This is the time of year we start wrapping up those project indoors dreaming about working outside in the spring. We have some killer DIY tips from painting, to appliance repair, to fixing that vacuum. Plus we talk about the new 6E internet standard that is now out and coming to a home near you that will make it easier to stream movies, work from home and all of those gaming needs. We talk for a moment with Kunle Ekundare, Senior Director of Product Development for Comcast about the next generation Xfinity Xfi gateway.

For more information about the 6E Gateway: https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-wifi-6e-fastest-router-gateway-10G-low-latency

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

We have moved the Pro Insider Special on Thursday to its new feed. It will no longer be on this page. You can find it and subscribe right here: https://around-the-house-pro-insider.captivate.fm/

Mentioned in this episode:

Check out our New YouTube channel @AroundtheHouse HQ

Make sure you subscribe and RING THE BELL for our brand new channel with 4k content! Click the link to take you there!

YouTube Around the House HQ

Take a second and leave us a review on your favorite podcast player!

Quick favor—if you're enjoying the show, the absolute best way you can support us is by leaving a quick review on your favorite podcast player.

[00:00:09] Eric Goranson: Here's the secret. So you get like the frog tape, the good tape. And if you're buying the cheap white tape, you already, you're already going to cause a problem. So you get what you pay for with tape. So get some good tape. So you'll run your straight line of your tape down. And I like to not do little sections, but pull the tape out.

[00:00:47] Intro: when it comes to remodeling and

[00:00:49] Intro: is a lot to know we

[00:00:53] Intro: This is around the house.

[00:01:09] Caroline Blazovsky: because we took a poll and our listeners want more DIY. So we're going to give it to you.

[00:01:16] Eric Goranson: tricks. We've got a ton for you today, and this is going to be a lot of. Plus, it's got a little internet, um, new wifi coming out that we'll talk about later in this hour. So we've got a lot for you today on the show. And I wanted to start out by painting cause it's some, it's a time of year inside that people are looking around going, okay.

[00:01:43] Caroline Blazovsky: And I'm a sloppy painter. I give it away right away upfront. I'm telling you messy as all. Heck, don't come to me for your painting needs. Just can't do it.

[00:02:15] Eric Goranson: Now, one of the things that you're like doing an accent wall, you know, where you've got two colors, maybe the ceilings, one color, the walls, a different, or you're going to do that accent wall, trying to get that line perfect is hard because you get thrown on

[00:02:39] Eric Goranson: Oh, yeah. So here's the secret. So you get like the frog tape, the good tape. And if you're buying the cheap white tape, you're already, you're already going to cause a problem. So you get what you pay for with tape. So get some good tape. So you'll run your straight line of your tape down. And I like to not do little sections, but pull the tape out.

[00:03:16] Caroline Blazovsky: right in that corner, let's say you have a corner and you're meeting it, right.

[00:03:27] Eric Goranson: Dick much, just going to seal off that tape to give you the perfect line. Then you wait your 30 minutes or so watch whatever the caulking says on it. And then you can paint.

[00:03:51] Caroline Blazovsky: you're obviously using a silicone, right? Some type of silicone cock.

[00:03:58] Eric Goranson: because silicone paint doesn't stick [00:04:00] to silicone. So you can't use the silicone cock. So what do you use? Do you use a latex? Or a latex modified cock because a silicone, you see, if you paint over silicone,

[00:04:17] Caroline Blazovsky: But you're saying, no, you actually don't want to use it. No.

[00:04:36] Eric Goranson: She have to use a paintable caulking right there. And you want something that's going to dry pretty quick too, because you're not worried about it. You know, sealing it off too much. It's going to seal off the paint, go underneath the tape. That's all you're trying to do. How does it look when you pull, it gives you a really good edge.

[00:04:56] Eric Goranson: Well, no, cause it's going to be stuck to the wall. So when you pull the tape off, [00:05:00] you actually want to pull the tape back and bend it towards itself. So if you're painting, you want to pull down with that. And so you're pulling kind of a way from that to give you a good clean edge.

