Question:
What are your favorite home improvement / repair programs?

Do you prefer a different program? Tell us about it.

Choices:
Broken House Chronicles (Discovery Home)
Ask This Old House (PBS)
House Detective (HGTV)
Kitchen Accomplished (Food Channel)
Ed the Plumber (DIY)

 

quote:

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Originally posted by Diana:
What are your favorite home improvement / repair programs?

Do you prefer a different program? Tell us about it.

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I'll have to watch a couple of those.

We have a local show "Ask Gus" which happens to be on when I'm actually sitting still on some Saturday mornings. He covers home tips and viewer write in questions. Nothing complicated but nice simple userful basic answers for anyone who owns a home, and most are something that is likely to come up, even if it isn't an issue right now.

Last week he did, how to stop rattling storm windows. Covered glazing points and putty. Of course there's more, but just that one, would be good for anyone owning a home with any windows.

Home Improvement? No wait... that's how I got the gas powered blender made from the weed wacker. The Red Green show?

Actually I've learned from Trading Spaces and got some design ideas.

Broken House Chronicles (Discovery Home) is a weird, quirky show that we watch. Two guys make repairs on an old home. You have to see it to believe it.

I thought this was a funny page regarding the Hometime program:

What's up with Dean and all his wives?
http://www.pbs.org/hometime/about/faq2.htm

I cannot fall asleep unless the food channel or HGTV is on...altho lately when I turn on the tv in the morning, I seem to have been watching the gemstone special channel the night before...how BORING!

quote:

Originally posted by winkin noddin:
I cannot fall asleep unless the food channel or HGTV is on...altho lately when I turn on the tv in the morning, I seem to have been watching the gemstone special channel the night before...how BORING!

I just discovered this topic.

I love the real estate programs!!!! It's like a busman's holiday since I sold houses for ten years. I was married to my work and adored it.

I find a number of the hosts on HGTV lacking but I like the shows.

The one that gets to me the most is Canadian real estate agent Sandra Rinomato who hosts a program called "Property Virgins" wherein she helps first-time homebuyers find their first home. Everybody in real estate knows this is the favored customer. Young couples buying their first home insist on seeing zillions of houses. It's a lot of work and the commissions could be higher but it's so much fun to share their excitment and guide them.

Rinomato is awful. The camera most definitely does not love her. She has an annoying screechy voice, bad skin and badly henna'd hair. I think she is either an alcholic with liver damage or uses way too much bronzer on her skin, which definitely appears jaudiced. She has a face you want to scrub and a gap between her two front teeth. Her clothes are way too tight.

I can barely look at her.

And her saleswomanship....GROAN. She actually argues with her customers! You don't argue with customers IMO....You 'bring them around'......they are precious flowers!...to be cultivated!! ......and she's also "gimmicky."

The next thing that happened to get my goat was that I once enjoyed back-to-back episodes of the highly successful "House Hunters" that I love. Alas, they stuck the hussy's 30 minute show between episodes....just to capture ratings and force me to watch her. Another plum for her. And then......(that's not the end of it)...The show was been expanded to on hour instead of 30 minutes!!!

One cannot help but wonder how many producers she is sleeping with......I know that's a bad, bad cliche particularly in view of the fact she's such a pig to start with but there's no way on earth she got all of that on merit.

She's everybody's hussy bassoon, tough as nails, hard sell, big-mouth, know-it-all, stereotypical real estate agent. No softness, no quiet manner and no apparent intelligence.... blah....blah.....blah....She will actually walk in to a kitchen and say "This is a kitchen." Worst of all, she looks like a friggin' hooker!! And I get so embarrassed for the hooker profession.

Then there's another show with a wannabe model who has this absolutely humongeous blonde frizzy faux afro and mini-skirts. She's trying to build an agency in So Cal I think. It seems that probably the only studying she has done are touchy feely self-help books instead of contract law. She does everything wrong and wonders why she can't sell anything......She is so full of herself and such a drama queen that she loses huge deals because she is too lazy to get every single thing in writing....in fact, she doesn't get much of anything in writing she does it all on her cell. I have to restrain myself to keep from calling her up and saying "RULE NUMBER ONE, get it in writing!.....I don't feel a bit sorry for you. You are never going to make it, frizzy!!!"

Okay....sorry about my rant........

I also enjoy "Design Star" and "Living with Ed" with Ed Begley....Ed is always thinking of ways to reduce his carbon footprint and it drives his wife crazy. He bikes on his porch in the morning to create energy for his toaster.

Another favorite I don't see any more was the one where the neighbors pick the worst yard in the neighborhood and take photos and submit for a spot on the show. The worst yard gets a free makeover. The best part is the look on the homeowners' faces when the TV cameras show up and say "Your neighbors want us to clean up your yard!!! I don't know if it's really a surprise or not....but if not, the homeowners deserve Emmys for their performances.

Peachy

 
I guess one gal's sleazy is another gal's Who cares?

