Low VOC products are not all alike, It’s understandable that the claims of low VOCs (volatile organic compounds) or no VOCs can become confusing. VOCs are only one component of a coating – every ingredient must be evaluated for its effect on your health.

We dive into paint with Jay Watts from AFM Safecoat. Everyone agrees a new coat adds life to any project. But is it worth the odor? One whiff of paint, primer, varnish, stain or other like-products can bring on a range of conditions from mild nasal irritation, headaches and nausea to serious respiratory issues. Personal sensitivities vary and many simply do their best to ignore the odor.

AFM products are continually reformulated to virtually eliminate physical afflictions caused by conventional coatings. Many people suffer with severe allergies, chemical sensitivities, respiratory issues and other complications that make using conventional products intolerable.

We talk with VP and Technical Director Jay Watts from AFM Safecoat in this episode of Around the House.

For more information about AFM Safecoat head to http://afmsafecoat.com/

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[00:00:31] Jay Watts: And this is. The whole point of the AFM product line is we started with the idea that there's a problem with sensitivities, and we need to figure out how we can build a product line that doesn't exacerbate that chemical sensitivity threshold. And the way we did that, because the original founder was himself sensitized.

[00:01:07] Eric Goranson: welcome to around the house with Eric G in Caroline, be your source for home improvement every single weekend. Thanks for joining us today. We're going to paint the town today, right?

[00:01:24] Jay Watts: Jay. I am good. I'm glad to be here. Glad to be here.

[00:01:51] Jay Watts: Um, just real quickly, uh, my background came, came from a base, like an art background. Um, my, [00:02:00] my degree is in, is in graphic design and marketing and, and that's, uh, kind of a roundabout way, got involved with AFM many, many years ago because they hired my firm to help them brand themselves and market their whole concept back then.

[00:02:44] Jay Watts: Uh, it basically, it's, you're exposed either occupationally over a long period of time at a lower level, or you're exposed in a massive way by some accidental chemical spill or exposure. And then your immune system gets [00:03:00] overwhelmed and you're not able to tolerate those intruders again, if you're exposed to them, uh, in extreme cases, uh, it's really debilitating.

[00:03:11] Eric Goranson: auto body guys that are painters that have run into that

[00:03:16] Caroline Blazovsky: like women who work in hair salons

[00:03:32] Jay Watts: And the owner of the original founder of AFM actually became sensitized himself. Uh, you know, he was working with those kinds of coatings as, as just what's called a toll manufacturer. So the toll manufacturer, you can come in and say, Hey, make me this make me that, whatever. Okay. And he'll do it now, of course, in California, we have fairly strict, uh, regulations now about, you know, outdoor air quality protection though.

[00:04:14] Jay Watts: So he had to comply with that. But at the same time, he wasn't really on the page of building safe, nontoxic coatings. It was more like how much does it cost and how effective is it? Uh, don't worry about the offgassing mom, pot, cattle. Don't worry about that because it'll eventually go away and you'll be fine.

[00:04:48] Jay Watts: I've been using it for 30 years. I've got to use it because if you asked me to use something else that I don't know about, I'm going to get all kind of wonky. And I, you know, I can't guarantee my work and, [00:05:00]

[00:05:03] Jay Watts: And so, so now people are saying, well, wait a minute. You know, I I've been reading.

[00:05:29] Jay Watts: I don't want to, you know, blackball all of them, but the younger guys that are getting into the industry now there, there's just more people asking for it's common sense in my mind. Don't we want don't we want to live in a place where we can breathe and we have healthy indoor air. Heck yeah. I mean, it's not like we have to think about that too long.

[00:05:50] Eric Goranson: Well, it's funny, Jacob, and I've been in the, in the re residential remodeling and construction industry as a designer for 30 years. And I find myself on the interwebs [00:06:00] on social media, arguing with other contractors that are about my age gone. Well, I've been doing it this way for 30 years and I.

[00:06:19] Jay Watts: better way to do it now. Yeah. You know what Andy pace says, you know, Andy, you guys know Andy, so Andy, what Andy says there, he says, yeah, I understand that.

[00:06:37] Eric Goranson: It's not tiger woods.

[00:06:52] Jay Watts: And of course what the big worry is. They don't want to hear, you got to come back. Oh, you got, you got to come back and fix it [00:07:00] then? Uh, no, no. Don't say those words to me. Ma'am or sir, you know, when that's where that comes from, that kind of, you know, a comfort level. Yeah. It's like, Hey, I've been doing this.

[00:07:20] Caroline Blazovsky: Don't worry about the contact high. You'll be fine.