[00:05:15] Caroline Blazovsky: I got it. So you're at the caucus thing there permanently. It's going right in the line, leave in there and that's going to give you your lip, the edge. So it doesn't bleed over into the other color on

[00:05:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah, you got it. It's good to us to explain to everybody so they can understand it here. One of the things that I do, especially on older homes, like not a brand new one, but if you've got something that's got a couple, you know, um, it's got a couple of paints on it, you know? People tend to not do the prep work correctly.

[00:06:10] Eric Goranson: Good time to do it. And you'll be shocked if you go to a wall, that's got a texture on it and you start knocking the bumps and weird stuff off of the, of the sins of previous paint jobs. There's going to be a lot of stuff. You could make a little bit of a mess with that.

[00:06:27] Eric Goranson: Exactly. Exactly. So you want to scrape that? Spackle it, sand it. Now one other painting tip is when you're doing. Multiple coats, which you need to, I'll be honest. The dream of a one coat finish is just, you're not going to get it on there. You're just not give up. Not trying to do it in one coat and don't go by the paint and primer in one either.

[00:06:54] Caroline Blazovsky: just going to say. What about the paint and primer

[00:07:13] Eric Goranson: So that'll help. So if you're painting a dark gray wall, if you can, if your primer that you're using will accept a tent. It's kinda nice to be able to put some gray in it that might save you another coat of paint. So you're not painting this dark color over.

[00:07:35] Eric Goranson: I've never done got it. And a lot of times I'll go home. Sure. Yeah. Makes it easier. Now, one other thing too, is you'll see people say, oh, put in some of that, like flow of trawl, the stuff to make the. Dry slower when you're trying to do edges. Nah, look at your paints. Most of the paints that I'm working with now are saying, don't put any additives to it that you don't want to do that.

[00:08:14] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm going to throw something in there.

[00:08:33] Caroline Blazovsky: So you don't want to mix chemicals together. You're better off going with the manufactured. Recommendations on paints because you can really create an issue.

[00:08:47] Caroline Blazovsky: I do. And it was a mess up.

[00:09:12] Caroline Blazovsky: And so there's kind of no secret tip. You got to pull those doors and repaint.

[00:09:32] Eric Goranson: And I would just spray it. All right. When we come back, let's talk a little bit more about some great DIY projects that you can tackle. And some of those insider tips we'll do that just as soon as around the house returns.[00:10:00]

[00:10:30] Caroline Blazovsky: of.

[00:10:52] Intro: to fix it.

[00:11:11] Eric Goranson: Sometimes there's aftermarket parts, many times there's a parts house in your area that you can just take the piece down to and go up to the counter. I need one of these and they'll help you find that part

[00:11:34] Caroline Blazovsky: It just doesn't work. So that's a big one, my dryer

[00:11:44] Intro: That's

[00:12:00] Caroline Blazovsky: nasty that gets caked into, if you have a downdraft that is like the worst combination of, of kind of filtration you can have.

[00:12:16] Eric Goranson: yeah, downdraft shirt or the worst hood, they're better than no hood

[00:12:30] Caroline Blazovsky: They get caked. When you take out that filter underneath where that filter comes out, it gets caked. Cause it wraps around until it finally. Your, you know, exhaust right in that pipe, it will get caked with stuff. And it's a fire hazard. So take years apart. It's not that overwhelming. I mean, I did it, you know, I'm not Eric.

[00:13:10] Eric Goranson: And man, I tell you what the junk that's going to put some safety glasses on and a respirator or a mask, because you're going to have lint coming out at you like nobody's business and you should be doing that. Like, you know, twice a year, they say every couple of years, but I say, you know, really do it.

[00:13:49] Eric Goranson: I had to actually get the screwdriver out and take the bottom panel off on it to get to that. Cause it was hiding behind it. And so I'd have to take four screws out and then I'd empty this out in [00:14:00] me being a DIY guy and, and doing stuff. You know, if I put my jeans in with, with a couple of screws in 'em or something like that, or, or clips or anything like that, or coins, it all gets hung up in that filter.

[00:14:38] Eric Goranson: And it's just like a filter medium, a traps.

