 and we're live. I am so excited that you guys are joining me today. Thank you so much. I am here with Matt DeBara and he is a fourth generation Mason. And oh my goodness, let me tell you their company has been in business for over 100 years. Imagine all the years of all the wisdom drifting down into Matt. It is now the owner of DeBara Masonry and I've got him on the show today and he's gonna share with us some reality tips on what we do with all the extra stuff that is left over after you finish a home renovation project. So today we're gonna be talking about the stuff that Matt is really aware of, which is gonna be all the extra pavers and paver stones. And if you have extra debris and how we clean up the dust and all the stuff that everybody asks and we're like, oh my gosh, what do we do with all this stuff? And oddly enough, a lot of people don't do anything with it because they don't know what to do. So Matt is here today and I'm super excited. So please help me welcome Matt DeBara. Hey Matt. Thank you so much for having me. This is gonna be a blast. I'm really looking forward to it. Well, so am I. Because I must get the question asked three or four times a week. Like what kind of vacuum should I use to clean up the construction dust? And I know that construction dust is just a small part of the stuff that you do. So start back from the beginning. Tell us how you got involved in the business and what you do and the kinds of stuff that you do. And then we'll go from there. Yeah, I mean, this is a special moment because and you'll laugh when you see how it connects. But my first, so my family's been in the business four generations, 104 years. But I started my first job, nine years old was picking up trash on job sites. You know, I was a young kid with a lot of energy and my dad wanted me to get out there. My mom's like, no, he's too young. And then I made it two days of my fourth grade summer before she's like, take them. And, you know, started the journey I showed up, I bought work boots and I was ready to build some of the things that my dad showed me photos of as a kid. And I get to the job site and he hands me a big black trash bag that he's like, start with that he pointed to all the debris and he's like, start picking up, you know, cement bags that we were mixing with and all this stuff. And I rushed because I wanted to get to the fun stuff. And then he said, well, now that you're done, go ask the carpenter and then the electrician. And so this moment here is very much full circle for me because it's something near and dear to me. I learned how to keep a clean site and that was something I took with me. I mean, gosh, you know, 21 years later and second in the country in a bricklaying competition move the family business to LA. I mean, there's a lot that happened in between but a family is really, really embedded in the industry. I have to ask a question about when you were young because when I was young and I was cleaning we didn't have personal protective equipment. So when your parents sent you out there with a big garbage bag and they said, pick up all the dust to gather like gloves and helmets and all the stuff. Yeah, we had gloves but I didn't wear them because I wanted to get the calluses that I bought. I thought it was like, I don't know. My dad always wore gloves and he was proud of the fact that his hands were soft and I learned early on that gloves were a good thing but for the first few summers I didn't wear gloves. That's so funny, I love that. All right, so tell us what you do now. So now I mean to borrow masonry I hold five or six licenses in California but general contracting, masonry, concrete specifically we do a lot in the home remodeling and renovation space. So a lot of exterior work just because selfishly that's what I enjoy but also interior work as well. So I've been to your website and one of the things that I love is all the before and after pictures. You've got some amazing pictures of the stuff that you've done on the different pictures from landscapes to retaining walls to walkways and stairways and swimming pools. And I mean, you guys have just done an amazing job at all the different things that you do. And so how did you learn at all? So my dad taught me in an old school way. It was as much as I can handle as fast as I can handle it. So I mean, this will summarize everything. This is how I learned how to lay brick. There was a mailbox to a church that got hit by a car and my dad said, today you're gonna learn how to lay brick with me. So we get all prepared. I mixed the mortar, I set everything up and then my dad goes, I gotta grab something out of the truck. He turns the truck on and he drives by me and says, I'll see you in five hours and leaves. So that was my journey. So that gives you an inclination to how I learned things throughout my career. My dad was like, he'll figure it out. He had massive amounts of trust and admiration in what I could do and respect in letting me really grow and expand into the business. But it was an old school way of learning things. That's for sure. And that's so awesome. I love hearing stories about how kids learn because whenever we get into a trade, it's the learning that then shapes the rest of our future. And I run into a lot of house cleaners and today we're actually streaming live to three audiences. We're streaming live to our Ask a House Cleaner audience. Our audience that is involved in real estate, which is the move in, move out cleaning. And we're talking about this because there are a lot of people that do renovations before they sell their home. And so this is a really important lesson for all of us. And then also we're talking to our clutter group today that is focused on how do we get rid of some of the stuff that we've stored? And the reason that we brought that group in to today's conversation is because a lot of people will do a project and then they have extra stuff when the project is done. And they say, well, I already paid for those pavers so I'll hang on to them in case I ever need to replace them. And so somewhere in their garage or around the side of their house, they've got like a stash of pavers that are just extra and leftover from a job. Or they'll do some kind of a do it yourself project and they have extra lumber or they have extra, I don't know, bolts and nuts and casters and little bits and pieces of things. And I myself am guilty because whenever I buy something like I bought a faucet the other day that I installed in my laundry room and it came with the hardware to install it but then it came with like extra nuts and bolts and a bunch of extra weird pieces. But I paid for them so I don't wanna throw them away, right? So start from the beginning and share with us, if you will, the process of what it takes to book a job, the stuff we're gonna need for the job and then what we do if there's anything left over from the job and then I wanna come in from the back and talk about cleaning up all the debris from that if you will. Yeah, and when you say book a job you mean like for my company right now like if someone calls us or- Yeah, what is the process? So if somebody calls our company right now we've got two ways. So we've modernized the business so you can either send us photos and get what's called a virtual consultation where you send us pictures of the project you're looking to have done or you can have us come out and we can take a look at it. So that's kind of the first part of it and then we meet with clients on site. We measure, we take notes, we video document everything so they get like this really cool video where we walk and we point to what we're doing as well as a write up and then from there if they decide to move forward then it gets scheduled with our scheduling team once they sign the agreement of course and then from there it's the work it's scheduled, commences they're assigned a dedicated project foreman and then that person is like the point of contact so that if on Monday they're like don't move the rose bush then on Tuesday we don't move the rose bush so we're not