[00:07:45] Jay Watts: And the way I interpret that to mean is you're not suffering right now from chemical exposure. Your body, we all human beings are chemically sensitive. If we are exposed [00:08:00] at levels that disrupt our immune system. Now all our immune systems are different. You know, genetically you have a different immune system Carolyn than Eric does, and mine's different.

[00:08:17] Eric Goranson: we're going to your

[00:08:21] Jay Watts: Yeah.

[00:08:23] Jay Watts: there's no question. We don't want to start listing them ways that we might get

[00:08:29] Jay Watts: something. Oh yeah.

[00:08:43] Jay Watts: So you've got this, you've got a really robust system. You're able to manage that and, and, and that's great. Uh, but other people may not have that. And so you get, uh, you get that exposure that I mentioned earlier. Well, what I wanted to bring it back around to was I found out [00:09:00] where I was on that spectrum.

[00:09:27] Jay Watts: And I went, what, what, what, wait, wait, wait, what's going on? And I realized, wait a minute, it's the smell in here? It's the, all this carpeting I literally had to get out of this. Before I could like balance myself out and I just, that was a wake wake-up call. I was like car carpeting's emitting a lot of stuff.

[00:09:52] Caroline Blazovsky: So

[00:10:10] Jay Watts: Aren't good for us. So what does. And what do we do? We look for the safer products, the safest products that people make. There's so many out there now there's so many great products. I mean, we were kind of the, we were kind of the first adopters. If you will, back in those days, there may be a couple other con companies here in the U S and the few in and in Europe who were on the page about building for healthier indoor air quality.

[00:10:38] Caroline Blazovsky: about AFM J so for people who don't, you know, people with traditional paint, right. You know, there's the traditional paint companies. And a lot of people say, Hey, I've been using Ben Moore for how many years I've been using Sherman Williams for how

[00:10:53] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So

[00:11:15] Jay Watts: Okay. Yeah. I think one of the ways I start the conversation on that, as I tell, I tell people, when they ask, do you animal test? And I said, absolutely not. I only test on humans. And of course that gets a little bit of a smile and a little bit of a, what do you mean by that test on humans? But what that really means is, is absolutely what we did.

[00:11:59] Jay Watts: And [00:12:00] the problem back in those days is if you went to a physician who didn't understand environmental illness, you were probably up up the Creek without a paddle because they didn't understand what that was. And if they couldn't understand and to prescribe something to you, then it went into the, it went into the psychology side of it, you know, visit your psychologist or your psychiatrist, just maybe a mental problem.

[00:12:37] Jay Watts: So what we found out was that there is a clinic in Dallas, Texas called the American environmental health clinic. The original founder of AFM went out there because he needed to find out what the heck was wrong with. Him seemed pretty obvious, but he didn't know for sure. They diagnosed them and said, Hey, you're poisoning yourself.

[00:13:12] Jay Watts: And they were like, well, no, but maybe I do, maybe if I can help you I'd love to. And so we took started with one of our products, the one we make called safe seal, and we took that product and he tinkered with it with his guys in the lab, you know, a bunch of creative lab guys messing around with formulas.

[00:13:49] Jay Watts: We'd go back to the lab, tinker, tinker, tinker, tinker, finally get it. So those people could tolerate it now because everyone's different. We can't promise that we're going to solve [00:14:00] everyone's chemical problem because of the nuances of our immune system. But what we discovered in the research was that we could get it pretty much done for most of the people most of the time.

[00:14:31] Jay Watts: And we need to meet paint. We need to make primers. We need to make glue. We need to just take everything off the shelf and knock it down and replace it with something a lot safer. So the line evolved kind of product by product. With that testing, we had done with the human Guinea pigs to prove that what we were telling people was true.

[00:15:08] Jay Watts: They're working on this stuff and it's really working. It's really working well for us, you know? And so that's, that's how the whole company got its feet underneath. It got its got its wings to fly. The original founder was PR you know, near the end of it. He was in his late sixties, early seventies. He was ready to kind of get out of the business and retire.

[00:15:48] Jay Watts: He had to look around and find somebody that could come into the business and help some younger guys. That's where we came into the. Nice through some networking we were able to do. We found out what he was doing. We got involved with him. He said, [00:16:00] here's what I've got going. The market looks like it's going to do this.

[00:16:23] Jay Watts: He would like poke in and see what was going on, but generally handed the ball to us. And then we took it and we started running with it. And of course, as you know, what happened is the industry started to catch up. Right. You know, as you alluded to Carolyn everyone, all the paint companies in the pink category, it's probably the most crowded.

