The Carolina Contractor Show
The Carolina Contractor Show
Building Tomorrow: Home Design Trends for 2025
Ready to transform your space? Donnie Blanchard kicks off this episode with a roof revival story, sharing how Tyler Dodson from Industrial Softwash completely eliminated ugly algae streaks using an innovative chemical process. As a roofing professional...That endorsement carries weight, for homeowners facing similar issues.
The conversation shifts to the hottest home design trends for 2025, revealing a dramatic pivot from the ubiquitous white farmhouse aesthetic to bold, all-black exteriors. While this monochromatic look might seem extreme, the hosts explore how texture differences between materials create visual interest, with gray emerging as an attractive middle-ground option that prevents homes from looking cookie-cutter.
Flooring choices take center stage as Donnie and his co-host compare pre-finished engineered hardwood versus luxury vinyl plank (LVP), offering practical insights about durability, feel, and cost. This leads to a thoughtful discussion about how our living spaces are evolving, with traditional dining rooms giving way to expanded kitchen islands that accommodate whole families and reflect our more casual entertaining style.
The all-electric home trend continues to gain momentum, with at least one in four new homes now fully electric. The hosts break down why this shift makes sense from both practical and financial perspectives, highlighting how current tax incentives create a "sweet spot" for homeowners considering the switch. For those planning new construction, single-story designs are experiencing a renaissance, offering accessibility benefits that appeal to homeowners of all ages.
Whether you're planning a major renovation or simple updates to your outdoor living space, this episode delivers practical advice from experienced contractors who understand both the technical requirements and lifestyle implications of today's home design trends. Visit thecarolinacontractor.com to see project photos, submit questions, or connect with the hosts about your next home project.
Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with your host, general Contractor Donnie Blanchard man. This is the time of year. Everybody is doing something with their house projects, whether it's big or small, and last week Donnie and I were talking about some stuff that we were going to do to our prospective homes. I'm in the process where we've got a key lock, so we're lining up some things we want to do at our house and you've got some project at your house. You still working on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, my fiance and I are going to move in together and, of course, she has a long list of uh things that she'd like for me to do to the house, and we've we've gotten through just about everything. There are a couple of things that'll have to wait until a better time of the year Just today, matter of fact being that I own SureTop Roofing. I don't want to admit that I did this, but I put my roof on back in 2011. And that was back before they had the algae deterrence built into the shingles like they do now. I want to say now it's 25-year algae warranty that they didn't have a long time ago. I don't even know if they had 10 back in 2011. So on the north side of my house, where I pull in every day over my garage doors, I had these ugly algae streaks there. So I had a fellow that lives close by and said you know, I can get those off no problem and pretty fascinating process.
Speaker 2:It's a shout out to Tyler Dodson with Industrial Softwash. He did a great job. It didn't take him very long and it was a lot less expensive than what I thought. Basically, he pulls up and he raised a solution on the roof and man is before he does the roof. So he made it a point Right. And he said well, the first thing that touches the landscaping it's going to absorb. He said so, I don't want the chemical solution to be the first thing that lands on the landscaping, which is really smart. So he sprays it with freshwater before he switches over to the solution. Side note there he has a valve and a remote control in his pocket that will operate that valve on the truck. So he pushes one button, the valve turns and it switches from freshwater solution to the chemical. And that was a cool thing.
Speaker 2:And we're walking around the house and he's giving me suggestions for other things I might want to do in the future. And he says man, I hate mulch. I said why is that? And he said well, mulch, it holds a lot of fungus. And I can't quote the type of fungus that he said Gosh, I'll put it up on our social media. But he showed me a picture and he said if you have brick, you're pretty much safe, but the type of fungus that likes to live on mulch can actually send the spores as high as 15 feet in the air. I had no idea. So he showed me several examples of hardy and vinyl siding, where you know the mulch gets to spores. Out there, the fungus grows on the siding and it's to the point where, if you don't catch it early enough, you'll have to sand it off, that you can't even pressure wash it. So you know he made a good point, he taught me a few things that I didn't know, and before he was gone my roof looked a million times better.
Speaker 1:So times better.
