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Simplifying Life Through Technology
SoundVision LLC is a lifestyle technology company located in Mooresville, North Carolina. We interview vendors, clients and staff with the purpose of demystifying the capabilties of new technologies for your home or business and sometimes highlighting local content that is important to our community.
Simplifying Life Through Technology
Renovation Upgrades
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On this episode of “SoundVision Tech Talks,” Mark, Zach, and Andrew sit down to discuss Home Renovation Upgrades.
Home renovations aren’t what they used to be. A decade ago, upgrading a home meant focusing on audio and video first. Today, lighting control and a strong Wi-Fi network take priority. We take you inside a recent remodel where lighting, automated shades, and commercial-grade Wi-Fi network elegantly transformed the home.
Our CSO, Zach, recently remodeled his 23-year-old newly purchased home, prioritizing lighting and automation over traditional audio-video upgrades. He replaced outdated fixtures with sleek, energy-efficient LED modules, swapped bulky ceiling fans for no-trim LED fixtures, and completely transformed the ambiance of his space. We discuss how strategic lighting design enhances both aesthetics and functionality, proving that the right lighting can make all the difference. But lighting isn’t just about the fixtures—automated shades play a crucial role in elevating the home's lighting control, design, and functionality.
With natural light being a major factor in any living space, Zach integrated motorized shades to complement his lighting upgrades. These shades adapt throughout the day, allowing for precise control over brightness, glare, and privacy at the touch of a button. Whether maximizing natural light in the morning or creating a cozy, dimmed atmosphere in the evening, the combination of automated shades and lighting control ensures every room has the perfect balance of illumination. Plus, by reducing heat gain and UV exposure, they help with energy efficiency and protecting interior finishes.
While Zach still plans to add high-end audio, video, and a media space, lighting control, automated shades, and a strong network were his top priorities for creating a seamless and efficient home. Whether you're considering minor upgrades or a full-scale renovation, this episode is packed with insights to help you rethink what’s possible in home transformation.
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Men's Hair Products and Home Renovations
Speaker 1Palmate or all that crap.
Speaker 2Palmate.
Speaker 3I'm not a hairspray kind of guy.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm not a hairspray guy, but it's powder like a men's styling hair powder. Let's see what it is. Chat it.
Speaker 2It's a lightweight, finely milled product that uses to add texture, volume or grip to hair. It often contains ingredients like silica, starch or clay, which absorbs excess oil and creates a matte finish. Hair powder is typically popular for volumizing oil absorption texture, and they keep using the word grip, which is interesting. It's a hold I feel like it's Like if you want your hair to just do something different.
Speaker 1Look, man, all you got to do is a two. All I got to do. My dad was a barber for 30 years.
Speaker 3This is what I do here.
Speaker 1You, is it two? Oh, I got to do it. My dad was a barber for 30 years. This is what I do here. You have to do a two guard on the side, two on the side. Blend it to a three up high, texturize the top and get you some clay and you can make it look like whatever you want.
Speaker 2I need clay also, so I need powder.
Speaker 1Not clay powder.
Speaker 2Powder.
Speaker 3Okay, do anything, you want All right, women's dry shampoo kind of thing too. It's like women's dry shampoo yeah.
Speaker 1But you got a two to three. You got to blend that up high. You can't do it down here. Okay. You got to take the two to here and then go to three to here and then leave some weight on the top. Slightly disconnected texture on the top Wow. The lady that does my hair loves me because I tell her exactly what I want.
Speaker 2And she doesn't have to create anything. Oh, and I just go in and say read the notes from last time.
Speaker 1Oh my gosh, really that's exactly what I do.
Speaker 3100 oh, I can cut my brother and I both can cut hair.
Speaker 1Yeah, I, I was cutting my hair, my brother's hair, during quarantine oh, in high school my younger brother had a barber shop in the boys bathroom in high school they don't like.
Speaker 2They don't like to do it anymore. Oh, or bring in scissors. You went in the shears if you go in the boys uh uh gym bathroom at south, my nobody's east mac, east mac my brother would have had somebody underneath the draped towel cutting their hair for 20 bucks a head, and we we in high school, um took uh uh tinfoil and made basketballs, made little balls out of them, and then would go in the in there and bet on, we'd move the trash can in various areas and you'd have to bank it.
