The Carolina Contractor Show
The Carolina Contractor Show
Building Your Forever Home on a Budget: Expert Tips and Strategies!
What if you could build your forever home without breaking the bank? Join us on the Carolina Contractor Show as we unravel the secrets to balancing quality and cost in home construction with our special guest, general contractor Donnie Blanchard. Our conversation starts with some light-hearted banter, including a flight of fancy where Donnie's charm lands Donald Trump on the Joe Rogan podcast. We quickly steer back to reality, diving into the Carolina Panthers’ quarterback quandaries, and how those sports lessons oddly mirror challenges in the housing market today.
Navigating fluctuating interest rates while planning a new build can feel like playing a high-stakes game of chess. Eric and Donnie share insights on making smart financial moves, like the potential benefits of refinancing and the importance of understanding long-term costs. They stress the need for a reliable builder who won't compromise on quality, especially when crafting a custom or forever home. From excellent insulation to thoughtful design choices, we highlight ways to make proactive investments that promise long-term savings and enhance the comfort of your home.
Ever wondered how to save big on building materials? Discover intriguing tales of homeowners sourcing discounted materials and the rising trend of luxury vinyl plank flooring as a cost-effective, stylish choice. Learn how quartz countertops are gaining ground over granite for their low maintenance appeal, and hear Donnie's personal journey to becoming a certified cabinet dealer. Tune in to uncover practical strategies to make your construction dreams a reality without sacrificing quality for cost.
And welcome boys and girls to another exciting, action-packed edition of the Carolina Contractor Show. My name is Eric Smith. I work for Home Builder Supply in Wilson-Greenville. Across from me, or next to me, or above me or below me, depending on your video screen orientation is general contractor Donnie Blanchard, also owner of Sure Top Roofing, also owner of Blanchard Building Company, and he is also the reason Donald Trump is going on the Joe Rogan podcast. He's got his connections and said Mr Trump, you need to do this. And the Donald said he's going to do it. So way to go, donnie, congratulations, donnie's and Donnie's working together.
Speaker 2:I never thought Donald would be such a popular name growing up. Now you're cool. It being cool depends on who you ask.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's both of us, man. We're not going to really talk football because there's only one undefeated team left, and that's mine, kansas City Chiefs. So there's really nothing else to talk about. Comes football, would you agree?
Speaker 2:I would, and I want to add a side note there Did you realize that they play the Panthers? I want to say, the last week in November those tickets are going for over a grand and obviously it's not to see the Panthers. So you know, we had a chance at a couple of tickets and it ended up being a scheme. So a realtor that I'm building a house for invited us to the game and the tickets didn't end up going over so well and thank goodness she caught that. But I told my significant other hey, you know, maybe Taylor Swift will be there and she was on board after that.
Speaker 1:Do you think making Bryce sit down and putting in the red rifle has proven not to be the problem with Carolina now?
Speaker 2:It's week to week, to be honest with you, and as a fan I'm just really frustrated. And you know there were two weeks in a row where I called our very own Mick Mixon you know voice of the Panthers for so many years and he's since retired. I called Mick and I said look, you got to tune back in. I just watched two Panther games from start to finish and I don't think I've done that in a few years, to be honest. So I don't know that Andy Dalton was a long-term solution in the first place, but with him taking the reins I just think these NFL teams and defensive schematics are so good and the coaches are so smart that they just need a couple of weeks of game film and they can pick that guy apart. But coming in sort of like the Cam Newton thing back in, he killed it his first season and he had a sophomore slump because they watched a year's worth of game film and they knew exactly how to handle the dude.