Speaker 2:So thanks, tyler Two things that he first of all mentioned, what to use instead of mulch Rubber mulch maybe. He said he didn't think that held the fungus. But you know, I don't. I don't, I've never had a problem, but I do have a brick house and he said bricks is not as susceptible to the growth. But but yeah, I guess that's something worth looking into. Maybe some sort of decorative gravel or something might be a better option.
Speaker 1:Number two I want you to mention his name again, because you see ads on social media for people who clean shingles and they have these different ways. It's hard to tell who's legit, who's not. Obviously, this guy was. So if people in your area want to know, hey, who was that guy who did so good on a roofer's house, cleaning algae off of it?
Speaker 2:He was again who, tyler Dodson with Industrial Soft Wash, and he actually owns the company and does the work himself, which I'm a big fan of that. I don't have his information handy right this second, but if you want to get in touch with him, reach out through the website thecarolinacontractorcom, send me a message and I will reply to that email and give you his info and out of that email and give you his info and maybe we can get him on the show in the near future and he could talk some about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool. Well, donnie gave away an important part of this show and that's the name of the Carolina contractor show, the website, the Carolina contractorcom. And what we like to talk about is we just proved right off the bat, as your house if you're doing a DIY project or maybe you're doing a big project, my wife and I are getting ready to do some stuff, and Donnie's been doing that. This show is for you. We're the sports center of DIYers and we're going to talk about some things that are trending in houses today and in the year 2025. But that's kind of a cool thing about the roofing, because that wasn't one of the things we were going to talk about. That's not a DIY, but it's definitely a maintenance thing, and I'm really glad that you, owning SureTop Roofing, could give your seal of approval on someone who does that, because it kind of some videos look a little sketchy, don't they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do. And you know I would love to rip those shingles off and put new shingles on. But you know I put my roof on not even half a lifespan ago, so there was a 30 year shingle when I put those on and we're not quite to the 15 year mark and I just thought it would be wise to spend a few hundred bucks versus a whole new roof, and I'm going to try to stretch that thing out as long as I can.
Speaker 1:One of the other things we like to do on the Carolina Contractor Show how you can save some money and maybe do repairs or upgrades versus replacements. So today's topic is going to be perfect for everybody tuning in inside and outside of your house of things you can do. We're going to talk about the top home building trends for 2025. And we've had a wide range of topics over the past few months. We won't go into them and go to the website and see those. At thecarolinacontractorcom, you download our past shows. They go back. We're just talking six years plus.
Speaker 1:Now we have social media contacts Facebook and Instagram and all that but we've hit such a wide range that some of our listeners said when are you going to talk specifically about houses? Because we learn something every time you talk about that, and we kind of went that's a pretty good idea. Maybe we should talk about houses. So we're going to tackle some of the trends that are occurring this year and we're going to start off with, you know, one that I want to jump into is you brought this up and it kind of hurts my heart because the trend that is going out is white houses with black trim and I love that. Maybe I'm traditional, but you're seeing more of black houses and black trim be popular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty fresh on the scene for the black on black on black. But to hear somebody say they want black windows, black siding, black roof, black gutters, it's like, well, what are you going for? You know Halloween theme or what's going on here? You're just a very dark person, but for, I'd say, the last five years, the most popular thing on the market in terms of new construction seems to be a white farmhouse style the vertical board and batten siding in white. And then you know the black windows, black gutters and the black roof. So really the only thing that changed in that equation would be the siding color.
Speaker 2:And I had a homeowner come to me and say they wanted the black on black on black. And you know to be open-minded, I went and found a couple of houses that were that way. So really the only thing that broke up the black was the texture differences. So you got asphalt shingles and you maybe have black vinyl and then aluminum gutters no-transcript. That we had on the show three weeks ago or so and at the very last minute Ashton decided we're going to go gray with the siding and it's not a boring gray, and I sent you the pictures earlier. And man, that house is a banger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to put pictures up on the IG and the Facebook and stuff because it is gorgeous and a black on black on black, I wouldn't go for. But once you sent me the pictures of her house, wow, that gray really makes a nice change. It doesn't look cookie cutter like other houses, it's going to make it one of a kind and it gives people a mental option of what they can do. I still like my idea of doing the white with a black trim. But if we're not clear here, donnie is not only owner of sure top roofing, he's a general contractor and he's owner of Blanchard building company, and so that house is like right in your, your wheelhouse, no pun intended. The, the combination of the metal trim on the roof and and the standard uh shingle, which I got right, was a charcoal black by the certainty manufacturer. Um, beautiful options, beautiful colors, uh, fantastic.