Speaker 1And that's what we did my high school did different things with tinfoil. Yeah, we're catholic school.
Speaker 3That's where I thought we were going.
Speaker 1No, no no, balled it up. No, catholic, come on, you guys were the worst. We, oh my gosh actually we were.
Speaker 2It was funny because where I went to high school there was two total class of people that went there. One was the traditional Catholic family that you know, better education or whatever you believe or whatever Like there was that. And then we had like the rejects from every other high school. Every kid that had a problem came to my high school, which didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, I guess because they thought they were going to be reformed Maybe, or whatever. But one was really cool.
Speaker 1We were playing, did y'all do that bamboo stick across the back of the knees. Is that how they got it reformed?
Speaker 2No, that's on the knuckles. That's the type of Catholic school you got to wear that.
Speaker 1Yeah, with the about the Catholic school she went to as a little girl and that's the type of corrections they got my grandma too.
Speaker 2Alright, what are we going to do here? I don't think. I don't want to care about talking about Catholic school punishment.
Speaker 3Catholic school punishment hair products for men.
Speaker 2Corporal punishment.
Speaker 3So do we want to discuss? I was saying either we can talk about what you're doing in your new house and technologies deploying, or we can talk about kind of what you're doing in your new house and technologies deploying, or we can talk about the color scape and Luchetta lighting we've done in here, or you have another topic.
Speaker 2What would Andrew guess?
Speaker 1I'd say we hold off on Lucetta until we got a little bit more experience with it under our belt, although I'll tell you it is already. Chris King came in here yesterday. $30,000 budget left with $48,000. That's all this said. He's won't be bad on the ceiling. Oh really, I'm gonna the black stuff. I'm gonna do it underneath some shelving that displays some football helmets.
Speaker 2That's yeah that's awesome, did you say it was forty eight thousand dollars, all in lighting no, it added. Oh, oh.
Speaker 1Yeah, so it's net. New light fixtures to a theater. Oh wow, yeah, 33 to 48.
Speaker 2Wow, yeah, very nice.
Speaker 1That's right, he had like the $30,000 theater yeah like a $30,000 budget, so there wasn't a lot of. I had six DMF, just retro kits to get him some good dimmable LED lighting in his theater, and now that's eight of those and about seven grand and lucetta rgb all right, so what do we?
Speaker 2so what do we want to talk about then? What would be a good, a good topic? So maybe something that that you as, uh, you know in the in the field customers I don't know, it's been a hot topic. That's obviously a hot topic, something that's been asked about a fair amount lately. Maybe, maybe, that would be a good one.
Speaker 3Yeah, what's been new?
Speaker 1Man, it's hard to explain why don't we do my. We'll do my house right now.
Speaker 3Okay, okay.
Speaker 1And I'll blend that into. Like you know, I'm kind of an average consumer, one of our average consumers, and you know, I, I, I was interested, found that I was interested in a lot of what customers are asking yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2Yeah, okay, all right, cool andrew all right.
Speaker 3Well, welcome back to tech talks. Did you tech talk?
Speaker 2tech talks. It's mark talks. No, I'm not going to be talking much today, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna be like the color analyst.
Speaker 3This is all about you, zach. Yes, sir, this is your life new. So, zach, you have recently moved. Is that correct?
Speaker 1we did, yeah, moving well, we've moved a while back now we're moving. We purchased a while back now we're moving. Uh, bought a house, a new house, back in july and immediately went into like a five-month renovation where my wife and I lived in what we affectionately referred to as our third floor walk-up, because we decided to live in the home while being renovated instead of in one of our rental homes oh, you did yeah he lived upstairs and actually you don't know this, but my parents went just a weird tangent.
Speaker 2But when my parents first got married and my first sister was born, they could not afford anything. They lived in somebody's attic oh, yeah, so this is. This is very similar. Although zach could afford this and it's a very nice attic, it was a choice well, it would have been really cool.
Speaker 1If you find a house with a basement, I wouldn't have mind lived living in a basement while third floor, where you get to walk through the reno every day for two floors to where you're going.
