This Old House

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80bostonFEBRUARY2009

The House That

BuiltNorm

Tom

Roger

On its 30th anniversary, the creators, cast, and (mostly) lucky homeowners of This Old House reveal what the cameras haven’t shown—from how the series almost didn’t get off the ground to who really foots the bill for all those jaw-dropping renovations.

An oral history by francis storrs

81boston

FEBRUARY2009

The House That

BuiltRich

CaroleKevin*

* Not to mention: Henry, Bob, Steve, Larry, Dick, Estelle, and Viewers Like You

On its 30th anniversary, the creators, cast, and (mostly) lucky homeowners of This Old House reveal what the cameras haven’t shown—from how the series almost didn’t get off the ground to who really foots the bill for all those jaw-dropping renovations.

An oral history by francis storrsphotographs by walter smith

82 boston FEBRUARY 2009

This was before HGTV offered round-the-clock advice on installing ceiling fans; before Extreme Makeover: Home Edition began mass-producing mansions; before viewers were left to puzzle over the subtle difference between A&E’s Flip This House and TLC’s Flip That House.

Then, on the evening of February 20, 1979, Bostonians who tuned in to WGBH Channel 2 were introduced to This Old House, a show that would invent a new television genre. “The words ‘do-it-yourself’ hadn’t been put together in those days,” says Russell Morash, the program’s creator. “People did not have power tools, did not do their own repairs. They hired people.” Morash, together with WGBH’s Henry Becton, had a knack for distilling latent cultural interests into wildly popular television shows, including The French Chef and The Victory Garden. Premiering just as the country was sliding into a major housing crisis, This Old House (which WGBH spent just $50,000 to get off the ground) would show viewers that they didn’t need to buy new homes to be happy. All they needed was a little Yankee ingenuity.

The housing crisis that had cemented the show’s relevance eventu-ally passed, but viewers’ voyeuristic fascination with other peoples’ homes has proved enduring. With nearly 4 million viewers per episode, This Old House has become one of the highest-rated shows of its kind on television, and has won 16 Emmys to date. It launched a magazine (which now boasts a readership of 5.7 million), a website (that generates 16 million page views a month), and two popular spinoffs in Ask This Old House and The New Yankee Workshop. Today the various arms of the This Old House brand reach 52 million Americans every month.

As originally conceived, though, the half-hour program that would grow into that multimedia empire promised to be little more than the quaint, televised equivalent of a Realtor’s open house. Initially titled House Calls, each episode would show off an already completed home renovation (think MTV Cribs for the PBS set). Morash recruited a Globe journalist named Estelle Bond Guralnick to star in the pilot, which they filmed at a Brookline Victorian she had recently written about. The pilot was never aired, and the whole experiment might have been shelved had it not been for a certain star quality the producers saw in the Victorian’s young builder, who had escorted Guralnick around his project. His name was Bob Vila.

henry Becton (former WGBH general manager): I sat down and reviewed the pilot with Russ. I thought it was okay; I didn’t think it was great.

russell Morash (series creator): I said, “I think you have to show the process.” It’s too easy to say, “And then I put down this blue tile.” When I see something like what Vila had done with his place I think, how can I put down my own blue tile, because I’ll never have the money to do it unless I do it myself.

Becton: Boy, when Vila looked at you through that camera, there was something that really connected. Russ and I thought, maybe we should try to convince him.

estelle Bond guralnick (home design writer, Boston Globe): Russ just felt awful. He called me and said, “They like Bob Vila.” Of course, I was disappointed, but I was very busy.

BoB Vila (host, 1979–1989): They called me up and said, “Come over and take a look at this house in Dorchester. We’ve got everything ready to go.” They had gotten underwriting, I think it was Montgomery

thirty years ago, the cultural landscape for fix-it television was barren.

boston FEBRUARY 2009 83

MASTERS OF THE HOUSE1. Russell Morash, series creator 2. Deborah Hood, executive producer 3. Chris Wolfe, Ask This Old House producer 4. TK NAME, TK TITLE 5. TK NAME, TK TITLE 6. Stephen D’Onofrio, cameraman 7. Rich Trethewey, heating and plumbing specialist 8. Michael Burton, This Old House Ventures vice president of television operations 9. Tom Silva, general contractor 10. TK NAME, TK TITLE 11. TK NAME, TK TITLE 12. Norm Abram, master carpenter 13. Bruce Irving, former executive producer 14. TK NAME, TK TITLE 15. TK NAME, TK TITLE 16. TK NAME, TK TITLE 17. Roger Cook, landscape contractor 18. Kevin O’Connor, host 19. TK NAME, TK TITLE 20. Carole Freehauf, interior design correspondent 21. TK NAME, TK TITLE. 22. David Vos, director and senior producer.