Speaker 2:overall, I think it's a beautiful house I really appreciate the compliment and I'm gonna be better about putting more, more pictures out there. I don't put enough of my work out there and I stay so busy. And I want to be honest again, I don't advertise at all for Blanchard Building. With SureTop there's so many more roofing companies and there are builders out there that you have to kind of play the game with the roofing deal. But the building thing, I've got people waiting in line for me to do their work and, man, we've done some killer projects here lately especially, and I need to be better about putting those pictures out.
Speaker 2:And I want to comment on one thing. You just said that with Blanchard Building and SureTop I met a young guy this week and he does commercial construction. He's getting his contractor license. Just really, really interesting guy starting a family, maybe late 20s, and I was telling him all the stuff that I do and I just go to work every day and I do this day in and day out. And you know I have a really I think I have a really good personal life balance with my work. But I'm telling them I'm like, yeah, I have, you know, four or five construction jobs going. I've got three roofing crews that run just about every day. So at any given moment I've got seven to 10 jobs going that I'm handling and he said, dude, you do what and you do that every day and I'm just used to it.
Speaker 2:So I really want to say to the young people that listen to the show and it seems like the young people, the audience full of the young guys who were in construction really gained a lot of traction.
Speaker 2:I get more interaction from those guys than anybody at this point and, fellas, if you have the time and the energy to be a subcontractor and a contractor and you're getting going, you know, and really, if you're starting a family and have children to feed, maybe start a side hustle as a subcontractor, even if it's a pressure washing guy or a, you know, a landscape company or just something that you can start with a with not a lot of money, and then you have your contractor license as well, because you can do a lot more than you think you can and it's not.
Speaker 2:It's hard at first but when you learn how to delegate and you learn how to manage these people and look ahead and I'm flirting with the idea of maybe writing a short book on how to become a contractor and just some of the things and the cashflow balance and keeping your bills going and just several things that are super important and when you get busy it's really hard to keep up with. But if you keep a handful of these things on the forefront, you can be successful at both.
Speaker 1:What we're going to do in the future, donnie, is have an unscripted show where I'm just going to pick your brain, where you give advice to people who might be considering going into construction or even pursuing a general contractor's license, and you can just give some wisdom you've gained and just talk.
Speaker 2:I can't do it all the time, but once in a while my brain will start firing and I'll just open my notes up. And I've got that. I've got that, that notes page open with. I probably wrote two pages of things in 30 minutes when I started firing. And you know, some days I'm brain dead at the end of the day and I just can't do that. But but I have some really good stuff that I would Well, I think it'd be very valuable to people.
Speaker 1:We had talked about home projects we're doing and I've got a few on the plate that we're going to do over the next year or two. We're going to, we're trying to decide on our floors and we have a pine hardwood floors and pine is a softer wood so it gets some dents and stuff and you can have someone come in and they can sand it, refinish it and everything. And we're also considering some luxury vinyl plank LVP and you're very familiar with it and a big fan of it. But one of the trends now is called pre-finished engineered floors.
Speaker 1:So are hardwood floors really out? These floors are multiple layers of plywood or OSB fiberboard and they've got like a hardwood veneer on top and I'm assuming I've not seen many of them that veneer thickness is different the higher the price, the thicker it is. But they say it's super cost effective. It cuts labor costs because you can put in really longer lengths and you don't have to do sanding and finishing and it does cost a little bit less than hardwood floors. Do you have any experience with these pre-engineered or pre-finished engineered floors, donnie?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if I had to explain it to the average person, I would say that it looks like LVP. So the LVP and the pre-engineered hardwood are about the same, look. I think the big difference is the feel. So the engineered hardwood is actually real wood. So if you're walking on it barefooted it feels the same as a hardwood floor and the fact that they've uh, you know, condensed it down. You know, traditional hardwood is three quarter inches thick, by either two and a quarter or three and a quarter wide, and the uh, the the pre-engineered stuff is anywhere from three, eight cents thick to a half inch thick, and but, but it still has wood property. So if you want that wood feel and you want to, you want the wood look then that's the way to go.