[00:16:58] Jay Watts: Why should I buy safe code? I didn't even [00:17:00] even heard of it, but I buy Benjamin Moore. They've got a zero VOC paint. All of them do. What's the difference? And I say, the difference is we did that initial human testing, which those companies haven't done, they haven't done it that way. They didn't get into the, they didn't start drilling down in with real people to see if these things really worked.

[00:17:42] Jay Watts: We were certified at the time by scientific certification systems SCS and what they were doing back then, which was a little bit different than GreenGuard. And some of the other ones is they were doing chamber testing. So we submit our coding and they put it in a chamber and they started doing their metric [00:18:00] readings.

[00:18:02] Caroline Blazovsky: We do that a lot with chemicals. Like we do that with say, we want to know what's in a product. Like, you know, I don't do it so much anymore, but earlier in my career, I would send something out to for chamber testing, if it was potentially giving somebody a problem. And then you get a list of kind of all the nasty that's coming on.

[00:18:17] Jay Watts: Yeah, that's it. That's it. So, so we liked that, that protocol. And so we gave them a lot of our different products and we were able to achieve their highest rating, which was our indoor advantage gold certification, which was great. Nice. And we love that. And of course, you know, people were paying attention to us because of the app, but what happened?

[00:18:56] Jay Watts: I mean, if we went back to SCS now and said, Hey, do us again. I know for a fact [00:19:00] that we would pass again and we'd get their gold certification because we haven't changed anything. We were way ahead of the curve anyway, to begin with. So. Uh, that's, that's what that's about in terms of, of, of what our history is, uh, and why we do what we do.

[00:19:37] Jay Watts: You know, yeah, there was, there was just enough, not enough awareness for people to want to buy into it. We were on a 60, you know, you know what the home Depot aisle looks like. It's 65 feet long. Right. And it, and it's, and you're surrounded by the competition on all sides, except right in the middle. We had eight feet and that's where the safe, big set April.

[00:20:19] Jay Watts: And the one that did the best was the one down near the Mexican. And that was because, and you wouldn't think, nah, that's not, not down to Santa seed row. You know, it's going to be up say in Rancho, Santa Fe, it's going to be a north county where all the money is right now. It was because the, the pink, the guy that ran the paint department down there, that Santa Seadrill store was in love with us.

[00:21:04] Eric Goranson: You know, what's funny, Jay, that you bring up with paint sensitivity. Because when I was back in going to college, I got exposed to. A lot of ammonia where it overwhelmed my mask. I had to jump off the top of a semi tanker truck because I got a face full of, of ammonia, of Aqua ammonia and kind burnt my lungs and never even went to the doctor about it.

[00:21:52] Eric Goranson: And I would go up not using that paint because it was just too much for me in a room to paint with. So even I who have, you know, [00:22:00] battled with this stuff, I've noticed that where I'm like, man, I would have been happy if that was. Then ammonia and my body. Yeah, that's crazy.

[00:22:12] Jay Watts: It's like, it's like a warning flag that goes up saying, Hey, this is something you don't want to be around. And if you keep, if you, if you don't listen to that, then you start to tip over. Um, you're probably referring to an ingredient in, in coding's call an AME and an Amie can have that little bit of sharpness like ammonia.

[00:22:49] Jay Watts: Ammonia is not. Oh, no. So it's like what we know, it brings up the whole topic of VOC. You know, what is a VOC? What is an, a VOC? Um, how are they [00:23:00] regulated? Uh, how many are there? Uh, this is all about what the EPA was trying to do back or long time ago about outdoor air quality. They want to protect the ozone layer.

[00:23:29] Jay Watts: Uh, the, the problem there is that those exempt ingredients, what we now can call hazardous air pollutants, which is another category. And there's a lot of similarity. Um, but there are some exemptions. Those hazardous air pollutants are the ones that can kind of sneak into a formula and the VOC can be zero.

[00:24:13] Jay Watts: If it's not zero, don't talk to me about it. It's got to be zero. Great. I mean the rising Thai Jay,

[00:24:43] Caroline Blazovsky: It's just such a small level and they can go on under the radar. Right. So it's, it's hard for people to realize that just because something is labeled something doesn't necessarily mean it's a hundred percent true

[00:25:12] Jay Watts: Yeah. And to make sure that the chemistry's okay. You know, I, I tell people if you're going to do a test, which is the way I do it, I use a piece of glass. I have are tinfoil works too. And you can basically brush out your coding onto that surface. Why? Because it's a nerd. You're not going to have any flushing.