Speaker 1So you know, five of us and two animals lived in a you know thousand square feet and luckily there is a. You know it had a bedroom and a kitchen and a. It's like an apartment. Yeah, it was livable and that that area really didn't need, nor did we really want to do much remodeling and so, uh, basically gutted everything didn't move walls, I didn't really take down a bunch of sheetrock, but all but all bathrooms, kitchen floors, paint trim doors.
Speaker 2You know all that new so and in so doing, yeah, some technology things.
Speaker 1Well, yeah, it's fine, you know, for 20 plus years of doing this, I personally have never done a lot of technology in the homes I've lived in. You, you meet people or clients and like, oh, but you have, you, you're in the business, you, and I'm like yeah, it's the shoemakers, not really and we had a nice media room in the last yeah, you did. But yeah, you did.
Speaker 2We've been pretty vanilla when it comes to technology, lighting, lighting control zach is not the like tinkerer programmer no he is not that, not that dude, like I'm that dude aside from maybe some amount of numbers in my net worth.
Speaker 1uh, I think my mindset is very what much what we see from clients. They want something that they're going to use daily, something that's going to work and that they don't have to mess with. That's me I don't want.
Speaker 3You want the convenience, yeah.
Speaker 1So, in all these years of designing systems for people, what I found when Allison and I bought this house, I was, like you know, this is the one that I'm going to finally just kind of do what I value out of what we do from a technology standpoint, and I found myself thinking like a client.
Speaker 3It was kind of weird to design your own system. Yeah, be on the other side of it, yeah it was kind of weird.
Speaker 1It's kind of like when I designed a showroom here I was shade. What did? Automated shading on every window in the entire home.
Speaker 3Wow.
Speaker 1Every one, except I forgot to measure the small window in the master bath water closet. So for the past week I've been turning the light off in that bathroom when I go in there.
Speaker 2And there are a lot of shades. It looks right at the neighborhood.
Speaker 1Yeah, we ended up at like 39, 39. When I go in there because there are a lot of shades, it looks right at the neighborhood.
Speaker 2Yeah, we were, we ended up at like 39, 39 window shades.
Speaker 1Yeah, um, living room has four big picture windows that look out the back, uh, backyard, and it's two stories. So there's a total of eight. A couple of them are really high. You know, it's funny taking those down. They we had the house had big, thick, two inch wide blinds. When our technicians were out taking them down, I happened to be standing near the ladder when Ian was up taking the four down up high and when he just pulled the blinds up to get them compacted so he could remove the old blind.
Speaker 2Oh sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1The amount of dust that flew off of that one window shade.
Speaker 2Oh wow, it was insane.
Speaker 1It was insane. It was insane. And I'm, my wife is an organizer, I'm a cleaner, and it just my OCD kicked in. I was like this was the best investment ever to get all of these dust catchers out of the way. So we did a bunch of window shades.
Speaker 2And why were the shades important to you? Like what I mean? Because you really invested a lot in this.
Speaker 1I did, I did. Oh, andrew just lost his mic. What the heck. Now you get to hold it. Just hold it.
Speaker 3There you go.
Speaker 1There you go. Yeah, so last house, 16 acres. Really no reason to have privacy because I had it all built in this house a third of an acre. I love it, Tangent.
Speaker 2That is a huge difference.
Speaker 1Yeah, I owned many, many pieces of yard working equipment at the last property and I own a battery-powered blower now.
Speaker 2I have one of those too at home. I love that thing.
Speaker 1I spent six hours every Saturday for 14 years cutting grass and now I pay a fantastic gentleman $40 a week to come and cut my grass and do all the work, and I don't. I just tapped out of that part of my life.
Speaker 3So I feel so good, so it's great so privacy was a big privacy.
Speaker 1Yeah, privacy, um, and you know in in doing the home. You know in in doing the home. We, like I said, we had all the hardwood floors redone. Um, we happened to sell our last house, basically furnished. The people that bought it um did want to keep the majority that was in there, so we negotiated that out, so we had a lot of new furniture to buy.
Speaker 3Um, so you know which is fun. Yeah, well, yeah kind of um.
Speaker 1So now we, um, you know, I was thinking things like uh, you know, making sure the longevity of the hardwood floors doesn't fade, doesn't you know? We? There was a table that we moved out of our last house, in a laundry room at a big window, and when we moved that table I realized, man, look how much the floors faded.