Speaker 2:Every house that I have going right now, um, has the lvp. I'm sorry. One one that I finished recently did have the pre-engineered hardwood and they look great. Um, my big concern there is if they will stand up to water. So if they're in a wet area, like a kitchen or a bathroom, will they display the properties of wood if you have a spill or multiple spills over in that sink area? But everything else I have is LVP. It's quite a bit cheaper than the pre-engineered hardwood and it checks all the boxes.
Speaker 1:So you might not know the answer to this. I'm curious with LVP, for most time you just put over the existing floor and you might have to pull up your quarter round, trim and and reseat that. But would you have to pull up a hard? If, like say, I went with this engineered hardwood, would I have to tear up my existing wood floor to put?
Speaker 2:the stuff down? No, not at all. I mean, if you have carpet, of course that's got to come out. But uh, the the pre-engineered hardwood and the LVP are usually right around the same thickness, anywhere from three eighths of an inch to a half an inch.
Speaker 1:Okay cool, but I know you're a big fan of the LVP.
Speaker 2:I'm a big fan of uh. Lvp has more options in terms of the look and you know it's. It's more durable, scratch proof, burn proof, waterproof and if you have animals I would say LVP all the way. The pre-engineered hardwood, the wood properties. I would say it still can be scratched.
Speaker 1:Of course, it all can burn at the right temperature, but is it burn resistant? Those are the right questions to ask. Another trend coming this year is mixed use spaces, and you've got a thing with housing shortages and retail spaces that are not being optimized the best they can. These are projects that combine home, workplaces, recreation, everything, but you've really got to figure them out Again as you as a house builder. Are you seeing a switch on these kind of mixed use spaces? Are they becoming more common or people asking for them more? Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And when I see a floor plan now that has a lot of space devoted to a dining area or something like that, and my first question is how often do you plan to use this or, um, you know they?
Speaker 1:have a. Let me interrupt, Donnie. What's on your dining room table? Is it set for dinner?
Speaker 2:Yes, but there's a lot of dust on it as well, and so you know it's. It's something that never gets used and uh, like I said, I drew my house plans gosh 15, 16 years ago, so that was just something you did. I have a breakfast area and a dining room and we barely ever use any. To comment on your mixed use space, we use our, we use our bar in the kitchen for just about everything and, depending on the size of the family, how much you entertain, you know, uh, do you have neighbors close by that eat at your place often? You know, if you've got two families that come together two or three times a week, maybe you can justify that.
Speaker 2:But the the great room concept kind of started this whole thing 30 years ago when everybody kind of combined the kitchen and the living room there. So my, I do have that, my kitchen feeds into my living room and I have a pretty generous sized island area. But what I'm seeing now is people are doing away with the dining room, maybe still have a breakfast area, but they have what they labeled when we did the TV show Every house. They were small houses, they all had eat-in kitchens, and so what I'm seeing as a result of the popularity from eating kitchens is that we're doing these giant islands. So people are doing where my island will seat four bar stools you know we're doing more like eight in their wraparound seating and and basically I think it's wonderful because if that keeps the family together and you don't have two or three people eating in another room, it's a way to you know, corral the kids and and you can keep an eye on them if they're smaller while you're doing your cooking thing. And I really liked the concept. Yeah, this past.
Speaker 1:Easter, our son came home for a quick weekend visit and we had Easter dinner in the kitchen table the round kitchen table where you're going move over a little and we have a dining room that seats six comfortably. But exactly what you said. We just it's not used. I kept looking over because as I look over at my dining room table in the other room I can see I've got a battery charger sitting on top of the table right now with a battery in it recharging for my blower. So that's how fancy our dining room is.
Speaker 1:Hey, paint we've talked about many shows, donnie is a big thing you can do. It's an easy DIY project to change the look of your house and make something really stand out. If you did a painted accent wall, I was going to mention the manufacturer of this paint, but I was unable to find it online, so I'm not going to say it because it could embarrass them if I did. But there's these things called dopamine decor, which is like vibrant paint colors and patterns and textured layers and it's basically a mental health room. Have you ever heard anyone ask or?
Speaker 2:talk about that before. Not really, but I'm a dude and I don't pick paint colors and I usually leave that up to the women. And I do understand that dark paint colors make for a dreary room and you'd want to brighten things up in most cases and so nobody ever picks. You know lots of blacks or grays for bedrooms or offices or whatever, and I just think that that's. I mean, it's an interesting concept.