[00:25:45] Jay Watts: But at the same time, you're starting in a good spot, as opposed to just reading something on a website or, or buying into some brochure, you've read that said, Hey, don't, don't worry. Trust us. It's going to be okay. And then you do a whole big project and you [00:26:00] can't live there, which is something that, you know, you've, you've, you've talked to people about Carolyn.

[00:26:07] Caroline Blazovsky: know, it's a lot of people do Jay, and I'd love to get your opinion on this. Um, people love to use it like air fresheners and they use all the products in their house. And I've had a couple of clients now where they've painted their house. And I guess there was residue on the wall.

[00:26:41] Caroline Blazovsky: And the only thing that I could really think was one, potentially the paint could have been skunked, which happens. People should realize that just because you get a can of paint doesn't mean it can't go bad. And it usually has this weird, like yeasty nasty smell when it goes bad, at least traditional paint.

[00:27:15] Caroline Blazovsky: Or how would

[00:27:34] Jay Watts: I mean, how many, there's thousands of chemicals out there that we get exposed to through different

[00:27:52] Jay Watts: or.

[00:28:11] Eric Goranson: got some Struthers, see the grease fire then the smoker.

[00:28:14] Jay Watts: that's crazy. Oh yeah. I mean, those are all very, or the other one would be essential oils, you know, someone's, you know, they're, they're, they're using candles. Maybe like that's like, that's like an air freshener, but not the same. Um, yeah. So in general, in real simple terms, those contaminants are, uh, they're, they're oily in nature and, and they're also molecular speaking.

[00:29:07] Jay Watts: And basically they're back to where they started. Um, so that's almost

[00:29:15] Jay Watts: So that's a very good analogy of it. Very good. Yeah. So, so in those situations, it, what I've discovered just from my own experimentation, uh, is that you have to, you have to kind of go back into the conventional world, uh, and that would be using, uh, using , you know, Shaq's been around for hundreds of years using Schlack, uh, as a, as a foundation to seal in the problem.

[00:30:04] Jay Watts: I been looking at shul, I've been looking at shul Lac, shellacs got 575 grams of VOC. I don't want that. And I got. I know, I know it looks bad, but let me explain the Schlack hat is the carrier in shellacked. The solvent is alcohol. Exactly. And alcohol is very, very volatile, which means it acts, it flashes off so quick, just so quick, it just goes, boom.

[00:30:47] Eric Goranson: literally two hours, two hours. It's pretty much

[00:30:58] Jay Watts: I'm still nervous. [00:31:00] Okay. One of the great things about our brand is we're known for being able to control other emissions. You know, you've got a problem here. We need to seal it up. Hey, safe. Coat's pretty good at that. So if you put safe coat over shallow, We've got a really good system for controlling that really knocks knock stuff.

[00:31:36] Jay Watts: We have a AFM makes a dedicated product for that called Walt wallboard. Super thick, really creamy, uh, hides all. If you've got a bad tape job or a little bit rough sanding job like

[00:32:01] Jay Watts: all.

[00:32:20] Jay Watts: Use my new w it was new construction. Use my new wallboard prime coat all by itself on your ceiling. You don't need to paint. You don't need to paint it. Why? Because it's not stressed, nothing up there. You're not going to touch it. You're not going to feel it. Nothing's going to have surface. It's a white.

[00:32:55] Eric Goranson: I'm happy. A hundred gallon dollar, a gallon primer.

[00:33:03] Yes.

[00:33:15] Jay Watts: I buy, never seen anything like this before in my life. And of course there's nervousness and then they use it and then they go, oh my. That was fantastic. Fantastic. I love it. When we have a convert, you know, you got, you got this resistance, the guy is dying. The wool, I'm never going to change. Don't make me change.

[00:33:56] Eric Goranson: Same thing, go to primary, two coats of paint.

[00:34:03] Jay Watts: but that's all that's, that's become a, yeah, it's become kind of a popular trend because why it's cheaper in the long run because you got less labor, so, okay. Blah, blah, blah. But you know, you sell, you suffer, you suffer from durability, scrub ability.

[00:34:29] Jay Watts: And when it's wet, it's kind of hard to see it, unless it's really a bad paint job. But I know this personally, because I've done that. I've, I've rolled it. I've rolled it and I cut it in and then my wife goes, Hey buddy, you missed something. You're right. And so then I have to go back and I realize, you know what?

[00:35:04] Jay Watts: So basically what we do is we took a piece of MDF and we measured it. Andy pace, uh, you interviewed, Andy has a us, a sensor unit that he can actually put right on the surface and it will actually measure the formaldehyde directly coming off of the surface. Cool. So what we did is we measured the MDF, we got a reading and then we took our primers, transitional new transitional primer and our paint.