Speaker 1Oh wow, yeah, and I didn't even know it. So we moved in this new house and Alison went through a pretty exhaustive process with the flooring folks to pick this new color. She went on the floor they're really pretty but didn't want them to fade, didn't want the new furniture to get damaged and and privacy, and I'm a very much not an anti-glare guy, so, um, I like keeping them closed the majority of the time. All right, cool, so we did all shades. Uh, it's a three-story house so you know wi-fi footprint was a big deal, obviously, with three kids and and trying to work from home and three kids out of school and all the fun. We're streaming folks for video, like everybody is nowadays.
Speaker 1So, reliable Wi-Fi. Being in a neighborhood now I wanted to have some surveillance coverage, so a few cameras.
Speaker 2Actually, before we jump off the Wi-Fi, one of the things I wanted to at least bring up is we talk about how we do commercial-grade Wi-Fi here, and we do a lot of. We have a very keen eye on cybersecurity, passwords and whatnot. We've really vetted a lot of network products over the years and for the last couple years we've been using access networks, and would you agree in your personal house, uh, that it is the most reliable system that we've had, or or is there? Is there other stuff?
Speaker 1yeah, and I haven't had a lot of experience yet in the home with the high traffic.
Home Lighting and Color Temperature
Speaker 1But I wouldn't have picked it had I not already felt that way just from working with it with our own clients yeah, it's been phenomenal we'll find some proverbial wood slash mdf to knock on here, but our network reliability is off the charts, since we've really kind of honed in on what we're doing between arachnids and access networks for, and our processes internally of of how we program those into place, just not out out of the box plug it in and walk away. There's a lot behind the scenes to get those set up properly. And let me take a step back because I should have led from the shading conversation to. The house is 23 years old, never been renovated, which is great. It's a great house. We bought it, we loved it, but it was a 23-year-old, so you can imagine there was the stacked stone all the way up the two-story fireplace.
Speaker 2Which I love. By the way, we differ on that. Yeah, it's got its place.
Speaker 1There was stacked stone around the vent hood, over the oven in the kitchen. I thought that was a little strange. But they went a little crazy with stacked stone Lighting. The house never had any lighting upgrades.
Speaker 2It was built with a bunch of six inch recessed 23 years ago, like there wasn't any.
Speaker 1Yep. Six inch recessed screw in light bulbs who someone had gone through and replaced them with really pretty like 4,500.
Speaker 3Kelvin screw in LED bulbs.
Speaker 1So the house was slightly light blue. It was very bright, very bright, almost light blue Went through the entire home. Took all of those out and redid with one of our manufacturers we carry, dmf, did all of their four-inch recessed true dimming LED lighting modules.
Speaker 2Did you replace drywall repair and all that with the new fixture, or did you do the plug-in modules where you could take?
Speaker 1So the main foyer hallway and second floor hallway and stairwells I took, I did the retrofit so it for folks that don't know yeah take a six inch recessed can on the ceiling, unscrew the bulb, pull the plastic trim out and then we have with dmf, one of our manufacturers, we have a replaceable, really nice aluminum and powder coated aluminum or in white. You can have it in multiple colors trim that goes back in with a true led module behind it, and what I mean by that is a led fixture which is manmade light. That is true. Color rendering, um, and you get to select which color temperature you like. So my wife and I are big 3000 Kelvin fans so we're able to get a nice clean look in those areas and get those kind of ugly plastic light trims that in this home had yellowed over time so they weren't even white anymore. So the hallways we did that in all the bedrooms.
Speaker 2Hold up before you jumped to that. Did you do warm dim in those too? We did not.
Speaker 1I in all the bedrooms because hold it before you jump to that. Did you do warm dimming those two? We did not, I didn't want to do. Yeah, static 3000. Had we kept the house with the you know darker wood floors and the rock you know accents I probably would have because it lends itself to that. Um, but we went through the entire home, kind of a tangent, and we're big white paint people so the entire house.
Speaker 1Inside the house was painted a sherwin williams plug color here called snowbound, so I didn't want to take this home that we were and the hardwood floors are refinished in what's called nordic seal, so it's a very light white oak look okay and I didn't want to take this kind of white port, you know, kind of put the orange on it, yeah yeah, kind of um canvas and and turn it orange at night.