Speaker 2:There's probably some truth to it, but you know, I think that every time you turn around, somebody's being labeled with a different condition. If you have a crappy day, I don't think the paint color is going to make you feel better when you pop in the front door. So and I could be wrong about that that that's each to their own and everybody's different. I get all that. But dopamine decor sounds like an amazing marketing technique and for somebody that's you know that's prone to feel bad when they get home or they hate their job it may be something that they want to try and you know, if you're going to paint your house and you're going to paint your house and you're just prone to be in a bad mood, then maybe that appeals to you. So I don't know if I have an opinion, really, either way.
Speaker 1:And I don't pick paints. I already had to go through that with do you want the off-white egg white or white at dawn for the ceiling, and I'm like they're all the same color. Can I leave now, can I go? And so I went to a sports bar to recover. Another thing that's trending and I'm going to question this being a real trend because we did an entire show on an all-electric home. But there's more money for it because of the. The inflation reduction act helps people, let's face it. The inflation reduction act was just the green new deal it was. It was kind of put under a camouflage of what it really was, but it does have some government discounts and tax rebates to use more electric but a fully electric house. Like I said, go to the website to hear the episode we did years ago. But that's becoming more and more common and it's not necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker 2:No, I think it's a great thing. I'm a big fan of all electric and there's so many things that are pros and so few cons that you really can't go wrong with all electric. And the one thing when people speculate, there's just that a lot of speculation. We really don't know where things are going. We can kind of see where they're trending and guess, but one in four houses right now are already all electric and it may be even more than that since we got this. I think that statistic came when we did the all electric house show two or three years ago, so it's probably more than that at this point.
Speaker 2:And the heat pumps, which is the electric way to heat and cool your house, they've come so far that they just work really well. Gas and people, a lot of people don't realize that when you have gas it's only your heat. You know you still have electric for your cooling and your air conditioning. So really the only there's really no advantage to that and the only reason I would say that gas was so popular for so long is because a lot of houses were older and they were poorly insulated. So if you have no insulation, then you're paying an extra couple hundred dollars a month just to have that gas heat.
Speaker 2:You know, gas blows out of the registers at 120 degrees, where electric only blows out at 90 degrees. But if you have good insulation, 90 degrees is fine and once you get to the desired temperature you're just in maintenance mode after that. So electric is definitely the way to go in my opinion, and the way things are going with solar options and just everything renewable energy wise, having an all electric house sets you up beautifully for that. So if you ever go that route, then you know the solar will work everything in your house, whereas if you're, you have gas this and gas that, then you've got a lot of conversion kits to buy and I'm just a fan right down to appliances, and it all just works better as electric in my opinion.
Speaker 1:And cars. Let's face it you now got technology where not only do you have electric cars that you recharge at your house, your car can power your house if you lose power to the house itself.
Speaker 2:Right. I think this is a sweet spot and I think that because they're really trying to push people to go all electric and use these renewable energy resources, there's more tax credits than there's ever going to be. When three out of every four homes in the country are all electric and, say, 50% of the population has some form of solar, the tax credits are going to go away or they're going to be way less than they are now. So we're in that sweet spot where the equipment, everything's not as advanced as it will be, but it's way down the road compared to where we were 20 years ago and the tax credits and everything you can get back from the government is pretty much at a peak right now. So I think sweet spot for about the next five years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got to get that infrastructure going, and I'm just going to go ahead and say this too Nuclear power is what's going to power this idea of having so much more electric homes and vehicles and stuff. Right now we can't do it, so stop fighting the nuke reactor. They're actually pretty good and they're extremely safe when compared to other methods. I didn't want to go too far off on that. I just am tired of hearing electric, electric, electric. Where are you going to get it from? You got to have something, hey, bo, something. My wife and I. As you get older, a lot of people experience this, and that is going up and down the stairs every day, because it's very common to have a two-story house. I've told my kids look at a nice brick one-level house. If you're buying a house, or if you're building, make a big floor plan but keep it at one floor. It's very practical. Single story homes that's something else that's come up as a trend in 2025. Again, your expertise, your experience, is that something you see more and more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you're a young person buying a house and you're not going to live there forever, or maybe you'll consider it as a rental, think about it this way it's going to be a slab house If you have, you know one story with with no steps going into the, into the house, and I'm I'm a custom builder, so of course I don't. I'm not a fan of slab houses because that's what they'd use for track builders. Uh, that's what track builders use and so forth. But if you're going to buy a house, it's going to move or you have a different intention for it down the road.