[00:35:46] Jay Watts: Wow. Eggshell was like 96 semi-gloss was 97. Something like, all right, then we do it with our clear finishes, hard seal, safe seal, acrobatic ball yourself. And so, you know, those are something people can look on our website and see what we're talking about in terms of from LA [00:36:00] formaldehyde is pretty small molecule versus some of the bigger ones.

[00:36:27] Jay Watts: We already talked about the bad guys, you know, nicotine, but there's, there's other ones, people paint their house with zero VOC paint and they can't be in the house because it's zero VOC. So what it's causing a problem, they got to fix it. What are they going to do? I get a call, Hey, AFM, we hear that you can seal over other paint.

[00:37:00] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. And it's, you know, why. So many people have problems with paint. Like it's, that's unbelievable to me.

[00:37:19] Jay Watts: we'll see. That's just all, that's all pers that's all personal.

[00:37:42] Jay Watts: I basically opened the garage door. Okay. And I'm using, you know, I'm using resin, fiberglass, resin, Stan. I know I burned, I burned some brain cells on that one, but, um, so, but, but Pete, I didn't sensitize me. You know, I can paint, I can paint pretty [00:38:00] much. I know that I'm not going to paint with really bad stuff in an enclosed space.

[00:38:17] Eric Goranson: I've done my own autobody stuff.

[00:38:39] Eric Goranson: But my question for you, Jay is lead paint for instance, is still a big one in our older communities with the older homes. How do you guys deal with that as an existing material inside the house?

[00:39:01] Jay Watts: That where that, where would that possibly happen? We have a child who's T who's teething. Right, right. And they're gonna put their lips are gonna suck on something that in my, that you wouldn't want that. Um, so that's a whole kind of category of, of containment you have to use encapsulants and that's a category of product AFM.

[00:39:34] Jay Watts: So you don't have to worry about that. Offgassing um, I typically tell people if you've got lead, it's probably buried by

[00:39:48] Jay Watts: Cause lead. Paint's been gone for 40 years now. Right? Exactly. So, so, but you get an old house like you imagine and you go, well, they haven't done anything in this old house. It is possible. And they have a test done. Oh yeah, you [00:40:00] got lead. Well, you got to look at it. How bad is, is the, is the, is, is the film distressed?

[00:40:20] Jay Watts: You don't have to hire an abatement company to come out and do it. I mean, you can get yourself a good mask and we were all comfortable wearing masks now. So there's no argument there. You get them, you get a mask on you. You know, you pull off one, you get a mask on your face. And if it's right, if you, if you have to scrape and you have to sand, yes, you want to keep that wet sand.

[00:41:06] Jay Watts: You could use my transitional. People have done that. Why? Because it sticks really well. Don't get it on your hands. Don't get in your fingernails because you'll take days to get it out. I know for spray foam. Oh my God. I'm trying to get it out of my fingernails and why didn't I wear my gloves? I got sloppy.

[00:41:36] Eric Goranson: you may have childcare facility and you're trying to do those kinds of things where you got big just to jump through.

[00:41:52] Eric Goranson: So yeah, I got a lead paint story. That's funny. And I'll, I'll tell this now. Th th I'm now not doing this show on TV [00:42:00] anymore, but I was shooting here in Portland, uh, for our local TV station, these DIY segments.

[00:42:24] Eric Goranson: Cause it was just kind of just black rod iron, look to it and then, okay, we're gonna add some color to this. So I go through and I'm sinning and I got a dust mask on. We get it all cleaned up and I thought, Hey, let's shoot this real quick. Let's talk about lead paint and a lead paint test real quick that you should always test it.

[00:43:02] Eric Goranson: And I'm like, we're not using that. And we didn't, but it was like, it was brutal. I was like, oh my gosh. And I was just using it in 95 dust mask. I wasn't using the right mask for paint. I wasn't really doing the right stuff, but I was like, ah,

[00:43:24] Jay Watts: Really? It's kind of slowly kind of going away. Yeah. No, well, every year it's just

[00:43:42] Eric Goranson: Cause there's a lot of homes that have been built past. Late seventies.

[00:44:02] Jay Watts: That was really our focus. Um, people have asked me, you know, are you, are you going to work on an encapsulant? And I basically say, well, no, you know, we have to keep our eye on the prize here. Um,

[00:44:24] Caroline Blazovsky: So I'm in a low and they're using low VOC. Encapsulant I don't know the quality of it. Cause you would know better, but there are brands out there and most of these remediation companies are using it now because the molds get so entrenched into the beam that you just can't get it out. I mean, there's only so much standing you can do.