I love Property Virgins as a show, because I love seeing inside the homes these folks are touring... the host, Sandra Rinomato, isn't even a factor for me.

Of course, I'm also a fool for House Hunters, House Hunters International, My First Place, etc. for the same reason.

I used to be hooked on Trading Spaces for all the design short-cuts they presented... saving a couple of bucks and many hours while still getting a good look is still VERY pertinent today, but the new version of Trading Spaces(with the new version of its original host, Paige) hasn't hooked me. In it's place I've come to enjoy Design on A Dime.

I absolutely loved the now-off-the-air Home To Go w/ host Peter Fallico for design dilemmas/solutions faced by those who don't own the property they're living in... something about NOT spending $10k (or $100k) and NOT knocking down walls and NOT having to adopt an interior designer/architect to achieve spaces that are really nice to live in was great.

Speaking of Trading Spaces, I also enjoy TLC's Moving Up with host (and former TS designer) Doug Wilson... it plays into my love of seeing before and afters, but the snarkiness can overwhelm.

Recently, in the last year or so, I've come to really like both Small Spaces, Big Style (showcases living spaces < 1,000 sq ft) and Freestyle (re-do a room w/ no money spent) (host Evan Farmer previously of While You Were Out). Maybe I'm thinking of downsizing and making do because the Gentle Giant is approaching college age? Yikes.

HGTV and TLC (their home/design shows, at least) and I are old, old friends.

*CJ

quote:

I guess one gal's sleazy is another gal's Who cares?

I was kinda hard on her wasn't I....

My favorite is HOUSE HUNTERS.


Steve Thomas (once on This Old House) is coming to HGTV with a show. I always liked him.

Peachy

In Detroit it is cheaper to buy a new home than it is to repair the one you have.
Seán

quote:

Design on A Dime.

Is that the one with Candace? Or is that the one with the team of 3, a gal and two guys?

I love all the house-hunting shows.

Isn't it interesting that all the flip-this-house shows have faded into the sunset? Wonder why...

There's a show, not on HGTV, maybe PBS, about things they find in walls and behind paintings in old, old houses when they remodel. That's a good one.

quote:

Originally posted by Avenging Peach:

quote:

I guess one gal's sleazy is another gal's Who cares?

I was kinda hard on her wasn't I....

Naaaaaah... I can see what you mean now that you mention it.

quote:

My favorite is HOUSE HUNTERS.


Steve Thomas (once on This Old House) is coming to HGTV with a show. I always liked him.

Peachy

I never did like Thomas on This Old House... IMO he was just a lil' too "small" to fill Villa's shoes; it's like he was always playing the eager pup, instead of a confident, capable guy like Villa. Liked the show (as I lived in a 19-room house built in the late 1830s ), but not him.

But he's aged well, and I now enjoy him on his new show Discovery Channel's Planet Green's Renovation Nation.

BTW, check out the listing for Thomas' tremendously renovated 1836 Salem, MA home --10 rooms, 5 BR, 3.5 baths, two fireplaces, listed at $825k, 2009 taxes $8,360-- here. That's not a bad price at ALL for that much real estate in Salem.

*CJ

quote:

Originally posted by winkin noddin:

quote:

Design on A Dime.

Is that the one with Candace? Or is that the one with the team of 3, a gal and two guys?

That's the two-guys-and-a-gal show... they re-do a room for $1k and, like Trading Spaces, often show how to accomplish high-end designer style for fewer bucks.

quote:

I love all the house-hunting shows.

Isn't it interesting that all the flip-this-house shows have faded into the sunset? Wonder why...

Mebbe because the idea of buying a distressed property for $120k, putting $15k into it and selling it for $95k isn't terribly attractive?

quote:

There's a show, not on HGTV, maybe PBS, about things they find in walls and behind paintings in old, old houses when they remodel. That's a good one.

Would that be HGTV's If Walls Could Talk...? I liked it when it first came out, but the host-inserted "drama" ("Next up on If Walls Could Talk, what this woman found in her attic that led her to discover her home was built by a famous robber baron/witch hunter/artist/serial killer?") wore really thin really quickly for me.

Has anyone watched the new HGTV show (Thursday nights, mebbe? I forget as I DVR everything) called For Rent? Same as House Hunters but for the we're-renting-now folks. Good looks inside rental properties of all kinds.

*CJ

Yes, if walls could talk...I don't watch it enough for it to get boring.

I'm glad Steve is back. I never watched TOH with Bob Villa so I didn't have that reference.

I felt complimented (sorta) yesterday when my DIL was at dinner and she said to me, "Peach, if you were younger you could study to be a magazine designer." (Like my life is over now....)....Well I was in a college program for an art degree when marriage interrupted....but I wanted to know what a magazine designer was. She explained that none of those homes in magazines actually LOOK like the pictures....they send in designers to stage them before being photographed.

