Expert Help for that major project with Corbin Clay and Wayhome

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[00:00:25] Eric Goranson: awful. There's

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[00:00:26] Corbin Clay: Exactly. And it's just like, hey, I mean, these guys don't know what they're doing. Like I'm sure they're great guys. They're just trying to expand their scope. I get it. I was there too. I want the biggest scope as possible, but, but they are not technically capable of creating the finish you want. So what would you like to do?

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[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: house. Welcome to The Round the House Show. This is where we help you get the most outta your home through information and [00:01:00] education. Thanks for joining us today. Well, we got a special guest in the studio 'cause you know, there are so many people out there that are tackling larger projects and of course probably haven't done it before.

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[00:01:32] Corbin Clay: Yeah, absolutely. I, um, I, uh, out of high school went to a, um, motorcycle mechanic school. Nice. Uh, coincidentally enough, and long story short, um, turns out I do not care why your turn signal doesn't work or, or why that tire keeps going flat. Now, if you wanna make it look better or go faster, let's chat. So, yep.

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[00:02:06] Corbin Clay: Flash to or cut to 22 year old Corbin. Kind of a kind of a heart to heart with myself. Do I want to be, because I didn't go to college. Yeah. So it's like, okay, do I want to be a 22 year old freshman entry level of my career at probably 28, 29 or I'd happened to have gotten a remodeling job to help pay for the community college I just enrolled in.

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[00:02:57] Corbin Clay: Nice. And then, yeah, offs. [00:03:00] So I two apprenticeship, then moved Colorado. And there, I ran a cabinet shop for a while. They kind of morphed into a, um, a furniture shop. Mm-hmm. And then they had ultimately closed. Meanwhile, I was learning about the 4 million acres of dead pine trees that are in the Colorado Rocky Mountains from the result of a beetle infestation.

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[00:03:29] Eric Goranson: them here too. They just, they're just sitting out there ready to burn.

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[00:03:50] Corbin Clay: Why don't you guys do anything with it? And honestly, I didn't have a good answer for them. I thought, well, surely it's, it's.[00:04:00]

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[00:04:19] Corbin Clay: It comes from the winters not being as cold, so the Beatles don't die off every year. Well, there was just this confluence of, it was kind of a perfect storm. You had warmer winters, then couple that with basically no age diversity in the forest. When we moved west in the industrial revolution, we basically cut down like every tree in the forest we did.

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[00:05:11] Corbin Clay: Let's see how much of a good situation we can get from a really bad situation. Um, I, that company got much bigger than I ever planned on it, than it getting. Um, and, uh, I'm very much a product, customer facing, uh, fellow. I'm not very interested in, in, um, you know, corporate operations and that type of stuff, but at scale you need all these things.

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[00:06:03] Corbin Clay: Nice. Um, yeah, just, I mean, just really nerding out on building science and how to do things properly and close cell, open cell, all that stuff. There's a lot to that. Oh, there's so much to it. And the thing is, is you move, you move this one and then three things over here move. Oh, and then it's a game. Yeah.

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[00:06:43] Corbin Clay: Get that spray foam up there. 'cause that'll air seal as well, you know, so there's just, there's so many variables. Yeah. To.

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[00:07:12] Eric Goranson: what is building science?

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[00:07:20] Corbin Clay: Yeah. The notion that houses need to breathe. Like we want leaky windows and leaky roofs because we're, we're breathing in air from the crawlspace, the vented crawlspace, and then we're expanding through.

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[00:07:42] Eric Goranson: And you know, the, I think one of the biggest problems in that whole space of high performance homes, Is that you have, I'm gonna make a number up.

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[00:08:15] Eric Goranson: Just to get those five companies to play well together. And they mean to play well together, but the instructions don't overlap. Right,

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[00:08:35] Corbin Clay: Um, for better or for worse. Yeah. Basically no standardization in the industry. Um, the code only goes so far. The code is effectively there for safety. It doesn't necessarily apply. The crown molding is not in the code. Um, cabinet door adjustment isn't in the code cabinet. Door finishes isn't in the code.

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[00:08:55] Eric Goranson: you and I could go install a kitchen that was one inch out of level, [00:09:00] including the uppers, and they'd sign off on it. Mm-hmm. Even though everything's gonna be sliding around in those cabinets because it's outta level, it's not covered.

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[00:09:11] Corbin Clay: Right? Yeah.