[00:44:59] Jay Watts: Yeah. [00:45:00] I'll tell you, you know what he reminded me of Carolyn, um, uh, I've had, I've had clients over the years. Want us to control. You know how, you know, how nasty Korea soda's nasty. And I, I tried, I took everything I had in my workshop that was AFM. And I tried, I had a guy who was up in Los Angeles and he had, they had creosoted underneath his, he had a crawlspace.

[00:45:41] Jay Watts: I mean, if I could, if I could figure out a seal, Chris, I probably have pretty I'd have a damn good encapsulant for everything else. Yeah.

[00:46:02] Eric Goranson: And the problem with those is a lot of them. They built them on basic telephone poles where they drove him down into the ground and there might be some concrete in there, but the whole house, maybe it's only the driveway that's touching. Earth and everything else is suspended up. Right. And that goes all the way up into the framing of the house.

[00:46:28] Caroline Blazovsky: I can smell that. Like when I walk and I take a walk sometimes and I'm out and you pass some of these telephone poles have this like nasty stench and that's what it is.

[00:46:42] Jay Watts: So they're trying, they're trying to keep the wood from degrading. It's all about keeping the wood from falling apart. And so someone discovered that years ago, they dip, they dip their post into a, some concoction they made and went, oh my God.

[00:47:24] Jay Watts: And, uh, in, in our mind, we want to. Bridge the gap between the two concepts we cause people say, well, are you, are you natural or are you synthetic? And I say, well, I'm mostly synthetic. And of course, you know, they get all kind of freaked out when I say synthetic, because they attach that to petrochemical.

[00:48:04] Jay Watts: We're going to slowly evolve. You can see what's happening in the bios based world, but you're gonna, you're still gonna be living with, you know, synthetics. So let me explain to you about that. And I get through the story. Um, the way I talk about high VOC content is I say, okay, well, I'm going to can make a comparison that may help you when we're talking about, remember, we're talking about shell and it's got 575 grams of VOC.

[00:48:40] Caroline Blazovsky: They do daily money. That's nice stuff.

[00:48:51] Caroline Blazovsky: I tell them, I say, just because something's green doesn't mean it's good for you. There's lots of things like eucalyptus lavender , which is [00:49:00] citrus PI, a pining pinene, turpentine is made from a natural substance. It is not. You want to go suck on some turpentine? No.

[00:49:25] Eric Goranson: Yeah. But the problem was is that it could mildew really easy cause it was still straw. And it was like making cabinetry out of rice cakes. As soon as somebody slammed a door, the hinge would pull out of it. And there were, there were as a cabinet designer, I can think of about eight jobs where the contractor was already replacing boxes and he hadn't even installed them all the way yet.

[00:50:02] Jay Watts: cabinets. Oh my God, is it new?

[00:50:07] Jay Watts: idea. Is Kelly, is Neil Kelly still up there in Portland?

[00:50:26] Eric Goranson: Kelly. I don't know if they're making cabinets.

[00:50:51] Eric Goranson: But, um, they're very high-end remodel. Um, and I think they're doing a lot less cabinetry, so I'm not sure if their cabinet shop is, [00:51:00] is open or not. I haven't been in that part for

[00:51:17] Jay Watts: We've we've seen that with the eco retail stores too. Um, uh, and the internet had a big, had a lot to do with that too. I mean, people are buying things online now. You know, one of our biggest dealers is a green building supply. Besides, besides, besides the green design center, green building supply in Iowa is like, Yeah.

[00:51:38] Caroline Blazovsky: a lot of my clients to them.

[00:51:57] Jay Watts: All the cabinets are all built. I mean, you could live [00:52:00] there. I want to live there. As a matter of fact, it's let me live in a show, a station

[00:52:06] Jay Watts: here's, what's so interesting there in Fairfield. I was there for four days. You know, how many people I saw in the S in the showroom in four days for nobody, I bet for four people I'm thinking, oh my God, this is almost, this is almost wasted.

[00:52:40] Caroline Blazovsky: Eric.

[00:52:45] Eric Goranson: no, no. I like to cook, but I'm not a famous chef.

[00:52:51] Jay Watts: yeah, yeah, you could. That would be great. Joel, have you spoken to Joel, Carolyn? Ah, you should. I should. I should. I'll hook [00:53:00] you guys up. I'll hook you guys. That would be fantastic. He's he's very much about the marketing thing. Very, very nice. And that's what, that's why it's so successful. That's cool.