Speaker 1:So you got to adapt nonstop in the NFL to pull it off and you remember when Cam came back for a short stint in his first game back, it was great and everybody got excited. As a matter of fact, we had mick mixing on the show right after that game and then they went right back to losing again because they all just said, okay, let's review the tape. And I think what we're seeing with carolina I watched the game last week and start to finish, which, like you, was the first time I've watched a game in years start to finish with carolina. Their defense is horrible and having an arguably better quarterback subbing in there for Bryce, he still has no target. This is a top-down problem. You don't have targets. Your D is bad. Sitting your QB isn't the problem right here, it is overall management selection, and just be glad that they get a number one pick next season probably the way they're playing, though they'll probably trade it for a bag of balls or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's had a year to get everything organized and situated around, you know, tailored around his skill sets, and so still not able to pull it off. And I'm not pulling the plug on Bryce Young, but the rumors are that he may be traded and the dude had a pedigree that won the Heisman Trophy in college, but I just don't think that that, or his size, translates very well to the NFL. That being said, cj Stroud, who we took Bryce Young in front of last year, had a great season. He's kind of stinking it up this year. So, um, it may be. The same thing I've said about cam, that sophomore slump is a real thing. So I don't know, I don't. I don't want to give up on the guys, but I do know life was much better in the fall when the panthers were rocking it out and winning just about every game. You know cam used to give children in the stands the, uh, the, the football after every touchdown and he did the, the dab which I wasn't, wasn't, you know it, whatever the kids liked it, the Superman thing.
Speaker 1:And then he started wearing flowers on his head and it all went to hell that may be the point that it turned on him You're right, but I will never take away from Cam what he did for the team and the good times and how he treated the fans. For sure, I think his skillset started to diminish, which is normal, but he didn't believe it in his brain and he couldn't cash those checks, much like Aaron Rogers and the jets All right.
Speaker 2:So we got to cut it off, we got to stop this.
Speaker 1:We're going to turn this into a hour and a half show Just talking about football. Not that we don't want to do that, but this is the Carolina contractor show. What we'd like to talk about is your house. I always direct you to the website first, thecarolinacontractorcom, and you can find the links to say this show on YouTube because we've got it up there. You can find the Facebook and the IG and any way you want to contact us. Past shows we've got hundreds. Cool little fact, donnie do you know? Of all the gazillion podcasts that are out in the world, the majority of podcasts have three episodes or less banked. Yeah, People do it a couple of times and that's it. And we've got over close to 250.
Speaker 2:There's a thing on our where we upload our podcast and it does a tracker and it showed we were I want to say we were top 800 in the world, something like that, in terms of downloads and everything.
Speaker 2:So I don't know how many podcasts there are out there, but I do know that we have a lot of loyal listeners and we appreciate the heck out of it.
Speaker 2:I watch that ticker every time I upload a podcast and totally my fault, I own this one, but I'm closing three houses out this month and to have three jobs all in the closing phase, you know each, each one has a 40, 50 item punch list and so there's more to it than just keeping things rolling in the middle third of the house or even when you're getting it out of the ground. There's so much more to it when you close one out and I want to apologize to everybody that has gone a week or so without me getting a new podcast upload and it's like they're hungry for it. As soon as I drop it it just goes. You know 800,000. And that makes me feel so good. So when I close these houses out, I'm putting my word out there on the air that we're going to do a lot better. I'm going to get all the YouTubes produced and cut, and so we're going to have a lot of great content here shortly.
Speaker 1:And I want to say that is the most perfect, unplanned introduction to today's show topic. It's where you can save money when you are building a house. And again, as we mentioned, Donnie's not only a general contractor, he owns Blanchard Building Company and he's closing houses and he builds them and so he knows the ins and outs. And when you're building a house and I'm talking to you, Donnie, as a home buyer in this case it's just stressful, All the things you got to think about. There's so many choices and you don't know where to go. All you hear is houses cost so much and you don't want to give up some of your dreams or design aspirations when building a house and you don't necessarily have to give them all up to save a fair amount of money. So today what we're going to talk about is those places you can save money when you are building a house. So there's no better guest to have on than our host, Donnie Blanchard.
Speaker 1:Real quick, we've talked, Donnie, a lot about interest rates. You were the great predictor and said interest rates would get cut starting this year. So a lot of people think this is the opportunity for me to buy a house because the interest rates are going to go down and that's not necessarily meaning you're going to save a lot of money. So I just took a real quick math problem here and I made it so simple. I'm going to give the price of a house at $350,000. We're not talking points, taxes, insurance, just you owe 350,000 on a mortgage.