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[00:09:14] Corbin Clay: in the drawer. That's fine. But, um, but yeah, so there's that frustration coupled with, throughout my entire career, you know, in the trades I would have friends and family often reach out and they would just sort of had a. Bathroom remodeled or kitchen countertops put in or whatever.

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[00:09:53] Corbin Clay: Did you know. Yeah. What was the layout, right? They took your exact, yeah, they took your exact slab and [00:10:00] they mocked it up. Yeah, we saw it. Okay. Is that what it looks like? No. Did you a hundred percent have a case That is not right? I'd find a picture online like this is what a seam should look like done properly and you know, whatever, a courts countertop or whatever.

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[00:10:31] Corbin Clay: And it's just always bothered me. Like, what do people, the millions of people that have their countertops installed incorrectly or have someone botch their floors or go into a new build remodel just with this feeling of anxiety and, and apprehension. No one's really just looking out for them,

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[00:10:55] Eric Goranson: This is crazy and it's the worst one I've seen yet and I've seen some bad stuff [00:11:00] and I just brought in, uh, I was over there on Sunday. I took my buddy who's part of the global tile posse out there, uh, the big Facebook group for tile setters, and I wanted him to take a look at the bathrooms. This guy, I think their family paid 140,000 for a contractor who was not licensed on insured.

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[00:11:37] Eric Goranson: And I mean, this is how bad the outside, they did siting and all this other stuff and some windows. And this is just a regular kind of split level type sized house. It's nothing extravagant. His bid to get the siding all removed, all the windows put in correctly, just in the windows was a hundred and siding in Windows 150 grand [00:12:00] just to fix what he had already paid.

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[00:12:24] Eric Goranson: They went right over the top of that. No TARP paper, but I mean tarp paper in places. Bathroom tile job, worst tile job ever seen. There's three bathrooms that, um, For waterproofing. They use the blue stucco, uh, sealant that you paint on before stucco. Great. Uh, but they put that over drywall and, you know, that kind of stuff.

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[00:13:09] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And the guy underbid it too, so it's not gonna cost him 150, it'll probably cost him 2 25 to do it. So it's brutal, you know, and that's where I think you guys really can help people.

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[00:13:35] Corbin Clay: Or ideally, you know, you can't unto bread. Yeah. Ideally we can help homeowners identify red flags like you do on your show to say, Hey, license bond, insure bare minimum. That's what we need to see. Yep. You know, but then additionally, um, let's ask for when something goes wrong. How do we handle it? You know, something has gone GC.[00:14:00]

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[00:14:14] Corbin Clay: Like that's a reasonable question to ask. Right? So, yeah, and then we just can take all of our knowledge. And then, and then most important is

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[00:15:10] Corbin Clay: Child, like, we're not gonna get very far with them. So let's cut that cord as soon as possible, and then here's how we can say, bring in a new finisher. Or maybe we have a d i y solution to get you the look you really wanted on your wide oak cabinets. You know what I mean? You

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[00:15:33] Corbin Clay: Hey, it's a, it's a good technique for, um, for a nice orange peel finish, an intentional orange peel. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's artisan. It's artisan.

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[00:15:44] Corbin Clay: Yeah. Artisan orange. It's textured, textured artisanal latex. But yeah, so that's, that's where we're at. 'cause like I said, my entire career is just, it's, I mean, really breaks my heart because, you know, I'm happy to take care of my friends and colleagues and family.

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[00:16:10] Eric Goranson: else, you know? And there's so many good contractors out there, right? There are so many good guys out there in the fields and, you know, male, female, whatever out there that are, that are out there, and they're just absolute craftspeople.

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[00:16:36] Corbin Clay: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's, you know, so, so we do it mainly through, through, um, zoom consults.

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[00:17:03] Eric Goranson: like, it's like LA people hot mopping, showers, and they scratch my head and go, really?

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[00:17:07] Corbin Clay: Exactly. So then, and then you, you also have this thing to not get on too much of a tangent for whatever reason. Finishes are not part of the, um, high-end cabinet making curriculum, let's say. It's just this afterthought. And, and, and I just happened to luck out in my apprenticeship. I was in a spray booth for a year and a half.

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[00:17:59] Eric Goranson: They're only as good [00:18:00] as their paint rep. Right?

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[00:18:18] Corbin Clay: So that this person can, can accomplish it, or do we want to bring in a professional finisher or whatever the case is, right? So even the good ones, I love when we get on calls and I ask a question and they say, no, this is what, this is what our builder said. And I was like, that's the right answer. You got a good one.