I took that as a supreme compliment because she was looking around my house as she said it. Of course, the other DIL is hipper and wouldn't be caught dead with any of my stuff......which I have so say.....is dated because I have to make do for the most part with what I acquired during a flush period in the 80's....English Chintz and a lot of clutter. Because things must last, I try very hard to be as practical as possible when buying items but I do capitulate to trends.....even when I know I'm doing it.

I'm truly feeling my age now because I don't see anything pretty in the current trends. I do like the simplicity but the colors are horrible and there doesn't seem to be much emphasis on quality. Yet I look at my surroundings and wonder if they are beginning to look "granny."

I fell in love with antiques when I had a house with no furniture in it. I shopped used furniture stores and thrift stores and got a lot of old stuff intending to replace it once I was rich. Alas, my used stuff became popular and "antiques" therefore I never got rid of it. While the rest of you were inhaling recreational smoke, I was getting high on Kutzit and Tung Oil.

For quite a while now, I have found more challenge and opportunity for creativity designing a garden rather than rooms. In fact, I like to think of a garden as having rooms.....I love that idea and it came to me touring my favorite gardener Mr. Ryan Gainey and watching his garden change and evolve over the years. It's really a "city garden" on about an acre at the most. But enchanting. As you may tell by his homepage, Ryan is a bit full of himself, but he is so nice. He has let me bring friends through his garden many times but if I want a guided tour, it's $4,000.

And oh, BTW.....I've been in a lot of homes and there are many that look like magazines... Some people are indeed so perfectionistic that they really live that way.

Peachy

 
Peachy...

I've been watching Property Virgins since your remarks, and I guess I agree about the host... who the hell dresses her in those WAY too-tight outfits? And the make-up?!? Ease off the bronzer, people... she's looking a lil' jaundiced for cryin' out loud.

I don't blame Sandra though as I believe most of those sorts of decisions --wardrobe, hair, make-up, etc.-- are made by the producers, unless she were a real name-brand like Ty Pennington or some such, ya' know?

As for designing homes... I toured some model homes this weekend. Well, model townhomes, really and whilst I was looking at 'em w/ an eye to occupying 'em, I also took a hard look at the furniture and its layouts and such to see what made 'em look so darn good as compared to having to really live in the space.

The living room had two itty-bitty side tables flanking the couch, but no coffee table... where does one put alllllllll their STUFF? (Remote for the TV, remote for the cable, book, coffee mug, ashtray, magazines, telephone, clock, cat toys, the GG's Rubix Cube du jour [he's learning how to "speed solve" those darn things, and is saving up for a 12x12 cube... Yikes!], a pencil cup, not to mention last night's ice cream bowl, the loose screw I found on the floor and the canasta cards and scorepad!) The two tables and the couch were floating in the room... how do you plug in a reading (or counted cross-stitch... LOL!) lamp without trailing an electrical cord across a walkway? There was a beautiful deep cushy chair and ottoman near the fireplace, but no table for an ashtray, lamp, coffee mug, book, whathaveyou. In the master bedroom, there was a lil' seating area set up in a bay window, but only one night stand in the room... what does the second person do, read with a booklight, balancing their mug of cocoa on the bed clothes?

There was a desk set-up in the small loft area, but absolutely NO place to store any items you might want to use whilst sitting AT the desk like files, a printer and its paper, office supplies, and (even worse, IMO) there was only a single 2-plug electrical outlet behind the desk... okay, think on it for a minute... how many things on YOUR desk need to be plugged in? I've got a modem, a router, a CPU, a printer, my telephone's "base" (which plugs into my VONAGE router), a TV, a printing calculator and a lamp. EIGHT items into two plugs... that doesn't work for me.

Come to think of it, it was sorta like those children's puzzle pages... you know, the "Find The Hidden Things" puzzles? Taking a critical look at what seems to be a gorgeous space and discovering what was wrong w/ it was as much fun as touring the model homes.

*CJ

A new "Design Star" season started last night. I thought the rooms were ALL hideous..absolutely hideous. The poor housewife from Utah who had the anxiety attack and went into shock was probably glad to go.

I heard a statement that the judges would pick the final star this year.....and then another statement to the contrary.

Peachy

 
I luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhv Design Star. I DVR'd the last three weeks so I could savor 'em at my leisure.

I'm only up to the second show and can't believe Tashica got to stay... two weeks in a row she didn't complete her tasks and they let her STAY? Pffffff.

*CJ

Mulching is a very good home improvement project.

quote:

Originally posted by Avenging Peach:
A new "Design Star" season started last night. I thought the rooms were ALL hideous..absolutely hideous. The poor housewife from Utah who had the anxiety attack and went into shock was probably glad to go.

I heard a statement that the judges would pick the final star this year.....and then another statement to the contrary.

Peachy

I heard the judges are picking the winner who gets their own HGTV show... but the fans are picking the one who'll get their own online show.

*CJ

Initially I loved to do House Detective things..
I use to do it myself, I enjoyed doing it. I use to read magazines and browse through internet to get tips regarding the home improvement. Now a days i use forums and encyclopedia for home repair and improvement tips to do it my self.