Speaker 2:Think about it like this is that if you want to rent it out or sell it and it's one level, no steps it's going to be a very attractive option to an older couple and it's small, so it's probably just going to be two people buying it, so that fits the square footage factor right there. But the fact that they can get in it and it's wheelchair accessible, all that's just a super attractive option. And I think the thing that scares people about slab houses is they think, well, all that plumbing is down in the concrete, but really and this isn't the case always, but most of the time it's just the drains for all your plumbing that's in the slab. Most of the time you don't have any supply lines. They come from overhead, so they come from your attic down through the walls and the only thing that's embedded in the concrete is just the drain system, which doesn't hold water until you send water through it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm very happy where we live. I love my house. It's got all the memories, but a one-story house does sound nice as you get up. In years, and as we've even talked in the past, you've done some renovations on houses or new builds where you've planned for that by putting what was it like two by sixes in the walls. So in the future if someone wanted to attach a handrail, it would be supported already behind the wall.
Speaker 2:The handicap accessibility the two by six was just the envelope of the house, so only the exterior walls were two by six. That's what you're thinking about there, which is still wonderful 50% more insulation than a two by four. Um, but the handicap accessibility was that there was no steps into the house. But what you were probably thinking about is I blocked everything. So I have. I took all my scrap two by tens and everywhere, in every bathroom, down, down every hallway, I blocked in the wall. So if they ever have to add grab bars or any kind of handicap accessibility feature, there was blocking inside the wall there to support those.
Speaker 1:Let's move outdoors real quick, because I'm blessed. I have a nice big in-ground pool, that is, we've already opened it. No one's swimming in it because it'll make you sing as high as Michael Jackson if you jumped in. The thing is, once the pool's open, the weather's warm, you like to be outdoors and we have a big deck. I'll put up a picture of that. I'm blessed with a screened-in porch. We love that. It's time to get creative about outdoor design and what are some things you might have or that you like to see at a house that really says let's move this party outdoors.
Speaker 2:Some form or fashion of cover. So if you're going to be outside, it's nice to have a covered area. I don't I'm on the fence about whether or not I like screened in. I was going to screen in my covered porch at my personal house and I just saw it being a leaf and pollen trap and all the things, and of course you know you had a good solution to that when you wrapped it in plastic during pollen season.
Speaker 2:But I really think some cover and if you have something that's on the south facing side of the house as your outdoor area, you definitely need. You know in the evenings that that low sun going down is awful hot in the summertime, so I would say that would be number one. You know, just refreshing your deck space or any kind of patio space making, making a designated area for cooking. So I buy these things called grill mats. So anywhere right around my cooking area if I have a spill or anything, I'm not ruining the concrete or the deck boards or anything like that, and just several, you know, accessories like that, and each house is different. So, um, the cover would be my first priority though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like the idea of maybe a fire pit. We've got a gazebo and we've talked about it'd be a great spot to put a hot tub, because it's a concrete slab next to the pool. That's our covered area. But having the screen porch is a bug thing. That's kind of nice. Yeah, true, pollen's a pain, but I don't have an issue with pollen getting on the screen that. That's easy to get rid of. It's just getting inside.
Speaker 1:A fantasy would be um, glassing in that screened in porch with windows you can drop that becomes screen so you can have the advantage of enjoying summer air, cool fall, or if it's cold and rainy outside, you can have the windows up and sit out there with a cup of coffee and just enjoy the weather. So I understand your position too. The big thing I want to quick add is the deck materials and what you use. I have a lumber deck and people say, well, you got to clean it and stain it and seal it and take care of it, and a lot of people like the? Um, the synthetic material, the treks and stuff like that. Uh, what do you? You have synthetic, you have a like treks I do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had the five quarter deck boards originally and they just twisted and turned and, um, I had to replace those. So I went with, I did the extension with the covered porch and I just went ahead and did the um, the treks throughout. But two things that I wanted to mention from what you just said is the, the treated deck boards. They're, they're not bad at all, and the thing that I've seen on a handful of houses here recently is people are leaning towards treated two by sixes and you have to go with number one grade, which are hard to find, but I have a great resource locally for that. But go with a two by six. A five quarter board means it's an inch, uh, it's one inch thick and so, um, yeah, you're the material man, is that right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's why it's called five and a quarter.