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Clockwise from top left: Cameraman Dick Holden takes the view from above; con-tractor Tom Silva teaches host Kevin O’Connor his own brand of job-site etiquette; plumber Rich Trethewey, O’Connor, and carpenter Norm Abram mug for the camera; in Bermuda, the cast salute creator Russ Morash (in slacks) on the occasion of his final show; Trethewey has a unique method for choosing the perfect bathtub; direc-tor David Vos gets a boost setting up his shot; Abram and the show’s second host, Steve Thomas, consider the perils of termite damage; Silva gets a closer look at some siding; 30 years on the air has turned even the most low-key member of the cast into a star and inspired lookalike contests.

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for the first several seasons, WgBh bought the properties the show worked on, then sold them after renovations were complete . But a slumping real estate market in the early ’80s convinced the pro-ducers to change their modus ope-randi: from then on, homeowners would pay for all the construction work while enjoying the perks (and occasional headaches) of having a lot of the materials donated by eager sponsors.

Becton: Selling those houses was always sort of nail-biting. We thought, we’re not real estate devel-opers. Meanwhile, Russ’s realization was that real homeowners might make a more interesting story line.

dean gallant (Belmont homeowner, 1993 season): We had the common misconception that if the show selected you, they would pay for everything.

terry Maitland (Acton homeowner, 1994 season): There are two huge benefits to working with the show. One is that it’s going to be done in six months, which is ex-traordinary. The other good thing is all the goodies. All the donations.

christian nolen (Watertown homeowner, 1998 season): At the time, Kohler was the plumbing supplier of choice. They said, “You don’t have to, but if you use Kohler, it’s going to get donated.” I said, “You know, I think I can find a toilet in the Kohler line.”

Janice leVine igoe (Lexington homeowner, 1992 season): You get what they call a bigger bang for the buck.

lynn WickWire (Concord homeowner, 1989 season): We get a letter from the IRS saying you owe taxes on all these donated items. It was a ton of money—the taxes were going to be something like $70,000. We said, “We can’t do that, we’ll have to sell the [house].” We ended up hiring a very good tax lawyer. It eventually settled, but we were a week away from going to court.

as this old house became a sensation, homeowners were increas-ingly eager to pitch their own projects to the producers. starting in 1986, the show began filming two renovations a year: one somewhere in Massachusetts (always), and another, less-intensive job in a warmer locale like new orleans or Bermuda. finding options has never been a problem.

Bruce irVing (producer, 1988–2006): We got boxes and boxes of proposals. We got everything from handwritten notes to full-on bound, quasi-PowerPoints. A homeowner named Mills Fleming really was memorable in his high-quality pursuit. It was something along the lines of a phone call, a follow-up presentation with photographs, and then, after my resounding silence, another phone call. He pursued me like a stalker.

Mills fleMing (Savannah, Georgia, homeowner, 1996 season): [Laughs.] I would say I was “appropriately diligent.”

chris Wolfe (producer, Ask This Old House): We once got a letter from a man that said something like, “I’m writing to you because I need some help with a project. I’m trying to make a hole in

Ward, and they had gotten Norm [Abram], who was Morash’s carpenter. This just seemed like a lark.

Morash: Norm had built my barn, and I was so impressed with him I asked him if he would be inter-ested in helping out. He was a young, unmarried guy, and he said sure.

norM aBraM (master carpenter, 1979–present): I just took the job for some work in a winter of no work. I thought I’d be in the background of a couple scenes carrying around ladders.

Morash: We had to do extensive work on the gas mains, and I said “I don’t know anybody who plumbs in the city of Boston.” I mean, I was a suburban guy, I knew as much about Boston as I knew about Mar-rakesh. The gas company said, “well, we have this firm over in Roslindale called the Trethewey Broth-ers.” I said, “the what?”

richard tretheWey (heating and plumbing specialist, 1979–present): It’s a British name.