Speaker 1:The current interest rate, as a recording of this show, was 7.197%. That's about 2375 a month, 2,375. You're waiting for that full point drop. It might take into next year before you get it. You'll save $232 a month if you get that one point drop. You might lose out on the house you wanted or the lot to buy because you're waiting for that drop. And say it goes from seven down to five, that same mortgage goes from $23751,880. That's a big chunk of change. That's like $500 a month. But depending on what type of house you're buying, as in your forever home or a temporary, you can't let the interest rates rule the roost?
Speaker 2:No, because you can always refinance and I know that a lot of folks just want to play it super safe and they're just cautious as a lifestyle and those folks may not want to take the jump. But there's also people who have growing families and they're outgrowing their current living situation and maybe they found an off-market deal and there's a time to jump on it, even with a higher interest rate, and I really think that that higher interest rate only impacts you when you're talking $500,000, $700,000 plus house. I don't think that it has the same impact if you're talking $200,000, $300,000 house, which there aren't very many of in terms of inventory.
Speaker 1:Well, when it comes to building a house and trying to save money, people automatically think quality gets skipped and so they don't want to. You know, try to cut a corner is not the right phrase. They don't want to try to be conscious of their budget because they think they're going to get cheaper material or a cheaper build or uh, it's just not going to be quality. But there's the old saying cheap, fast and and quality, you can pick any two, you can't have all three. But in your world of building houses, quality doesn't go out the window when you're trying to save money in the bill.
Speaker 2:No, and I'm glad you said that, shout out to a guy named Jeff Reynolds. You know, he was my heating and air sales guy for years and years and he was just such a whiz with all that and he used to tell me that he would tell homeowners that, and I think that that's just a realistic way to look at it. He worded it a little differently. He said there's good, quick and cheap. Pick any of the two, but you can't have all three. So I kind of take that to heart. As a contractor, subcontractor, I want to get it done as efficiently as I can financially, I want it to happen in a timely manner and of course, the quality has to be there. So I think if, as a business owner or subcontractor, if you can figure out a way to pull off all those, then that's the perfect recipe to be a success in business. But it is hard A lot of times. If it's cheap, it's going to take forever, the quality might not be there, but for most people I think that's really a good rule of thumb to live by. And I want to go back to our previous point.
Speaker 2:We were talking about the interest rate thing. I thought of something when you were saying what you did last. That, and I said it really only impacts you when you have a um, you know, half million and up dollar house. But I think the rule of thumb we talked about a long time ago and this is just for easy math sake is every point of an interest rate affects your mortgage.
Speaker 2:For the 30 year mortgage it affects it by 20,000 on a hundred. So that's one of those things where if you feel like the interest rate could drop three points which I don't think it ever will, not in the next decade that's a chunk of change. That's 100,000 for every 500,000. So if you're buying that big house and that's just another thing to take into consideration and another reason to wait If you have a source that says, hey, we know interest rates are going down in the next two or three months, I think the big question to ask them is well, how much Going down doesn't really mean anything if it's not even a point, because that's not a $100,000 swing in an average mortgage.
Speaker 1:I think that's good advice because, again, if you're buying a house and having it built, you've got so many questions and things you're thinking about. It's really hard to balance it and it's why it's important to have a good builder who could talk you off the ledge and let you know that, hey, Blanchard Building Company is here. We're going to make sure you don't get poor quality or poor workmanship, Because if you had to pick two, if I did give me quality first, and I'm willing to wait for it With a custom.
