Try to imagine being five years old and having your house turned upside down. The kitchen's not where it's supposed to be, your VCR has been moved, there are strangers in the house all day, and every week a TV crew arrives to capture your family on tape for the whole world to see. It could be a frightening thing indeed.
Apparently not for the Smith triplets — Kate, Belle, and Michael — for whom the Dream Kitchen turned into a delightfully exciting adventure. "Michael would wake up in the morning and ask 'Is This Old House coming today?'" says their mother, Heidi Smith. "Never anyone in particular, just 'This Old House.'" Michael's lack of discrimination was no insult — Heidi reports that the kids enjoyed seeing the entire crew, who were suitably charmed in return.
"Oh my goodness, the kids loved them all!" Heidi exclaims. "They were a little nervous around all of them at first, but they really warmed up. They all loved Tom Silva — they called him Mister Tom — they sat on everyone's lap, and they were completely comfortable with them all. The crew would bring in pizza or something, and we'd all have a great time."
If that doesn't sound much like your last construction project, it's further proof that being a This Old House project house is a singular experience indeed. The Dream Kitchen project was even more complicated than most TOH projects, since the Massachusetts crew was 1,000 miles away from the job site.
"There were workers here every day but Sunday — and even a few Sundays at the end," says Heidi. "The crew would arrive midweek to do the filming, so I had a little time each Monday and Tuesday to get organized before they got here. But everybody just made themselves at home, and it was really comfortable. And the construction zone was blocked off, so I had some privacy when I needed it."
Not that she got to take advantage of that too much. "When the crew was here, I was ON," says Heidi. " It was just so exciting! I always thought I'd be able to get some little things done, but I never did, I was so wrapped up with the taping. It gets real personal to be around them all. We were all telling jokes and funny stories all the time — they're really nice, funny guys!"
Well, okay, they seem like nice, funny guys on TV, but surely there are stories of tempers flaring once the camera stopped rolling? Heidi just laughs at the suggestion. "They are all so much as they appear on TV," she says. "Norm is as true as you could imagine — he is sweet to the core. He talked about his wife so much I felt like I knew her already, then she came to the wrap party — and she is such a doll!"
One might think, with a top-notch design/build firm (Lake Forest Landmark Development) on site and TOH experts arriving weekly from Boston, that there would at least be some conflicts between the two crews. There was certainly the potential for a power struggle, but it just didn't materialize.
"Our workers are very professional," says Jim Eimerman, project manager for Lake Forest Landmark Development. "We work on a lot of high-end projects, and we knew we were the right crew for this job. And we had a lot of respect for This Old House, since we know their work and we know how much experience they have. But they didn't know anything about us. We had to earn their respect, but they were great about it — they stood back and observed us, and we won them over."
But every job has its tensions, right? All those experts trying to work together, trying to do things their own way? Surely there were some not-so-great moments?
"There are always lots of different ways to do things in this business," says Eimerman. "But in the end the only thing that matters is the result. Everybody worked really hard together, and when there were different approaches we'd talk it out and the best path would sort of float to the top. And everyone who worked on this project was really at the top of his game."
As Heidi saw it, she and her family were the beneficiaries of all that creative input. "You know, they're all smart people, and they all have their opinions and want to be heard," she says. "We got the benefit of that — we got to hear every angle on every issue and we got to make our decisions based on absolutely the best information."
As an example, Heidi explains that the breakfast room was originally designed with baseboard heating. Richard Trethewey suggested putting radiant heat in the walls as well as in the floor to keep the room warm and save floor space. Radiant heating in the walls? Lake Forest Landmark had never done that before, and Richard had to persuade them. In the process, the Smiths learned all the pros and cons of the various approaches to heating the room, and had the benefit of a lot of expert, and spirited, opinions. In the end, the whole team came to a consensus, the radiant heat went into the walls, and Heidi reports that "it works great!"
On the other hand, Eimerman reports that the This Old House team originally didn't want to use a pocket door on the powder room. "But we talked it through, and it turned out to be the only way to do it," he says. "There were no ego problems, we put everybody's best work into it and came to the correct conclusion."
It is true that the peculiar requirements of scheduling a project around a television series can lead to some inevitable issues. Deadlines are tight, and when the cameras are coming to tape something, the work has to be where it's expected to be. The taping schedule can be hard on the workers, since there are "blackout" periods when workers have to either clear out or keep quiet for a scene. And workers can't always work in the most efficient manner — for example, for the episode that will show decorative painting in the kitchen cabinet interiors, painters had to have one sample unpainted, one partially painted, and one complete. That may not be the way a painter would normally work, and it's not the most efficient, especially when the timing is tight. But that's how it goes when you're working on a TOH project.
In the end, the good will and great results are what matter, and they're what come through on the episodes you'll see on television. The too-good-to-be-true TOH crew turns out to be both good and true, the experts at Lake Forest Landmark are professional and hard-working, and the consistently upbeat homeowners are the real thing — energetic, positive, and deeply gratified by the project. Far from being frightened or rattled by it, young Michael, Belle, and Kate were energized and excited by being on television, and it shows. "You'll see rather a lot of them on TV," laughs Heidi. "Russ (Executive Producer/Director Russell Morash) had his own way of handling the kids — he just let them go! If they ran into a scene, so be it."
Eimerman stresses that excellent results and satisfied homeowners are all that mattered on this job. "We build in an area with a lot of high-end work, and there's a tremendous cost to these projects. But when we build something, it stays built. And we have great relationships with our customers — we go fishing with them! — and that carries into the show. We're used to bending over backwards for our customers."
"Everybody was so appreciative of the experience," says Heidi. "Really, I wouldn't change a thing!"
Sounds like good news for Lake Forest Landmark. Do we sense a fishing trip coming up?
