Norm Abram, left, and Steve Thomas host "This Old House,"
the granddaddy of home improvement shows. PBS Photo
Norm Abram, left, and Steve Thomas host "This Old House,"
the granddaddy of home improvement shows. PBS Photo
"There," he says. "That looks good. Now all we need is some wood glue and it's done."
If you're a "New Yankee Workshop" fan, you know Norm is Norm Abram, the host of that show, and Steve Thomas' sidekick on "This Old House."
And if you've seen the biscuit-in-seconds episode, you're probably one of the many do-it-yourself show junkies who surf the channels looking for men - and sometimes women - with tool belts strapped to their middles.
There are lots of them.
We're talking real life "Home Improvement," the shows that serve as models for the popular ABC-TV sitcom. Home fix-it shows, long a mainstay of public television, are proliferating.
Bob Vila
But just how handy are these programs? Do viewers watch them to learn or to be entertained? The answers from local builders and remodelers pretty much boil down to this: Entertainment-wise they're pretty decent; helpful-wise maybe not so much.James Cook, publisher of Hawaii Remodeling magazine and executive producer of the weekly KHNL show of the same name, says home shows are instructional.
"If you're not familiar with the process, the shows for the most part teach that," he said. "I know people watch our show for ideas and sources of supplies."
Not everyone agrees.
"I think they try to tell people, encourage even, how to hire a professional contractor," said a local builder, who requested anonymity. "When you see someone installing $6,000 worth of Corian counter work, you realize that this probably isn't do-it-yourself type work."
Frank Suster, City Mill's training coordinator who also appears on KHNL "Hawaii Remodeling" says it depends on which show you're watching.
"'This Old House' is entertainment because the average homeowner cannot do the projects they're showing, like adding an additional story on a home, or restoring a 200-year-old house."
For learning, Suster recommends KITV's "Your New House" because of helpful hints ranging from how to remove stubborn stains to changing a faucet.
"Labor costs are so high that people have to learn to do things themselves," he said. "A water heater may cost $800 to buy and install but you could do it yourself for about $200. A painter might charge you $3,000 to paint your house but you could buy all the paint you need for under $300."
Ben Wong
An informal check shows that there are more than two dozen home and garden shows on Hawaii television, not including those on the pay channel House & Garden station.The Learning Channel has the most weekly shows at six followed by public television's four: "Hometime," "New Yankee Workshop," "The Woodwright Shop" and the grand-daddy of all home shows, "This Old House."
Network affiliates offer "Bob Vila's Home Again," "Your New House," the three-year-old "Hawaii Remodeling" and repeats of "This Old House."
"Hawaii Remodeling" began as a monthly show on KITV then moved to KHNL in January on a weekly schedule. The thrust of the show is to get people to hire professionals, Cook said.
"We try to show features from the magazine, including a do-it-yourself segment like replacing a faucet, hanging a screen door...and then a segment with professional remodelers," he said.
Both public and network television air many of their shows on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings, when, presumably, dad isn't fixing things up. Cable channels, particularly The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Lifetime and Arts & Entertainment, peddle repeat airings of the same shows throughout the week.
So how competitive is it getting?
Roy Underhill, host of PBS's "The Woodwright's Shop," says in the upcoming season his show will be enhanced by the addition of a "tool cam" - a tiny video camera that goes on the end of a chisel or edge of a saw and allows viewers to see surfaces actually being cut.
"The tool cam helps the audience see with their own eyes how something is made instead of me just telling them," Roy explains. "It makes it more interesting."
One prime complaint about these shows is there's little talk of budgets and costs on the shows. Over many hours of viewing recently, we found little reference to prices. And the projects highlighted on many of the programs seem to be pretty expensive.
In a recent "This Old House," host Steve Thomas, and master carpenter Norm Abram were working on such features as hand-painted wallpaper and a top-notch kitchen. While the visit to the wallpaper studio was interesting, the fact that the studio's owner knew his customers by name should tip viewers off about the product's actual price.
There are lots of professional crews that run around on the "This Old House" job site from the guys putting up $1,600 awnings to the crew installing customized, leaded glass windows.
As for the hosts, Abram has a nice earthy quality about him and he actually asks about price. Thomas is a good interviewer, but he uses words like "lovely," "glorious," and "stunning" a lot when he's supposed to be just a guy hanging out at a job site.
When it comes to hosts, few are hailed or railed as much as Bob Vila. Love him or hate him, Vila vaulted the genre into the limelight on the original "This Old House." His current retread, "Home Again," is a bit slicker, but continues to offer a solid, if predictable, mix of big budget renovations and sidebar features.
It may even be a bit better on offering tips than "House," but the main rap is much the same: It could just as easily be called "How to Work with Contractors."
Then there's the happy, jokey "Hometime" with the never-arguing couple Dean Jones and Robin Hartl. They break down jobs by task, and the tips are typically useful. The show is sort of a Time-Life how-to book, but the show can get ponderous because of the he said/she said dialogue.
As for the handful of woodworking hobbyist shows like "The New Yankee Workshop," these sell their wares mostly in the form of construction plans at the program's end. The shows typically go to great lengths to explain the projects and impart plenty of usable tips during their half hour.
"Workshop," starring Abrams, merits applause, although the projects are pretty advanced. (Did you see the recent one on the gazebo?) But techniques are shown clearly and you pick up on them and use them.
Here are most of the do-it-yourself television programs you'll find on Oceanic cable, network affiliates, and public television.
Lifetime (17):
"Our Home" 12:30 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays
Home & Garden (69):
Art & Entertainment (33):
The Discovery Channel (20):
The Learning Channel (27):
KITV (4):
KHNL (8):
KGMB (9):
KHET (10):
(KHET plans to add "The American Wood Shop" and "21st Century Wood Doctor."