Question: "This Old House" The Current Project

features renovation of a modern house in Cambridge MA, and, it must be
costing $$$MILLIONS! The house features all kinds of labor-intensive
details.

Ian Pilcher...

I have the same proble with all of the renovation shows on HGTV, etc.
My wife loves to watch them, and I've got to admin that they're kind of
interesting, but watching a couple of hours of this stuff makes me feel
like an utter failure.

After all, if you can't afford a $20,000 bathroom and a $50,000 kitchen,
you're life has obviously been wasted!

Who pays for this? The program, which is partly funded by our
donations? Or the home owner?

Nancy1...

The program producers get some products free (donated) or at a discount
(so their products will be shown on TV), the owner has a budget and
pays a lot of the cost.

TOH has often emphasized very large, expensive projects - remember when
they rebuilt Tommy's brother's house from the ground up? The new one
was really big. Some of that cost came from the insurance money (the
house burned down), but given the differences between old and new, I'd
say the new one was at least twice the insurance. Or the Vermont barn

D4...

They ought to change the name of the show to to "The Ultra-rich
Remodel." None of their projects are practical any more.

neillmassello...

I was thinking "Construction Projects of the Rich and Famous" or "This
Gold House".

neillmassello...

Ask This Old House is their practical program. TOH itself has become a
"behind the scenes at Disneyland" show.

they did - no expense spared, really - or the pianist's house - same
story. I think for many of these, the "renovation" budget is in the
hundreds of thousands.

Default User...

There was an early one, back when Bob Vila was the host, where the

SpencerDogg...

Bob Vila left because of he chose to do SEARS commercials. He had to chose
between TOH and that gig.

renovated an old farmhouse for a young couple. The last few episodes,
you didn't see the homeowners any more, and at the end Bob sort of
casually mentioned that they'd planned to spend $100,000 and it had
been closer to $200,000. It came out in the paper later that the
homeowners were really steamed about the whole situation, 100 grand is
fair amount of money now, 15 years ago it was a LOT of money.

After that, it seemed like they emphasized sticking to the budget more.
I haven't watched the show in years, so I can't comment on how they do
it these days.

John Duncan Yoyo...

The small projects on Ask This Old House were much more reasonable
things for most people to tackle.

RicodJour...

Not sure if your donation money makes it into the project - kind of
doubtful. There's advertising and the show promotes products,
materials and contractors - plenty of bucks in that. The project is in
Cambridge, MA and in a great section. The house hadn't had anything
done to it in quite some time. I'm not sure how long the owner has
lived there, but I gathered it had been a while, so there must have
been a fair amount of equity in the property. I don't know what the
owner does, but he went to MIT, and we all know they're loaded. Right,
Jeff? ;)