Speaker 2:That's the name of the game A custom. It doesn't really happen fast because you're making decisions along the way and a lot of these people who are building their forever houses. If you put them in a box and said, hey, we can't get started until you make these 100 decisions, they'll never get started. It's a situation where you almost need to see the framework. You need to see the structure of the house. You need to stand there at certain times of day and see how the sunlight comes through the windows and then you start picking things out.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why some of the suggestions we have on this episode of the Carolina Contractor Show are going to be proactive investments, things you can do almost before you even have the framing up. Things to think about to save money that will still give you a good quality build, and a lot of these things can save you thousands, maybe tens of thousands. We know excellent insulation, done right, will save you so much money over the life of a house. But it all starts with the design of the house. You got to come up with your basic idea and the KISS acronym works, the keep it simple, stupid. Just you know, if you're going to do a custom house, you can still keep it kind of straightforward, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, getting into to cut up designs. You know the fancy details just really get expensive and you know it's hard to tell a person no, because nobody wants a cookie cutter house. I guess some people. If you're going to sell it, it's just a place to live and they're realistic about that. But it seems to be in my world that everybody's building their forever house with me and that's a huge compliment.
Speaker 2:But, um, if I were to get involved during the design phase, um, I would say that, um, use common sizes for windows and doors. Uh, that that's, that's a big deal. Uh, 10 foot ceilings are the new thing and not the new thing. But but everybody wants that. And when you do a 10 foot ceiling, usually you do a eight foot door just to look right. A six foot eight door doesn't look right with three and a half feet over top of the doorway with a 10 foot ceiling. So anything that's non-standard in the house, that that takes months to get in and it's not as bad as it used to be, but anything custom, special order, you know that, being in the supply industry, it takes forever to get in and you know your front door. That's the main thing you see when you pull up to a house. I might argue that the roof might be in contention with that. But anyway, those front doors, what are you seeing them go for 5,000, plus for the fancy ones.
Speaker 1:Oh the sky's the limit because you have so many options. Oh the sky's the limit because you have so many options. And, like you said, once you get out of a standard 3068 or something you get out of a standard entry-sized door, whatever your mind can come up with there is somebody that can make it the most. I've seen was quoted somebody at like 28 and change for a door, 28,000, not 2,800. And it was going to be six to eight weeks and the first build came incorrect. So it took them, you know, several months just to get to the entry door windows.
Speaker 1:Same thing there's lots of fancy cuts you can get, but if you and I'm a fan of single hung how many times you open that double hung? It doesn't add a lot to the price, but you will save a little bit if you go with a single hung. And, as we've talked many times on the show, windows today are better than the super expensive windows of just a decade ago when it comes to our values and keeping the cold out in the winter and the heat in, and vice versa in the summer. So there's no need to sit there and go with the super duper big name brand windows because it has, you know, oil rub bamboo, wood, trim around it or something like that that sounds like a good looking window, but no, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Single hung Energy Star used to preach single hung all the way because they're cheaper. You don't have any break in the seal around that top sash. That being said, if you have a second story, those are going to be nearly impossible to clean. You're going to have to hire a roofer to get on the outside. So you know the double, the advantage of the double hung, and I want to. I don't want to speak for you, but I'm guessing 20 or $30 a window is probably about what it is. The average house has 20 windows. So you're talking $600 savings. But if you're a stickler for cleaning the windows, then that's going to be an issue. And are you seeing a trend with black windows?
Speaker 1:I'm not going to say it's a trend with black windows. I'm going to say it's moved, definitely 50-50. It used to almost be white trim in and out, but now I'm seeing darker trims and some of the wood trims are coming in. That would be on the interior side of the house.
Speaker 2:Well, the deal with the black or the bronze windows is they were hard to get in vinyl, so they weren't very affordable. And when I built my house, what? 12 years ago? Aluminum clad was the only way to get a darker finish like that. And now they have fiberglass options, which I'm a fan of, but the fiberglass is pricey, it comes in just under the aluminum clad. And then vinyl is the way to go in terms of something that's affordable, and I say that, and they still charge a ton and I'm thinking it's a painted product, I wanna say and nobody's seen it stand the test of time yet. So if the front of your house faces south, you get a lot of sun exposure and you have a painted vinyl window. I don't know what that looks like in 20 years, but I do know that most of the big manufacturers are coming out with a line of the black vinyl just to meet the demand.
Speaker 1:You talked about, donnie. When you pull up to the house you see that entry door, but then that roof sets the whole house from the street. How important is the roof to a house?