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[00:18:56] Corbin Clay: But then we also wanna put shine on the good ones. [00:19:00] Yeah. To say no, that that guy, that's the right answer. That's a beautiful project. Go with him. And then that girl did it right. See how she did the seam right there? That's exactly what you want. Go with her. So yeah, we're trying to push out the bad ones and elevate the good ones.

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[00:19:23] Corbin Clay: goodness,

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[00:19:42] Eric Goranson: This one almost goes beyond it, but. Installs one of the worst tile jobs ever seen. I mean, um, over drywall. The bench was made outta drywall in the shower. No waterproofing go down the list. It's just looks like a, a blind eight year old tried their [00:20:00] first tile job. It just, nothing made sense. Job gets 80% done.

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[00:20:29] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm. Uh, contractor gets mad. She told him not to go by the house contractor comes by with a sledgehammer and repossess the bathroom as it was installed and does a 15 minute demo with a sledgehammer all while the roommate recorded it. So it got on national news, inside Edition was covering it, and uh, somebody of mines in the tile industry went out there and, um, did the job for free to make it right for her.[00:21:00]

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[00:21:22] Eric Goranson: Majority of that pain.

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[00:21:44] Corbin Clay: Say we get into it. We're still able to To help coach through, right? Yeah. To just say, Hey, this, this guy does not know what he's doing. We just had a call a while ago to where the painters were going to do basically a pickled finish on white oak, pickled and [00:22:00] ERUs. Pretty darn advanced. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

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[00:22:09] Eric Goranson: actually lose samples are awful. There's your warning sign, right?

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[00:22:23] Corbin Clay: I want the biggest scope as possible, but, but they are not technically capable of creating the finish you want. So what would you like to do? Do you want to reevaluate the finish you want? Something more user friendly, you know? Or do we just wanna kick these guys loose? Hey, we're gonna have you paint the rest of the house.

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[00:22:55] Eric Goranson: It is crazy. It's crazy. And when you're dealing with [00:23:00] specialty fi, I guess first to me, I look at it and go, oh my gosh, why is that being done out in the field and not at the cabinet shop where it's controlled?

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[00:23:36] Eric Goranson: I get that. But stain finishes, I don't understand it. Yep.

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[00:24:08] Corbin Clay: You're, you're, I mean, a homeowner can, you know, dump it in and just with, with, with very, very little skill, we can paint a wall and have it look pretty darn good. And I think that there's just this, this, yeah. I think that there's just this misunderstanding that wood finishing is insane to where it's wooding is like car finishing.

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[00:24:55] Corbin Clay: Oh, and then additionally, I don't think that there's just an [00:25:00] understanding of, of how technically difficult. Most wood, let's say clear topcoat finishes are sustained, glazed, you know, toned on a mo. I think that's where we, and not have a

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[00:25:15] Corbin Clay: Mm-hmm. No, it's bad. Yeah, we've seen some, I'll send you some photos actually.

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[00:25:41] Corbin Clay: Well, let's run a shop back first. I mean, like, I, it's, it's still not ideal. But, but again, back to back to what I was saying earlier about how we, we just listen first and we try to be genuinely helpful. Yes. I would love to say fire that builder, fire those painters like, this is not [00:26:00] working. But we can't, we close in 60 days.

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[00:26:18] Corbin Clay: Awesome. You're gonna have a, let's say Sherwin Williams wood coatings distributor there, get them to tempt the top coat, add a little color into the top coat. Do two of those, maybe three on site. It's gonna blend all the color variation in the oak, and you'll be fine, even with a lower skilled professional.

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[00:26:48] Eric Goranson: Nice. Yeah. I mean, and finishes keep changing. You know, we keep getting into, it used to be that in cabinetry especially, we'd have those waterborne finishes and they always kind of looked a little plasticy, a little milky, [00:27:00] a little not awesome.

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[00:27:13] Corbin Clay: a solve. Yeah. Yeah. Bu yeah. They actually make an amber, um, colorant to add to waters to replicate the look of solvents.

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[00:27:23] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And it, before you'd kind of go, ah, that looks okay, but just don't do a natural maple in it. 'cause it's gonna look funky. It's gonna look like you plastic dipped it. Not

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[00:27:37] Corbin Clay: Uh, and especially the right ones. You know, when you do it properly, it looks really, really good. And when you do it poorly, it looks really, really bad. So let's make sure you do

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[00:28:00] Eric Goranson: Box cabinets that are in there, that are the big name brands that are in every kitchen department and in a big box store. Those finishes are pretty solid.