Speaker 1Um so so we went 3 000 kelvin, static, um color fixed. So it's 3 000 kelvin if it's 100, it's 3 000 kelvin if it's at one percent. Um, all the bedrooms only had ceiling fans with really pretty light kits on them. I've got a few of those left if anybody wants them.
Speaker 2So Wants some.
Speaker 1So we knew we were taking those out. I'm not a, you know.
Speaker 1From a lighting design standpoint, a singular point of light in the middle of a room is the worst thing you can do so we knew we were going to have a little patching to be done in those rooms to get rid of the ceiling fans. So we took that opportunity to go ahead and get the actual four-inch no-trim led modules put in, all those in those rooms back. So all bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen ceiling had to be redone because we did build a, a new island and bar space.
Speaker 2So it's all pretty much the new construction with a few areas of the, the retrofit product and just to kind of put a bow on the retro thing, because it's we're in a podcast hard to visualize this. You literally don't. All you have to do is unscrew the bulb, pull out the trim which just pops out they're usually on little springs and then screw in a new bulb, it's clip-in.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's. Each fixture with zero skill can be done in five minutes.
Speaker 2It's zero skill. You need a ladder and hands For anyone. It's zero skill.
Speaker 1You need a ladder and you go from anyone that's ever maybe had an led fixture and wanted to dim it and realized a that once you begin to dim it and you get somewhere around the 20 to 40% intensity and it flickers a couple of times and turns off Um, or if they have an LED fixture that they just don't think that the light that it renders is pretty.
Speaker 1In other words, it makes your green cabinet look gray or your gray cabinet look green or your red apple look kind of like a dead apple. That's what poor LED lighting looks like. So you can go through an entire home if you're happy with the current placement of lights and replace those screw-in older fixtures with a true LED bulb that's going to dim in 1% increments from 0 to 100, be a high-quality LED fixture with a high rating of CRI, which is color rendering index. There's actually a standard of how a light can render color in the room, so other objects actually look like what they're supposed to look like. An apple looks like an apple, an orange look like what they're supposed to look like An apple.
Speaker 1looks like an apple an orange, looks like an orange, that kind of thing, and you've got a 10-year warrantied bulb with that product that we sell. So even when I did the last house we had gone through and taken all the bulbs out. Years ago I remember Costco made me buy all the new bulbs I was buying in like two or three trips because I tried to buy too many at one time which I didn't know that could be a thing.
Speaker 1I didn't know that either I ended up having to buy them in three trips from Costco. And even those LEDs that even me six, seven years ago, without knowing, I put these in thinking these are going to last forever. You replaced those LED screw-in bulbs as often as you would have replaced them, Maybe more as often as you would have replaced them?
Speaker 3Oh yeah, Maybe more.
Speaker 1I found that it almost felt like more. So now with the DMF product, it's in, it'll be in for a very long time and it's great lighting Now the house is from a lighting standpoint with the shades, because, make no mistake about it, shades are lighting control as well.
Speaker 3Yep.
Speaker 1But with the whole house of automated shades and new lighting with lighting control it totally changed.
Speaker 2You know the way that house could be lived in yeah, and probably just feels yeah, yeah, it feels different totally totally different well, and you and you you said something before that I wanted to touch on because of, um, snowbound, the color of the walls and kind of the washed look on the floors, you chose a consistent, a static, 3,000 Kelvin temperature One because you like it, but also because it enhances the look of how you want it to look Correct.
Speaker 2And so in that case you rightly said something like warm dim would make that look weird, right, 100%. In that case you rightly said, like, something like warm dim would make that look weird, right, 100. But there might be other folks that have, um, you know, maybe it's a darker look, maybe it's more wood grain or whatever, and so that warm dim would enhance that. So what's nice is that you like you said you could choose whatever you have the option to do this, and even if you just want to try it, you know, in a room, literally, it's not that you buy a couple of fixtures and it takes you a couple of minutes and pop it in.