Morash: My father came to me and said, “I can’t believe you’re going to put a carpenter or a plumber in front of the camera. What do you expect to learn from these people?” I said, “Dad, I’m not asking them to quote Shakespeare. I want them to tell me, in their own way, how to lay an oak floor, what tools to use, what goes on in their mind.”

Vila: Shortly after the first show aired I went out to supper with my wife and two other couples at the old Ritz hotel. There was some buzz in the room, and one of the guys at our table was ribbing me about people recognizing me. You don’t wrap yourself around the concept of fame very easily early on.

Morash: It cost us about $30,000 to do all the repairs on the first house. When you think about it you can’t buy half a car for that these days. The house eventually sold and everybody got paid, but ’GBH never got its $50,000 back. They never asked for it back because the show had taken off.

the first season of this old house, which fol-lowed the renovation of the dorchester home for 13 episodes, was a massive hit that set a new ratings record for WgBh. its popularity only grew when pBs snatched up the show for national distribu-tion the next season. Viewers found getting advice from real experts—as opposed to actors—uniquely helpful. the format, however, was less popular with contractors.

tretheWey: At first we were nervous that we were giving away trade secrets, like a magician.

Morash: Richard has had to carry an important message back to the plumbing industry: More infor-mation on the part of the public is a good thing, not a bad thing. And I think he’s right.

aBraM: Contractors would say, “Why are you doing this?” I used to hear that a lot. I felt it was people being insecure. There are going to be do-it-yourselfers no matter what. For those who aren’t going to do it themselves, isn’t it better that they understand your skill and how much work it actually takes? I think contractors finally got that.

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The show turned Bob Vila, top, into a star; he was replaced as host by Steve Thomas in 1989.


Morash: In the early days of the show, as I said again and again, the host asks the questions that the homeowner has. If the host appears to know the answer, it changes the chemistry com-pletely. As Vila matured, he became the expert. What kind of cuckoo land was that?

toM silVa (general contractor, 1986–present): You were more of just saying yes or no with Bob. He liked to control the scene.

Vila: I didn’t appreciate the way I was being dealt with, so we just kind of went our separate ways. It was the best thing for me because within a year I was back on the air with the syndicated show Bob Vila’s Home Again, and became spokesman for Sears Craftsman tools and did lots of things in the ensuing years that never would have happened.

the show found its new host in steve thomas, a shipbuilder and sailor who had recently appeared in a well-received pBs miniseries. Vila’s departure may have eased the tension on set, but sub-sequent seasons were not without dra-ma—an unavoidable byproduct when the stress of a home renovation is coupled with the frenzy of television production. the show has always asked its hom-eowners to contribute sweat equity to help get their jobs done, but few realize just how busy they’ll be.

igoe (homeowner): The good news is that you actually get your house done on time. The bad news, I have to tell you, is that it was crazy from the get go, and it just increased exponentially. It was a madhouse. It was pure chaos.

Vos: Our timeline is pretty compressed.

silVa: One of the projects recently grew almost double in size, and the last two months I had 30, 35 people working six days a week to try and bring it in on time. I did it, but it’s a tough process.

gallant: My wife and I had a fair amount of vacation time before the proj-ect, and we used it all. Occasionally, we’d hear from Bruce [Irving], “The plaster guys are coming on Monday, so you’ve got to pull down these three ceilings over the weekend.” We enlisted as many strong people as we could.

WickWire: One night we came home from work, and inside the house were all these boxes of shingles. The pile must have been 10, 12 feet high. They said, “well, you’re going to have to stain every single one of these.” I

and ends of episodes—a procedure that savvy manufacturers are keen to cir-cumvent whenever possible.

Michael Burton (vice president of television operations, This Old House Ventures): I think all [the cast members] could have made vast fortunes endorsing a product or two.

aBraM: I look at Julia Child. There’s a woman who never endorsed anything. The last thing I ever want to be is a pitch-man. I don’t want to be running around the country pitching tools or doing info-mercials. That’s for somebody else.

dan BeliVeau (Charlestown homeowner, 2000 season): You can’t name any of the products [on camera]. I kept making mistakes. I might say “Toto toi-lets,” or the brand name of the bamboo flooring. They’d say, “Cut, cut. Can you just not do that?”

