If I Had a Hammer, I Wouldn’t Watch TV | New York Times
“On “DIY to the Rescue” Amy Devers and Karl Champley helped Chris and Tamara Murphy of Philadelphia transform a “dark, discouraging drawing room” into a “sunny, stylish salon” through a series of very clever moves, all of them quite doable. To add character to a blank wall, for example, make white square frames from strips of molding, nail them to the wall, then fill in the squares with an accent color — olive on a sage wall, in this instance.”
If I Had a Hammer, I Wouldn’t Watch TV
Correction Appended
SPADE bits. Nylock nuts. Oriented strand board. These are my new best friends, traveling companions on the long, winding, perfectly landscaped path that leads to the perfect renovation: the home where toilets flush with a whisper, wall colors subtly echo the muted weave in the sectional sofa, and a cultured-stone water feature bubbles in the backyard.
The path certainly seems endless if you sit, as I did, through a full day’s worth of programming on the DIY Network. This is the cable channel dedicated to the proposition that ordinary humans, with the proper motivation and instruction, can rewire a living room ceiling, install a gas fireplace by the outdoor pool or transform a boring bedroom into a “Parisian Retreat” for $230. There is no reason to stop, ever.
The path certainly seems endless if you sit, as I did, through a full day’s worth of programming on the DIY Network. This is the cable channel dedicated to the proposition that ordinary humans, with the proper motivation and instruction, can rewire a living room ceiling, install a gas fireplace by the outdoor pool or transform a boring bedroom into a “Parisian Retreat” for $230. There is no reason to stop, ever.
The path certainly seems endless if you sit, as I did, through a full day’s worth of programming on the DIY Network. This is the cable channel dedicated to the proposition that ordinary humans, with the proper motivation and instruction, can rewire a living room ceiling, install a gas fireplace by the outdoor pool or transform a boring bedroom into a “Parisian Retreat” for $230. There is no reason to stop, ever.
DIY — the initials stand for Do It Yourself — is part of Scripps Networks, the company behind the Food Network and HGTV, channels with a similar just-do-it philosophy. Introduced in 1999, DIY reaches nearly 50 million subscriber households and averages 2.5 million viewers a month with programs like “This Old House,” “Sweat Equity” and “From Junky to Funky.” All of them tap deep into the primal fear and the equally primal greed of homeowners, who secretly believe that their property is infested with fatal flaws but, with the right improvements, could turn out to be a gold mine
Fetch the cordless impact wrench.
My day with DIY started slowly. From midnight till dawn, the schedule relied on reruns of mainstays like “Yard Crashers” and “Indoors Out” spiced up with back-to-back episodes of “Bathroom Renovations.”
“This Old House,” one of the network’s older properties, is the “Masterpiece Theater” of the home-renovation genre. Production values are high, and the homes are historic. The New England setting breathes class. Jacking up a 19th-century barn somehow seems more dignified than wedging a 21st-century toilet into an awkward corner, although, truth be told, toilet problems count for a lot more than barn raisings on DIY.
Take “DIY Weekend,” one of several programs showcasing Amy Matthews, a shapely blond contractor who handles a nail gun like Annie Oakley and, before my unbelieving eyes, solved the “two-flush toilet” problem with nothing more than a piece of wire clipped from an ordinary coat hanger. Poking and probing under a toilet-bowl rim, she cleared out mineral deposits, thereby speeding up the water flow.
The premise of “Sweat Equity” is nakedly mercenary. With Ms. Matthews’s expert guidance and peppy encouragement, homeowners try to carry out renovations that will lead to profit when they sell their house. A real estate agent names a price before and after. In between, tension builds. “Will they make the best choice to build equity?” a taut announcer’s voice asked as the show broke for a commercial.
DIY loves interventions. “Yard Crashers” specializes in them. Ahmed Hassan, a cheery landscape gardener, lurks near a Home Depot and pesters shoppers until someone agrees to a makeover, whereupon a DIY SWAT team goes into action. This is not to be confused with “Desperate Landscapes,” another makeover program, in which neighbors rat out the eyesore on their block.
In one of two “Landscapes” episodes that ran on my DIY-watching day, Jason Cameron, the host, rushed to the scene of a “botanical homicide.” The crime? An interior decorator’s boyfriend, a military policeman by profession, terminated a yardful of weeds with extreme prejudice, leaving a wasteland behind. A full program of floritan sod, wax myrtles, ginger plants, Southern Charm azaleas and Japanese blueberry trees brought the killing fields back to life.
“Indoors Out,” which made its first appearance of the day at 1:30 a.m., zeroes in on projects reflecting what the program insists is a nationwide trend, the unconquerable desire to move things like fireplaces, living rooms and dining rooms out into the open air. Later, in prime time, I would watch in stupefaction as the DIY team tore up an unoffending backyard and created an outdoor rec room with putting green, waterfall and koi pond.
“Indoors Out” has a twin, “Move It Outside,” that provided something rare on DIY: conflict. Like travel, food and fashion networks, DIY poses as a relentlessly practical how-to resource, a compendium of useful projects and expert advice. It posts prices at every stage of each project. Its Web site, diynetwork.com, offers backup: lists of the necessary tools, step-by-step instructions, more pointers on how to get the job done. Yet in the end DIY thrives on sheer fantasy.