Speaker 1And for those that don't know what the term warm dem means. Imagine sitting outside, underneath, you know, a bright afternoon's light, versus sitting by a campfire, with a campfire light at night. So you have the opportunity now. Now there's very few light sources you wouldn't put. You would want to put in your house. That would be the same color temperature of the sun is extremely, extremely bright. But you know a 3000 or maybe even a 3,500 Kelvin bulb and inside a home is going to be pretty white on the spectrum and then as that bulb would dim, so at full intensity you would get that nice 3 temperature or color. But as that light dims from 100 down to one, it's also going to accordingly change in color temperature down to a bottom threshold of 1800 kelvin, which is very much like campfire so in the evening.
Speaker 1If you want that really relaxed, mellow vibe, the room has to really call for it. We've had a few clients that I actually learned this lesson for myself from working with another one of our clients who built a new lakefront very modern farmhouse all white polished concrete floors, really pretty, a lot of artwork.
Speaker 1Um, she fell in love with warm dim in the showroom and wanted a house full of it and I literally told her that that was the wrong move in this case, because I was going to turn her white home that she had taken the time with her and her designer to work, to create and we were going to turn that home yellow and orange at night and it was and she was like I don't want that. And you know, fast forward four, six months when that project was finished. She definitely came to me on more than one occasion and said we made the absolute correct call and not putting that product in the house.
Speaker 2And that's, that's another reason to kind of advocate for lighting design in general. You know, we talk about we, we comically talk about four cans and a fan, which is the most common thing that is done when, when someone builds a new home because there's no design, and then then we start talking about, well, okay, the size of the bulbs, from like six inch cans down to four, down to you know what kind of what kind of trim around it, is there any trim? You know? Then it's where the light's placed. What is it accentuating? Then it's what color is it? So there's a lot.
Speaker 1I'll give you an example in this kitchen that we just remodeled which is beautiful, by the way. My wife and the kitchen designer did a great job. Um, most folks would walk into a kitchen and very symmetrically place can lights around the walkways, like between the countertops of the island or in some area right around right in the walkways of where you're going to walk around. I wanted the light that spills out of the light to hit every cabinet at the same height and at the same intensity. So, whereas our kitchen isn't a perfect square, there's walls that are kind of bumped out here and there's a wet bar over that's bumped out, so there's.
Speaker 1If you stand in the kitchen and look at one wall, the cabinets on the right are maybe stand 18 inches proud of all these cabinets running down the left. So if I would have done can lighting in a straight line across the front of that of that upper set of cabinets, the light that spills out of that fixture in the ceiling would have hit the right half of the room cabinet at one height with one intensity. But because the other half of the room is 18 inches behind that, you know, on a plane, it would have hit that cabinet at a different level and at a different intensity level at a different intensity. So I we created a common distance that we were going to place the lights off of the cat, off of the upper cabinets, so that all of the upper cabinets have are lit.
Home Lighting and Smart Devices
Speaker 2They look the same way, yeah yeah, and it worked out. It worked out really well, which again is a design element that you have to take into consideration and say, hey, I want this to be the focal point, correct? So then, when someone walks in and they go, wait a minute, they're not all in a line well, they're not supposed to be not supposed.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't. I don't walk in my kitchen looking up right, right. It's not how I live, you know um so, and you know, we had a couple of heirloom, um uh fixtures, uh kind of quirky pendants that have been in my wife's family for a while. We're able to pepper those in for the decorative what what I would call earrings of that room we got this really pretty gold with colored glass fruit pendant hanging in the window that looks out of the backyard over the bar.
Speaker 1To see it alone you'd be like what is that? Get it out of here. But in the space it looks really pretty.
Speaker 3I'm sure that's my character.
Speaker 1Of course we came in and I went, had a lot of fun doing the linear tape lighting under the cabinets and underneath.
Speaker 3I was going to ask if you deployed the toe kick.
Speaker 2I literally I have that in our kitchen too and when, every night, there's a motion detector in there. So when you walk in at night and you go in it, it lights up automatically, you know, for a certain period of time. And that those levels, the toe kick, the, you know, under the countertops, under the cabinets and then above are, is crazy, it's so nice, we didn't go above cabinets, go all the way to the ceiling in this.
Speaker 1But I will tell you one cool thing we did, and part of this was my wife. Um, we had this big island, but we've got a six foot by ten and a half foot single slab island in the middle, um, like a big farmhouse very large yeah, and on one side of one end, uh, underneath, was built in um we did a pot filler under there, like oh yeah, you were telling me about this yesterday yeah, so it's my.