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[00:28:27] Corbin Clay: Mm-hmm. Because those finishes, these professional grade finishes that we talk about, that, you know, catalyze coatings or, or, um, like proper cabinet coatings. Yep. Think of, um, like a polyurethane that you would buy at a hardware store. Mm-hmm. If you brush that on, it's probably gonna stay wet, which we call open stays open.

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[00:29:15] Corbin Clay: So when you couple all that together, they, the, the manufacturers want the speed. They don't want wet surfaces, wet horizontal surfaces sitting in the middle of a factory for dust to settle in and bugs and everything else. So they're, yeah, they're, they're using the most durable finishes to where we don't have any shipping damage because we've got a big durable finish on there.

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[00:29:37] Eric Goranson: my, my seeing has always been, yeah, in this cabinet market is custom, the word custom does not mean quality. Yeah. It just means somebody's building it more so by hand than in a factory. But it doesn't mean that you have a better product. No,

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[00:30:01] Corbin Clay: It's. What's artisanal? You just, you just decided one day you are artisanal. Yeah. And then you just decided one day that you're custom. It's like, well, there, there's something behind that. Like I had, we, we were part of a, of a, of a, a marketing campaign years ago with a, with a pretty big company, and they kept referring to me as a master craftsman.

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[00:30:51] Corbin Clay: It's like, so to your point when we say custom, yeah. That doesn't necessarily mean we still need to do our due diligence. We still need to do the research. What kind of finish are we using? [00:31:00] The the, here's, here's the, like the magic question for anybody, um, listening that might be considering custom cabinet makers.

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[00:31:28] Corbin Clay: Hundred percent. Now, if they, if they say one of the companies like Mo Campbell or Moee or Gemini or Centurion or any of these professional grade companies,

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[00:32:01] Corbin Clay: Here's one that doesn't look as plastic, like. There's this constant. R and d going on constant innovation. And then unfortunately, some custom shops just choose to not take advantage

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[00:32:24] Eric Goranson: Let's, um, Let's go do some samples of this real quick on your equipment and see how this goes and Exactly. You spend an hour and play around with stuff and all of a sudden you've got the latest, newest finish that, uh, you're trying to evaluate for the cabinets going forward. So it's, it's that constant evolution that gets missed.

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[00:33:05] Corbin Clay: It doesn't have any weird profit motive behind it of it. It's just this, we are, well, 'cause you know, you get the pay to play model and it's like, well are you really qualified or did you just pay the fee? Yeah. Um, but yeah, to where it's like, no, we commit to whatever, 40 hours a year of this ongoing education and these trade shows exist.

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[00:33:50] Eric Goranson: Yeah. One of my other key words that I hear that I always is my red flag. Oh, my cabinet maker, he's a master carpenter. [00:34:00] Okay. Who's calling him a master carpenter? What organization is he a master carpenter with? Or did he just throw that out when he was measuring up the kitchen? That he is a master carpenter and he is gonna make it look good?

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[00:34:13] Corbin Clay: right. And, and again, it's, it's hard,

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[00:34:29] Eric Goranson: guys are do. Yeah. I like what

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[00:34:33] Eric Goranson: Yeah. That's the whole thing is trying to avoid those, those pitfalls of, of bringing in the wrong people or making the wrong product decisions.

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[00:34:58] Corbin Clay: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And [00:35:00] additionally, because we, we see a lot, again, let, just to stay on this, on this, um, topic of finishes we see a lot where they say, oh, we'll spray whatever you want us to spray.

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[00:35:29] Corbin Clay: You go, I, I don't know. He's like, well, no, just tell you. Tell me however you wanna waterproof it and I'll do it. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're the professional. We want professionals with preferences. This says, I don't know, we use, you know, whatever. I don't know if we're allowed to use brand

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[00:35:46] Eric Goranson: Yeah, whatever we use, whatever. I don't care. We, yeah,

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[00:36:10] Corbin Clay: 'cause the shower leaks and you say, Hey, the shower leak, what the heck? And he goes, well, I did the one you told me to use. And it's like, no, no, no, no. We want you to tell us what to use. And we want you to say like for, for the, the houses we built after I sold my business, our plumber would only use Delta shower valves because he's used them for decades.

