office | Renovations & Relationships

Want to be on a reality TV show? If you said no, I can relate. I didn’t either, at first. Then again I also understand if you said yes. I mean, everyone’s gotta have 15 minutes of fame, right?

Here’s our story.

When we bought our house in Vermont a year and a half ago we knew we had to do some renovating. The master bedroom/office/bathroom was especially troublesome to us, with nasty smelly carpeting in the office and bathroom, poor layout between rooms, and a dark bedroom awaiting some natural light.

Mark, ever the brainstormer, came up with an idea to change the floorplan by opening up the wall between the bedroom and office, put in 15-lite French doors to let in natural light, and put down oak flooring. Sounds great, in theory, but how would we make it happen? This renovation would be a bigger undertaking than either of us had ever done, and we really had no idea where to start.

Well, I did have one idea. Maybe we could get ourselves onto one of those HGTV shows where experts come in and do the renovation for you? I mean, anything’s possible, right? I checked out the Be On HGTV website and found that we were ineligible for most of the shows due to geographic location (many shows are filmed in CA or NYC. Nothing specific to Burlington, Vermont, sadly), or type of show (we weren’t property virgins or house hunters or the like). But we were eligible for one show on the DIY Network (a “sister network” of HGTV) called Renovation Realities. There was one problem, though. It wasn’t one of those tell-us-what-you-like-and-we’ll-do-it-for-you kinds of shows. No, this was a totally different kind of show. As their website says:

Renovation Realities is about the realities and drama of home renovation. We want to see the issues, the arguments and the real effects of taking on a project with a spouse, friend or neighbor. There is no host and no help: YOU are the star of this 30-minute show!

If you have a great home renovation project (which must include demolition) and want to share it with millions of people across the United States, you might be an excellent candidate. Your personality means everything on this show, so don’t worry if you’re not the greatest do-it-yourselfer.

We could practically guarantee we’d be eligible based on the above. Renovation project including demolition? Check. Issues, arguments, and drama while working on this project? Undoubtedly. But we would have to do the entire renovation ourselves? Millions of viewers? Scary stuff. Nonetheless, we were intrigued enough to want to apply and learn more.

Thank goodness they said you don’t need to be the best do-it-yourselfer, because we had little faith in our abilities in this regard. We would have to rely on our personalities, not our skills, to get them to like us. So we put together this application video.

(If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, jump ahead to minute 8:30 to see some funny outtakes.)

We thought the 10-minute video was cute and funny, while also being practical: answering all of their questions about ourselves and the renovation project. That’s a great combo if you ask me: cute, funny, and practical. In fact, I think that might be my new motto.

Sometime after sending in the application we were accepted for the show (!) and I posted this teaser telling you we would be on TV but not giving any more details. Truthfully, we had no idea what we were getting into and we were hesitant to share the news until we had a chance to go through the filming and get to see the show ourselves.

There’s a lot I could say about the week of filming – the nervousness before meeting the film crew, the wardrobe conundrums, the stress of living in a construction zone, the pressure to make progress every day. But looking back on it, the experience wasn’t as bad as either of us expected.

Here’s a few shots during filming:

In the end, five days of footage turned into a 20 minute show with a bit of repetition before/after commercial breaks. I’m guessing it’s only about 15 minutes of actual footage in the show. Turns out the phrase 15 minutes of fame is entirely accurate! Here’s the description of us on the show’s website, followed by a link to the entire show.

Mark Weber and his girlfriend, Melissa, are setting out to renovate their master bedroom in order to make it more of a master suite. They start off determined to get their renovation done, but from an electrical scare to battling with drywall, the couple ends up struggling to finish in time.

Clicking anywhere on the image above should open the Renovation Realities episode in the same window. You’ll have to click the “back” button to get back here. You’ll also probably have to sit through a commercial or two – sorry!

A few things are worth pointing out:

The “electrical scare” that was made into a big deal on the show, was really not a concern at all because, ultimately, we didn’t need to tear out that section of the wall.
Yes, we did get to the point of a communication breakdown at the end of the week of filming (as was captured well in the show). We felt we had worked so hard that week yet had very little to show for it. We weren’t even done with the demolition. We were exhausted. We had a construction zone for a living space. It would be months before we had things back to normal. It’s really no surprise that we weren’t communicating well.
There are a few hilarious Mark lines in there. “You’re such a hippie” is one of my favorites. “Tuck me in” is another. See if you can catch him saying it when he’s in bed with the nightvision camera on one night.

We thought the show would make us look like total fools. We thought the slightly staged shots and voiceovers they asked us to do would sound corney or be a mockery, but really, it wasn’t that bad. As far as “reality tv” shows go, this one did a decent job of staying true to reality: It was a stressful experience. We weren’t really having a great time. We didn’t really know what we were doing. All of that comes across during the show.

