Jeff talks all about baths, bathrooms, and Billy Dee Williams with Mark & Theresa .
Theresa: And you are inside MyFixitUpLife, and I really enjoy that you have a lot of energy, but I don’t know if I enjoy your dancing so much.
Mark: Well, I hate my bath.
Theresa: He does. He actually does.
Jeff: Don’t relate bathrooms with your dancing, please, for the love of God.
Theresa: We’re here with Jeff Devlin from I Hate my Bath, DIY Network, and Mark hates our bath.
Jeff: Actually, when you guys are doing radio, where do you look? I mean, because you guys are looking all over. With TV, I’ve got to look at a camera. You guys are …
Mark: We’re like professional athletes.
Theresa: It’s sort of like we can wander through our lives a little bit and just be in wonder and amazement.
Jeff: You wish. You wish.
Mark: Yes. We’re like professional athletes. You’re running down the sideline. You know where the player is. You can catch the ball. See the quarterback’s eyes from like 200 yards away. That’s how they used to pass in high school.
Jeff: Yes. Again, radio; doesn’t really do that because you can’t do the visuals.
Theresa: Not as much, no.
Mark: Jeff Devlin, DIY Network, I Hate My Bath. This is going to cause me …
Jeff: Mark and Theresa, MyFixitUpLife.
Mark: This is going to cause me all kinds of grief.
Theresa: He hates our bath.
Jeff: Then fix it, dude.
Mark: No. Our bath is a disaster.
Theresa: I love our bathroom.
Jeff: Wait a second. I’ve been following you guys with your renovations.
Theresa: You’ve been in our bathroom.
Jeff: Yes. As a matter of fact, I have, but you guys did your kitchen. You took your time. You did it right. Why have you not taken a crack at your bathroom?
Theresa: We did our bathroom. It’s the first room we did in our house.
Jeff: So what, you don’t like it though?
Theresa: He doesn’t like it because I designed it, and he doesn’t like how I designed it because we have the washer and dryer in the bathroom.
Jeff: Sexy.
Theresa: Every single woman that walks into our bathroom …
Mark: The high efficiency that shakes the house to pieces.
Theresa: It does.
Mark: You know the high spin units. They’re not made to be on a wood finish.
Theresa: No, not so much, so we have to do some …
Mark: We have to do a MyFixitUpLife.
Theresa: But it’s glorious in there. We have the tub that’s elevated with a little step so it’s great to wash small people and things in it so you can sort of sit next to …
Jeff: You have small people that come visit your house or are we talking kids?
Mark: Big gremlins and the Hobbit. All of them come over.
Theresa: Yes, my friends.
Jeff: So basically ….
Theresa: No, for like our four year old so you can sit next to the tub, and it’s nice.
Mark: Oh yes. That step is the best thing we ever put in. I use that two or three times a day.
Theresa: He doesn’t hate the whole bath. He just hates 90% of the bath.
Mark: No. I would put a step in anybody’s bathroom, I tell you right now.
Jeff: It is nice.
Mark: I put my shoes on sitting on that step. That thing is awesome. I’m glad I designed it myself.
Theresa: What is the thing that people hate the most about their baths?
Jeff: It’s always, always, always every single time I go in, people talk about how the layout’s difficult, but it’s always mold.
Theresa: Really?
Jeff: They walk in and are like, see … I don’t like how it looks. There’s mold in the corners. The tile’s not clean. But it’s always mold. Then when I say, does your fan work? Does your exhaust fan work? They look at me crooked. They look at me like, wait, the thing up in the ceiling that just collects dust that every time I flip the switch it sort of works, but it sounds like an aircraft engine? Yes, that one thing that’s supposed to take all the moisture out of your bathroom. That’s the biggest beef. I mean, people, everything’s outdated and stuff like that, but that is … most people, they get health concerns, and they should.
Mark: Once it boils down to the color of the cabinets, color of the tile, whatever it is, they’re like, yeah, but it’s got mold on it? That’s it.
Jeff: That’s the first one. People are starting to care a little bit more about health. We do so many cool bathrooms, and yes, we do a lot of really neat stuff, but most people are plain and simple in their bathrooms, like an acrylic tub surrounds a simple white toilet. They’re simple in their needs because they just don’t want to put all of their hard earned money into their bathrooms, and I get that, but health and safety is really important in a bathroom, and people are starting to actually think about it. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s something that they should consider.
Mark: If you see it, you see it. I mean, you’re not making it up. I know you’re not.
Jeff: Yes. If you see it in front of a wall, believe me, that wall when you rip it out is ten times worse.
Mark: When you’re going into a bathroom, and I already know my answer to this one.
Theresa: Oh, really? You’re going to answer the question for him? Why are we even here?