Speaker 2:It sounds bigger, it sounds like an inch and a quarter. So four, dash four would be a one inch, but with a two by four, a two by four is only an inch and a half and it says two. So I think the the nominal versus uh, what? What the actual is is the why they say five, quarter and it only ends up being an inch, which drives me crazy. But we got, we live in that world, yeah. So what's a two by four? Right, two by a two by six? Uh, versus. That gets you an extra half an inch in thickness and if you look at the price point, they're not that far off. So, uh, a lumber package for a deck may cost you an extra $200 to go with a two by six versus a five quarter, but that's definitely an option worth entertaining. You mentioned fire pit. Have you seen a solo stove? They market them all over social media.
Speaker 1:My coworker has one and I've seen them, but I've not seen one in person.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I got one a couple of years ago and I was super paranoid. They say you can use it on your deck. I'm thinking no way, no how. And I was super paranoid. They say you can use it on your deck. I'm thinking no way, no how. And I put too much into this deck to burn it down. So one night we just said let's do it, let's do it, and I bought a ring. There's a ring that goes under it. It's maybe two and a half inches tall and it holds it up off the deck or whatever.
Speaker 2:And they've, they've got the holes and they've engineered the solo stove where it breath, breeze from bottom to top. So I took my little handy, dandy thermometer gun that they used to use during COVID, you know, and I shot the bottom of the solo stove and it was, I want to say, 45, 50 degree. It was a colder, colder night. The very bottom that ring that separates the deck from the stove was wasn't even 70 degrees. I put the thermometer gun at the top and it was like 350. I put the thermometer gun at the top and it was like 350. So we're talking less than two feet apart and a 300 degree swing. Temperature wise, I'm a believer they have the science figured out with that thing and that is definitely a really cool product.
Speaker 1:That's cool. They look pretty cool too, that modern design. Yeah, and I'm going to go back to the five and a quarter. If you are going to use them on a deck, make sure your spacing is tight, and I know you have tracks and tracks wants to a tighter space in between the the Joyce. But don't, if you've got like 18 or two foot wide Joyce, you're don't use a five and a quarter. It's not not only going to twist, it's going to just bow and bounce. Try to get those closer together.
Speaker 1:Two by six is a great idea. Two by fours again, if your spacing is good. They just aren't going to have the same flex and it's not like one is horribly bad compared to the other. They both have pros and cons, so it is easier to maintain something like a Trex versus a Lumber. But I like the look of a wood deck, Though some of the new stuff that's coming down the pipe is very hard to tell difference, especially visually. Much like the luxury vinyl plank. From a distance you wouldn't know that it's not real wood on a floor, Exactly.
Speaker 1:So a lot of trends going on and cool stuff, and we're going to share some of the things that we do through the year, Donnie and I upgrades we make, if we find a new product or, as I do things in my house, whether it be painting or if we go with LVP versus finishing the floors or things like that hey, maybe I'll get one of those solo stoves. You never know, We'll have to. You should, Okay. Okay, Thank you for twisting my arm. And if you have ideas of stuff you like that you think is a cool trend or something you've done in your house, please share it with us.
Speaker 1:Go to the website, thecarolinacontractorcom. You can contact us there or go on our IG Facebook feeds. Find us there. Let us know what you're doing. We'd love to hear from our listeners and also be sure to check out our YouTube page. We put all this stuff up on video so you can gawk at us while we talk about your house and things you can do to it. And again, if you have a question about your house, hit that same website, thecarolinacontractorcom, and hit the Ask the Contractor button and you can submit information, questions, comments, recipes or invitations to Backyard Barbecues for me and Donnie right there at the website. We appreciate you tuning in and also checking out the YouTube page and we hope to see and hear you next week on the Carolina contractor show. Have a good day everybody. Thanks for listening to the Carolina contractor show. Visit the Carolina contractorcom.