution or anything like that. And so it's easy for people that don't even live in your neighborhood to call you out. So you've got to make it as, as good as possible for your neighbors and they need to get to know you. And this donuts and demo goes a long way. You know, I want to try this and that's on a house that we might be demo to rebuild. You get

Nathan (15:49)
Yeah, that's right.

Vince (16:15)
you get a local association, like nonprofit, and you can do demo, hey, $20 donation allows you 10 minutes to break stuff in the house. That's pretty fun. And then we match it or something like that. And so that's also another cool idea. So you can get really creative with the really messy part of this to make your neighbors happy, maybe help a local association.

And just to have some fun with it and you're building that rapport with your neighbors to make the process smooth. that is what.

Nathan (16:49)
It's

super important. It's super important because you know, it is interesting in any, any client or buyer or anybody who's on, who's going to listen to this has been on both sides. You've been the one building and then you've been the one that is built getting built next to. And man, once you move in, it's almost like we have some amnesia on what it was like building your house. Right. And so it just as good to then bring that

back to where everybody, hey, this is what we're doing. You know, we're trying our best. have the silt fence up. We have to gravel construction entrances. We have a porta potty. We have dumpsters. You know, we're, we're, we're going to do our best. And you know, some days where the rapport matters the most, there are things that just doesn't matter. A couple of Fridays ago in Oklahoma, had 90 mile an hour winds, even if your trash is in the dumpster, it's coming out of the dumpster, right? And it's blowing into someone's yard. with no rapport.

As the builder, you're just the big bad wolf, you know, that's out there and you're right. It's easy to call in and call an anonymously anonymously. But if we're have built a rapport with breaking ground and doing some of these things, maybe they'll call us rather than calling the city and give us a chance to come out and get the trash gathered back up that blew out of the dumpster. ⁓ it was amazing because it's funny. He was doing this because he was demoing a house in tight quarters. I had never.

Contemplated doing this on new construction and now it's something that it's like Yeah, when we have a dozer our demo on new constructions bringing the dozer out on site, right? Hey when we bring a dozer out on site We know when that's coming. Let's have the neighbors that were around. Let's send out postcards to them Be like read us over here. We're gonna show you what we're gonna do We're gonna tell you how we're going to attempt to keep the site clean Please call us if you have any frustrations any of those things just to help make everybody feel good around you because you're right We're messing up their routine. Yeah

Vince (18:44)
Have you ever, have you ever sent out a letter to all the neighbors, letting them know, hey, this is who you are, this is your contact info, this is where you're gonna be building, if there's any issues, call? No. Do you think that would be a good idea? Yeah. You know, just kind of awareness to, hey, or do you think that this actually is in lieu of it, where you have a little event, where you have, again, coffee donuts, or hey, this is building brews and barbecue, maybe you some sliders or-

or something like that, is that what you feel that would be in lieu of it?

Nathan (19:18)
I think that would be better in lieu of it. Yeah, I mean, look, anything's better than nothing, right? So if you don't have time for that, at least send the postcard. No, it's never been a thought, right? is, construction has changed so much. It's why we're doing this podcast. I mean, it's a little less 10 years ago. It was construction. It's transactional. It's I give you money, you build me house, right? Like, and build a nice house and...

It was that way for years. It's been that way forever. And you almost like blocked out the neighbors too. Hey, I'm on this a lot. I'm doing this. Everything's changed so much to where there's so much just feelings involved and whether you agree, disagree, like that, don't like that. That's way it is, you know, that's way it is. So feelings of your customer involved, feelings of the neighbors are now involved. we have to morph with that.

And that's so, so thinking about this, just makes me think, man, no, I've never thought of it. I, I not one time until we saw Nathan Anderson doing that. was like, makes so much sense. all you're doing is helping. it solve every issue? No, you still may have the crouch the neighbor, right? One of them just, that may be the way they are. That yeah, they're not getting as many niceties.

Vince (20:31)
treat them differently.

I would have went the opposite. Where, you know, I think we've had some problem neighbors in the past and I've had my site super made it a point to bring over when he thought, uh-oh, this is going to be something that that person's gonna be pissed about. He's gone and tried to get in front of it and has like $25 gift cards to Starbucks and things like that in his truck. He'll run one over and say, hey, I'm so sorry. This is what's happened. You know, we're in here.

Nathan (21:04)
No, see, we did that for a long time and maybe I'll get a bit in the behind on doing this, but we really in the last year have put a focus on internally and this may be sharing too much. Maybe my customers are gonna find out. Maybe they need to hear it, maybe they don't.

