This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
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Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#2It's a great show, sort of the housebuilding equivalent of "How It's Made". One of the problems with the various HGTV shows is that they tend entirely gloss over the nature of the work that's actually performed. Plus, you got to love those Boston/Massachusetts accents.
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#3[deleted]
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#4This Old House is great for people interested in DIY or just knowing more about how houses should be built and renovated. Having done a fair amount of that myself, the HGTV shows can be very misleading. There's no sense of the scale of a project when everything finishes within the duration of a one-hour episode and the HGTV budget numbers are completely opaque and questionably realistic. I sometimes wonder if they're including any promotional discounts they receive in those budget numbers since some of them are far below what it would cost me to do a project even in a lost CoL area of the country.
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#5I haven't seen This Old House in years. As an apartment-dwelling teenager in the 80's, I watched it every week. My grandfather had been a carpenter and I was amazed at the skill of Bob Vila and Norm Abram, who at first was a peripheral character.
The current "reality show" home improvement shows all have the same flaw: no one cares about the actual work; it's all about the fake drama. We used to love the Restoration show on the History Channel when it actually showed the process they went through to estimate costs, get parts and do the real work. But a season later, all that stuff was pushed to the background for, you guessed it, more fake drama!
It really bugs me because you'd think that with as many available TV channels as there are, there'd be room for all kinds of quality entertainment, but in the end it all just seems to be a race to the bottom in search of more viewers with miniscule attention spans.
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#6Man, I love This Old House.
Even as someone who is not terribly handy, it is so nice to see professionals at work. Even though they are all hosts, you quickly can see that they know their stuff. Contractors and handymen are so hit and miss - it's a great way to understand quality work.
And again, the professionalism. These guys are all old fogeys who know their way around 100+ year old construction techniques. But the show has a great focus on embracing new technology and weaving it in successfully. If anything, it is a great way to wave off false nostalgia - seeing a host talk about how robust an octopus furnace was back in the day, but then describe how superior a modern system actually is.
In comparison, the HGTV shows seem obsessed with blinging out boxes of drywall.
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#7Pluto TV has a 24/7 This Old House streaming channel that I often find my way into as it makes for wonderful background entertainment while doing other things around the house. Always interesting DIY material, drama free, no wasted air time.
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#8It's a great show, sort of the housebuilding equivalent of "How It's Made". One of the problems with the various HGTV shows is that they tend entirely gloss over the nature of the work that's actually performed. Plus, you got to love those Boston/Massachusetts accents.
Another gem from that area on PBS is Rough Cut with Tommy Mac. It kind of makes you want to quit your job and just build furniture, but I love that he tends to go into the weeds of the little tricks and techniques.
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#9There's a YouTube channel that I feel espouses the values set forth by "This Old House" - and is as much fun to watch:
Essential Craftsman
I grew up on This Old House, and I relax to Essential Craftsman today. I hope someone else can find it as much fun as I do.
Re: This Old House: The Rare Home-Improvement Show That Spotlights Skilled Workers
#10Check out their reddit AMA from 2017
https://old.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/5m7ild/hi_reddit_greet...