switching people on projects and then we've got our own internal communication throughout that whole process. Now when you say that you book a job that way I'm assuming that you're bidding into that your own equipment and your own tools and buying all the supplies and all the stuff because and I need to ask this question because a lot of people will hang on to stuff and say I already have a whole bunch of extra old lumber and have some other projects or have old paving stones or old tile or whatever are you gonna use their old stuff or are you bringing new stuff and is that part of your bid? Yeah it depends on the client. I mean we're in the restoration space too so repair restoration so there's certain instances where a client might have brick or pavers they might have a certain paint that is really difficult to match because it's older and it's leftover but it's good so there's certain instances where things like that make sense but for the most part I like to own the means and the methods so I'm trying to bid in the right products and then also there's usually warranties involved so like if I'm using their old lumber they're like hey I have this leftover from a job sometimes that works but other times it's a concern regarding us being able to warranty the work. I love that answer. Okay so then I need to ask the next question what happens and can you give us instructions if you are gonna use the old paint or you are gonna use the old lumber or whatever under what circumstances does it need to be stored properly so that it's not just left out in the weather or left out in the rain or whatever so that you are able to use it and match that paint. I know for example some paint can't be left in our garage or it can't be left in a I don't know a repurposed bottle or something else which sometimes we see and you're like no it's expired it's evaporated I can't use it. Yeah that's always a bummer. You touch on a really interesting point which is we see clients and they're like oh I've saved this like gosh I could give some real examples like I had one client and she saved these travertine tiles right and they had to break some to redo this electrical lighting and she's like I've saved them for 12 years and she was so excited. The problem was was that the tiles outside had been weathering for 12 years and the tiles inside have not so when I showed her the match that we got we were closer matching her product like with new stuff quote unquote new than we were with the saved material because it had been inside the whole time. On the flip side of that like you mentioned there's the other side of it which is materials that need to be stored indoors because they need to be protected and climate controlled like certain woods or paints right usually it's climate controlled is what's important there and also UV light you don't want too much UV light on paint cans and we see people don't do that and so it's like oh behind the shed and we like take through it and then we get the paint can and we're like I think it's a rock it will open it it's just like a big glob that's all dried up so yeah it's definitely important to store it in the right setting for sure. So is your advice for people to store it in a climate controlled environment and then if you can use it great and if not just expect that as part of your bid you will include that in the price so that you can warranty the job when it's finished. Yeah I mean certain paints for example like when you're talking about paint we could the technology I mean when I started as a kid we used to have to do the little cards like I would go to the paint store or I'd take a big piece of something and I would go to the paint store with it and I'd be looking at it matching it I mean nowadays with laser matching we can get really really close so with paint what matters is that barcode typically like you know I've clients are like I got 20 gallons left over I'm like I just need the code you know so it's like the paint's six years old we need the code so with paint it's usually the barcode is what matters but then there's certain like there could be certain flooring like tile for example goes in and out of style like or in and out of fashion like style it's you get certain waves of it so tile is always good to hold onto some amount I find but if it's outdoor weathering ideally you leave it outdoors that's what goes behind your shed if it's indoor tile you leave it somewhere where it's indoors so it's really specific to how hard is it gonna be to find this like there's I have clients that some of them save like generic hardwood flooring for example and it's like I can get you know I feel bad because they've saved it for 10 years let's say and I'm like I have some left over in the truck like we have this we almost feel bad not using theirs Oh well that is fascinating and I'm really glad for that information so that helps us those of us that are storing a whole lot of stuff to make sure that it is in alignment with the job and like you said keep the indoor stuff inside and the outdoor stuff outside and how much of it should we save you mentioned 20 gallons of paint is it what do you do with 20 gallons of paint if you're not gonna use it? It's a big misconception around I see a lot of clients with good intentions and for example like I had a client that small paver job she wanted to like extend this walkway and she saved probably 80 or 90 pavers we needed about 120 the type of pavers she bought we have to buy a half pallet minimum she saved no money so she'd be because of the like by the time I go and I purchased that half pallet and as a minimum order quantity like I felt bad that she had all these pavers I'm like you're gonna have the same amount if I build this little walkway like now you're gonna have excess of what you save we can build another little walkway somewhere so you know and so we're trying to figure out where the other walkway is gonna go but it's when it comes to saving material I think it requires a little bit of planning as silly as it sounds around what like when you can understand what you're saving something for it's helpful like typically if you're if you have a big patio or a big driveway 10 or 15 pavers 20 pavers depending on the size is a good number if you get an oil stain you're usually taking out six depending on how many drops of oil and where it goes so but I see like typically if it's not gonna be a quantity to do the entire project the savings cost-wise isn't usually there Got it I want to stop for just a second say hi to everybody that's joined in thank you guys so much for being here today we've got LaShonda Smith she says hi we have a reclusive lovely that says cement dust I know cement dust we got to talk about that oh boy I'm up at 929 we've got Nancy this is really a great show thank you both thank you guys for joining us this is so much fun to have you guys here with us and today we are learning from Matt Dabara for those of you that are just joining us and we will talk about cement dust but before we do that I want to talk about when we do get rid of some of the stuff we've been saving what do we do with it can we just kind of like chunk it in the dumpster that's sitting over there like after dark and hope nobody catches us yeah the the dumpster is funny I've had I've had quite a few clients depends on what you're getting rid of you know I've had clients they fill a dumpster with pavers so they wonder why the trash bag doesn't pick it up like well because it's a 400 pound trash barrel so you know it's getting rid of it is it obviously hazardous materials like if you're getting rid of battery like car batteries or certain things that have lead paint like that's it's not a landfill thing you know the occasional paver or two in the trash can I mean we see that we see that often but a lot of times there's so many there's so many waste collection companies and what we find too I have a lot of clients that are selling their stuff interestingly enough on like certain offer up or Craigslist where they're able to get rid of like the woman I mentioned