The TV World of Home Repairs

In the early years of our marriage, before we could afford cable, my spouse and I watched PBS on Saturdays.  We both loved The Frugal Gourmet and other cooking shows that came later, like America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Country.  When we watched in the late 80's and 90's, there weren't as many Julia Child reruns, so we didn't watch those.  Home repair shows like This Old House and Hometime made us believe that we could restore houses too.  They showed the work as challenging but not impossible.

Our Roku stick brings us many channels of home repair shows now, and their approach is different than those old PBS shows.  There is usually a discovery of some sort of disaster, which upends the remodeling plans:  old wiring, water where it shouldn't be, asbestos.

When I was a child, for awhile I couldn't read books written in first person.  It created too much anxiety.  Eventually my coping strategy was to look up from the book and remind myself that the first person narrator was not me.  Over the week-end, with a steady stream of these shows on, I had to look up periodically and say, "Not my house, not my house."

We've restructured several houses, and not one has been as well-made as our current house.  I realize we're very lucky, particularly since this house was not designed to be lived in year round.

I do find my mind going back to other houses we weren't able to bring to full potential, particularly the cottage at our last house, less than a mile from the beach.  The first renovation was largely successful, but after Hurricane Irma flooding, it was hard to get the mold under control.  I think of the shows we've been watching about people carving out space from their basements to become rental units.  Just after the remodel, they looked perfect.  I wonder how they look now.

Those repairs and renovations make sense to me.  There are also plenty of shows where perfectly good rooms are transformed for no good reason that I can see.  People walk in to the house at the beginning of the show and proclaim about how dated it all is.  And then they spend so much money on new appliances and ripping out walls and moving rooms from one end of the house to the other.  Those decisions are hard for me to watch.  We have never had that kind of money with our house remodels.  Even with this one, with more money in the budget, we're being careful.

At least with these shows, I can read a book while my spouse watches the show.  I can look up for the reveal, which is the only part of the show that's really interesting to me.