Home with Dean Sharp

The hardest thing about change is changing.


The hardest thing about moving forward into your future is letting go of the past.


The past does not exist for you to live in it from the present. Those moments, like this one, were something we were just passing through. We’re always just passing through. Which is why I don’t like to think of a house as a castle or a monument or a museum. A house is not an end in and of itself. It’s a base of operations. A vehicle for growing relationships. A factory for making moments and memories. A vessel, a ship, constantly adapting itself to life’s next adventure.


We shouldn’t confuse houses and homes. But we do. Just like you are so much more than your body, but you do live in it, and it does effect the way you live. So my real home is not my house or the stuff inside it. My house is not my story, but it helps me tell my story.


John Ruskin put it this way, “We seek two things from our buildings. We want them to shelter us and we want them to speak to us. Speak to us of the things we find most important and need to be reminded of.”


So you see, at the end of the day, the house is not the project. You are the project. It is not the remodel. You are the remodel. When we’re doing this right we’re not designing our houses, we’re designing our lives. We don’t purge and declutter houses. We purge and declutter and organize our own hearts and minds and priorities. That’s why it’s so tough sometimes. Because we don’t know ourselves as well as we should, and we don’t like to change, and we don’t like to let go. But that’s exactly why it’s so important.


Home is where your heart is. Like the song says, “home is whenever I’m with you.” Home is family and friends, and it simply doesn’t take much “stuff” to satisfy your friends. If it does, you have the wrong friends. And if you don’t feel like you have enough stuff, well, maybe you haven’t invested in enough friends. Maybe there’s a hole in your boat where the meaning keeps leaking out.


I want you to live in a beautiful house that tells your beautiful story. So I want you to declutter it, purge it, organize it, redesign it and refine it. Not because your house needs more stuff but because it needs more you.



I’ve built a lot of houses and I’ll tell you this, houses only truly start to look like homes when the people inside them decide, not to build themselves a beautiful house, but to build themselves a beautiful life.

I wanted to give you some deeply meaningful philosophical gem this week but when I sat down to write all I could think of was not writing something great, but reading something great. So here’s just a couple of things about me, I guess.


I love to read and, despite the busyness of this current season of life, this week I’ve still been able to squeeze in a book on empathy written by a renowned primatologist, a story about vampires and witches, and earlier this week I even reread Winnie the Pooh.


Remember books? Books are the original hard drive technology. I love books. One of my personal commitments in life is to always be reading something. Sometimes that takes the form of an actual analog paper paged book. Sometimes it’s a digital book on my iPad. Sometimes on a long drive or when I’m working with my hands all day long—like I was this last week—I love a great audiobook. I’m not a format snob. It’s all a toolbox, so whatever works.


I love reading and I love writing, because crafting raw thoughts into language is as challenging as crafting raw materials into homes. In the end, it’s all storytelling. Reading makes me a better thinker. Thinking makes me a better writer. Writing makes me a better storyteller. Storytelling makes me a better designer and a better person, or so I’d like to believe. Building sentences is like building anything. There are fundamental rules which make them work and, once those fundamentals are mastered you can start shaping, bending, even breaking them, and that’s when the real fun begins.


Even the act of buying books is good for my soul. I love the instant gratification of downloading a book and immediately diving in on a whim, but I also love bookstores. First of all I love the smell of a bookstore. All that paper. All that ink. But I also love bookstores because unlike being guided by preference algorithms on the internet there’s room in a bookstore to be surprised by the unexpected. The older you get the more prone you are to being deceived into thinking you’ve seen it all and done it all, and I cant even begin to tell you how important it is to me to regularly be surprised. So just about every time I walk into a bookstore, even if I’m hunting down a particular title, I almost always walk out with at least one other that wasn’t part of the plan.


It’s kinda like life that way. Embracing the unexpected. Navigating what wasn’t part of the plan and letting life surprise you.


So there it is. Some thoughts on books. Honestly, I have no idea why I needed to tell you those things or what you’re supposed to do with them. Perhaps the lesson is pick up a book, it’ll do you good. Or perhaps what it means is you should rediscover some of your childlike wonder by reading Winnie the Pooh. Or maybe it’s just a reminder that, whatever you’re doing right now, don’t forget that life is so much more than that. So embrace something old, or something new, or something totally unexpected. Find another really well told story and relinquish your control to it. Let it capture you and carry you away for a while. I promise, everything will be fine while you’re gone, and you won’t be gone long.


And when you get back, who knows, perhaps you’ll be even more ready, and even better equipped, to build yourself a beautiful life.

When I was getting ready for the show and playing around with the phrase “21st Century Stone Age” it got me thinking about how far we’ve come since the first Stone Age, and yet in other ways how little we’ve changed.


I know sometimes it seems like everything is changing so fast that it’s difficult to know what exactly you can count on anymore. I mean, when stone isn’t even really stone anymore, how can you know if anything is real?