Speaker 1We built in my dog's water and food bowl like into the island it's got a little, but I did a little strip of linear lighting up above that, so the whole little feeding cove for for my dog my dog's named utah um, it's kind of lit up, it's kind of cool it looks got his own little spot.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, I, I stole that from a client.
Speaker 1By the way, they did the same thing.
Speaker 2It was in a laundry room, which maybe, hindsight, 2020, might have been the best place to put it in my house as well, but we did ours in the kitchen so I did something similar, uh, different application, but we just did a shower renovation in a condo and and we did a strip light in the niche that has all the the stuff, the stuff in, yeah, in the wall, yeah, so so and we um, we put uh these um lights in in the tile that are basically about your shin level, and then we've got some in the ceiling and then we've got linear above.
Speaker 2So when you come in, there's like four levels or layers of lighting in there and when you click I have a button that just says spa, and so when you click that then it goes to that for when you're in the shower. But it is so cool to have that lit up when you're in the shower, but it is so cool to have that lit up when you're in the shower and everything is super dim. So it's very kind of relaxing and and easy to see it's yeah, took a lot of planning.
Speaker 1Actually it does. It takes a lot and it's funny when you do it, when you do it for yourself, it's harder than doing it for someone yes, it is for someone else.
Speaker 1It is, um, but I've tried to take little things that I've learned on projects and working with clients and you know, uh, kind of mold it a little bit and make it mine and it's, it's been a lot of fun. Um, so the lighting and the shading in the house are, you know, for me, you know, chef's kiss type stuff on the home. Um, you know, we did a couple of televisions in the home, some wi-fi, some surveillance, excuse me, oh yeah, you were going to talk about surveillance yeah, I did four cameras.
Speaker 1You know nothing crazy on the quantity, but you know a high resolution camera where you know god forbid the moments you need to recall some video. It's not you know, watching atari characters running around in your yard. You can't tell who they are, and that's wired surveillance.
Speaker 3Oh, absolutely, yeah, Because we talked about that previously on the wired versus wireless, and that's when Allison's like just put up something. You're like no, I'm doing it right, I'm going to wire it, it's going to be great.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, you know, look, my wife is very smart in a lot of the things she does, but I had to educate her the difference between just a you know, plug it in the wall wireless camera and a true hardwired camera and so many pros that come along with that. It's hard to list them all but surveillance and um and security, and you know now I'm playing around with what I'm going to do on the audio side.
Speaker 2That's the only thing left, um for me so it's so interesting because, like 10 years ago, we would have started with audio we would have started with audio. You may have been talking about a theater man cave or something like that. Yeah, and literally we've been going 25 minutes and we haven't even gotten to that, and then, as a matter of fact, it's not even uh, uh, really an issue for you personally, it's my final phase yeah, yeah, I mean we, you know, we checked a lot of other boxes.
Speaker 1Uh, you know, quite frankly, I think a big part of that mark is it's what you use the most it's practical, it's the most priority yes, lighting and shading.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean it's it's every day, I, you know it's. It's like, uh, having heating and air and hot water. I mean, now lump wi-fi into that same category, but lighting and shading, and you get that done well, and show people. I mean we have things in our good night scene. It's making sure all the kids' blinds are closed, you know, and when we leave in the morning, keeping privacy in the home and keeping the sun out of the house. You know, it's funny. And I don't know if my thermostats all three of them are wrong or not. I haven't figured this out yet, but we're a 69 to 70 degree house.
Speaker 2Always have been last house. We were at pretty small range there, yeah either one of those two temperatures work.
Speaker 1Nobody will adjust if it reads one of those two temperatures. Um, last home built by a custom builder 69, 70 degrees for some reason in this house. Now that we've moved out of the third floor, walk up into the main part of the house with the lighting and shading in place. Um, I put my thermostat on all of them, it's 65 and the house is comfortable. I don't know, don't know for heat.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, I don't know I don't know if i're if hours are calibrated correct, incorrectly and 65 is actually 69. I have no idea, it's weird, but we're living in a home where the thermostat reads 65 and it's weird.
Speaker 2Actually ours are 65 and 72, I believe, is what numbers we use 65 for heat and 72 for cool. Oh God, 72.