Morash: Owens Corning prints its logo on its rolls of fiberglass, and I told our crew to always install it upside down so when you come into a room we’re not seeing it. The Owens Corning guys said, “How come you always turn it around?” I said, “Because, you know, we’re not supposed to show labels. It’s public television—I’ll go to Leaven-worth if I get caught doing this.” It took them about three years to figure it out, but they started printing it in such a way that no matter how it was hung you were going to be able to read the name.

in 1989 the issue of endorsements became a major problem for this old house. Bob Vila had begun appearing in ads for a small chain called rickel home centers, a competitor of the home depot, which was an underwriter. home depot complained to the producers, and Vila soon left the show. “i am at heart a capitalist,” he later told the Wall street Journal. “the years i hosted on pBs i compare to the years i volunteered for the peace corps.”

Morash: [Vila] was getting in the face of our efforts to underwrite the show. I said, “Bob, you’ve got to lay off that.” He said, “I can’t do that.”

Vila: In the beginning, they paid me 200 bucks an episode. After 10 years, I think they’d gotten up to $800. There wasn’t any money there. There was money to be had in terms of endorse-ments and stuff.

Becton: There was no question that we were going to part ways [with Vila], but I don’t remember being worried about that.

a wall and I have a pair of tweezers, a toothbrush, and a spoon.” He went on to say that he was in a federal prison.

Builder tom silva joined the show in 1986, followed by landscaper roger cook two years later. silva Brothers construction, which silva co-owns with his brother dick and nephew charlie, has been the general contractor on every Massachusetts-based this old house project since.

Morash: Tommy’s father was a car-penter, and he and his wife, Virginia, and their children lived next to us in our old house in Lexington. Tommy helped me fix up my house. Isn’t that interesting? It’s all a family.

roger cook (landscape contractor, 1988–present): It does feel like a family. We’re all fishermen, and we’ll get to-gether in the summer and go boating. Tommy and Rich like to be on the water, but I’m the best fisherman.

igoe: The Silva brothers are known for some of their antics, their practical jokes.

daVid Vos (director, 2004–present): They’re all wiseguys. They could have been great standup comedians, or phe-nomenal builders. They went with both.

Maitland: Charlie Silva has a dummy that he keeps in his truck. It was a filming day, and this new [produc-tion assistant] from ’GBH was walking around kind of starry-eyed. So Charlie had this dummy up on the roof, and he let out a huge scream and dropped it. Everyone was in on it, they started run-ning over, oh my god, oh my god.

irVing: The hallmark of that particu-lar joke was that the PA was standing there with her little clipboard. Over the edge falls this dummy, and she looks up, sees it all happen, and makes a note. We were just like, there’s an unflappable PA.

as the most authoritative home improvement show on television, this old house provides the kind of platform that is an advertiser’s dream. of course, as a public broadcasting production, it can’t accept traditional advertising, and instead must walk a fine line with its underwriters. the show confines short promotional spots to the beginnings } page 120

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silva and the producers that he seemed like a natural choice to join the cast.

Morash: We were stripping wall-paper off Kevin’s house—which needed everything and he knew it—and I re-member sort of, not helplessness, but his feeling that powerful forces were over-taking his time and finances. That was appealing. That’s what it’s all about: You take on too big a house, and you do too many things to it all at once, and you sit down at night and have a sip of wine and think, what did I get myself into? Kevin had a lot of that about him.

silVa: So I see Kevin’s toolbox and Russ goes, “What can you do with the tools?” I took his paintbrushes and hot-glued them to the inside of his cabinets. You open the cabinet door, all his paint-brushes were hanging neatly.

keVin o’connor (host, 2003–present): You’ve got to understand—it’s one thing to pull a gag on somebody, but this is my kitchen. What’s with that?

Burton: That’s Tommy. When he likes you, he picks on you.

o’connor: When they first called and spoke to my wife, they didn’t say what they wanted. We sat around the table and talked about it that night. My wife said they were going to ask me to host. I was convinced Russ [Morash] needed a loan.