Jeff: This is a good test. So you answer the questions and ask them?
Mark: I do.
Jeff: Awesome.
Mark: In fact, I’ve already …
Theresa: It works out better that way.
Mark: I’ve already got you on a true/false thing …
Jeff: What are you, my wife?
Mark: Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Theresa: He does that so that I don’t answer the question.
Mark: All right. I’m changing the question. The question is you go into a bathroom, and people are like, I want tile, cement board, in floor heating. I want everything heated, cooled …
Theresa: Does anyone ever say they want a roller coaster?
Mark: They want a roller coaster in there …
Jeff: If they’re under five, yes.
Mark: Yes.
Mark: Then you say, okay, that’s a great idea. With all the layers of your floor, you’re going to need a step-ladder to get in here. Do you have to talk them down off of doing that?Theresa: Because I do.
Jeff: We get an initial budget when we’re dealing with bathrooms, and we don’t really like to present people with the crazy … I don’t really want to ask somebody what they want until I figure out what their budget is, and that’s where you start. You say, here’s what you can do for your budget; because you do have to worry about all the things that happen behind the wall, and bathrooms are probably ten times more difficult than kitchens simply because kitchens, you see all the beautiful cabinets.
Mark: You’ve done over a hundred kitchens, right?
Jeff: Over a hundred kitchens and almost …
Mark: Spice Up My Kitchen HGTV.
Jeff: Yes. Again, I like them both. I like the challenges of bathrooms, but truth be told, with a bathroom, you’re dealing with stuff behind the walls more; more plumbing and stuff like that, and that costs money, and that’s tougher for people to get excited about. When somebody says I have a budget of say $50,000.00, I don’t really want to get into what I’m going to use for a backer board for their floor and how much I have to beef it up because honestly, most people don’t care. They just want to know that it’s done right and done so they don’t have to do it again, and then they get to pick out the pretty roller coaster to put in the bathroom.
Mark: That segues me into my next question, which I’m going to get no end of grief for asking.
Theresa: Oh no.
Mark: It starts like this, Jeff. I cannot wait. This is going to take a long time.
Jeff: Am I going to start crying?
Mark: No. I’m going to. So I’m in the shower this morning …
Jeff: Oh, Jesus. Don’t tell me you were thinking about me. Where’s this going?
Mark: Turn on the shower thing.
Jeff: I’m getting scared.
Mark: The water starts to come out, and I noticed that the shower head is like eight feet in the air; and by the time it gets down, I can literally stand inside the cone of water fully dressed and not get wet.
Theresa: Oh yes. That’s the opposite of the shower … we were at a place inWashingtonState recently …
Mark: Which is right in your face.
Theresa: It was like right here. It was like …
Mark: So you guys …
Jeff: It’s made for people…
Mark: I think this room was set aside for professional athletes.
Jeff: This was a hotel, correct?
Mark: This was a hotel.
Jeff: I’ll tell you exactly what the reason is. They’re rain shower heads. If they plumbed it in for the rain shower head, it came over, down, and then you had it. That’s at least my guess.
Mark: No. This is a regular shower head.
Jeff: No, but maybe it was plumbed for a rain shower head at one point, and then they took it out and went back old school, unless it was old. I’m just guessing here.
Mark: Right. Yes. Who knows?
Jeff: Or it’s just for tall people?
Theresa: You must be this tall for this hotel room.
Jeff: It should have the line right there.
Theresa: Yes. It should have the line outside the room.
Mark: So technically, I stood in the shower today, but I haven’t showered.
Jeff: Right. Oh, believe me, I can tell.
Mark: Thanks.
Jeff: Your hair. It doesn’t look vibrant.
Mark: I use a special gel product, and it makes it wavy.
Jeff: We’ll talk about that later.
Theresa: It’s very fluffy.
Mark: So you guys are building lightning speed. You’re doing all this stuff.
Jeff: It’s not crazy though, Mark. I mean, you understand everything, everything, everything is in preparation; and if you can plan and you can prepare, then the schedule … yes, it happens when it … it happens on a schedule, but it’s not like we need to work 15 hours a day every single day. You basically once you demo, you get the demo done, you finish that up. The next day, it’s rough in plumbing. The next day, it’s rough in electric. It’s basically very systematic in that you start and you do it, so it’s literally done in two, three weeks. A regular … I hate when I hear people complain about their contractor who’s been in their house for a month and a month and a half, and a lot of times, they blame it on the contractor, but it’s not always his fault. It’s that they didn’t plan, and they didn’t want to pay the contractor to plan it.
Mark: If you were getting somebody that said, hey Jeff, give me three DIY tips, like I’m about to, would one of them be … because DIY-ers are doing it on the weekends because they’re dentists during the week or whatever. Would one of your tips be, hey, get some sleep? Rest so you can come at it fresh on Sunday?
