This Old House

I got married in 1992. Our first house was a 1896 big timber mini farmhouse that had seen decades of ham-fisted DIY ownership culminating in it being a rental property before we bought it. I bought the place based on three criteria:  we could afford it, it had a detached garage/barn and I had been watching several seasons of TOH and Hometime.

Armed with my extensive video-provided knowledge I gutted the thing, removing walls, hauling off plaster and lath, installing insulation and drywall, painting, making trim and so on. Though my work wasn't contractor grade I did make the house far better than it was, increased its value and avoided redoing the kitchen before we sold it five years later for something less maintenance intensive. The subsequent owner finished it off by doing the really expensive stuff (new kitchen which it desperately needed, siding) and it is a lovely little property these days.

Norm, Tommy, Richard, Dean Johnson and his rotating co-host 'wives' were responsible for both my naivete and my success. However, I did learn that I would need to make a decision for the future:   old houses or old cars. No way I could afford to own both. I chose the cars. Still love old houses and if I were a millionaire needing a hobby I'd finance rehabbing old properties.

TOH was a great show (I rarely watch it these days) but I think I enjoyed Hometime even more. Dean was capable, funny and most of his helpers were decently attractive. They did stray into the McMansion building though and I lost interest. There were some blooper reels out there that were hilarious. I also thought it was funny how he pronounced 'ruff' for that thing on top of the house.

Good times. Wish I could rewatch them all without having to buy a subscription to something. I never did see the Vila ones but remember Home Again and his cameos on the comedy Home Improvement.

In reply to ddavidv :

We always watched home improvement when I was growing up. I wasn't a big fan, I thought it was too corny, but I always thought his one sided feud with Bob Vila was hilarious.

I watch TOH now, but as a kid i was all about New Yankee Workshop. Norm Abram sure knows how to make it look easy. That and Yan Can Cook. That guy was fun to watch.

Side question; I've noticed on TOH that many of the homes they work (which are in new england) on have radiators for heat, at least when they start working on them. It seems like a solid 75%. Here in Ohio i cant remember the last time ive seen a house with radiators. Why is that?

Saturday mornings as a kid in the early 90’s I loved TOH, Home Again and Hometime.  If you want some good nostalgia to go along with those look up the Like a Rock Chevy truck ads on youtube.  The best thing now is seeing the absurd punishment they used to put trucks through compared to today’s disclaimers and cautions about driving off road.   

Pretty amazing that This Old House is still going strong and producing something good to watch.  Now my wife loves to watch it with me and make jokes at Kevin’s expense. I even got a Silva brothers t-shirt for Christmas.

In reply to frenchyd :

Geodome houses are more DIY friendly...

How hard can it be?

One of the benefits to Tiny Homes is that they are on wheels, so at the very least they are easy to remove from the property when the project stalls. 

My father was a New Yankee Woodshop and This Old House adherant. He too also fell into the trap of many craftsman, those shows made it all "look easy". He was a pretty good small-project carpenter, and had a successful business rebuilding wind pipe-organs. 

Remodelling a house is not like a pipe organ, or a cabinet, or redoing window trim. Remodelling a home is a lesson in "good enough" and focusing more on timelines and less on details. Something my father was never good at, at something that the shows don't really cover (ever notice how it can go from Fall to Summer in the course of an episode?)

gearheadmb said:

 

Side question; I've noticed on TOH that many of the homes they work (which are in new england) on have radiators for heat, at least when they start working on them. It seems like a solid 75%. Here in Ohio i cant remember the last time ive seen a house with radiators. Why is that?

A lot of NE homes don't have AC.  The old steam heat is looked at as a comfortable heat.  I never warmed up to it though.   

In reply to pheller :

Very true.  DIY shows can definitely portray a distorted perception of time and build quality. It's like when I was working on theater sets in high school and for the local theater.  There was more of a "get it done" attitude than a "make it perfect" one.  The audience is a minimum of 20 feet away and won't be able to tell.  TV is similar. Plus the viewer only sees the "good" parts.  Anything that looks less than perfect ends up on the cutting room floor (or computer trash folder).