Well, we have some dear friends in town from Sheffield, England. They’re very real. I know because they’re sitting right across the table from me. And even though we don’t get to see one another as oft as we’d like, and even though lots of things have changed in all of us over the years, I’m always happy to rediscover how our friendship is still very real.


And how, in many ways, maybe most ways, despite the years and all the changes, we’re all still the same wide-eyed kids, still doing our best to understand ourselves, still in awe of the great Mystery at the center of everything, and still glad to take comfort and rest in each other’s company.


And it reminded me once again of this singular unchanging truth: There’s very little more one really needs in this life apart from a true friend.


Tina and I have built our house for the most part to enjoy the company of friends because for us, friendship is the very definition of home. Make no mistake, when a marriage thrives it’s because those two people are above all other things, friends. When a family thrives it’s not because of authority or obligation but because the rules of friendship are honored first. Friendship cuts to the heart of all relationships, not because of blood or oaths or debts or any other external obligation, but simply because we choose them. Friends are the family you choose.


A friend is someone who understands where you’ve been, accepts what you’ve become, and gives you room to grow. And of course, some of the best advice I’ve ever been given is if you need a friend the best way to make a friend is to be a friend.


So we’re off now to continue to celebrate friendship and I just thought I’d take a moment and encourage you to do the same.


Because friendship is something that hasn’t changed at all from the first Stone Age to this one. And even after all this time, it’s the one thing none of us can do without.


Not only is it a beautiful day but it’s the only today we have. So why not call up a friend and spend it together?



Get together, talk, eat, laugh, cry, whatever. Because building a beautiful friendship is the best way I know how to build yourself a beautiful life.

There is as myth propagated by some that when Columbus first came to the America’s the native tribes couldn’t see the Spanish ships because their minds simply had no frame of reference for something so foreign. I don’t believe it. But what I can imagine is a bunch of them gathering on the beach tilting their heads in puzzlement as they strained to categorize what exactly they were seeing.


Because it is true that we do all have trouble visualizing what we aren’t familiar with. Or as the German playwright and poet Johann von Goethe famously said, “We only see what we know.”


That truth, by the way, is the reason for hiring an experienced designer for your project, and for remaining open to collaboration with multiple perspectives. Because only seeing what we know means we’re all likely to miss out on a lot of possibilities.


It’s also probably the best way to stay humble and open-minded, and non-judgmental and to remain teachable and young at heart and flexible. Because we only see what we know, and when you consider all the things that can be known, we don’t know much.


People say I know a lot about designing homes. What I know is there’s a whole lot more to learn. But if that seems true it’s only because of two things: First, I’ve made it one of my lifelong passions to weaponize my curiosity. Yes, it makes me a nerd but it keeps me learning.

And more importantly, somewhere along the path I realized how truly freeing it is to embrace my own ignorance. If we only see what we know, and we don’t know much, then we are blind to most things, even what may be right in front of us … and what I want is to see.


I don’t celebrate ignorance because I want to stay that way. I celebrate it because the world is so old and big and I am so young and so small, there’s simply no way for me to escape it. So I embrace my ignorance and hold it close, and spend it liberally wherever and whenever I can because I know no matter how much ignorance I get rid of there will always be plenty more where that came from.


Being aware of my ignorance becomes rocket fuel for my journey. It opens my eyes to see more. It keeps my ego in check and humbles me. It makes me a better artist, a better designer, a better leader, a better husband and father and a better friend.


I try to stay aware of my ignorance because the smartest person in the room is always the one who knows enough to know they don’t know enough.


So today maybe you learned something about a space in your home that’s been right in front of you the whole time. Well done! Now let me encourage you to take the awareness of all that you still don’t know and head out the door on a new adventure. Try to see the world from a fresh perspective, with new eyes and an open heart.


You just might be surprised how much life is hiding in plain sight right in front of you. And you just might be surprised how far a little well applied ignorance will go toward building yourself a beautiful life.

There is as myth propagated by some that when Columbus first came to the America’s the native tribes couldn’t see the Spanish ships because their minds simply had no frame of reference for something so foreign. I don’t believe it. But what I can imagine is a bunch of them gathering on the beach tilting their heads in puzzlement as they strained to categorize what exactly they were seeing.


Because it is true that we do all have trouble visualizing what we aren’t familiar with. Or as the German playwright and poet Johann von Goethe famously said, “We only see what we know.”


That truth, by the way, is the reason for hiring an experienced designer for your project, and for remaining open to collaboration with multiple perspectives. Because only seeing what we know means we’re all likely to miss out on a lot of possibilities.


It’s also probably the best way to stay humble and open-minded, and non-judgmental and to remain teachable and young at heart and flexible. Because we only see what we know, and when you consider all the things that can be known, we don’t know much.