Burton: Kevin has, more than anyone else, built a relationship with these guys. In some ways, they mentor him, which is kind of cool.

in spite of all the budget overruns and long nights spent pitching in on their ren-ovations, homeowners inevitably develop a sense of camaraderie with the cast and crew by the time production wraps.

liz Bagley (East Boston homeowner, 2006 season): I think what’s so surprising is how suddenly it all ends. You’re so used to having people here all the time. And then, there’s no one. We miss the guys.

nolen: We had lunch with the guys every day. We would all sit up on the third floor, 8, 10, 12 of us all sitting on five-gallon drywall buckets. It was magnificent.

tretheWey: It’s so intense, and all of a sudden we’re gone. It’s like we leave a silver bullet on the countertop—who were those guys?

gallant: You feel very special while this is going on. You’ve got a bunch of people who are focused on making your house better—that’s pretty nice. Not

only that, but several million people are watching it every week. If you can take it, it’s good for your psyche.

thirty years on, the show has made a cultural impact beyond public television and turned its stars into unlikely icons. in the mid-1990s, the aBc sitcom home improvement featured tim allen as a bumbling version of Bob Vila and rich-ard karn as his able assistant, a thinly veiled and flannel-clad norm abram. even the homeowners achieve a surpris-ing level of fame.

Vila: The Disney people contacted me before Home Improvement premiered. I think there was some concern in the legal department about whether I was being ripped off. The fact is, it’s a sitcom based on me and Norm, you know?

silVa: You never really realize how powerful TV is until you start traveling. You go into a store, you go into a home center, a mall, airport, wherever—it doesn’t matter where you go, somebody will always say something about the show. It’s really very nice.

Morash: There are Norm look-alike contests where guys grow beards, put on glasses, and wear plaid shirts.

aBraM: In the early shows you’ll see me in solid-color shirts, and I would have plaid shirts when it was really cold. Russ was the one who said, “You know, plaids, they work really well, you should wear the plaids.” I said okay, went out and bought myself a bunch of plaid shirts. Now, I can’t not put one on.

nolen: We’ll be standing at Logan waiting for a cab, and somebody will go, “I really like that kitchen.”

Bagley: I was in Paris and some couple came up to me. I didn’t know what they said, it was in French, but it ended with “This Old House.”

aBraM: It’s hard to believe 30 years have gone by. A few weeks ago my wife and I went into the Whole Foods in Bedford. This gentleman was there with two children. He’s holding one, one is in the shopping cart. As soon as I walked in the door, the boy who was in the shopping cart recognized me. He turned around and looked at his father, and his father said, “It’s okay, you can talk to him.” So he goes, “Hi, Norm.” I say, “Oh, hi.” And he said, “How did you get out of the TV?”

Staff writer francis storrs profiled personalinjury lawyer Jim Sokolove in January 2009. This story featured additional reporting by Ian Aldrich.

said, “You got to be kidding me.” They told us we’re taping Tuesday and they gotta be done. They don’t care when you get it done, but it’s gotta be done by Tuesday, if you have to stay all night.

nolen: It’s renovation at warp speed.silVa: Outlets are being hung, trim

is being made, and the walls aren’t even completed. You can’t actually finish something until the camera has seen it. That’s the hardest part of the whole deal for me.

as if a televised renovation isn’t challenging enough, over the course of most projects the homeowners come to a realization that being on the show is their one chance to take advantage of the casts’ expert craftsmanship—which inspires a temptation to stretch their ambitions, no matter the cost.

BeliVeau: We increased our budget about 20 percent to get on the show, and then we went over that as well. We had talked to other homeowners, and they said, you just need to keep an eye on the budget—it goes haywire.

silVa: Before you know it, the homeowners realize what they’re getting. The next thing you know they’re using those four magic words in construction that always extend the project and always raise the budget. Those words are “while you’re at it....”

Maitland: Bruce [Irving] was con-stantly pulling in on the reins. We really couldn’t afford to do air conditioning, but the contractor said, “I’ll just put all the stuff in anyway, who’s gonna know?” Bruce said, “I’m gonna know, and furthermore, your budget is a na-tional laughingstock.” They filmed the air- conditioning equipment being car-ried back out of the house while we stood there going, “Bring it back!”

fleMing: We had a small bathroom, and we wanted to put in one of these megatubs, you know? Russ said, “When is the last time you took a bath?” I said, “I don’t know, five years ago.” It was just one of those reality checks.

in 2003 steve thomas left the show and was replaced by kevin o’connor, a mortgage broker who had appeared as a homeowner on a segment of ask this old house. he so quickly connected with tom

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