[00:14:46] Eric Goranson: No, uh, just because what ends up happening is the holes in the drum ended up being the filter in that keeps enough stuff out of the pump that you don't hurt it. And that's what it's there for.

[00:15:20] Eric Goranson: So you can clean it and get a pan because it'll put anywhere from a cord to a gallon of water out there, depending on how much it's plugged up. So you want to make sure and capture and make sure you're throwing

[00:15:38] Caroline Blazovsky: You have a drum inside of a drum. So when you look down in, it looks really clean, but if you stick your flash. In the side and look through, you can see that there's actually another tub that surrounds your tub, that cleans your clothes. And that tub gets gunked up with soap, scum, bacteria, mold. I mean, anything you can imagine, and that needs to be cleaned off because if you don't, it will [00:16:00] actually raise your mold levels in your house.

[00:16:08] Intro: Gross.

[00:16:26] Eric Goranson: So that starts sticking to the inside of the drum. And oh man, I've, I've done some repairs on those and they get nasty. It's like Blackstone shake

[00:16:45] Caroline Blazovsky: And your clothes are sloshing around in that it's not the direct hub, but it's the one underneath it. So you really need to do this. And just from an indoor air quality standpoint, if you have mold allergy, One you'll end up with this stuff in your laundry. You'll end up breathing it in, in your house and it can get [00:17:00] really high.

[00:17:08] Eric Goranson: See, and that's crazy. I mean, my house, that's one of the things that when I got this washer that I liked is it has a, you run the enzyme, certain cleanup, but it also has a steam cycle. So it fills that whole thing up with steam and that steam kills any mold or anything else in it.

[00:17:33] Caroline Blazovsky: that's good because it gets to the top, you know, like in a, in a top loader, the water only gets to a certain level and you'll get scum up above it.

[00:17:53] Caroline Blazovsky: And then of course the dangers of fire hazard with the lint. So key just, this is a DIY that everybody [00:18:00] needs to be.

[00:18:14] Eric Goranson: We'll talk to the experts to that, right? When we come back and then we're going to dive right back into DIY projects, just as soon as around the house.

[00:18:42] Intro: if you're listening to around the house

[00:18:58] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to around the house with [00:19:00] Eric G and Caroline B. This is where we talk home improvement every weekend. And I've got a special guest here. This is going to be fun because in full disclosure, I am a Comcast Xfinity user at my house, my studio. And when there's new technology coming out, that affects smart homes, gaming, all that stuff.

[00:19:41] Kunle Ekundare: We're

[00:20:14] Eric Goranson: So you're not waiting for something to download. Yeah, no, you're right.

[00:20:32] Kunle Ekundare: And then that really got accentuated because now everybody's home all the time. There wasn't a break where, you know, you didn't notice some of the issues that may have been happening in the past. And so we, we took different approaches, at least from, from a Comcast perspective to try and address that.

[00:21:11] Kunle Ekundare: So there was work that we did on the capacity, on the network side to be able to augment that and support that. And what we're here to talk about was on our devices side, we needed to make sure that our devices were capable of supporting multi user interfaces within the customer.

[00:21:31] Eric Goranson: That's this new six east standard that's coming out. And this is just going to give us a lot more bandwidth, correct. That we can continue using those, those kind of high bandwidth devices that we've got. Maybe we're on a zoom call or a teams meeting where somebody is doing online gaming. And, and of course, we've got all these streaming services where.

[00:22:06] Kunle Ekundare: So like interestingly, the wifi six E is an important piece of what's happening in the wifi ecosystem.

[00:22:33] Kunle Ekundare: They've been able to actually get approval for us to use six gigahertz, which adds another 1200. So imagine being on a two lane highway, and now you have a six lane highway that you're able to take advantage. And so there's a lot of value in just being able to leverage Wi-Fi 60.

[00:22:58] Eric Goranson: Well, for me, it's a Honda [00:23:00] accord, but yeah, no,

[00:23:15] Kunle Ekundare: That you could put your car on and drive and there's nobody else on that label. It's limited traffic on that limit.

[00:23:37] Eric Goranson: I need a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, you know, the TV that you're streaming all of a sudden, wow. Now you're watching 4k video, which uses a ton more. And you're seeing eight K getting teased. And if you don't have that wide highway, you're going to be in trouble because there's a lot more data coming down.