I had this argument with my ex- a lot as I was working on her house. "Why is it taking so long?"  "Well dear, I've never done this before. I'm working by myself. And this work simply takes time. Remember how it took your father 22 years to build the A-Frame?"   We broke up 5 years ago and parts of her house still aren't done.

Wow, yeah, we watched a ton of This Old House while growing up--this had to be back when the show was new. 

We also watched he Woodwright's Shop. A favorite line of ours, once said when the host cut himself while working on something: "This redwood is getting redder." At least, at the time, my brother and I found it funny. We still do. 

pheller said:

 

Remodelling a house is not like a pipe organ, or a cabinet, or redoing window trim. Remodelling a home is a lesson in "good enough" and focusing more on timelines and less on details. Something my father was never good at, at something that the shows don't really cover (ever notice how it can go from Fall to Summer in the course of an episode?)

I keep thinking about small projects around the house. But the house was built in 1927. Nothing is square anymore. I just don't want to mess with anything. 

The other tough thing about "project homes" is that every miss-cut, every idea that doesn't pan out, every broken sheet of drywall is money down the drain. It's not easy to tear walls down when you're not quite sure how to put them back up. For that reason, I'd love to own a $20,000 old home in an old city just to goof around. 

I regret not taking anymore home building/renovation classes when I attempted to attend vo-tech in highschool, or when so many of the local vo-tech schools had $350-$600 courses on such topics.

I also regret not having time to ask my father all of those question, but he died when I was 23 and focused on a college education, not learning a trade. 

The idea of 'How hard can it be? They do it on TV' is no different (as most of you know) in the automotive realm. Overhaulin' was a great show, but it also created a bunch of people who thought a car restoration only takes a week. Well, yeah, it does...if you have an army of people working on your car around the clock and have all the parts delivered to your door the day after you start.

This bled over into the general population and I saw it when I worked for body shops for a couple of years. People simply couldn't understand why it took two weeks to repair a car they drove into the shop. Never dawned on them that one guy, working on their car for about 5-6 actual hours a day, might take longer than the Overhaulin' scenario.

In reply to pheller :

My father and I were talking about this the other day. He and my mother built a geodesic dome in the late 70 and I grew up helping him finish various projects. 

It's interesting as I help here and there to renovate the house now 40 years later. The availability of information on how to do something correctly at that time was quite a bit less than it is today. When we take things apart you can see him thinking "Who the hell did this?" Other times ideas on energy conservation (Hello Mother Earth News) were simply half baked so we correct them with modern materials and techniques.

Really there's not much of a reason anymore not to get it at least 90% right. Information and correct materials are so readily available all you have to do is look.

I will agree with the effect home reno shows have had on people's expectations of timelines. It took me 3 years to finish the trim in in an 1800 sqft home.

does anyone know what happened to Roger Cook? if you watch him on Ask TOH he has not been looking good lately. almost like he had a stroke or something. he can barely walk, shakes, etc. 

In reply to old_ :

I have been wondering too.  I googled, and nothing came up about his health, but his wife died unexpectedly a few years back.  

He looks to be going downhill.  I wonder if it's bad back from too many years of hard work, or some Parkinson's/ms type situation.

We watched it Saturday, and my wife (who works in the medical field) said " I bet Roger has Parkinson's". I hope not but she is spooky good at that kind of thing.

gearheadmb said:

We watched it Saturday, and my wife (who works in the medical field) said " I bet Roger has Parkinson's". I hope not but she is spooky good at that kind of thing.

If you see that sort of stuff often enough...a friend diagnosed another friends ALS after one visit.

Looks a lot more like Parkinsons than MS to me.

I must be getting dense.  I haven’t noticed anything different about Roger.  

I recently had a good friend diagnosed with IBM.  I thought he had ALS for a while.  

HOMETIME!!! 

Yes it got to glamorous for it's own good but man it was great most years. They took the time to explain how they did the work. The subs would explain what they did with technical words. Simple to moderately difficult stuff was shown with enough detail to get you started to doing something similar yourself. I laid brick, built a garage, and redid a lot of my hot water lines because of Hometime, TOH, and one other show that disappeared after just a couple years. They were way better than the current HGTV stuff of just look at the design...oh no (big problem before commercial)...ahhh fixed and still pretty design the end.