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[00:36:53] Corbin Clay: This is an informed opinion. This isn't what's most convenient for him. This isn't what he's gonna make the most money on. This is him [00:37:00] saying, I don't want you to have to rip your wall apart. Or, or get drops on your head, you know, while you're watching TV one day, because some shower valve I never worked with before failed.

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[00:37:16] Eric Goranson: with. No question. No question. Well, before we run outta time, I wanna really dive into what you're doing out there and, and in your program, because you and I could tell horror stories here for hours about things gone bad.

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[00:37:54] Corbin Clay: Absolutely. Yeah, it's, um, right now we have, we have, um, three or [00:38:00] basically two different virtual calls you can do. We have one's called Expert Call, and that's just more kind of general construction. Um, you have an issue or several, or you're trying to vet a builder or you just want some, you know, a second opinion on the floor plan to see if this works out well.

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[00:38:37] Corbin Clay: It's 40 minutes and that's where we can do a deep dive and it's usually, you'll appreciate this. It's usually right before the cabinets are ordered. Is generally who we, we see booking these calls to where we're about to spend 80 grand for this whole house worth of cabinets, or 50 or 120 or whatever the case is.

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[00:39:13] Eric Goranson: we, yeah. The dish dishwasher is gonna hit the blind corner of the lazy Susan.

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[00:39:24] Corbin Clay: Exactly, exactly this. Just make sure someone's seen a million times, make sure it's done properly. This is when we can identify potential issues on. You know, the cabinet maker that, you know, that provided these drawings that we've been working with said that he doesn't use this finish.

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[00:40:01] Corbin Clay: Yep. So you just have like a follow up question or two. 'cause a lot of the time we'd say, okay, ask your, ask your cabinet maker, what type of coatings do they use? And I was like, and then just, just shoot me an email with what the answer is. And that'll really kind of tell us what our next steps are. Well then we'd get three emails and five emails and 10 emails.

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[00:40:42] Corbin Clay: Exactly how I used to do with my friends and family to where now that's a.

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[00:41:11] Corbin Clay: The.

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[00:41:22] Eric Goranson: cell phone. Man, that is smart and such a need out there because there are so many people out there kind of navigating in the dark, doing the best they can. But, um, until you get burned many times you don't know what you don't know exactly.

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[00:41:49] Corbin Clay: You were lost. We just don't know. We didn't know what decision to make. We don't know who to trust. We go on YouTube and do this, and we go to these Facebook groups and ask a question, and there's 20 answers. [00:42:00] Three. Three of which are toxic, 10 of which are saying this. And then the other ones are saying this.

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[00:42:27] Corbin Clay: that's need as.

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[00:42:49] Eric Goranson: And uh, that's really where, where I think you can really help steer people into finding the right people to do the job. And that saves people hundreds of thousands of dollars in the [00:43:00] long run.

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[00:43:17] Corbin Clay: Or unfortunately, like your, like your, your colleague or your, your friend that had the, the botch tile project. I mean, where do you even start? Like, where do you even start? Hopefully he or she has the money, but so many times we hear the story to where it's part of the American dream to own a home. Yeah.

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[00:44:07] Corbin Clay: Yes. And it's just the slow erosion of any excitement or optimism you have. Oh. Where you get to the co, the certificate of occupancy and you go, just go away. I just wanna get moved

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[00:44:20] Corbin Clay: breaks my heart, so it's like, no, we got you. We are here to help because let's keep that, that same excitement and optimism and fulfillment to where after you've moved in, you're sitting there Saturday morning, say before the kids have woken up and you're just having a cup of coffee and you're looking around at your brand new house and you just go, yes.

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[00:44:52] Corbin Clay: Yeah, so we're at hello way home.com. We also have a Facebook group called Ask a Cabinet Maker, and that's me [00:45:00] personally in there, just giving as much free advice as we can. Um, sometimes, you know, we can only, we can only do so much just through exchanging Facebook comments.

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[00:45:15] Corbin Clay: I I need to ask you 25 more questions before I can give any type of actionable, valuable advice. Exactly. So you'll see me, you'll see me, um, pitching my home quite a bit in the group, but for the most part, yeah, that, that's a great group. We give a ton of free advice there. Um, we're almost of the socials, uh, so yeah, hella way home com's probably the best place.

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[00:45:42] Eric Goranson: Perfect brother. Hey, thanks for coming on today, man. I love what you're doing out there and I'm excited to see this thing grow 'cause I think there's a huge need for it.

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[00:45:54] Corbin Clay: It means a lot.

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