with the walkway she's just going to sell her paver she'll get 50 or 100 bucks but they'll come and pick it up so she doesn't have to get rid of it that's a great tip I know we had some extra pallets from a job just that the wooden pallets and so we put them out at the end of the drive took a picture of them put them on next door and within moments they were gone I don't know who came and got them and I don't know what they were going to use them for but they were just gone I was like hey that was awesome pallets are hot commodity people use them for art they use them to store things like I mean pallets are just we can get we leave pallets like when we're doing a job if we have a three-day project we'll put the pallets out on the first day they'll be gone by the second or third day oh really oh yeah always wow all right so if we don't have experience cleaning up the um and I have to stop for a second because I want to go back to the last question for just a second because I'm thinking of two questions at once can we say something about illegal dumping if you put your debris and extra stuff inside somebody else's dumpster that does not belong to you or a public dumpster how that can lead to fines yeah that's that's a big one um obviously storing storing getting disposing rather disposing properly is important I know I've nowadays everyone has cameras so I've had clients that have had issues you know with people they've caught people I mean I see it firsthand they show me the ring camera and they're like oh you know we gotta not leave waste out or don't leave your dumpster in front of our house and we say why and they say because we got people that are dumping illegally we had this issue you know we we know who they are they're going to be fine so nowadays it's it's I mean it's not right regardless but the people with technology now it's the thought of getting away with it is is not what it what it was and it's not you know not right in general there is a state I forget which state it is I think it's Michigan or Wisconsin or something and there is not only a fine but there's imprisonment for illegal dumping illegal dumping is such a huge issue don't don't do it I mean like don't pretend like oh hey I'm going to sneak over when no one's looking into it don't do it it is it's not cool there are a lot of land places around that will take extra stuff and I know that near where I live it's probably about an eight mile drive and you have to pay like $15 to get in and once you get in they have little stations and the stations will take like old doors and over here they'll take old washing machines and over here they'll take old paint and cleaning cans and over here they have I mean they have all different kinds of stuff and so you can just drive in with your great big monster truck and if you do have a big monster truck it's not $15 you have to drive over this weighted scale and then they weigh your vehicle and then there's a price and then with that price then you can go in and make all the stops in the dumping ground but they have people at those stations that are trained and they know how to get rid of that waste so it just doesn't go into a landfill just as a bunch of trash okay so I do want to stop for just a second and say when you're cleaning up renovation projects there is a proper way to do that so anyway that was not a trick question but I did want your expertise so all right so now let's say that we have a project and it's really exciting and we're in the middle of it during the middle of the process people are walking through like let's say they're having their their pavers laid and they walk over the cement dust and then into their house and they track all that stuff through the house tell us about the process of cleaning it up as you go yeah I mean it's always the main thing is to mitigate right is protection like when we think of when we think of products I always look at reduce so reduce the waste or reduce the problem and then it's reuse recycle like that's the that's the process through I mean now it's like lead if like I was very much into that when that first came out leader and environmental and energy design energy efficient design but when you're looking at when you're looking at a site it's always temp protect first because I mean you can clean and and do it well but there's always a risk with certain especially when you're doing with like cement dust and if it gets into something porous typically the same cleaners that we use to get rid of the cement dust eat away at the porous material if it's cement based so like some papers and cement dust like we've done jobs where somebody's poured concrete and walk through it and got concrete from their boots on the concrete pavers and it's like well this is a problem because the cleaner is the same cleaner to eat away at the concrete in the pavers so protection is huge it's a big first kind of first step and then if you don't have that cement dust in particular if it's dry the big thing is not using liquids always trying to like depending on how well ventilated the area is sometimes you can get away with like leaf blowing it but I always like to use a shop bag with a good HEPA filter and a bag so I double up that's a neat trick if you're listening so you don't have to worry about with the exhaust because if you just use a bag or you just use a HEPA filter sometimes the dust is so fine that it'll come out through the negative end but if you use a bag and HEPA filter I found that you can usually get cement dust up and the key there is keep it dry now why keep it dry because the dust what happens is the cement when you have like water like some people try and spray it and then they end up with this haze and it soaks into like I've seen it with tile I've seen it with all sorts of different surfaces and it activates the cement again so it basically re-hardens it because cement is something that continues to harden even underwater that's why we use it for like bridges and things like that that cross waterways it can harden underwater so it almost like we've used certain like roof coatings and things that they call it re-emulsify where basically a new coating would reactivate it cement does that with water that's really fascinating so we can clean up with a shop bag with a HEPA filter and a bag all right now many people know what regular vacuum looks like what does a what does a shop bag look like and when you say a bag on the back explain to us how that works yeah so I'm there's all different types of brands but if you go to like any of the main you know hardware stores like a home depot you get like a rigid shop bag there's all different sizes but a shop bag is usually you can clean wet and dry material which is nice because then you have the versatility so it's a big round drum and it's got a kind of a hose nozzle to it and there's all these different fixtures you can put on it and whenever I'm dealing with something that's whenever I'm dealing with something that's really fine dust I always like to use because what will happen is if you don't put a HEPA filter which goes on the inside you take the lid off and the HEPA filter slides on on the inside and then the bag there's actually the bag acts as a filter mechanism for the air as well for the outlet I don't know if that answers your question so the air comes in through like a attachment or a hose and then the air goes out the back into a bag that connects on somehow to the back of the shop bag sorry so nozzle basically it's like nozzle that you use to clean with and then that sucks the air into a drum well actually there's an inlet inside the drum and that inlet you slide a bag onto and then air is sucked through and the HEPA filter goes on the basically the suction mechanism of the vacuum so there's no external bag or whatnot it's all kind of contained within the the drum of the the drum of the shop bag okay and I know this is going to be a unique question but I am going to get asked this question so I'm going to ask you instead can you vacuum up wet cement dust yes absolutely yep it wouldn't