Home improvement shows

Recently "Trading Spaces", one of the original home improvement shows, rebooted with all of the original designers and carpenters, and it was a blast. I'm not ashamed to say I was a fan of many of these original shows, and I wonder if there are others like me here in Hoffmanland.

So this is a thread dedicated to this now over-stuffed genre. What are your favorites? Here are some of mine:

Trading Spaces-neighbors design a room in their neighbor's house assisted by designers and a carpenter. They have to do it for $2000 (it was originally $1000) and in 48 hours. Long-time viewers of this show, which was on from 2000-2008 and back again, know the quirks of all of the designers, including Hildi Santo-Tomas, who notoriously glued hay onto a wall for a family with children. The original was very seat of the pants, and the host, Paige Davis, was very perky-she makes Katie Couric look like Gollum.

This Old House-By far the longest running of these shows, and one of the most long-lived show of any type, was originally hosted by Bob Vila, and basically detailed the complete remodeling of a house over the course of several weeks. It stated out as show that really appealed to do-it-yourselfers, and morphed into unapproachable grandiosity as time wore on. They've recently scaled back the scope of the projects.

Hometime-Originally hosted by Dean Johnson and a slew of co-hosts, the best of which was JoAnne Liebeler, this show also ran for decades, and featured Dean and co-host doing much of the work of a remodel. All of the homes were in the Chaska, Minnesota area where the show was based, so they were always dealing with a lot of snow.

Sell This House-Hosted by the very appealing Tanya Memme, this show tries to help people who are having trouble selling their house. A small crew plus the homeowners improve the house on a small budget. The best thing about this show was seeing hidden camera reactions of prospective home buyers, and then bringing them back to see the improvements.

Curb Appeal-basically showed you how to make your house look good from the street. Very simple-I used some of their techniques.

In A Fix-This show ran for two seasons, and it took a "gonzo" approach by "surprising" homeowners who were stuck in a home improvement nightmare, and offering to finish whatever project was stifling them. It featured some very bad mistakes made by contractors, some of which couldn't be fixed. Featured a very game crew and was actually a lot of fun to watch.

What are some of yours? Did you actually participate in one of these types of shows?

 

I liked This Old House in the early 90s when Bob Vila was replaced by Steve Thomas.

On my local PBS station, right after This Old House was a show called The Woodwright's Shop, and the opening credits showed the host walking from a city downtown, across the stream, to a cabin in the woods where he made stuff without power tools. It was kind of like The Joy of Painting but with woodworking.

 

Yes! I used to watch this too! Something about making furniture the old fashioned way. The other show I forgot to mention was New Yankee Workshop. "Don't forget the most important piece of equipment is to wear your safety goggles!"

 

My favorite is "First Time Flippers" on the DIY network, where they follow incompetent people who think they are going to get rich flipping houses and saving money by doing it themselves.

 

Up here in Canadia we'd get the PBS feed from the US. I watched all those shows, though I don't remember seeing The Woodwright's Shop. We did have The New Yankee Workshop though which I also enjoyed. I was addicted to those shows. Although I don't pine for them I do miss them.

 

I remember when that show started in the UK. It was early days of reality TV and that wasn't a bad show at all. Usually I hoped the people would hate what the others had done. Those were the best shows. Otherwise, I tended to sit there amused at some of the design decisions thinking, that's been done so cheaply it'll fall apart as soon as the camera's stop rolling.

I liked a lot of the early home improvement style shows. There are so many know that they've all turned into a bit of a blur, but to be honest, I like watching them regardless. Not bad if you want to kill time.

 

I never did but a friend of mine was on once. His wife wanted to do it so he relented. He's an electrician by trade so knows what reno's involved etc. Although they were doing the entire house, the show only paid for the bathroom and capped it at nowhere near what it actually cost to do. I remember watching it and the colour of his skin kept changing from shot to shot because they filmed it before a holiday but had to re-film after a beach holiday. lol

He said it was a nightmare and was quite pleased when it was all over. He honestly got very little out of it. I tried pitching him an "Electrician to the Semi Famous" tv show idea but he dismissed that with extreme prejudice.

 

While You Were Out was an interesting variation on the Trading Spaces format, when someone (usually a spouse) would have a room remodeled while their partner was away. I especially liked it when Teresa Strasser was the host. On one notorious episode, an unsuspecting husband was livid with what they had done to his deck. Strasser walked up and said, "Hi, I'm Paige Davis."