They Itemized all of the cost of their repairs and reconstruction's ?

and spelled it out for the viewers.

they do tons of good shows, but never divulge the expence.

Or how many unexpected things (code and permit hassles, for instance) louse up the rehab or how often they screwed up something and had to re-do it.
"Reality TV".

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Or how many unexpected things louse up the rehab

Yep. There's not telling what all you'll find when you start cracking open the walls of a house. Even on recent construction.

I don't often watch those shows for the same reason I stopped watching The New Yankee Workshop: They have an infinite supply of the very best in tools, which, even if I could afford all that stuff, I'd have to build a special building in which to put it all.

E.g.: Yesterday my wife alerted me to the fact they were doing a short segment on how to cut rafters. Tom Silva's training some people. "Hmmm...", I think, "the sled on that circular saw sure makes it easy." Luckily I managed to catch a glimpse of the model number.

Turns out to have been a Festool 769942 FSK 420 Cross Cutting Guide Rail, which can be acquired for a mere $185. And, naturally, works only with Festool circular saws. I don't even wanna know what those cost.

Not that you can't learn useful things from those shows, for surely you can. But watching them on a regular basis only leads to frustration and tool envy, IME.

quote:

tool envy

Hehehe...'tool envy'

I have This Old House on right now. It has always kind of bugged me also that the cost is rarely mentioned.

The one I am watching now did actually mention the cost of a couple things tho. One of which was the nice wood garage doors that are being used. $5000 per door, 2 car garage, so $10K for just the doors. Sure they are nice looking and all but WOW.

And they are also doing solar for power and hot water. No mention on the cost for the hot water system, but the solar for producing up to 75% of the power was $27K.

In the past they seemed to wear whatever work clothes. On a recent show I happened to notice the Carhart label prominently displayed on coats, hats, etc. Sure enough, Carhart is now a sponsor. Ditto for a lot of the power tools they use. This makes it seem like the show is one long commercial. So much for PBS being commercial-free.

I quit watching a few years back when they would take an old barn in New England, add a couple million dollars, and make a mansion. IE something way out of the reach of us average blokes. Not to mention it seemed like a stunt.

I started watching again and was really impressed with a house they redid in Detroit. The homeowner-to-be did a lot of the work, as did his entire extended family. The budget seemed to be within reason. I had some hope the show would return to its roots. But now it seems to be slipping back into creating mansions.

A name change is required to "This Old Mansion"

quote:

Originally posted by John Steed:
In the past they seemed to wear whatever work clothes. On a recent show I happened to notice the Carhart label prominently displayed on coats, hats, etc. Sure enough, Carhart is now a sponsor. Ditto for a lot of the power tools they use. This makes it seem like the show is one long commercial.

That's essentially what The New Yankee Workshop was.

Back before I stopped watching it, I'd find myself saying "That could've been done easier, faster, cheaper and better with <this> hand tool" or "I sure wish he'd demonstrate how to do that with the tools ordinary people can afford." One time it was "Holy crap! Norm's using a hand plane!"

Saw one recently where the house was being retro fitted with all the latest environmental/energy saving doodads.

No mention of the cost, but I’d imagine the price was in the stratosphere. It was just getting silly with all the ultra high end crap they were putting in.

I’m all for women in the work force, but I think it’s funny how they shoe horn some random chick into the show to prove a woman can use a nail gun.

No. People would stop watching when they saw actual costs.
Not that they could come up with actual costs after all the product placement deals and sponsorships.

Where do they find these people?
“I work part time at a volunteer soup kitchen, my wife catches butterflies for the Audubon society. Our budget is $750,000.”
The above is really bad on the buy/renovate shows.

And their mantra, it seems, is:
“First thing we’re gonna have to do is cut a bigger hole”

This Old House is part of my regularly scheduled weekend programming. Sure, I'd like to know costs, but I don't really get heartburn not knowing.

Hell, I'd like to have the money Norm has tied up in clamps alone!

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
Hell, I'd like to have the money Norm has tied up in clamps alone!

I will tell you, as somebody who once dipped a toe into fine woodworking, that it is impossible to have too many clamps.

That being said: The proper application of hand tools, in the hands of a skilled woodworker, can obviate the need for a lot of clamping. Never mind Norm's favourite joinery technique: Brad nailing

The guy that was teaching fine woodworking at a local store could hand plane two boards for edge joining so nicely he could lay them edge-to-edge on a bench, rub the edges together and they'd stick, without glue, so firmly he could pick them up and they'd stay stuck together.

I've got a pair of practice pieces from a dovetail class that have been joined for twenty+ years. No glue. They've been bounced all over our garage over the years--spending a good deal of time in a barrel full of odds and ends of all nature. You'd need a mallet to get 'em apart.

A lot of the home renovation shows are awful and fake. They don't show you the work, and the ones that show you any money are full of shit. It's the NCIS effect for construction, where people watch that shit and get an unrealistic picture of time and cost.

This Old House has done numerous projects near me, I know folks who have worked on them. Excellent quality, for all the money.

That show in particular, should let you in on the budget, because it wouldn't be off putting to the type of people who watch it.

But Flip This House and all things like it... utter trash. Holmes on Homes was OK.

They are Professional Grade. I grew up watching This Old House, Hometime, Shadetree Mechanic, Bob Ross, etc. Our kids like watching them too, mostly in a "How its Made" type of thing. Watching people build something with their own hands, transform something, progress, improve something. My gripe about This Old House is half of the show is a trip to some antique expert to pick out what type of wall paper or what "salvage" multi-thousand dollar furniture that came over on the Mayflower should be purchased.

Watching both shows gave me a completely unrealistic idea of how much it would cost to finish our basement and the quality I should expect.

Remember watch this episode. The owners had planned to stay in the house during the renovation but moved out and stopped appearing. It was very clear that only parts of the house had been updated. Turn out the production depended more on handshakes then contracts. It does give us an insight into the costs.

“ On that memorable last day of shooting in December 1987, when the renovation was supposedly complete and ready for inspection, Bob Vila, then host of the popular PBS series This Old House, smiled into the camera and proclaimed Weatherbee House “beautiful.” Bill and Cynthia Dromgoole, the owners of the 200-year-old farmhouse outside Boston, thought somebody had a screw loose. The home might be telegenic, but rain leaked in, the stove pilots didn’t work, the heating system was incomplete, and the lamps in one bedroom were plugged into an extension cord from the basement.”

“ Truth was, Russell Morash, the creator, director and executive producer of This Old House, had left more than a bedroom in the dark. The price of the renovation, first estimated on the air at $100,000 and revised weeks later to more than $200,000, still represented only the expense paid by the home owners. The true cost was actually $440,000—counting the $250,000 in free supplies contributed by commercial suppliers. Says Vila: “We would gloss over the cost of all the donated materials so that, in fact, the half million dollars that was spent on a project would appear as being much less.”
https://people.com/archive/som...-house-vol-33-no-14/

I do enjoy both shows but yes, the prices must be astronomical. The last series of TOH I watched the guy was making his net zero house. He didnt want basic lattice under the front porch and sketched his own design. They visit the local custom shop and speak with the owner about the custom design that is laser cut. $$$$$$$