Speaker 2:It's very important, I think, and when I build a house that has as much square footage in the attic that's unused as it does in the living space, it kind of stings. But then you walk out front and it looks beautiful. So that just seems to be what everybody wants, and if you're a person who stores everything in the attic, then maybe you can justify that. But in terms of cost, the whole theme of the show is how do you keep prices down when you build? And, um, that everything is about square footage, your roof square footage, your interior square footage. And really, when you're talking about things like paint, sheetrock flooring, there's no hiding that square footage. So I think that, um, that you know a simple roof line, not cut up, you know, not a lot. Maybe throw a gable or two out front just to try to break up the front elevation, but, uh, the roof line definitely has an impact. And since you're on the roof, I'm going to get on my little soapbox about, uh, dormers and chimneys. You know, um, dormers are, uh, one of those things where sometimes I don't know, I don't really like them that much. I mean, you could say that they look good in that colonial style house that has the roof with the three dormers spaced out. You know, if my framer turned me on to this, I was brand new in the business and he said, dude, I hate a dormer and I, you know, explain why. And there are as many cuts in a dormer as there are building a whole room of a house and if you think about all the corners and the, it's got to have a roof on it, it's got to be flashed all the way around and from a roofing standpoint it's just a leak prone area. Same with a chimney. When there was a call for masonry chimneys back in the day, I get it, you got the biggest chimney on the block. You know brick or stone and it's beautiful and you know that's how you heat your home and it needs to be good and all the things and efficient and bulky. But now, with vent free gas fireplaces that most people have, or even with a vented fireplace, you don't need a masonry chimney. And a masonry chimney from the, from the bottom up, it has to have a thicker footing than what the rest of the house has to have. You've got to get it up. It's a multi-phase thing. You've got to get it up, you know, to the foundation or the floor level, and then you have to frame around it and you have to let the Mason come back in after, usually closer to the finished stage of the house to uh put a veneer on the inside of the house, and it's just a messy thing. And the big deal with me is where it protrudes through the roof. You know you've got, um, a porous product, meaning either the block or the brick or, uh, even the rock or the mortar between the rock. You know all that can can absorb water, and so you've got a porous product above a roof line and I just think that's a big no-no, unless you just got to have that look Um, no no, unless you just got to have that look Crazy story.
Speaker 2:We had a Parada Homes house in Elon. You know multi-million dollar home. It had two chimneys that went up about 13 feet above the roof line and they were both fake. They didn't do anything. It was only gas fireplaces in the whole house. The chimneys kept leaking and it's a popular thing for a brick mason. I know that everybody can't see my hands, but you step it out three quarters for a brick and you step it back in, just kind of like a neat little detail from the street. Well, the builder and I got together and we couldn't he couldn't find the leak. And everybody points the finger at the roof and I'm thinking I've already checked out the flashing that it's not. It's not me, it's, it's, it's gotta be the masonry. So we get on rain suits, we, we harness off in the middle of a rainstorm, get up on the roof, just kamikaze style and just crazy, and we're up there on the roof and basically we were watching the flow of the water around those chimneys Because, mind you, this is a parade of homes, house and it was first place house and you got a leak in a multimillion dollar home that you can't figure out.
Speaker 2:Well, I take a eight penny nail and I go to the head joint in between two bricks, which is the vertical joint. I go to the head joint and with two fingers, when it was saturated, I pushed that eight penny nail right through, showing that when the mason put all that together, the bed joint is on the bottom of the brick and so it normally goes all the way through that three and a half inches the head joint. If you've ever seen a brick mason do this, they slap the bottom, boom and then they skim the side where the head joint is. So the vertical joint in a brick doesn't go all the way through that three and a half inches, and this one had less of a head joint than even what's normal. So that was what's going on and that brick was absorbing all that water and of course it was stepped out three quarters of an inch for several brick courses up and it was almost like the water was running down a set of steps and running inside the house every time it hit the next horizontal surface.
Speaker 1:Is it possible?
