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Home Reno Shows: Educational or Voyeurism?

Posted by admin on July 19, 2007 in Misc., Real Estate

I watch a lot of HGTV as both an architecture fan and as someone looking for ideas for my condo. I tend to concentrate most of my viewing in the renovation design shows. We have all seen these- a designer hosts a show that takes a room/house/yard and redesigns/renovates it doing a before and after theme. What I have noticed is that there is a certain pattern to the development of these shows over the life of a show. The designer is typically unknown outside of its local community in the first year of the show and the projects they tackle are more scalable for most viewers: a kitchen reno with a $5,000 budget, redoing the rec room for $10,000 etc. etc. The designer attains fame being on t.v. and, as the years progress, the clients become more upscale and projects and renovations become quite sophisticated. Suddenly, the designer is moving retaining walls, rewiring the entire house and adding $250,000 additions. I remember watching Bob Villa towards the end of his tenure in “This Old House”; he was regularly spending $500,000 plus on renovating homes across the country. After a while, these shows become less an educational experience than renovation voyeurism; most of us could not contemplate or have the means to spend over $500,000 on a renovation. I watch more in awe than for ideas at that point.

I don’t blame the shows. All professionals want to tackle different challenges to keep themselves fresh. But, HGTV would do me a huge favor if they re-ran more of the older shows or showed more first-time reno shows. The shows where the designer were still working on modest spaces on modest budgets. I would certainly get more out of the old shows than watching a designer working with massive budgets.

The one other helpful suggestion would be to have these shows give better time-lines. How long did the project take? How many trades were on the project? From an educational perspective, there is no context to many of these renovations. Anyone can finish on time if you utilized 10 trades-people at a project and forced them to work all night. It would helpful for the shows to address the people power required and actual budget required to finish a project.

No post on Friday- its been a long week. Have a great weekend. I’ll be on some extensive business traveling next week; I’ll pre-post some posts for next week.