[00:23:56] Kunle Ekundare: That's right. So data consumption within the home is increased [00:24:00] to probably where we didn't foresee this happening. Right? I mean, one of the, I was making a joke that in my house, there are four people to live in my house. There are 47 connected devices and only two people have jobs. And the two people that have jobs, aren't the ones with the most connected devices.

[00:24:38] Kunle Ekundare: So he's, he's got multiple things that he's connected to all the time and it's just.

[00:24:57] Eric Goranson: They're going to team up with GE [00:25:00] and Electrolux and American standard and Trane. So now you're going to have, not only are you gonna have. Your appliances and stuff in your house and are talking together, but you're going to have cross brands going to, and so again, that's just another thing that's going to be taken up more, more space on that highway for you.

[00:25:35] Eric Goranson: But man, you guys did a great job and I have two hats off to you guys for keeping that moving and having enough bandwidth to start with, you know, nobody plans a pandemic, but hats off to keeping that, keeping that ball moving so we can all work. Okay. We appreciate

[00:25:53] Kunle Ekundare: That took it personal when we all had to work from home, because much of all of our work over the past two years has happened [00:26:00] from our homes as well. And in order to facilitate that, you know, we, we, we live and breathe with our customers live in Greece, so we utilize our services. And so it's important for us that we're testing things before it becomes a bottleneck for the customers, but the team has done a fantastic job in really pulling things together, to be able to support them.

[00:26:19] Eric Goranson: That's great. And we're going to start seeing products coming out now, right? They're going to start using that six gigahertz that we're going to start seeing. So because the, the high capacity stuff's going to need that you'll probably start seeing what televisions and all that kind of, you know, gaming systems and stuff down the road,

[00:26:39] Kunle Ekundare: So VR is coming, um, you know, VR has been around for a bit, but you'll really be able to take advantage of the bandwidth. Um, and to your point, There's new technology out there. There are devices out there today. There are over 11 devices out there that are commercially available today that customers can go and buy and utilize on six E.

[00:27:08] Eric Goranson: And that's great. And that makes a big difference when you're working from home too, because if you've got that capability and maybe you don't have the best cell towers in your neighborhood, I know my house.

[00:27:32] Eric Goranson: This is going to be rolling out over the next few months. It sounds like it is. It

[00:28:02] Kunle Ekundare: So.

[00:28:39] Intro: hi everybody. I'm

[00:28:45] Intro: house with Eric G and the beautiful Caroline.

[00:29:14] Caroline Blazovsky: And this is a good time to do. Vacuum clean out vacuum is huge as an indoor air quality professional. I can't stress enough. The importance of getting your vacuum serviced and cleaned, and you can do this yourself. It's a little time consuming. You've got to take the different parts off and we'll talk about that.

[00:29:50] Caroline Blazovsky: Then you've got the belts that usually have to be changed. And if you're going to pull it apart, you might as well might as well change your belt at that time. Right. It just makes sense. And then you've got the brushes and [00:30:00] that all has to be disconnected that you pull them up. You got to wash them. I usually do, you know, some soap and water and get all the hair and gunk and there's powder in there.

[00:30:24] Caroline Blazovsky: You should change every six. Bags. I don't want you to let them get all the way full. So usually half. And I know that sort of sounds wasteful and people don't want to do it, but the problem is with these vacuums, they're not hermetically sealed. So all that Dustin debris starts popping out the inside of the bag when you get too much stuff in there.

[00:30:53] Eric Goranson: You got to make sure you get high quality bags too, because those cheap bags tend to not seal around very well.

[00:31:09] Caroline Blazovsky: If you're going with it. If you're having allergy or you have people in the house who have allergies, or you have pets, you need to go with a self-contained or a sealed system.

[00:31:37] Caroline Blazovsky: I also like CBO is a company out of Germany that makes an excellent vacuum. So with this sealed system, making sure you always have a HEPA filter, making sure that, you know, when you open up that canister, you're not seeing all that debris in there. You shouldn't. That means you're not cleaning well, and that's getting back out into your environment.