Speaker 3I need that 68.
Speaker 2Hold on, we'll be back up, because Zach was just talking about the goodnight scene and setting the shades down. It is 67 or 68. I can't remember which one. It's one of the two. When we go to bed.
Speaker 3Yeah, on the main level, you need a cool when you go to bed.
Smart Home Automation and Integration
Speaker 1Oh yeah, yeah, so now we're playing around with the audio side and I'm a less is more kind of guy with audio, so we don't listen to music personally in every room. So, uh, you know, living room, kitchen, um, backyard, and now that we're we have moved out of that third floor, walk up, uh, it'll become what it was always intended to be and that'll be a, um, you know, a guest place where my kids if my daughter comes back from college or any of our parents come to stay with us for a little while there's a bedroom up there or, you know, kids can have a slumber type thing with friends, but the living room space up there we're going to do a little media room nothing over the top.
Speaker 1A little media room up in that third floor space. Um, something simple, probably like the theory system we have in here. Um, but yeah, it's fun Technology in your own home.
Speaker 2That's right. Practical real world.
Speaker 1All control four driven. Traditionally I've been one of the guys, mark, you and I have always talked about the difference.
Speaker 2We do.
Speaker 1You want everything integrated in one app and I personally didn't mind hopping from one app to control this to another app to control that, but the fully integrated experience is pretty sweet.
Speaker 2We had someone in here and I know, I know we need to wrap it up, but we had someone here the other day and we were talking about lighting and automation and uh and, and he was talking about he'd had very old lighting uh, upb actually, and you know he's used to that and he was talking about like scenes and then like his wife not being able to turn off something, like she was having a hard time turning off something, and I and he's like, how do you do it in your house? And I started thinking I was like you know, I actually don't touch many switches anymore, like almost. I mean, everything is automated. Right. To give you an idea, like going down into our basement, I haven't touched a switch down to our basement to turn a light on or off in six years, I mean it, just it literally just there's just a sensor and I, you know, open the door to walk down and the light comes on, and I get down and a minute later it goes off.
Speaker 2And so we're getting to the point now where I don't even touch switches.
Speaker 1Yeah, so I had a client in here not too long ago and we were talking about scenes and scenes are great.
Speaker 3Yeah, clients love them.
Speaker 1But he asked. He was like, what about motion? And what he really and it's my, at least now, without having lived there yet what he, what he wants, is I want to walk in the room and the light turn on, and when I leave a room and it's been vacant for five or 10 minutes, I wanted to turn off. He was like now the only. So he said I don't really care about scenes so much. Maybe good night and goodbye and entertain.
Speaker 1Cooking is one he was like. So I don't really care so much about scenes. For me it's more going to be a question of which lights in a room. If there's more than one layer of lighting, which ones turn on when I walk in and walk out?
Speaker 2That. That is exactly, literally exactly what I do. Either that, or dawn and dusk or some version of that, depending on where the sun is, literally does it all by itself. In fact, it's like I know cooking is a scene that you should use only because it's one of the very few buttons I touch in my house. Right the cooking, so I know that one is one yeah.
Speaker 1It's funny. You talk about uh, dusk and dawn um this is the same yeah yeah, um, with the shades.
Speaker 1I've always and we've done them for years and I know that they have the ability to but I've always been a fan of like, hey, I want all my shades to open at this time of day and close at this time of day. And now that we're in this house, I'm really the. Just night before last I was up a little late, just kind of, you know, messing around, and I was like I'm gonna create a scene and start tracking some of this sun movement to where?
Speaker 1because the back of the house phase, the east front of the house, faces west like why do I, why am I opening all shades?
Speaker 2at a certain time. That's right yeah so I've got.
Speaker 1I've got things happening on the east side of the house at particular times of day that are different than are happening on the west side house, and that's cool, that's that also helps your temperature too.
Speaker 2Absolutely, yeah, that's, that's very. That's what automation, that's the power of it. Yeah, yeah, really cool, yeah, really cool well, good conversation.
Speaker 3Yeah, yes, and congratulations, yeah, your new home.
Speaker 1We're getting there. It will be settled by the end of the year, I think.
Speaker 3You're almost there, awesome, alright, guys. Well, until next time.
Speaker 1Thank you.
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