In the world of DIY all measurements are precise, and all edges fit. No one bends a nail. Couples do not bicker. The tools are top quality, the hosts genial and omniscient. This is a world in which all problems get solved.
Whether most of the projects can really be done by average viewers remains a highly debatable proposition. “Ed the Plumber,” one of the early-morning programs, showed how to install a booster tank to increase home water pressure. Much as I would like one for my own home, it quickly became apparent that the only way to make this happen was to call Ed and have him come over. Once a blowtorch enters the picture, I think it’s safe to say that most viewers will simply step back. At that point they can yield to the real pleasure of how-to television: watching somebody else do a lot of work.
“Move It Outside” introduced a highly entertaining snake into do-it-yourself paradise. A suspicious, sharp-eyed client, Jessica Taser, did not quite believe that the gas fireplace being installed at one end of her swimming pool lined up dead center. She dared to question the contractor, who delivered a classic contractor line: “That is an illusion.” It wasn’t. The client-contractor relationship went downhill from there. It was great television.
Meanwhile the morning schedule lurched between get-rich-quick infomercials and marginal programs like “Knitty Gritty” and “Tricked Out.” As the name suggests, “Knitty Gritty” is a show about knitting. The energy level is two ticks above catatonia. High excitement is an extreme close-up of two needles executing a complicated knot for a unisex messenger bag. It has a rival in the serenity sweepstakes, a crafts show called “B. Original.” On this day Michele Beschen, the host and a New Agey artisan, fashioned lawn sculpture and planters out of driftwood.
“Tricked Out,” by contrast, thrusts front and center a car maniac with a shaved head and a patch of chin hair that looks like a shrunken beaver pelt. The project of the day was installing an oversize intake manifold into an Acura Integra, allowing more “go juice” to reach the pistons. The visual payoff was nil. Post-conversion the car sat on rollers and a machine took a reading. It was about as exciting as watching a blood-pressure test.
Onward to “Today Show Tips,” “Bob Vila’s Home Again” and lots more “This Old House,” and an episode of “Martha Stewart Crafts” devoted to ribbon belts and a tour-de-force segment on how to transform a wooden acorn finial into a wax candle. On “From Junky to Funky” hip decorators blended Las Vegas and the Wild West in a Chicago apartment filled with crummy furniture. One chair ended up with cowhide upholstery and cowboy boots on its front legs.
By midafternoon the programs were beginning to blur. Most of the male hosts on DIY seemed interchangeable. As straight arrow as Dudley Do-Right, they wore the same work shirts, grew the same out-of-date mustaches and laughed easily at nothing in particular. Partly out of desperation DIY has matched some of them with female partners.
The good-guy hosts are ferociously competent, however, and full of useful tips. Do not use duct tape on ducts, for example. This revelation rocked me to my no-doubt poorly installed foundations. Duct tape dries out and cracks. Use heat-treated foil tape instead. Who knew?
There are a million revelations like that. On “DIY to the Rescue” Amy Devers and Karl Champley helped Chris and Tamara Murphy of Philadelphia transform a “dark, discouraging drawing room” into a “sunny, stylish salon” through a series of very clever moves, all of them quite doable. To add character to a blank wall, for example, make white square frames from strips of molding, nail them to the wall, then fill in the squares with an accent color — olive on a sage wall, in this instance.
On “Kitchen Renovations” and “Bathroom Renovations,” meanwhile, the meat of the network’s batting order, faucets were installed, acres of tile laid and shiny stainless-steel appliances rolled into precisely calibrated spaces. On “Wasted Spaces” a wiry Australian bashed through an annoying divider wall and put a nifty granite-top counter in its place. On “Home Transformations,” a title that could be applied to nearly every program I had watched for the previous 15 hours, many things were transformed, none of them currently available to my short-term memory. Someone, I’m not sure where or when, used caustic goop to etch whimsical words on thrift-store glasses to make them “fun.”
After a while it wasn’t just the kitchen tiles that were glazed. Fabulous fixtures and great equity decisions blended into commercials for Kobalt tools, propane gas and Scotch masking tape, a mix made more confusing when advertisers like Home Depot and Lowe’s presented their own fix-it-up spots. Purina showed how to make a terrific padded pet shelf that can be moved from window to window. Occasionally, a voice-over would snap me back to attention: “When ‘Weekend Warriors’ returns — Christine and David go a little overboard with the drill.”
After 24 hours, back at “This Old House,” I turned off the television set, inspired. Get me a nail gun and a stud finder. Gather driftwood. Buy many bags of peastone.
Then call Ed.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 21, 2008
An article on July 20 that chronicled 24 hours of programming on the DIY network misidentified the program on which Amy Matthews solved the “two-flush” toilet problem. It was “DIY Weekend” — not “Sweat Equity,” a program on the network that has Ms. Matthews as one of its hosts. The network pointed out the error in an e-mail on July 17, and this correction was delayed for research.