be it would it would not necessarily be dust at that point it kind of turns into like a slurry so a lot of times and this is a great point whenever you're dealing with like gosh I mean we see it with like drywall dust we see it with with drywall mud we see it with any of your plasters or cement dust when people when we spray those they leave a haze or a residue so we actually typically shot back up the slurry so like we'll shot back it and then when it turns into a big puddle we'll vacuum that up otherwise it'll leave a residue where that puddle or that wherever there's low spots is where that dust collects it's one of the more common calls that we used to get when we when we did this kind of cleaning all right so then the next question is at what point of the job do you stop and clean stuff up do you clean it up as you go or do you wait till the job is done and then say okay we're done for the day and then you clean it up I don't want to be neurotic about like cleaning it up every few minutes but is that the best way to go yeah it depends on the it depends on the project that's a great question I haven't I haven't thought about this like formulaically how we do it I know that we always clean up at the end of the day because typically we're dealing with homes even in like new construction you don't want to be the company that even if there's nobody living there and they're just framing the house so but in the remodeling where somebody might live there or the owner might come through daily cleanups crucial and then depending on how dusty something is like when we tend when we build plastic tents we're cleaning up usually like before every break so team takes 10 o'clock break we're cleaning up and we're doing it again at 12 and we're doing it again at 1 and usually that's because the dust will settle so anytime we're dealing with like really dusty products like if it can be sawdust if you're cutting a lot it's nice to clean up right after the break or right before if you're not working because then the dust tends to settle and does that also prevent people then from tracking it all over the house and what have you yeah absolutely you want to contain it because it gets on it gets on the shoes or the boots and a lot of the non-slip OSHA footwear if you're wearing that it's really it almost like it captures because there's like these little dimples on the ribs they're like captures the dust and I mean you can track it for you can track it for hundreds of feet we had a stairway in our home and they sanded down the banisters and they re did the stain on it and it's a two-story open area and they taped off as much of it as they could with big sheets of plastic but because the outside area was just like open and there was nothing to tape there was nowhere to take the plastic to there was a lot of dust that got all over the house and imagine me in a house with you know dust this thick but it just went everywhere and then when the air would kick on boom it would go everywhere and I cleaned out the air filter so many times it was just like so much dust for months I mean for months it was just every time I turn around there's like this much stuff on the baseball it's like no you know I want to stop for just a second and say hi to all the folks that are joining us we've got some fun fans here otherwise you get cement in the air dust is toxic yes I'm loving this if you don't have a filter you blow it all around your shop that's true Matt is awesome yes he is so many shops don't think about this I've been on so many bad sites clean as you go yep I'm telling you what pal we gotta have you here on the show good boss yep this is awesome I do so much cleanable and post construction on all the sites thank you guys so much for the comments thanks for jumping in here this is Matt DeBara with DeBara Masonry and he's giving us some tips on how to clean up from the work that we do on renovation projects so this is exciting and lots of fun so what are some of the misconceptions that people have about the debris that is left behind from home construction projects well I think the big ones fall around dust one of the big ones is like it'll just settle and I'll clean it and you touched on that I mean we've seen that I mean gosh we got a call once where it was a high school basketball gym and they were cutting out some of the blocks and they didn't have the right vacuum attachments I guess the bag had like slipped off for the HEPA filter and it was just shooting the dust out I mean they were vacuuming it it was like almost just like concentrating it and we got a call to clean that and it was like you said it was the dust was everywhere so I think there's a big misconception around dust and then the other one we see a lot is with with things that leech you know if you have like if you're dealing with oils or stains or if you're dealing with drywall mud things that leave shadows you know like we've had people that have we see it a lot with like drywall muds messy it's everywhere and then it's like it leaves like a shadow stain on a mantle or so that's another big one is like the residual leftover when you remove like when something gets hard like the old school way was we used to call it a moon pie we'd let the mortar it would we would let it we would let it get hard in the wheelbarrow and then we'd bang it out the next day but it would leave and that was like the old school way of doing things was like let it get hard and then deal with it later when I was a little kid that's what we're taught and we learned that's not necessarily good because things leave shadows and so being really mindful of that and so if a if a person is doing a home renovation project to do it yourself home renovation project should they have a what did you call it a shop vac should they have that from the beginning of the project or is that something that they can buy after the project is complete number number one thing I'd have before you start I know that because you knock things over you make me say I mean the best thing like we set it up for everything so you have your shop vac ready I mean if you're painting if you're sanding I mean things happen and sometimes you'll have a tent if you're sanding let's say or things are taped off and tape might fall and now all of a sudden it's like you know you want to you want to dust it or one trick you can do is you can just leave the shop vac on and it'll circulate the air in the room so if you seal off the room if you put plastic in front of the door and there's no ventilation you can just let it run and it'll capture that airborne dust and help clean the room we've done that what a great tip yeah that's a good one I forgot about that one yeah you can use it to just literally purify the air in the room so if somebody has a mistake which a lot of times like sometimes when you're sanding and there's that that pouch where the the sand pulls in if that slips off or if you're painting and knock over paint the shop vac is your best friend because it allows you to clean things in a way that's not conventional what I mean is like for example if I spilled paint the last thing you want to do is start wipe like let's say I have carpet or tile and I've paint last thing you want to do is start wiping it with the shop vac you can just come right in and suck up all that paint and then you can use your paint stripper or your basically your paint thinner apply it and then suck up that residual kind of mix of the paint thinner in the paint so yeah shop vac on the job whenever you're working around dust or liquids is huge and that's a great tip I didn't know you could suck up paint that's a really interesting tip because my first thought would be if you suck up paint and then it dries inside your shop vac then doesn't ruin the shop vac so tell us about how to clean your shop vac so that you can protect the equipment that you're using to protect your home yeah so shop vac typically what we do is we take out the we take out the bag and we take out the HEPA filter and then that hose it's corrugated so like any paints or any any