Speaker 2:to purchase materials in large quantities when you're building one house, or is that really not practical, donnie? It depends on if you've got the means to store the materials or if you have a trailer and a way to load and unload those materials. Because you know, I can make a phone call right now and by lunchtime tomorrow I can have a whole house worth of lumber on the ground and the supply house. Of course they charge for that, but, um, you know, I, the first time this has ever happened, I've got a, a really neat homeowner, um, just awesome guy. And about a month after we started the house he said I got my license. I said, well, cool, great, what license? He said my contractor license. I said what do you need me for? But anyway, he said the bank. But anyway, no, he's, he's, he's got his contractor license. Super smart guy.
Speaker 2:And for about a year he accumulated all the materials for his house and so he found a deal on insulation and he stored that. He had the means trucks, trailers, skid steers to load and unload. He bought about 50 percent of the framing package and he got it all at a discount. He bought all the osb for the sidewalls and the roof and of course he just stored all that and and maybe by the time we got around to getting into the job site a handful of stuff had gotten wet or you know, it just was unusable. But for for the most part you know that that's possible. But what it takes to pull that off is is not going to be friendly to the average homeowner or to the builder. So I would say buying in bulk unless it's things like flooring you get a good deal on flooring. You can put that in your garage for the time being, but not for the whole house, but a few items, yeah, you can do that.
Speaker 1:And you know what? I think we're going to have to make two shows out of this, Donnie, because we've got so much to talk about, but that's fine. I want to jump into another thing about where you can save money. I have hardwood, hardwood, hardwood, pine floors in my house, yeah, and they need to be finished, refinished, and my wife likes the idea of the luxury vinyl plank and I talked to a guy who did flooring and he prefers that because he said sanding, staining and sealing and finishing. He said it takes a lot of work versus the luxury vinyl plank. He said you have so many options and it can be put down relatively faster. He said you know, I pull up some quarter round and replace that. Do you have any of the luxury vinyl or do you have an opinion on using that when building house versus like genuine hardwood floors?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, every house that I have right now has LVP, and so that that it it's really come a long way. I want to say about 10, 12 years ago, maybe a little bit before that, it was one of those products that you couldn't use in a wet area, so it disqualified itself from being in bathrooms, kitchens and so forth. But, um, they re-engineered or most companies re-engineered the core the core for the lvp and made it waterproof. So literally they guarantee it to the point where they say it can be understanding water for a couple of days. When the water subsides, you can take it up, let everything dry out and put the same floor back down. So I don't think I've seen a worst case scenario like that. But it's the most popular thing with the most options, the most colors and I think it looks phenomenal. You know you don't have to just go with a hardwood pattern anymore. They have things that replicate tile and you know just a lot more options they've ever had and the product's better than it's ever been Would it take a lot of work.
Speaker 1:if somebody else said I don't want it, I want to go back to the hardwoods that are underneath it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, no for sure, you would just have to sand and finish the hardwood. I thought you meant is it reversible, like, can you flip it upside down? You have two different designs? Yeah, exactly, well, no, the big deal that they pulled off too. Part of the waterproof attribute for the LVP is that you used to have to put down an underlayment under your, your flooring, and so, uh, people would, before they put down laminates. What it was the slang, or, uh, floating floor was the slang before they, um, put the LVP acronym on it. But, um, they figured out a way to coat the bottom of most of the LVP so that you don't have to do the underlayment on it. And the underlayment, by the way, was super expensive, and so you know you're talking an extra five $600 on a job just to get the underlayment. And they figured out how to put all that into one package and it's. It's just a really good product.
