'THIS OLD HOUSE' - The Washington Post

Publish date: 2024-08-31

For Dave and Susan Dickinson, in the beginning there was

anticipation: Home remodeling for a discount price and national

television exposure on PBS' "This Old House." In the middle there was

frustration: Soaring costs and a completion date that often seemed

unreachable. And in the end there was relief: After six months, the

carpenters and television crews had left and their old house was now

practically new.

Dave Dickinson compares his "This Old House" experience with a

Shakespearean play: "It {the renovation process} takes a while to hit

the denouement," he explained. "Then you've got the falling action,

which is the landscaping going in. And the resolution was us standing

outside with the irrigation system spitting happily away on the boxwood

hedge and Susan and I beaming ... and them leaving. You know, we were

pretty happy when they were gone."

The Dickinsons were as surprised as anyone when the producers of the

show picked their Santa Barbara, Calif., home last fall to be featured

in six episodes of the multiple Emmy Award-winning home fix-it program,

now gearing up for its 10th season on PBS this October.

While others sent in elaborate plans, detailed pictures and formal

letters in response to a Santa Barbara News Press article, Susan simply

enclosed a photo of the house and a small description explaining that

she and Dave wanted to convert the attic in their 1 1/2-story bungalow

into a master bedroom.

"We had a dream that some day we would put a master bedroom and bath

on the second floor of our house," said Susan. "It definitely had the

potential for expansion."

The producers of "This Old House" apparently thought so. From more

than 100 initial responses, the Dickinsons were among the 40 finalists.

Then the producers whittled down the possible homes to 10, which they

"Everyone asked us, 'Why were you so lucky?'" said Dave, a

commercial loan officer. The Dickinsons believe their selection was

sealed when the producers met them and saw their family photos.

"They had seen on our family room wall the pictures of the

triathlons we participated in and the pictures of family and friends ...

they saw the potential for sweat equity," said Susan. Their

personalities and energetic lifestyles were apparently major factors in

the producers' decision.

"It's definitely an ingredient," said a spokeswoman for the show.

"That's an important part of the program."

They also had the advantage of youth (he is 30, she 29), which Dave

feels was important too. "I wouldn't recommend it for someone who is

80," he said.

But the Dickinsons, both natives of Washington, D.C., soon found that

they would need every bit of their youthful fortitude to withstand the

pressures of having their home ripped apart and remodeled at a swift

pace. Dreams of expanded living quarters and mini-stardom quickly turned

into mega-frustration.

"This Old House" is one of several television programs that are

designed to help viewers keep house, home and sanity intact. They range

from programs like PBS' "The Woodwright's Shop" and "Victory Garden" to

ABC's "Home," shows that aim to make you more proficient in the garden,

in the kitchen and in the workshop.

But as anyone knows who's ever done extensive home-improvement work

-- or hired others to do it for them -- interesting things can happen

when people armed with shovels, hammers and power saws invade your home.

Frustrating things. Awful things. Complicated things. Wonderful things.

The TV programs emphasize the wonderful, but there can be frustrating,

awful complications too.

"This Old House" told the Dickinsons, whose son Sam was born in July

1987, that they would be able to live in the house during the process

and that there would be little disruption to their lives. Not so, as

they soon found out.

"That disappeared big time because once they took the roof off, they

started walking around to pound down the new framing and they managed to

step through the ceiling a number of times," said Dave.

"But it was nobody's fault," added Susan.

"Yeah, it was very old and had water damage ... but it was the

beginning of the end," said Dave.

When a structural engineer found that the existing foundation could

not handle a second floor, the news got worse: the house would have to

be jacked up while the foundation was reinforced, which meant that

utilities would be cut off in one form or another for a month and a

half. Still, the Dickinsons were able to get by with a little help from

their friends.

"We lived out of the house for two weeks at that time," said Dave.

"We house-sat for a vacationing friend. We also showered at our next

door neighbor's a few days and we took a couple of cold showers. But the

nut of it was that there was a huge disruption in our lives."

"Plus we had to look good for the film crew," joked Susan.

The costs of labor and materials also took the Dickinsons by

"One of the things that was a chief concern was how much 'This Old

House' actually contributed to a project. My major concern was: Could we

afford it? Long before we paid for a structural engineer, long before we

hired an architect, long before we actually committed to the project we

had to find out whether we could afford it," said Dave.

The Dickinsons moved to Santa Barbara in 1981 and purchased the

house in 1983 for $150,000, which Dave said was at the bottom end of the

home market at the time. Although the house had appreciated considerably

since then, the Dickinsons decided that renovation would be less costly

than buying a new home.

The producers explained the facts of funding to them: Weyerhaeuser,

the large Washington state lumber and building supplies company that

serves as the show's underwriters, would donate as many materials as

possible. The Dickinsons would have to pay all of the labor costs and

any materials not donated.

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"There is no contract with 'This Old House.' It's all verbal," Dave

said with hindsight. "It's exceptionally vague."

But a spokeswoman for the show, which is produced by WGBH in Boston,

says otherwise.

"I'm not sure that we would agree that our agreement with homeowners

is either vague or ambiguous," she said, "We're saying 'We'll film the

process. We'll provide whatever labor and materials we can get donated.