type of like dust or slurry if you've mixed water with any type of dust it basically collects in those corrugated rings and so what we do is what I like to do is I'll take like a bucket and I'll take sand and I'll wet it so it's like this slurry and I'll suck that up and what that'll do is it'll like self clean so I'll take a couple scoops of or trials usually when I'm on the job and it could be regular play sand it could be ideally not like dirt it needs to be like you can get it at any of the hardware stores just bag sand and you mix it with water and you make the slurry and if you run that through and it's really wet you want it like 90% water 10% sand when you suck that up it's basically like rinsing it but with grit and it'll clean out paints it'll clean out oh my gosh drywall mud that's wet it'll cement dust any any of those things and you can kind of self clean your shop vac what a brilliant idea oh that's good all right so then the next question is what is the difference between a regular commercial consumer vacuum not a commercial but a consumer vacuum and a wet dry vacuum because I know a lot of people are going to say well I just have this vacuum already in my house and it's using a bag or it's a canister or something can I use that instead yeah the thing with the shop vac is that the big difference is the wet dry feature and the bigger the bigger hose nozzle so a lot of the vacuums that like I used to use you have the handle and you kind of be behind and you push it this it's more nozzle driven so you have all these different nozzles and it's meant for more hand cleaning but you can the hose is it's a three or four inch hose so you can suck up I mean big rocks and chunks of things and fine debris but it's it's so versatile that's the big thing I mean you can't we used to joke I mean you can't it's hard to break these things I mean I remember we were on a job once and and a roofer dropped one off a roof and we saw it just tumble second story boom and it fell and it landed and it was still plugged in and it turned itself on first of all why did that fall off the roof that's not good second of all how is this thing still running you know so they're really terrible wow that's amazing what are some of the potential hazards and safety concerns that homeowners need to be aware of when using equipment as they're cleaning up yeah um I mean with a shot back in particular you want to be careful what you're sucking up you know obviously if you're using it for like we've seen people with their hair right because it's really strong with the suction like making sure if you're leaning down you know I'm really trying to get something um you can suck up your hair because it'll just pull it right in so being mindful of that being mindful of things that might be things that might be like in the water for example like we've seen um people have sucked up like like wires or things like that that they didn't want to like long rope like things that can be in piles of debris you know what other what other types of cleaning equipment do people commonly use so I can be more more specific well there are a lot of different types of projects I know in the audience that we have today there are a lot of professional house cleaners and they're called out on jobs that are let's say post construction jobs and so they go out on a job and they erroneously think that they're just going to clean everything up once and then it will be done forever but some of that dust comes back again and again and again and we have to really build two or three times in order to get the job done and get it clean because as soon as you do it then somebody comes in and they blue tape everything and then they come back with dry wall sand and there's more dust and all the stuff and so it's not just a one-time thing any tips for professional house cleaners that are doing post constructions yeah I think one of the one of the big things is the dust I would definitely use the shot back like what we do is we would take one shot back and we would let it run in a room while we were cleaning the dust so that any dust that we stirred up would be sucked in and we found that not every time but a decent amount of the time we could eliminate that second trip because we were cleaning the room but you have to make sure look at like the vents and windows and doorways and try and get the room to be concealed that way you get that good suction effect in the air but that's a good one so like as you're sweeping or doing any of those things that's big I mean gosh there's so many do you close do you close the windows when you're doing that or do you open the the window so that the air can come in and fresh air close them close and turn off air and central air and heat yep you close it so that the room's tight and then that vacuum you get the effect of circulating the air I remember I had a friend who's a physicist and he was trying to figure out how many times the air circulates with the shot back he was trying to do the calculation and he was like in this room with this size the air actually is going to completely circulate through the shot back every x amount of time and I was blown away by the number I don't remember what it was but he was into he was into the physics of it but yeah it's a really neat trick this is a really interesting idea for those of you that are not aware please pay attention to this if you are using strong heavy chemicals we want to ventilate by opening the windows and getting the air circulating so there's plenty of clean air to breathe but when you're doing a post construction job with lots of dust we want to seal off the areas so like what Matt is saying we can go ahead and we can run that shot back and it will circulate the air and it will suck everything up and contain it I love that there's two different rules here for two different types of clean that's awesome are there any specific tools or equipment besides a shot back that you would recommend I know I'm a really really big fan of the disposable dusters because it will trap and lock the technology on the dust and this may be a finer layer of we're doing a final dusting what would you recommend as far as any special tools that you like that you find are just super great for cleaning up yeah I like so I usually you'll have shot back is probably number one with the different nozzles sometimes I'll have duct tape for corners if I can't get the shot back in there I'll use duct tape and just pull whatever is in the corner there there's a scraper it's like a paint scraper but it's got a hook on one end and I'll use that all the time for cleaning corners and pulling debris out I like hand brushes coarse fine and then we in the masonry world we use like coarse hair brushes or really really fine brushes that are nice for like fine dust and those are the main things that I'll have sometimes I'll have a screwdriver to get in any areas that that I can't easily like a nice long screwdriver to get in like fine spots to clean those areas and then dust pan brush I mean that's kind of like the oh and then the microfiber cloth I usually have something like that but that's kind of like my main I would say my main toolkit that sounds like a good one I know on many occasions we've used the screwdriver wrapped with a paper towel and that way we can get inside place without actually scratching it because I know oftentimes as cleaners we're in a hurry because we're trying to be efficient and if you've got a screwdriver and you're trying to get in a ledge or you know along the shower rim or something it's easy to scratch if you don't have a cover great tips what are some of the most unusual or challenging message messy debris situations that you've run into that you've had to just really stop and wrap your head around like ah yeah I mean getting the the oils and stains for for wood when you're refinishing wood like if you're doing any like the exotic hardwoods and you're doing staining or finishing that gets on anything else like we had one where they got it all over a fireplace hearth all the brick and it