[00:31:58] Eric Goranson: So I've got one of the, uh, [00:32:00] LG robot bat vacs, one of the things you robot facts, and I've had it for a year now. It's done really well. Um, they've made it, so it's pretty easy to clean up. Now the secret in my house because I have, I use it on my first floor, which is 100% hardwood flooring there.

[00:32:42] Intro: So explain there's two systems

[00:32:45] Caroline Blazovsky: And there's two systems with that robot back. Right. You can just collect it in the actual vacuum itself or there, there are the systems where it pulls into a port and it dumps into this.

[00:33:01] Eric Goranson: That's odd. It's probably like the size of a quart of paint. You know what I mean? That's a canister on that. And then you can just pop the bottom, open, it drops right off into your trash and you can do that. There's a, uh, there's a HEPA filter on the top of it that they make that I love because it's, it's made a fabric on the outside.

[00:33:31] Caroline Blazovsky: Um, so when you have to clean that, what's the maintenance on the robot.

[00:33:48] Eric Goranson: So just clip and the whole thing comes off of my hand, which is great. And so then you can get any of the hair stuff out of it that way. And then the vacuum piece comes out. What I do is I just take it outside probably. [00:34:00] With my air hose and I blow the thing out, put a mask on, go outside, blow it out with some high pressure air, just to clean out any of that stuff.

[00:34:15] Caroline Blazovsky: How about Julie? She has long hair. So I tell people like I have long hair too, and that gets all entangled up in your wheels. It gets in your brushes and then the thing stop working properly. So is that an issue with that too? And you have to watch if

[00:34:28] Eric Goranson: So it doesn't really tangle a pair and I don't know why, but it does not handle a pair because I think it's direct drive. And I don't know. I wonder if it reverses the brush back, you know, Yeah, cause it's not the brushes on a different kind of system than just the motor many times. It's the motor spinning.

[00:35:07] Eric Goranson: So if you've got thick carpet, you can put it on the turbo mode to give you extra suction, to get stuff out of the bottom of the carpet, which is really cool.

[00:35:25] Caroline Blazovsky: Cause that dander, accumulates in our houses and causes our bodies to get all this inflammation. So. You do need something, either an upright or you need something, that's going to have your tools to be able to do all your other IX, you know, your accessories that are needed to do your furniture and stuff like that.

[00:35:41] Eric Goranson: All our furniture is leather, so we just nice leather cloth wipe it down. And on our first floor, we don't have blinds on that because it's all contemporary finished. We literally don't have blinds down there because it's, we're out in the. So we have no blinds in those [00:36:00] rooms, so there's nothing to clean there as well.

[00:36:09] Eric Goranson: surface. Now I got, I got a cleaning hack here for. You know how you, you know, so many people make their coffee, they put it in the, in the metal mug, whatever their mental travel mug is that they take it or even they make their tea.

[00:36:33] Caroline Blazovsky: It gets really

[00:36:34] Eric Goranson: And you're like, it's stainless steel. How's it. Stick into it. It's still there. It's still there. It just starts to get darker.

[00:36:59] Eric Goranson: Now pay [00:37:00] attention to the steps on this. Cause it does make a difference. So what I do is I get the water out of my faucet going really hot, right. Or if I've got an instant, hot where I'm going to make tea or something, I heat the water up without it. And I fill that up. So there's all the way up to the top of that.

[00:37:41] Eric Goranson: So you don't want to create this pressure condition that you've got like 30 PSI inside this thing, and you blow the top. Here. And I say

[00:37:50] Eric Goranson: because I learned that lesson the hard way on my first time doing this, I, I snapped down the lid on it and like an hour later, I hear this boom, boom. [00:38:00] What was that?

[00:38:26] Eric Goranson: I tell you what that'll, it looks factory new on the inside, but Carolina, I hear that music in the background. You know what that means? We're out of time.

[00:38:45] Caroline Blazovsky: So get on there and talk to us

[00:38:48] Eric Goranson: to answer your back, you got it. Well, I'm Eric G and

[00:38:52] Eric Goranson: B. You've been listening