People say I know a lot about designing homes. What I know is there’s a whole lot more to learn. But if that seems true it’s only because of two things: First, I’ve made it one of my lifelong passions to weaponize my curiosity. Yes, it makes me a nerd but it keeps me learning.

And more importantly, somewhere along the path I realized how truly freeing it is to embrace my own ignorance. If we only see what we know, and we don’t know much, then we are blind to most things, even what may be right in front of us … and what I want is to see.


I don’t celebrate ignorance because I want to stay that way. I celebrate it because the world is so old and big and I am so young and so small, there’s simply no way for me to escape it. So I embrace my ignorance and hold it close, and spend it liberally wherever and whenever I can because I know no matter how much ignorance I get rid of there will always be plenty more where that came from.


Being aware of my ignorance becomes rocket fuel for my journey. It opens my eyes to see more. It keeps my ego in check and humbles me. It makes me a better artist, a better designer, a better leader, a better husband and father and a better friend.


I try to stay aware of my ignorance because the smartest person in the room is always the one who knows enough to know they don’t know enough.


So today maybe you learned something about a space in your home that’s been right in front of you the whole time. Well done! Now let me encourage you to take the awareness of all that you still don’t know and head out the door on a new adventure. Try to see the world from a fresh perspective, with new eyes and an open heart.


You just might be surprised how much life is hiding in plain sight right in front of you. And you just might be surprised how far a little well applied ignorance will go toward building yourself a beautiful life.

This morning we have very special guests in studio with us from The Kitchen Store www.thekitchenstore.net sharing their expertise on all things kitchens. Tune in from 9-11 at The Official KFI AM 640 or catch the podcast anytime on the iHeartRadio App

When buying quality kitchen cabinets look for:

Plywood boxes / Channeled Intersections / Thick full height back panel / I-Beam bracing / No Staples / Solid Wood Face Frame / Doweled or Mortice & Tenon Joints / Finished Interior / ¾” Solid Wood Doors / Doweled or Mortice & Tenon Door Joints / Hardwood Dovetail Drawers / Multi-Adjustable Soft-Close Hinges / Under-mount Soft Close Drawer Glides / Durable Multi-Coat Finishes / Warranty / KCMA Certified (Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association)

How was the week? A little bitter? Or was it sweet? Or maybe bitter-sweet?

Mine was just that, on about three different fronts.


What do you do when life gets unexpectedly complex?


My first desperate reaction is to try and define it and oversimplify it so I know what to do with it. That’s because I’m human and can only really understand a thing when it fits neatly into one of my stories.


We all do it, so we can tell ourselves something is good or bad, right or wrong, black or white. But I’ve noticed most of the time Life has very little interest in handing me easy definitions.


It’s like the ancient Taoist parable of the farmer and his horse ...


A farmer buys a horse, but then it runs away. His neighbor says, "Oh I’m so sorry. That's bad news." But the farmer says, "Good news, bad news, who can say?" A few days pass and the horse comes back and brings another horse with it. Now the farmer has two horses. “Ah, so it was actually good news,” says the neighbor. But the farmer says, “Good news, bad news, who can say?" The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it but then is thrown and badly breaks his leg. "So indeed it was bad news after all," says the neighbor. But in a week or so, the Emperor calls upon every able-bodied young man to go to war and the farmer's son is spared from going because of his broken leg. Good news? Bad news? Who can say?


You don't have be a deeply philosophical person to understand that from where we stand now, we don't know the end of the story we're living, even though we desperately want to, and often convince ourselves that we do. That’s just us writing stories of an unknown future. The truth is we don't know the twists and turns still to come.


And that's why from time to time, even I—the one who presses you every week to write yourself a better story—want to remind both of us to guard ourselves from falling too deeply into our stories.


We’re usually so immersed in them we forget they’re even there. And whenever anything happens we start writing what it means long before we should. It’s tale of the farmer over and over again. What his neighbor never grasped was the farmer was never at the mercy of uncontrollable events. His life was only ever at the mercy of his own chosen perspectives.


It’s not about the unexpected, the uninvited, or the unwanted. It’s about us. That may seem pithy, and I don’t mean for it to sound like it’s easy, but nevertheless, it is true.


Perhaps Shakespeare had heard the story of the farmer when he wrote, “there is nothing either good or bad, but that thinking makes it so.”


Or as Obi Wan might say, “You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”


So on we go—all our stories in tow—into the unknown. I’ll tell you the one and only thing I know about the future …


For as long as you are here, no matter what happens next, if you truly want to, you can choose to build yourself a beautiful life.

Today's show is all about DIY. What to do, Why you do it, and how to stay safe while you're doing it. HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!

Today's Homily is a lesson fit for St. Patrick's Day.

Today we test the intelligence of your homes and give you ideas on how to make your normal houses smart ones.