soaked in is really really difficult to clean there's a lot with dust which we hit we hit on pretty well dust is a huge issue I mean because there's so many things that contribute to it drywall team does it framers do it carpenters masons I mean there's like you know six of the 10 major roofers so you're always getting dust roof cement and roof tires are really really nasty products to clean off that we've seen and then any of the the cement stuff when when cement gets wet and it's activated that's a really difficult one too can we talk for just a second about the stain one of the things is a house cleaner that we've seen inside people's homes and this is for a lot of do-it-yourselfers when they are staining things like their wood deck or they're staining I don't know something that they've created in their house and it's a refinished bureau or bed stand or something and they're re-staining it there's a temptation because in the back of our heads we know that oh my kitchen sink has water I'll just go into my kitchen sink that's stainless steel and I'll just wash my hands and my brush and all the things in the in the sink and what happens as a result of that is when that hits the stainless steel it stays it does not wash down the drain and you cannot scrub it out and so then we're left you know and we get asked a lot how how do I clean this I've stained my sink well it can be refinished but the best secret is to not wash stain and things that don't wash out that are not water-based down a sink please do not do that on any sink inside your home and that's what a garden hose is for and so we send people outside to wash out their tools in a garden hose yeah we and that's a good point I mean we've seen a lot with that and then also just pouring like pouring if you're done with like a thinset or a grout or any of these products and you're pouring them down the drain we see a lot of the plumbing issues too that's a common one that we get like really common actually so if a homeowner was going to clean up their property is there a series of steps that they should take you mentioned in the process of doing some some masonry work that you taped things off with like painters tape and some plastic sheets or there are things like that that you could recommend that would help the process not be so difficult afterwards because I can think in my head of a whole lot of situations that we've gone into as house cleaners where the homeowner didn't know they were supposed to tape off the house and so when they started and I kid you not I kid you not a table saw inside their living room and they're sawing stuff and there's like saw dust going everywhere and we walk in and our eyes get really big and we have to just kind of like not say anything because what we're thinking is like uh oh no way this is not happening yeah when you're the big things are so the I love I'm a huge fan of the small that they're small painters rules of plastic they're about eight inches long and they fold open into like you can get them in the 10 by 10 or 10 by 20s I'm a huge fan of those going back to the taping making sure you have the right tape and testing it first is huge we see a lot with like depending on the quality of paint and the quality of painter if you use even the blue painters tape that says it's good for painted services we always recommend you put it on you take your thumb and you press it real hard rub it three or four times and then peel it off you know quickly and see what happens and ideally you're doing this in an area like lower to the floor just in case but it's better to find out in one small area than to tape off everything and then when you're pulling it because sometimes painters they mix paints like they'll mix an acrylic with an oil base with the water and then what happens is those paint layers they don't hold up and so I just wanted to throw that in there because we see that a lot with with when it comes to taping off areas but assuming you've tested your tape to make sure and also sealers on floors is another big one so semi gloss and glossy sealers it could be concrete floors tile floors it can pull the varnish off of finished wood so testing the tape is a huge one we've seen that a lot but assuming you've tested the tape and you know that it won't damage the surface then plastic is great I'm a huge fan of a ram board which is you can get rolls of it for certain areas that are heavy traffic drop cloths are great for local areas that you're working they're not super good for anything that might spill over so a lot of times and we've seen this a lot where people will paint and they'll paint with the drop cloth well ideally you have plastic and you have to be mindful of this because if you put the plastic underneath the drop cloth it can be slippery if you put it on top it can be slippery but ideally you have an area like local to where your paint is that you have something heavier duty that's ideally plastic based because we've seen when that paint gets knocked over and it soaks it can soak through the drop cloth very quickly whereas the drop cloth is good if you're painting and you get the occasional drip or drop it doesn't usually bleed through those are kind of a couple common ones that we see and I'm so glad you brought that up because as house cleaners we often get asked how do I clean up all this paint that spilled on my floor my hardwood floor or something like that and if it's a water based paint sometimes we can get it up and sometimes even a steamer will help get it up just like a hot steamer and that's not ideal for hardwood floors but in a pinch we can remove some dry paint and things like that with it do you have any advice for getting paint off a floor that has it has spilled and it's it's now on the hard surface flooring yeah that's a tricky one so ideally first we look at can we carefully scrape it off like is it thick enough where we can carefully scrape it off that's one thing we'll try and we'll usually test that in one area then would you try that when the paint is wet or dry only when it's dry so we only try when it's dry if the paint is wet you can't scrape it but sometimes if if like we come and we realize that we've seen for example paint spills and it kind of cakes on and it's thick sometimes you can almost peel that up and one big big almost like one big kind of like paint little pancake thing so if you can do that great you can test scraping it like in a real small area carefully with like a paint scraper and you'll know right away if it's going to come off or not sometimes if there was dust dust becomes our friend at that point because if the floor was dusty and the paint hardened over the dust it'll just come off assuming it won't then I've seen steam work really well I've also seen a lot of the environmentally friendly paint strippers like they're almost like yogurt compounds the real aggressive ones tend to pull off any of the coatings of whatever's underneath which if it's wood so I like to start with the most environmentally or eco friendly and usually that's like a yogurt like almost like a jelly and I'll pick a small square I'll leave it on there for a few hours and then I'll see if it comes off and let it dry and I found that to be really work really well and then sometimes you have to move your way out also depending on the surface like for example if you have a good like let's say you've got a really durable porcelain tile sometimes you can use a fine sandpaper and get it off without damaging the tile if you do it carefully but you got to kind of I found at least you have to test those different methods because you don't know how clean the floor was you don't know if there's any coatings on it you don't know if the paint would come off how well it's caked on there oh those are some really good tips thank you so much for that when you're dealing with outdoor projects such as landscaping or hardscaping what messes and debris should homeowners be prepared for and how can those be best be managed a big one as you were saying that is a lot of the soils fertilizers the mulches they