Shows provide ideas and entertain

We watch a lot of home improvement shows. I always wonder what kind of jobs people have that allows them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something they are going to tear apart.

If I were to spend the kind of money that is quoted as being the budget for the renovation I would expect to pay that much for an entire block of homes. I guess I am spoiled by living in a town that has a relatively low cost of living.

At one time I lived in a little four-room house that used to be a toll house. The house looked like it could fall apart at any moment. We called it the little house. There was a half-acre of land that went with it. Some of the houses featured on home improvement shows make that little house look like a mansion.

One show featured a bathroom that in my mind looked perfect. The tiles appeared new as did everything else in the room. There were even grab bars on the side of the shower. I watched as the room was gleefully torn apart. After the room was redone to the host’s satisfaction, I thought it looked a lot more functional before it was renovated.

Speaking of bathrooms, why do so many of the bathroom renovations have a huge window beside the bathtub? I don’t know about you but I don’t like the idea of flashing the neighbors. I rarely see much storage in the bathrooms. In this day and age of buying a year’s worth of toilet paper at a time I seldom see where it could be stored until needed.

At the end of most of these programs the hosts proclaim that there is so much more light inside the house than there was before all the work was done. Well, of course there is. There are no curtains, blinds or any other kind of window coverings. I expect that when the curtains go up, there will be a lot less light in the house.

Another thing that bothers me is that the hosts always hand the homeowner a sledge hammer and tell them to swing it at the kitchen cabinets. Has nobody ever heard of using a screwdriver to take them apart without destroying them? I guess that is not as attention getting.

One thing the shows get right is that at some point Murphy’s Law will kick in. Something will go very wrong and the hosts will have major panic attacks and everyone will be in a tizzy until someone proposes a simple solution that solves the problem.

At some point in the show the hosts decide that they have to do a special project for the homeowners. They will then create a hideous piece of art that the owners will declare is perfect. I wonder how many of those special projects survive after the camera stops filming.

Watching people redo houses helps us decide what we like and dislike. It lets us know what is in style and what isn’t. We also get to see products that we didn’t know existed. The shows point out new and different ways of solving problems. Plus, they are an entertaining way to spend an hour or so avoiding all of our own special projects.