What are Ghost Designers and we answer a listener question about hanging pictures

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[00:00:23] Intro: this is around the house.

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[00:00:44] Eric Goranson: So it was pretty cool to see us beat the Denver Broncos, sorry, Denver Bronco's fan. But, uh, we didn't think that, uh, we were gonna win this one or at least I didn't and I was wrong. So, uh, my voice is a little bad today as I'm recording [00:01:00] here on. Tuesday. So, uh, we're just having a great time here. And, uh, that was a fun, fun time last night.

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[00:01:26] Eric Goranson: They put us up in a hotel downtown and I got to make my own boots, got to go out to, uh, Bridgetown forge and build some blacksmithing. It was awesome. We had such a great time out there and, uh, got to spend a lot of time with a lot of good friends. And that was a lot of fun to me, made some new ones. That was great.

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[00:02:09] Eric Goranson: That was just a blast. Of course, my friends like mechanical hub build with Ethan, all these different people out there. I had a lot of fun and, uh, just building new friendships, so many more people on that list that I'm not gonna put on there, but, uh, there's about 20 of us rolling around and we had an absolute great time.

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[00:02:46] Eric Goranson: On the podcast and radio show. Now something else that came out this week, uh, which I'll be putting out a video here soon. Just a quick little video. This was a lot of fun, actually. So Lutron has a brand new, uh, [00:03:00] diva, smart dimmer, and a Claro smart switch. So we've got some new lighting controls out there that are smart.

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[00:03:30] Eric Goranson: You get the regular paddle in the decor style. It is wonderful. And I just put this into my house and it works so well. And, uh, it's very impressive. Uh, I'm, I'm very impressed with this and they've got it in a, uh, a really good. Smart price points. So not much more than a regular dimmer, you can add this into your house.

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[00:04:09] Eric Goranson: And, uh, you're gonna be able to pair that in with any of the remotes, including the, the Pico remote can work it into a three-way application. So, uh, really cool how you can play this all together and, uh, brand new switch that came out on Monday. Couple of them, they work out really well and, uh, having a lot of fun with it.

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[00:04:48] Eric Goranson: And, uh, that's a lot of fun to be well coming up here next. If you live in Portland, Oregon, this weekend over at Woodcrafters, you better take a look. Jess stone. My friend is [00:05:00] in talking epoxy this weekend. She's got some classes over there. So if you're lucky enough to be in our Portland area, check that out and you can follow Jess out there.

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[00:05:29] Eric Goranson: But what we're gonna have is a bunch of different contributors. Caroline is gonna be one of them and that's, what's exciting is we're gonna have all these people popping in. You'll hear Walt Tamala. You'll hear all these different people rotating through, including some new ones that are experts in their field that are gonna come on and, uh, kinda rotate through.

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[00:06:05] Eric Goranson: So stay tuned for that coming up. We've got some great interviews coming up, uh, as well. Well, the subject I wanted to dive in today in this midweek special is ghost designers. What is a ghost designer? A ghost designer. Is like a ghost writer. There are some designers out there and this is something that's very interesting.

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[00:06:47] Eric Goranson: Doesn't have a good design eye. Heck, they didn't even finish high school, let alone get into design school. They have literally no design education having taken a [00:07:00] college class or anything, but they hire people to do the work for them. So they'll come out, wave their arms around, say they've got a great plan.

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[00:07:38] Eric Goranson: 95% of the industry out there is really good. Kinda like bad contractors. There are bad ones out there that will absolutely blow your mind. And the same thing goes with designers. So you gotta be careful looking at designers, so you don't get that ghost designer shown up on your job site. [00:08:00] And plus, why are you paying the overhead for this big name?

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[00:08:29] Eric Goranson: Make sure that you've got the right person doing it. Some of the things that I will say that you need to be careful with out there is when the designer shows up, they've got their assistant with them or whoever they are. And that assistant is giving more information than the designer is, or the designer keeps looking over to that assistant going, Hey, what do you think?

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[00:09:19] Eric Goranson: So again, something to think about, watch out for those ghost designers out there. I've seen 'em more and more just because you can hire somebody out there to do the work and have the skill set that they actually don't have. So there's my tip of the day. Watch out for those ghost designers. Now coming up on the show this weekend, I'm not gonna tell you all that's coming on, but I will say one of the hours, we're gonna be talking about water in the basement of crawl.

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[00:10:03] Eric Goranson: We're gonna make it a project that you hired a contractor for. This is gonna be kind of the one all be all show for controlling water in the basement, crawlspace, or even that flooded backyard. How do we control it? It's gonna be a lot of fun and we'll dive into that. And hour number two is gonna be a surprise, but you just wait.

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[00:10:40] Eric Goranson: And if you have any questions head over to around the house, online.com and I do have a new thing up on around the house nation. That's really cool. I did put up a thing there at the top of the page, in our closed group on Facebook, where you could put in some requests. For doing stuff on the show. So that way you can sit [00:11:00] there and really kind of figure out, Hey, I got a question.

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[00:11:27] Eric Goranson: There are different things you can do. Of course, the easy one is to grab studs, get that nail screw into the studs. I like personally using the picture hangers where we have a hook, cuz it'll do better than hanging on a finish nail. Of course, cuz you've actually got something to hook on. Now what happens when you don't have a stud.

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[00:12:16] Eric Goranson: A screw that goes in the inside. Then you can get a, uh, you can hang out on the screw head or you can actually go out and get some screw, style hangers that will hold on there. And then you've got something that might hold up to 75, 75 pounds out there, and then you've got something solid. Now those don't work as well.

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[00:12:58] Eric Goranson: So you have to be much. [00:13:00] Careful and gentle when you're dealing with that. And those are my kind of my two favorite types of, of drywall anchors really is either going into the stud or just going through with that screw style. I don't like the inserts as well. Those are great for concrete and things like that.

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[00:13:37] Eric Goranson: So what I've seen done too is you hang the picture up on the wall and there is a little product you can get museum wax or some of the Velcro. Pieces. And you could actually Velcro that bottom to the wall. So it doesn't lift that way. If it's in a high traffic area, or if it's in, an earthquake area where you're wanting to keep it on the wall, that actually [00:14:00] will do a pretty good job of keeping it on the wall.

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[00:14:22] Eric Goranson: If you've got your. Question, make sure and drop it over there at, uh, around the house nation on Facebook, just go over there, ask to be in it. It's our closed group. So we keep everything safe and protected for everybody. Uh, as best as we can, we give a good effort and we have people always patrolling that looking patrols, but you know, something, you guys are really good.

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[00:14:51] Intro: the house[00:15:00]