Speaker 1:Some other material costs you can save on is fixtures and hardware. There's cabinet makers. I know there's a long wait for custom cabinets. There's cabinet makers. I know there's a long wait for custom cabinets you dealing with that, oh yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:And um, I want to jump right back and I'll come back to cabinets, the, the shopping for fixtures online. Um, like you mentioned, doorknobs, hardware that's all easy peasy. You can't put your hands on it before you buy it, but a lot of times those things, if you buy one or two, you can have it next day and just check it out and make sure it passes the test. The big thing that I see is light fixtures and plumbing fixtures. There's a markup. When somebody has a big, fancy showroom, they have to charge for that because they've got a lot of overhead. They've got people working on salary and with the plumbing supply house in their defense. You know they've got the counter guys in the back who deal with the plumbers and the small parts that the average homeowner wouldn't have to think about. But I have seen some of my homeowners in the last two years save as much as $10,000 to $20,000 by being patient, shopping for the good deals, going bathroom by bathroom. They figure out the color scheme they want, whether it be dark, bronze, black fixtures seem to be a hit, and here lately, what's it called? It's a brushed gold color, so it's like a brushed brass. Maybe it's a softer brass and never did I ever, after living with my grandparents for a while did I think brass would make a comeback, but just a different version of it. And once you get that color scheme, you know you can really find some good deals online with that stuff. And it's a popular wives' tale to say that they sell something different online than they sell in the big box stores, and we talked about that three or four years ago on the show. Can you imagine the logistics nightmare of a manufacturing company having to put you know a different this product for Lowe's in one box, this product for Amazon in another box? And I just want to say that, in terms of the theme of the show, that LVP, choosing to go with LVP and buying your plumbing and light fixtures online are probably the biggest game changers that we talked about all day.
Speaker 2:Sorry not to be long winded, but fast forward to cabinets. Cabinets are all over the place. I personally am a conspiracy theorist when it comes to this because I think in my hometown the cabinet salespeople have colluded. The price of cabinets doubled almost in a 12 month time span. You know the same house it was 18 grand. All of a sudden it was 32, 35 grand and I'm thinking you know what happened and the cost of everything went up and I think they took full advantage of that and just jumped right in there. But we did the TV show last year and we got hooked up with a company on the other side of Raleigh and it actually took me forever because they don't, they don't want to do this. You just have to be persistent. And I got certified as a cabinet dealer so now I'm savvy with the design part. I know what goes where and I can get my cabinets at a fraction of what they were being sold to me for before.
Speaker 1:Sweet hey, uh, last thing countertops granite going out of fashion and quartz is the new trend.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what I'm seeing. Yeah, I have granite because I built before quartz jumped them in the popularity category, but I will say that my granite around my sink and I have granite in a bathroom that I have to not maintain but I have to seal and I'm not good about it. To be honest. You're supposed to seal and maintain it a lot more frequent than I do, but I am seeing quartz and quartzite you know alternatives to that just really steal the show and it's a good look, I can't deny. Quartz doesn't have pores, so you don't have all the sealing and the maintenance to deal with. So I think that may be why they look better and they're less maintenance, and who could ask for more than?
Speaker 1:that Price difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quartz is a bit more, but it's not thousands, it's hundreds more, so it's pretty darn close.
Speaker 1:So when you're building that house, that's definitely an investment worth making at the build stage because that's not cutting a corner, but it's a good investment. That's absolutely right, yes, sir. Well, donnie, we're going to have to make two parts of the show, because there's so many places as you go through the build of a house that you can save money and not sacrifice quality, and you again, being the owner of Blanchard Building Company, a general contractor, I think a lot of people want to hear the details you have and the advice you have when building a house in places you can save money. So next week could we like do the second half and hit some other subjects where you can save money while building a house?
Speaker 2:Let's do it, man. I'm excited I see what we got left to talk about and we didn't scratch the surface. No, we couldn't because it was courts Nice.
Speaker 1:We'll do that. So hit the website thecarolinacontractorcom. You can see the show on YouTube. You can download it eventually. If you have a question about it or something you want to know where you can save money when building a house, ask the contractors the button on the website you click and that goes right to Donnie. There's an opportunity of a of a lifetime, so to speak, because it's your chance to ask somebody who builds houses where can I save money or should I go with this or that? And you'll get a response from him. And next week we'll hit some of the other subjects. We've got like three or four categories we want to talk about. So we'll have a Carolina contractor show part D. So until then, we will see you next week on the Carolina contractor show. Take care everybody.