[00:53:09] Eric Goranson: asked you about, I wanted to ask you about cabinetry finishes because you just kinda touched on it and I've got almost 30 years as a kitchen and bath designer out there and there are so many different. You know, finishes out there from what you see at your, you know, your big box store, where they've got a, a catalyzed, UV cured, conversion, varnish, there's all these new, you know, conversion urethanes coming on out there.

[00:53:43] Jay Watts: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. Um, yeah, you're right. There are some really good products coming out there. And I think there, uh, you know, uh, regulation and just awareness of driving thought, you know, down in those things.

[00:54:10] Jay Watts: So it functions very much like, um, like lacquer in terms of your application, it doesn't burn in, you know, a lacquers Eric, they kind of burn into the coatings. You can put a coat on second on a burns in ours. Doesn't do that. The water is don't do that very well. So basically you're doing a layering, you know, you're, you're spraying on a coat, you're letting it dry, then you're spraying on another coat.

[00:54:50] Jay Watts: Um, you'd have to deal with that. So that's the one we've come up with and it's. It's just, it's durable for a water base. I think it's pretty durable. I mean, I've put [00:55:00] it through its paces in my kitchen. In fact, as a matter of fact, I have it on my countertop in my kitchen, which I wouldn't necessarily, I wouldn't necessarily tell people to do that, but I wanted to stress it out and it's.

[00:55:38] Jay Watts: It happened in my house in the morning. I come up and lift the pot off. There's this giant white ring. Wait

[00:55:48] Jay Watts: I tell you though. It's so it's so amazing. So the white ring, first time I saw it, I went, oh no, I've ruined the finish. I left and came back an hour later and it was [00:56:00] gone.

[00:56:18] Jay Watts: You don't see it. And I'm looking at it on the angle. Is it, is the film starting to bubble up? Is it cracking? No, I've, I've done. I've videotaped this. I've taken photographs a dozen times now to show to my dealers before and after it's like, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. So I don't think there's some of those alkyd products and those solvent brake products from a hardness standpoint are probably never going to be eclipsed by a water.

[00:57:06] Jay Watts: I don't want you spraying crap in my house. You're going to do this offsite. You're going to let it sit off site and someplace where it's not going to be contaminated. You're going to let it off. In your space and then you're going to come in install. All right. That's one, that's one way to manage it.

[00:57:30] Eric Goranson: And within a quarter mile, I've got every window down on my vehicle because I am taking thousands of brain cells and throwing them out the window with the rest of the fumes or that, because I'm just burning myself in with

[00:57:49] Jay Watts: 'cause they, they do a lot of, they lay down really well. They've got a long working time. Um, they look fantastic. You know, you spray it and it's like almost a piano [00:58:00] finish. If you do a really good job. And it's like, that's what everyone wants. You can get, you can get really good results with water-based, but you gotta work at it.

[00:58:27] Jay Watts: I'd like you to stop doing for your own health, but I know you're not. What you need to do is add this to your options for your clients. Why? Because a client's going to ask you, and if you look like a deer in the headlights, they're probably going to say, bye-bye wrong guy. Bye bye. And you're going to lose business that you don't need to lose business here.

[00:58:59] Eric Goranson: Yeah. I've got a [00:59:00] waterborne, a baked on finish in my kitchen that I put in last year. And it's, it's done really well. You know, you go, it's done really well.

[00:59:08] Jay Watts: I feel like we're part of this and I know you feel this too. And just in discussions you have with everyone, you interview, we're all part of this movement. I always, I like this feeling that we're kind of this like tribe, we're a tribe of people that are trying to lift Everett all up here and get people in a better place.

[00:59:42] Jay Watts: That needs to be redone. It's time to I'm here. You know, I'm, I'm working, but I could take a break over lunch and like paint a wall or something. We're not

[00:59:57] Caroline Blazovsky: Cause I got a Sarah tech crack and now it's bothering [01:00:00] me. It never bothered me and stuff.

[01:00:13] Eric Goranson: And I talked about. How they all needed to lumberyard owners needed to embrace technology and bring in healthier products and make sure that they can work in the 21st century, get rid of the notepad ordering system, make sure that people can order online because in the future, people are not going to be coming into the lumberyard like they did.

[01:00:55] Eric Goranson: This was, it was, it was like talking home technology to, to [01:01:00] 1820. But the ones that listened really won you kind of have to embrace it with the times with COVID now, because that's just kind of the way of the future, how things are changing. And that, that includes being a healthier home.

