Wasting Away in Home TV-ville

By Richard Huff

Every weekend morning, when other people are reaching for the coffee pot, I'm reaching for the TV remote. Normal folks may need caffeine to launch them into their home restoration projects, but I need a little television. It seems I'm hooked on the hours of fix-em-up shows that air on Saturdays and Sundays. I crave them. I tell my wife they inspire me, but clearly I waste a lot of time watching them. Just ask her.

I've always done my own home renovations. But when we lived in a two-bedroom condo, major work meant satisfying my wife's redecorating whims, not rebuilding a load-bearing wall. Sure, I read Old-House Journal and some other magazines vicariously, but if I watched the TV shows at all, I would ignore the segments on porch building or rescuing a sash window and closely attend to the pieces on sponge-painting techniques.

Things changed dramatically two years ago when we bought an 1889 Queen Anne on the New Jersey shore. It had been reconfigured into a duplex, but it appeared that with minimal work it could easily become a one-family home again. By minimal, I mean work I could do with my own hands or the assistance of a talented friend. On weekends, of course.

Hesitant to embark on any task unprepared, however, when Saturday arrives I first have to watch my favorite home shows. They may be delving into the very chore I'm working on, or one I will soon have to tackle. I can't possibly be wasting time if I pick up a new hint about sistering that floor joint.

Of late, though, I've come to realize that I might have less positive motivations, clicking the channel changer to find fault, the way you keep up with some politicians you can't stand just to root out their misstatements.

Having spent literally hundreds of hours absorbing such broadcasts, I've noticed that some of the shows tend to run together. Many, for instance, pair male and female hosts. There's Dean and Robin (although he used to be with Joanne). There's Pat and Jodi, who seem to make a nice couple, and Matt and Shari, an incredibly perky pair. What gnaws me every time I tune in is wondering whether they're couples off the screen. So I spend the half-hour looking for little cluesÑa lingering of the eyes, a discreet brushing of knees. Speaking from experience, all of them seem to get along awfully well for a real-life couple working on a house together.

Then there's the issue of their tools versus my tools. Everyone on TV has better tools than the average homeowner. But do the hosts have to point out that they're walking over to their super-duper power planers to mill down horrific looking pieces of wood into something I might buy from my local home supply retailer?

I don't have a super-duper power planer. I'll never have one. Immediately I feel inadequate. Click. On to the next. Here, a host is chatting with a fashion model about a new line of carpeting she's promoting. It might be the greatest carpet ever made, but I can't keep from obsessing over whether she knows what she's talking about. Does she really understand fiber and wear and installation, or even color (This is our platinum blue, she intones breathily, which goes with anything.), or is she just a paid shill? So around the dial I continue. I suppose what I'm looking for in these TV shows is people like me. I've yet to see their mistakes, and I certainly make enough. I've never seen them start a project and realize they're short on wood, either having just come from the lumberyard or better, just after it has closed.

To that end, they never tell the other hosts, Gee, I could really do this job if only I had a super-duper power planer. And just once, I'd like to see the host put a hole in the wrong place. Their seeming perfection may be annoying but it's certainly convincing. Why else, in the middle of an actual project, do I sometimes ask myself, What would fill-in-the-blank host do in this situation?

Before I know it I'm into the midday hours and the channels have switched to garden shows, so I obligingly redirect my concerns to landscape issues. By then I'm thinking about lunch and it's way too late in the day to start working on anything strenuous. The house has been here for more than 100 years and it will likely be here 100 more, whether I get around to redoing the kitchen or not.

I just wish I could figure out if those hosts are more than friendsÑand where I might have mislaid the remote.

Richard Huff is the television editor for the New York Daily News.


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