What you don’t see during the show is the weeks of work we put into the renovation after the crew left, so that we could complete the project for our own sanity AND our pocketbook (there was a deadline for “after” photos in order for us to receive the second half of our compensation for being on the show). We are proud of the fact that we actually did 90% of the work ourselves, relying on friends to help us when we needed a hand. But I won’t bore you with all those details. You can read all about the renovation process in previous posts here, here, and here.

The “before” and “after” photos are included at the end of the show, and in previous blog posts, but I’ll throw a few in here as well. The transformation still amazes us when we look back at it.

We went from this:

To this:

From this:

To this:

You might wonder why I’m even writing about all this, since we finished the renovation in the fall and we’re now over 500 miles away in the other V state. Well, for one thing, I thought it was time to post something in the namesake of this blog, which has been severely lacking in the renovations department recently. I also figured enough time had passed that we were over any (vain) issues about how the show turned out, and we were legally allowed to share behind-the-scenes photos and link to the show on the DIY website.

So there you have it. We survived our 15 minutes of fame. Will we become big reality tv stars? Ummm if it hasn’t happened already it’s doubtful. The show has already been airing on the DIY Network since October. Plus, we aren’t quite as cute and funny in the stressful reality show as we are on the laid-back application video or in person!

Want to be on an HGTV/DIY Network show? Check out all the shows they are currently casting, here.

Due to reader interest, I’ll share a little bit about last week’s renovation (nevermind that one of the interested ‘readers’ was actually my partner for the entire project). While I’m not legally allowed to discuss most of the details (seriously), you can follow along on TV in a few months (yes, seriously).

What I can tell you is that Mark and I began an ambitious renovation of our master suite on Monday. Now, five days later, it looks almost exactly like it did on Monday afternoon – walls are demolished, drywall dust is everywhere, and our new french doors are sitting on the floor awaiting the day when they will be hung in the room. That day is not today.

You see, while Mark and I (mostly Mark) know what we’re doing – or can figure it out – when it comes to demolition and some basic construction, we’re not professionals. No, really. We are not carpenters, flooring experts, structural engineers, or electricians.

But we are dreamers. We have ideas. We know what we like and what we don’t like. One thing that has always fallen into the latter category is our bedroom. Our oddly-designed, cluttered, dark, slanted-ceilinged, bedroom. The biggest problem for us from day one has been the location of the doorway between the bedroom and office on the other side. (I know, I know, if that’s our biggest problem in life I suppose we have it pretty good.) The door is off to the side of the room. Once you go through the door, you’re not actually in the office until you walk through another ~3.5 foot section of wall that makes it feel like a hallway. If you were heading through the office to get to the bathroom, it will take you longer than if you just exited the bedroom through the main bedroom door and walk (through the hallway) to the bathroom (which, itself feels mostly like a hallway).

Oh, nevermind. It’s such a confusing layout that it’s too difficult to put into words. You should just come visit and see what I’m talking about. Oh, wait. You can’t. Because now it looks totally different.

Here’s what our bedroom once looked like. The photo is taken from the west side of the room. The traffic side of the house. The slanted-ceiling side. You’ll notice the silly doorway I mentioned, that goes through to the office. There’s a strange little ‘nook’ that just so happened to fit my dresser perfectly. And the 15-lite door that was actually an inspiration for the renovation. It came from my mom’s house and we planned on installing it here until we realized a new pre-hung door would make our lives a lot easier. And would allow us to use french double-doors rather than this single huge heavy door of my mom’s.

Oh, how we longed for a real master ‘suite’ – a bedroom, office and bathroom connected in cohesive and functional ways. And if more light came into the bedroom, we wouldn’t mind.

Well actually that’s not true. I would mind. I would need a new eye mask to sleep with at night to keep the ambient light and morning sunshine out. But Mark wouldn’t mind. He would love to let in the light and the view of the trees in the backyard.

So we took down a wall.

We also framed out a new bedroom closet (where the doorway used to be). I’m not sure how this happened but Mark has claimed both bedroom closets as his own.

And we framed out the doorway for the french doors, including space above the doors for a glass tramsom window. Don’t know what a transom is? Here’s one example.

The newest idea from my idea-filled-guy? To learn how to do stained glass himself for the transom. I will happily encourage this idea and hope you will too.

Ours will likely be less complex and colorful, and with less tropical plants.

I wish I could keep going with the description of the renovation, step by step, showing the final product of french doors hanging in the new doorway. But I can’t. Because we haven’t progressed all that much further than this yet.

So for now, we are making our bed in our construction zone of a bedroom.