Vince (21:23)
Hold

on, the count of three, I'm gonna count it down. Everybody in Oklahoma, stop listening for 15 seconds. Yeah, give me. Okay, three, two, one.

Nathan (21:30)
15 to 20 seconds.

All right, stop listening. all right. So what we've been doing is usually what they talk about is the squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? So in custom building, if I have 10 projects going, it's usually the 80-20 rule. 80 % of the customers are enjoying it or they may be not be enjoying it, but they're not real loud, right? Then you have your 20 % that are the squeaky wheel that are getting all of your time, right? What we have noticed is we then end up giving 80 % of our time to the 20%.

to attempt to keep them happy. Generally speaking, no matter how much we bend over, we can't ever get them happy. But what we're doing is we're dropping the ball on the people that if we gave them that time, not only would they be happy, we would even super exceed their expectations. We are now setting our baseline. Hey, even if someone's mean, even if they're rude, they're getting this standard. And that standard's above normal standard. They're gonna get that standard. But if you are someone who is treating us well,

is loving the process, is enjoying it. We're going to go above and beyond for you because you're the one that should be, you're the one that should be getting our time, right? Our extra time rather than spending our extra time trying to grease the wheel that maybe can't be greased. And that, and so we're, we're actually going the opposite way a little bit. And that's, you know, we'll see how it works out. Maybe, maybe I get in trouble because we don't grease the wheel enough that we feel like the people that are having a great time.

We want to make sure they even have more of a great time because that's something that'll follow them forever and they'll cherish it to where sometimes, you know, when you're unhappy, maybe sometimes you're just unhappy. I can't grease it enough. So we're a little bit the opposite. All right. Oklahoma people, you can start listening.

Vince (23:16)
Three,

two, one, welcome back, our listeners from Oklahoma.

⁓ Well, yeah, and I think, you know, one of the big things that we've done over the years, which, you know, I've heard people say it's a no-no. If my insurance company is listening, now's the time to tune out. But what we'll do is if we're a house down and the homeowner is there, our excavator will allow them, he'll get the backhoe, because that's what we use to tear down the house, a backhoe. He'll get that set up and he'll let them sit in it.

and take the first whack off. who cares, what are they gonna mess up? Yeah, that's right, it's going away. Yeah, it's when they asked to do it once the house is framed up. It's a different problem. But the excavator will help them and man, they just brighten right up. When you can smash your house with a bulldozer or a backhoe, it's pretty fun. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, but we had one get carried away, so that's why I was concerned about the insurance. It's like, no, that's

shouldn't be doing That's Your Neighbor's Car.

Nathan (24:20)
No,

that's someone else's house.

Vince (24:22)
But anyway, thanks for coming back, insurance companies. So that's a fun thing too. If you can do that, I recommend any of our listeners to show up and say, hey, you mind if I do that? Not sure if you want your neighbors to do that, but I guess what you could do if you're building a brand new house is have you ever had your excavator on site and let the homeowner or someone that really wanted to kind of go around in the excavator, the backhoe or the-

Nathan (24:50)
No, we haven't had that, but I'm sure our guy would if any of the customers wanted to. I've never even thought about that. ⁓ No, what we what we're doing on our site days because being out in East Edmond, primarily there are so many trees. Usually our homeowners are on site and we're string lining the build box basically. And then we're letting the and then cutting in the driveway and we're letting our homeowners kind of pick which trees they want us to try to avoid. Right. But we tell them, hey, inside this build box, though,

nothing we can do. Those trees have to go, but we can kind of move this build box around if we want to save this tree or save that tree. And so our homeowners are very involved in that and we get it. Look, we live in East Edmond, we build in East Edmond because we love the hills and trees too. So most of the time when customers come to us, it's, always enjoyable because they're like, now we like the trees. Like, of course that's why you're here, right? You're here for that. And so we take a lot of time maneuvering around trees.

Vince (25:50)
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, bringing this thing home, because I think we're at a good start, I'm gonna ask you in a second, Nathan, what are your final thoughts on that initial day to get started that I might have forgotten. ⁓ But I would say, if there's a, in my opinion, okay, what's a great walk away pro tip for a homeowner? You know, and I would say the biggest pro tip at this stage is get a GoPro

or some other slow motion or time lapse camera and capture as much, from the demo, but all the way through capture as much as you possibly can because there is nothing cooler than being able to track the progress of your project, whether it's a new home, demo rebuild, or a renovation from start to finish and then be able to replay that.

at the end and you see it all come together in 30 seconds and that becomes a really cool Instagram reel or just something that you can share that your family will have forever. That's a start to finish. And I think for me, that's a huge pro tip. Yeah.

