With the exception of his preachy self, I still enjoy any show Mike Holmes in it the most. I feel like I actually get something out of his shows… especially because Damon is the Man!
At the opposite end of the scale is Matt Muenster with his bathroom renovations. Holy crap, half the time I watch that show, I feel stupider by the end of it. I think his designs are horrible.
I just caught Allison Victoria last weekend for the first time in Kitchen Crashers. Not only does she appear to be smoking hot; but it looks like she knows what she’s talking about; and actually gets in there and does some of the work. Whatever the truth is there in real life; at the end of the episode I feel like I’ve gained something. *My disclaimer is that I’ve only see a couple of episodes.
My overall favorite though is probably Ask This Old House as day in and day out, they tackle problems that are most relevant to me. It’s a pretty good cast; I just wish it wasn’t on public tv. I’ve never measured it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that 60% of the show was commercials. Plus the What Is It segment is always enjoyable.
So what shows do you guys like? hate? and why? What would your ideal show be?
There were a couple of guys that took a classic Pasadena craftsman, and chainsawed a hole in a beautiful peg joined wall so they could install an AV system. I wanted to do really rude and painful things to them. This was about 5 years ago, so I can’t remember their names.
Many of the shows the people go in and gut out walls and all I want to do is whack them with a brick and ask them if they understand ‘load bearing wall’ and if they have a degree in architectural engineering that lets them decide that gutting out that particular wall won’t cause structural issues later.
Same rather goes with plumbing and electrical systems. I see them sometimes doing some pretty questionable things that makes me worried for later on down the road.
And as an aside - There are very few architects/designers that seem to understand how to make something truely handicapped access. I just stayed at a hotel who had declared the room we were in handicapped access. OK, it was on the ground floor, so in case of a fire I could just roll out onto the patio that lead to the boardwalk. And there was a sizable room with kingsized bed that actually had a 5 foot border on 3 sides so you could actually move about in the room comfortably. The bathroom was a giant fail. Bathtub, no shower seat and it would have been a bitch to transfer onto a portable shower stool because of the tub wall. No hand held shower - it was mounted high up on the wall. Not insurmountable, but a bit more difficult to hose down the under bits if you couldn’t stand briefly. No knee cut out vanity to use the sink and no space around the toilet to parallel park the wheelchair. If you needed to transfer, it would have taken someone else to pick you up and move you if you were unable to transfer any other way. And the grab rails were along the back of the tank, and on the left side for all of 14 inches [I measured] slammed back against the hand rail along the back of the tank. Not really a useful grab rail.
I swear, the average architect should be given a spinal, plunked into a wheelchair and left to take a crap by themselves to understand how badly they design accessible bathrooms.
Mike Holmes is a god [and Damon is his archangel!] I adore the way he explains exactly what is wrong with whatever they are looking at, and explains the correct way it should be done. I love that he has 2 of his kids working with him, I hope that more kids will see this and decide to go into the trades. I would love to have a job designing renovations for people except I would be inclined to whack the entitlement whores for being insane.
I like to watch entitlement whores and entitlement whores international so we can go gaga over the houses and trash on the morons that are house hunting. [House Hunters and House Hunters International that is :D] and I have seen one episode of List It or Leave It or whatever it is called. If there isn’t anything else on, we tend to watch the HGTV and Travel Channel. Antonio is great, and also some guy that designs remodels with color in the title of the show. I would love to have the money to have Antonio do a room in my house, if I had a bigger house!
Holmes on Homes/Holmes Inspection: He tends to grate on me, although I’ll listen to him because he does know what he’s talking about.
I like the Property Brothers. I like how they can show a dubious home buyer how to envision what a house could be as opposed to what they’re seeing at the moment.
Love It Or List It: I’ve only caught it a few times. The male is annoying to me. The female is OK, although she tends to get on my nerves for some odd reason.
It’s probably a good thing I don’t get the DIY network or else I’d be ODing on everything!
I haven’t watched TOH or ATOH in ages, but if I had a serious question about something, they’d be the first people I’d turn to.
Like everyone else so far, I love Mike Holmes, yes he’s preachy and yes, he’s repetitious, but he does seem to know what he’s talking about. The “Crasher” shows are a mixed bag. I don’t watch the outdoor one and I don’t care much for the Kitchen Crasher woman (mostly because she tends to slink up to guys in the hardware store and ask if she can go home with them–it’s just awkward). Matt Muenster and Josh Temple are both highly entertaining but I don’t know that I’d want either one designing something for my house.