leach and so we've gotten we used to get calls a lot where people would get like mulch delivered in their concrete or paper driveway and it would like leach some of the chemicals and then it would you'd have the shadow of where the mulch was especially if it rained so a big one is planning for any of your porous surfaces could be wood like up against your house or it could be any of your concrete whether it's concrete or pavers or even your asphalt sometimes you get shadowing on the asphalt that's a big one making sure that there's something underneath there and being really thoughtful of where you put plants if you're watering like sometimes we do hanging plants from windows and we water them and then the water leaches the the fertilizers and nitrates and can get onto your house or if you have wood siding or plastic siding and even into your concrete as well very common you know what now that you mentioned that and I never thought of that but now that you mentioned that that makes my husband so angry when they drop the mulch off and then for some reason after he scooped it all up off the the driveway out it always stains the driveway I didn't think about that but there should be a tarp or something underneath it oh my gosh so how does technology and modern equipment help us clean up some of the the debris from the projects that we've started gosh we've come a long way I mean I you know a lot of the stuff I started with it was like elbow grease right my dad was like just try harder like I'm gonna ruin what's underneath there he's like well it's nothing we can do I think we've gotten better at understanding there's there's a lot more products to remove to remove things now and that's that's a big one it's really taking the time to figure out okay what's already in the market for cleaning this I mean I get emails every six months it'll be like hey this new product to clean root cement or this new product to clean sealers and we try them and I find that they're getting better and better so that's huge and then also there's a lot with the steam as a technology like high heat I'm finding is a lot better than it used to be like controlled pressure steam cleaning is really neat we've gotten a lot better with power washers and the different nozzles and the oscillating power washer heads that that don't damage the surface quite as much so I think products and the tools definitely have become better specifically the chemical compounds that that can remove stains without being so environmentally harsh awesome thanks for sharing that Vicky has a question and she says does plexiglass turn color in the sun I want to apply something out on my front porch halfway up and the floor is getting ruined what advice do you have for Vicky yeah they if you for the for plexiglass there are plexiglasses that don't it used to be that there's a resin and plexiglass that would turn yellow and people would get that or they'd get almost like a fog or this same thing that would happen to your car headlights if they got moisture it was like this almost the scaling if you get a good quality plexiglass and you let them know what you're looking to do they do have it that but it has to be the right plexiglass because it's the same you want the same and I'm sorry I wish I knew exactly what it was called but it's the same one we were just on a project and they were going to put glass in for the railing because they had a really nice view and they had to use they couldn't use real glass so they needed to use a certain plexiglass so I know they have ones that don't yellow or discolor and I think what you said a minute ago about technology has changed I know that there are a lot of things even like window tinting where I know in a lot of the homes that we go into especially like new homes there will be a need for window tinting so that it doesn't discolor like the hardwood floors or the hard surface flooring and it's just a little tiny things that sometimes you don't think about but if you will try to forecast like hey if I'm going to sell my house in five years from now wouldn't it be nice if the hardwood floors didn't have to be replaced because they've faded so much that they don't match the rest of the house or something you know little tiny things like that so have you ever encountered any do-it-yourself disasters related to cleanup or debris that there were some valuable lessons in there for homeowners that we could take away from that um it's never happened right never I was just trying to find what deep buried it by brain no there's there's been quite a few I mean I see a lot with with grouts and stains and white washing brick I've seen a lot with white washing brick a lot of the more modern look now is if you have red brick and you want it to look white like lime washing or white washing brick I've seen a lot with like they've over applied it and it's just like completely calcified the brick I see it with sealers I see a lot with over applying sealers or not cleaning properly so that could be your tile your shower that could be your driveway any exterior it could be any even wood if you have a deck where it's just like it's so thick and the the logic is well it wasn't really it didn't look like it was working so I came back the next day and added another coat and then I added another coat and it's like we've seen it where it's just it's so oversaturated but yeah grouts white washing brick and then sealers specifically as big ones where I've seen some serious serious problems and is that because the do-it-yourselfer didn't have the right information as far as the application of it or would it have been better for them to then and I hate I hate this question because it's going to come back to they didn't know enough to do the research and the development in order to do it correctly the first time so now they had to call an expert in to kind of come fix the problem after the fact is that I don't know what's the answer there do you just call the expert to begin with and save yourself the hassle and save them the repairs I mean it's you don't have to you just have to be really I feel like the confidence when I see do-it-yourselfers handle cleaning and sealing or refinishing projects right if they restain or waterproof for example would it's just the ones that I see problems with is where they were just so overconfident they're like yeah I kind of read it you know I skimmed it over and then you just spread the stuff and so I think it's just one of those things where at least in my experience the problems happened because they were like well how hard could it be and so as long as you go into it cautiously and knowing that you could ruin the entire surface I think the homeowners and the do-it-yourselfers I see that are cautious with like I didn't want to mess it up so I did this this did I do it right I'm like oh you did it perfectly like this is great so I think it's that level of cautiousness I would say that makes for a good product because the the the research is out there I mean they the the the directions are good the way to do the margin forever if you're cautious is very little is what I was trying to say well I know for example when we had our stairs redone it was it was always wrong because when we bought the house and the guy stained the wood the next person that came in didn't wait till the wood had cured and so it was a repairman that came in but then put like this paper on the floor but taped it up with a painter's tape and so when they picked off the painter's tape just like you said the sealer hadn't settled or cured and so it just peeled it off like in bubbles and so then forever it was bubbled and looked bad and so then we had to have somebody come in and re-sand the whole thing and start over again because all the stain was bad and it was only bad on every stair where he taped the paper ah how come how come we find ourselves in this situation but but we do we do and so there's this really nice mix of we have professionals that know exactly what we're doing we have a group of do-it-yourselfers that are like oh I saw