Nathan (27:06)
⁓ for me going more in the new construction side, it's definitely going to be, it's going to be just, you know, thinking about how you want your house to sit on this lot, which direction you're wanting it to face, what angle you're wanting it to be and thinking through the tree placement. ⁓ the biggest pro tip is something we were actually talking about last night is understanding how close a tree can actually be to the property. Cause we get so many customers that

For us, 30 foot is tall. A 30 foot tall tree in Oklahoma, because it's so windy, is really tall. And the amount of our customers, which I get, 30 foot tall oak tree, seven foot from the house. Hey, we want to save it. And we're constantly having to educate, hey, it's going to die. Because we're under the tree canopy. And when we dig your footing, it's not going to die today, it's not going to die tomorrow, but you're going to live in your house for about six months and that tree's never coming back. And now it's seven feet from your house.

And so just that'd be my pro tip knowing, hey, they can't be that close when they're that big. Yeah. You know, and just because that it's not a battle, but it's a constant teaching moment for us of like, look, when you're that, when you're under the canopy, you're in the root system. Yeah. So we have to be.

Vince (28:20)
careful.

Does Oklahoma and those municipalities allow you to get that close to a tree? Like in Atlanta, you better be out of that critical root zone or you'll get shut down because trees are more important than people.

Nathan (28:32)
So

as builders know as builders were very We can basically do what we need to do with trees where they hit where our local municipality and Edmund has gotten my trees is on the developer side So they basically took away clear-cutting developments. It's gone We have a tree canopy that we have we have to actually go out hire someone that does all of our tree canopy But and put it on the plaque and then we have to keep 20 % of it

So we have to find a way to keep 20 % of the tree canopy. so, so they don't let us clear cut. we're way more, it's trees are extremely important in East Edmond, but they put that on us back on the developer, not the builder. Once we develop it, then the builder can take what he needs to take.

Vince (29:18)
wow, see in Atlanta, it's all on the builder. On that particular lot, you've got to save all the trees in the side setbacks. Not only that, it used to be able to put just orange tree fence, plastic tree fence out, save. And just to say, hey, don't go past this area. Somebody's in this area. You're going to get citation and shut down and the builder might have to pay for that tree. But not only that, now they make you put in chain link fence. To block people. It's like, really do people?

do that much damage. No, it's a bulldozer that you're trying to stop from getting in that area. And last I checked, I don't care if you got a plastic fence or a ⁓ chain link fence, that bulldozer doesn't feel it. Yeah, that's right. And so it's the dumbest thing. I'm convinced that the municipalities just continue to make you spend more and more money so it gets harder and harder to build. And that's why I said before, to these municipalities, trees are more important than people just because they've lost their mind.

And on that, I think we can end this.

Nathan (30:18)
Yeah, I'm not going to get into that. I love you, Edmund.

Vince (30:20)
But

yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I love you, it ran a municipality. Please grant us our permit. But it's just something that we battle constantly. And our homeowners and listeners need to know what they can do in Oklahoma and what they can do in Atlanta, which is not much. And it's getting worse day by day. So let's end this on a upbeat note. Should we do a dance or have a sandwich or something? Yeah, or a beer. Or a beer. No light. It is only 10 o'clock here.

but it's time, right? It's time. It's time for me. The next episodes will be a lot of fun. That's right. Well, listen, thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you liked it, please like, and if you're not subscribed to us, please subscribe. ⁓ We're going to be continuing on with this ⁓ series called The House That Wisdom Built. We hope you'll follow along with us, and if you have any questions, please DM us. We'd love to answer them, and we'd love to get you engaged.

Here's what I say, let's give them a little challenge. All right? Send us your coolest demo video or clip. Send us your coolest demo clip and me and you are gonna pick a window. A window. A window. A window.

Nathan (31:20)
What's that gonna be?

What's a winner? What is a zangre? What are we gonna do? What's a winner? I could win me? I'm gonna-

Vince (31:36)
We look out the window, stare

out the window all day. No, gonna pick a winner and with that window, we're gonna send you something and I'll show you.

Nathan (31:48)
I also in that, in the comments, I wanna know if a homeowner also thinks the dozer and doughnuts is a good idea too of bringing the neighbors in because on the builder's side, I think that that's such a fabulous idea. I wanna know if that's something that you feel as a neighbor is, hey, too much. If you would like it, don't like it, kind of just let us know what you think about that.

Vince (32:10)
Awesome, well thanks again. We'll see you on the next episode.