I despise the Property Brothers. The show is set up like a scam. They find out what the customer wants then show them a place that completely exceeds their desires. The place also exceeds the customers’ budget, often by as much as three times. Having done this, they then begin their spiel about how they can take a fixer-upper and turn it into a dream house with the features of the pricey place they’ve just shown. If anyone without a camera crew were to try this, I think most of us would be smart enough to (1) walk away and (2) contact the Better Business Bureau. The worst part is that once they get the buyers to purchase a house, they then usually proceed to redo only part of it. Fuck 'em.
My current favorites are Kitchen Cousins. They’re smart, attractive and put together good looking modern kitchens. I also like the shows with Bryan Baeumler (Disaster DIY among others), Amy Matthews (Sweat Equity et al), Kayleen McCabe (Rescue Renovation, very similar to Disaster DIY except without the snarkiness) and finally–and this is a guilty pleasure, so I won’t defend it–Rehab Addict with Nicole Curtis.
The show that grates in an odd way is Carson, a Design Star Runner Up, who crashes garages - and basically turns them into spare rooms.
Sure, people do this on occasion, but it just seems like an odd thing to base a show on. Congratulations - you lost a drive-in garage, but gained a music room.
There used to be a show on painting and painting effects on DIY, hosted by an English person. I loved that show. It was all about how you could make a room look new without knocking out a wall or other major demo.
Rehab addict is really good. Nicole Curtis knows her stuff and works hard to rehab vintage homes.
Professional Grade - is a lot of fun to watch. Homeowners reno a project and then the pro contractors come in and estimate the value of the work. if they spent 25k and the pros say its worth 35k, the homeowners get a 10k check.
Oh yeah, I like that show, too. I like that they actually help the homeowners, not just tell them to do it then laugh at them if they don’t do a very good job. It’s kinda cool when you see something done by a homeowner and the professionals say things like, “You did that yourself? That’s the best tiling job I’ve ever seen.”
My favorite is PBS’ New Yankee Workshop. Just a master carpenter and the perfect shop, with every woodworking tool known to man, doing a project. Norm Abrams makes stuff look easy that we all know is difficult.
Mike Holmes is the shit. I can watch his shows all day and I’m pretty much to the point that I’m convinced I could reno a money pit into a gold mine base solely on watching his show. Plus he’s always just hot college age girls on his shows actually doing handy stuff. I fully support this.
I did the dude who does Income Property. He’s not quite as technical as Holmes, but I generally feel like I’m learning something useful and repeatable watching that show. Plus some of the architecture concepts he uses to utilize space are somewhat unique to these shows. Though, I’m getting a little sick of him constantly redoing basements and nothing makes me more stabby than watching his greedy little shit homeowners move into the “rental” unit instead of, you know, renting it.
The one think that infuriates me is the ass who does Curb Appeal. Generally the show is ok as are his ideas, but the motherfucker is absolutely obsessed with painting red brick homes! You. Do. Not. Paint. Brick. This guy basically slaps $50 of paint on a home to spruce it up and effectively ruins it for the rest of it’s life. In 5 years that paint is going to look like shit and there’s no going back after you’ve ruined the brick that way. People spend top dollar to live in brick homes and they last for a century, yet this prick can’t stop painting the shit out of it. Gah…what a dildo.
Me and the g/f went through a phase where we’d watch hours of the real estate porn shows and fantasize about buying a house ourselves, but we’ve gotten it out of our system. We’ve moved on to Diners Drive Ins and Dives…aka junk food porn.
My husband calls it that, too, except sometimes he says it funny and it sounds like, “Realistic porn;” as in, “Are you going to be watching realistic porn?” The first time I heard that, I’m pretty sure I actually did do this —>:eek:
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the non-basic cable shows. On the rare occasions that I’m up until sunrise at the bar I love watching some Ron Hazelton’s House Calls. The commercial ratio is pretty obnoxious but he tends to actually do repairs and improvements that are actually relevant to your average apartment dweller. It’s nice to see someone fix a leaky toilet and install a thermostat instead of bringing in a bobcat and a crew of 25 to redo a backyard and add an entire wing to an estate.
In the same vein, I used to really dig The New Yankee Workshop. I haven’t seen it in ages and I don’t usually skim PBS in my free time so I’m not even sure it’s still on, but he’s convinced me that in my grey old age I’m going to make furniture.