Jeff: I completely … I definitely think that you need to be patient, and you need to know where your skills lie. There’s a lot of people, and we empower people to go out there and build this stuff. You see it for 22 minutes. You see us rip apart a bathroom. It’s crazy. It’s very cool, but people get empowered. It’s like, I can do that; and we want them to get excited about the process, but we also … you’ve got to be honest with your skills, and a lot of people will wake up on a Friday morning, get all excited, run to work, come home, go to the big box store, and bring back all their materials, stick it under the floor, and then they’re running back to Home Depot six times. Then they don’t really know how to put the tile in. They thought they knew, but they didn’t educate themselves, and then it becomes a miserable experience; and if it’s a husband and wife team, spouse, whatever, then you start to get that wonderful interaction where you need to introduce alcohol to make it an enjoyable experience.
Theresa: And some nice sexy music.
Mark: Billy Dee Williams while you’re putting in tile.
Theresa: Yes. That’s where the wife goes upstairs and puts on her sexy high heels. Do we really want to argue about this tile?
Jeff: It’s tough because you get excited. You really want to have that end result, but the worst thing is when I … I have buddies that call me all the time on Sunday night and be like, dude, what do I do? I don’t have water, and I ripped out my shower. I’m like, dude, what did you think was going to happen (laughing)?
Theresa: Do you belong to a gym?
Jeff: Yes …
Theresa: Go take a shower there.
Jeff: Do you have a garden hose outside? Go for it, buddy. Just wear your suit.
Mark: That’s classy. By the way, I just do that anyway. Have you done outdoor showers? I love outdoor showers.
Jeff: We haven’t done it on the bath, but as a kid, I grew up in Philly, but I surfed a lot, and our family had a house inCapeBay so I would basically go down there, go surfing. The best experience is you go surfing, you take a shower outdoors when it’s like 60 degrees outside or even 50. Oh my God. It feels so good. It’s rejuvenating. You’re looking outside. It’s the best thing in the world, but we never get to do it on the show.
Theresa: Port-a-Potty challenge.
Mark: Theresa has a port-a-potty challenge.
Theresa: I gave this to Matt Muenster too. Have you ever done a Port-a-Potty, and would you ever think of doing one, like one of those tricked out ones at a festival or a fair or something?
Jeff: Of course, we would think about doing one.
Theresa: Would that be awesome for your show?
Jeff: That would be great, and then I could just keep it with me so I can go.
Theresa: You could travel with it, like this really cool, awesome, tricked out …
Mark: Forget hotels. You’ve got a rolling bathroom.
Jeff: Hey, at my house, I have a favorite toilet. I don’t like to use the other one because, you know, you get a little sentimental about your toilets. I like them.
Theresa: Aww. Jeff has a favorite toilet.
Jeff: That’s because it’s my room.
Theresa: Do you have a name for it too?
Jeff: No. I’m not going to tell you his name.
Mark: I have a tool question for you because as we know, you’re a farmer, and I think you probably chop your own wood, and I don’t know what.
Jeff: Sometimes.
Mark: You’re growing corn and stuff. What kind of axe do you like?
Jeff: Guitar axe or are we talking axe axe?
Mark: We’re talking guitar axe.
Jeff: Okay. I will tell you this, and I know Tim’s sitting there. You ready, Tim? I have a ’71 Les Paul gold top. I have a ’79 Fender strat, and I have a jumbo Gild.
Tim: My birthday is coming up.
Jeff: And I never get to play any of them anymore.
Mark: We have Tim Williams. We have Jeff Devlin. Why am I not hearing music?
Theresa: Yes. Do you want to play?
Jeff: Do I want to play?
Mark: Why am I not hearing …?
Jeff: Play what?
Theresa: I don’t know. Play Tim’s guitar.
Mark: Can you play chopsticks?
Tim: Play some Billy Dee Williams.
Jeff: Yes. Sure.
Mark: Billy Dee Williams. Go for it, man.
Jeff: As long as he dances to it, that’s fine.
Mark: Oh, I’m dancing. It’s got to rock.
Theresa: I’m going to close my eyes and just listen to the music.
Jeff: Oh, that is too funny.
Mark: Yes. I’ll play the beginning of …
Tim: Maybe we’ll figure something out on break, and you can play guitar, and I’ll sing us into the next segment.
Jeff: That sounds awesome. That sounds great.
Theresa: That’s so good.
Mark: I want to hear that insomniac song by Green Day.
Theresa: As long as you’re not singing. Really? Really? Really? Really? JeffDevlin.net
Mark: We’re really going into a break. We’ll be back with more MyFixitUpLife.
Check out more of Mark & Theresa’s chats with Jeff Devlin.