this on YouTube therefore I can do it and then we have the cleanup crew sometimes they're house cleaners or heaven forbid it's some somebody that's coming in for a move and move out clean that's trying to get the home ready and repaired in order to sell it and so it's things like somebody epoxied their their garage flooring but they didn't use the chemical you're supposed to use to make sure that it's and they're like what was new cement so I just like painted over it but then when their tires hit that it then just ripped up the peeling because it wasn't whatever they were supposed to put down there they didn't use they skipped some steps can you talk to us about skipping steps in the application process and how that can cost you later on yeah a big time I mean especially in the applications you just mentioned like for we do we used to do a lot of epoxy floors and there's no they'd be like well how do we fix it I'm like there's no fix like we have to add acid etch it properly so like that exact example you gave is one that I've seen many times we're like well it's fresh concrete I'm like how long did we wait so it comes down to really reading and thoroughly understanding like for example concrete is supposed to cure typically 28 days and usually depending on how it's climate controlled and if you get rain you four to six weeks is kind of the real thumb before you want to put any special coatings on it especially ones that don't breathe and so like if you miss that one little note that little star at the bottom of the sheet that's like oh by the way if the concrete's less than you know 28 days old weight or ask a professional that one note could cost you the entire surface so it's definitely something where maybe you're not going to hire an expert but maybe you meet with one and really size up the job and ask them the process I find that to be kind of a good middle of the road so if you're doing it yourself or and you're listening and thinking well I'm going to refinish this word deck or I'm going to reseal my driveway maybe consult with a professional and get a quote now you know how much more it will cost you to do it with them but more importantly you'll get an idea of what are the sequences and steps that they'll use and you might avoid missing the step because it's crucial not to miss any when you're talking about this kind of application well and I appreciate you bringing that up because I think the a lot of the do-it-yourselfers like you said are overconfident and they're like hey I can save some money by doing this myself then if you factor in the cost of the repairs or the renovations that you're going to have to do if you do it wrong or the factor of if I do it myself using either the wrong equipment or old equipment like something I've been storing that's been out in the weather and it's and it voids the warranty of whatever the new project is that you're doing there are a lot of factors that can or need to be considered so that you're not spending extra money chasing bad money chasing good money if that makes sense yeah and there's specialty equipment that I mean we have we have a measuring saw that we use it's $1,500 or $2,000 saw right so there's certain equipment that on projects it's just not it doesn't always make sense like for example if you need a really deep steam clean to prep a surface before you seal it because there's a lot of if you have trees that have a lot of sap and a lot of organic matter a cold power washer doesn't typically get those out and so you'll ruin you'll ruin you'll apply a sealer and it won't take in those areas whereas if you had a good steam cleaner and you were able to go in there and really release and pull the sap out you would have got the job that you wanted so things like that it's like and you know to buy or rent that equipment sometimes doesn't pencil out into the cost and so at what point do you not knowing what you don't know at what point do you get with a professional and just say hey I'm thinking about doing this because you mentioned a moment ago it might benefit you to do that at what point do you do it after the project started and say hey I'm in the middle of this project and I just realize I don't know what I'm doing or do you do you bring them in from the beginning and just let them quote you the project from the beginning and say oh this is going to cost less than all the time and energy that if I did it myself like at what point I'm a big proponent to find a good company online find somebody that looks reputable right don't don't necessarily start with the most affordable company per se like find somebody that's got a good online presence bring them out get a quote because a lot of do-it-yourselfers that I see some of them not a lot but some I've seen where they're like oh I've saved myself tons of money and I'll run through the numbers with them these are friends typically right we'll be in their backyard having a barbecue and they're like oh I did this all myself I'm like well talk me through this like well I rented this and then we messed this up and I had to do this again and I'm like I would have charged you twenty two hundred bucks you're at two grand cost you're kidding I'm like yeah because we would have done this in four hours and it took you you know X amount of time to do it so I think getting that price and getting the means of methods because upfront to answer your question because then you can compare things accurately and you can say okay it's going to cost me how much do I have this equipment and a lot of times we find like I'll meet for example with a somebody who's typically a do-it-yourselfer and midway through the conversation they'll say I'm not doing this myself I'm definitely going to hire you and and it's comforting to know that they avoided that potential issue well and I think the takeaway from today's conversation if there is a takeaway and there are a lot of takeaways you guys have some amazing tips thank you but I think one of the most interesting things is that sometimes with the best of intentions we are ruining a project that we don't even know we're ruining because of our lack of education on that particular project and then we think that we're saving time when because we don't have the skill set we don't have the 100 years of background that you have in this business what happens is we end up taking a lot longer and taking shortcuts along the way that then end up tripping us up later on that then cost us in cleanup and debris and repairs that had we had we gone to the expert in the beginning and just gotten a little bit more information it would then help us make an educated decision on how to move forward 100% and I think we touched on them but I usually see it with with stains sealers like coatings those types of things that you have like one shot like if you're applying something and you're thinking to yourself it's going to last 20 years if it's done right and it's going to last zero days if it's done wrong like I've seen papers and walkways and tile like there's a lot of things that you can you can do and the the risk is relatively low but with that stuff it ends up costing so much more to remove it only to get you back to where you originally started to then do it all over again that it's exactly what you mentioned you guys this was an awesome hour with Matt Debarre thank you Matt so much for joining us today this has just been enlightening and I do want to have our listeners find where they can they can go to find you tell us tell us that yeah family business is debarremasonry.com if you ever have any questions or has anything we can do be happy to help well this has been so informative thank you so much I just I've learned so much and this is just really awesome I'm going to leave links in the show notes as well where you can find Matt and then if he has anything later on that he wants to add to this or if he wants to drop back by and answer your questions you guys will have a direct link to him there thanks again so much Matt I appreciate you guys joining in today and this was fun thank you