[01:01:16] Jay Watts: Well, you know, I, Andy and I were talking about this in our last podcast and that is, we were thinking about where's where's it all going? You know, what's the future look like? And so we kind of riffed on that a little bit. He had ideas and ideas, but one of the things that Andy said that I really, really stuck with me is we want to get to a point where what we're talking about isn't newsworthy anymore.

[01:01:53] Eric Goranson: Well, it's almost like going into a paint store and asking, you know, latex pain is in many [01:02:00] cases, all you got out there when you walk into a paint store for, you know, interior, exterior stuff.

[01:02:20] Jay Watts: Great. Yeah, I think so. We're putting ourselves out of jobs here

[01:02:30] Caroline Blazovsky: What is this pickle?

[01:02:55] Jay Watts: All right.

[01:02:59] Jay Watts: ball. You know [01:03:00] what a wiffle ball is like a wiffle ball. Okay. And, but it's heavier. And the court, the court is much smaller than a tennis. So, and you'll want to look this up on the internet, cause there's tons of stuff on this now and you'll see how it's played.

[01:03:42] Jay Watts: I mean, this thing's going back and forth really fast. Yeah, very much so. But it's, uh, it's huge. It's very, and what's happening is tennis facilities now are adding because

[01:03:55] Jay Watts: Western, well, I don't think so. I think it's national. [01:04:00]

[01:04:01] Jay Watts: you could be the first one to promote it and then it'll catch on like wildfire.

[01:04:28] Jay Watts: There's what's called the kitchen and you cannot volley take a volley. If you're standing in the kitchen, that's against the rules. But if someone dinks over the net and the ball bounces into the kitchen, you can step into the kitchen to volley it back, know, hit it back.

[01:04:53] Eric Goranson: not,

[01:05:01] Caroline Blazovsky: New Jersey.

[01:05:12] Eric Goranson: five miles.

[01:05:15] Caroline Blazovsky: They have a pickle ball club at my tennis club.

[01:05:25] Caroline Blazovsky: wait, wait, wait to my defense. The club opened in 2020. So it opened during COVID first. It says

[01:05:48] Eric Goranson: excuses. Totally excuses

[01:05:54] Caroline Blazovsky: and I haven't had a chance.

[01:06:24] Caroline Blazovsky: God.

[01:06:37] Jay Watts: Yeah. No, this is your, this is your deal. This is definitely, this is your new game.

[01:06:51] Jay Watts: out. Yeah, I see that. I don't know. I think we did a pretty good job of covering all the bases or something that sticking out. Caroline, you have anything it's bumping out of here.[01:07:00]

[01:07:17] Jay Watts: And then when they get to the, the very most important thing, which is what I call the decoration side. Right. And I way I make an analogy, as I said, I want you to think about the, the walls and ceilings and floors in your home as the skin on your body. All right. We want to take care of our skin. Very important.

[01:07:48] Jay Watts: So don't run out of money at the end. All right. Make sure that you're budgeting to do all those decorative things with the safest coatings. You can find whether it's AFM or any other [01:08:00] coding you believe in that's where you want to make sure you don't cut corners. Don't compromise on your skin. Don't compromise your skin.

[01:08:28] Jay Watts: Um, they can look at all that and, and they can decide, uh, where they want to start, what they want to start with. They can get samples. I mentioned earlier, there are two ounce samples available on all of our products, except our cock and blue, because that comes in tubes. You can't get a sample, you have to buy a whole tube, but all the codings, the liquid coatings all come in a little two ounce bottle, which is really great for making sure that you're going to tolerate our chemistry.

[01:09:04] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And they have to call you to confirm.

[01:09:09] Caroline Blazovsky: or they'll call me,

[01:09:26] Eric Goranson: I'm bringing it up.

[01:09:32] Eric Goranson: do this. I'm bringing it up here.

[01:09:48] Caroline Blazovsky: gotta watch Jay there's pay the co-host, which means we

[01:09:54] Jay Watts: There's risk. Will you take paint and exchange for cash?

[01:10:06] Eric Goranson: there we go. All right. Let's spin the wheel. Spin it.

[01:10:18] Jay Watts: kitchen,

[01:10:26] Jay Watts: fun. Don't step don't step into the pickle ball kitchen.

[01:10:43] Jay Watts: That was easy.

[01:10:55] Eric Goranson: dangerous since we all have to go back to work. So. All right, [01:11:00] Jay. Thanks for coming on today, man. You have been so great and so informative.

[01:11:10] Eric Goranson: So we will. I'm Eric G and I'm Caroline B and you've been listening to. Around the house