We'll come into your house with a television production crew. It will

not be easy.'

"Remodeling is never very much fun," she said. "It places a great

strain on families. And remodeling with both construction and television

{crews} in your house is even more difficult."

The spokeswoman described the contract between the show and

homeowners as a "handshake."

Somewhere in the handshake was the fact that the Dickinsons' house

is built with redwood. Weyerhauser doesn't have any stands of redwood

trees. Hence, lumber, a significant cost, was added to the list of

materials that wouldn't be donated.

"The cost of materials was incredible," Dave said, "because

initially, Anthony {associate producer Anthony Ching} said that we'd get

these materials donated. I guess Weyerhauser had spent a lot of money on

another project and they had a certain budget so they didn't want to

exceed $5,000 on our place, which doesn't go very far at all. Eventually

they did spend more, but it took a lot of cajoling and a lot of work on

our part."

And a lot of work is exactly what the show's producers expect out of

the homeowners who agree to participate with "This Old House." According

to an article in the Wall Street Journal last March, the owners of the

Weatherbee Farm in suburban Boston, the last home-remodeling project

featured on the show, were left with a less-than-perfect and incomplete

renovation.

"Anyone who watched the renovations that were done on Weatherbee

Farm will see the amount of work that went into that place," said the

WGBH spokeswoman. "And while it is true that not every room was in

pristine condition when we left, it is also true that that was never

part of any arrangement that we had with the homeowners."

She said that the owners of that house were told that their "sweat

equity" was imperative in getting the house renovated successfully.

"That is something that is told to everyone we work with, up front,

because we need their cooperation."

The spokeswoman said that the Weatherbee Farm couple might not have

kept up with their end of the handshake.

"Let me point out that 'This Old House' is not in the business of

remodeling houses. We produce a television series," she said.

But television isn't always like real life. Throughout the six

episodes that featured the Dickinsons' home, the project appeared to go

smoothly. Bob Vila, the show's host, was helpful and optimistic, but he

didn't actually work on the house in the day-to-day process. Forget the

image of smilin' Bob and his happy hammer.

"Bob Vila is the 'personality' in TV terms. By profession he was

once a contractor," said Dave Dickinson. "He's the expediter. He's the

one who says 'Let's see this, let's see that' ...

"There's one scene, like in episode five, where he's helping us tile

the bathroom and he says, 'Why don't you all continue along. I'll be up

to help in a minute.' It's sort of a joke.

"There's also a scene in the next episode with a deck-pounding

party. We were all out pounding the planks down and there's a classic

shot of Vila with Rolex watch pounding nails.

"He does have integrity, though. He knows what he's talking about."

The Dickinsons had plenty of chances to get their own hands dirty.

Susan and her mother did most of the tiling in the new bathroom and Dave

and his friends dug out a large ditch to gain access to the main house

drain when the plumbing backed up. And the experience taught them a lot

about construction in general.

"I think what we came down to was a respect for the trade and what

they can do," Dave said, "like stuff you never see ... like getting

things square.

"It comes out that somebody who does home improvement cannot just

out go out and buy a {manual} which tells you how to replace an

electrical system. You cannot do that. You should not try to do that."

The experience also taught the Dickinsons something about being on

television. While Vila and the house itself were on camera for most of

the episodes, the Dickinsons had their brief thespian moments.

"Some of the scenes were a bit contrived, no doubt," said Dave

laughing, "but I can only think of a couple of instances when they told

us what to say."

"Like the first scene of us meeting Bob at our front door," Susan

said. "We had to pretend like we didn't know that he was coming and all

of a sudden, 'Bob Vila! My goodness, are you going to do our house?'"

Dave recalled another scene in which the Dickinsons sat on the back

deck discussing costs: "They said, '... and you will need an architect,'

and Susan was supposed to say, 'Well, why do we need an architect, Bob?'

Susan works for an architect so she knows why you need one, so we worked

that one around so that I said, 'Really? An architect?' It's one of the

worst bits of acting I've seen in my life!"

But the Dickinsons' acting skills didn't diminish their status as

mini-celebrities in the Santa Barbara area.

"Almost every day I hear from somebody somewhere," said Susan,

"either on the phone or walking down the street or in the grocery store.

Just yesterday Dave and I were walking to work together and somebody

said, 'Oh, here are the stars of "This Old House!"'"

"We still get people driving by and craning their necks. I walked

home for lunch the other day and there were a couple of people from

Sacramento standing there staring at the house," said Dave. "I almost

walked on by.

"It's nice that fame is fleeting because my 15 minutes is gone and

I'm glad."

For all the negative aspects of having their house remodeled in

front of millions of television viewers, the Dickinsons don't regret

their decision. Both Dave and Susan noted that they could not have

enlarged their home without the help of "This Old House," even though

the cost to them exceeded $60,000.

"One of the reasons I don't want to whine is that it was a good

deal, even though I hoped it would cost less than $50,000," Dave said.

"For what we got, it was probably worth twice that much."

But that doesn't mean the Dickinsons would go through another

project of this scale. "They did not hold a gun to our head when they

asked us on the last episode, 'So, would you do it again?' I said, a

little too glibly, 'Yeah, sure Bob!'

"But we would not do it again real soon."

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'THIS OLD HOUSE' - The Washington Post