Metro Pulse/Gamut/DIY Network

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The TV crew came into our home and brightened it for us

by Adrienne Martini

Television makes you believe all sorts of blatantly false things, like, say, that all single women will stab each other in the back to win a date with a loser. Or that there is enough real news to fill a 24-hour station devoted to nothing but. Or that every problem can be resolved if you just have enough heart or courage or cash.

But these are minor dangers, akin to a quick dash from car to office without a healthy coating of sunscreen. The real pitfalls—the kind with nasty teeth that can take off an arm or two—lurk in home improvement shows. HGTV, TLC, and DIY have probably destroyed more relationships than any hidden camera show or Internet chat room. They make it look so easy, both the renovation thing and the TV show taping thing. Of all the lies perpetrated by the idiot box, these are the most cruel.

For three days this summer, I let a TV crew live in my house while our master bedroom was redone. Let my experience serve as a cautionary tale.

It started innocently enough. Mary Helen Glover, who very well may be the center of Knoxville's version of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, dropped in for one of my sporadic Stitch 'n' Bitches. After giving her the very short Cribs-style tour, more women who craft arrived, and we each commenced to knitting, embroidering and/or scrapbooking. Conversations followed and, at some point, MH mentioned that she might be location scouting for a new show that local production house Rivr Media was producing.

"Your house would be perfect," she said. "It's a mess." Or words to that effect, at any rate.

Time passes.

The husband and I busied ourselves with other, more pressing things and proceeded to pretty much forget about MH's comment. Sure, we reasoned, it would be nice to have someone else storm into the house and take care of all of the outstanding renovation projects, but the odds were slim that it would ever come to pass.

Then, out of the blue, a producer called to see if he could swing by. His name was Daniel Schwartz and he'd just moved here from L.A., he said, to work with Rivr, who had just won an Emmy for the first season of Trading Spaces.

Schwartz is an interesting guy who seems to have a touch of the ADHD about him. Topics never linger long and names are always changed. "Mary Helen" became "Mary Holler;" our cat "Trout" became "Trent." And we were never sure if these new names were unintentional, affectionate or sarcastic—or some strange combination of all three.

Regardless, Schwartz echoed MH's summation—it's perfect, it's a mess!—and mentioned that he'd be in touch. We interpret this as the classic brush-off, but it turns out he's serious. A few days later, we and the house and the baby are in front of a video camera being asked a series of questions, ranging from "what do you do for a living?" to "why do you want to be on TV?" (I'm later told that the network finds Scott and me "adorable," which is one of the last words I'd use to describe us. But, there it is.)

A flurry of exchanges follows our screen test. Schedules are firmed up, then completely abandoned. Ours would be the first house, we're told. No, it won't, we're told. "It'll be number two," Schwartz continues in an ominous voice, "you don't want to be the first." Again, we don't know how to interpret his tone.

Everything gets finalized. A contractor stops by and tells us that all will be OK. More producers swing through—one of whom we never see again. A director is assigned, asks us a bunch of questions, then is moved to another house, and we start again with another director, Cindy Wallach, who lives on a houseboat outside of Annapolis and whose last project involved taping people who kept unusual pets, including a guy who kept live gators in his basement. And I thought my job was odd.

To the Rescue, the show that all of these folks were assembling, is but one more entry into the decorating sub-genre of reality shows. Trading Spaces is perhaps the best known. Mention the name "Hildi Santos-Tomas" to most homeowners and they will hiss, then tell you about the plastic flowers she once stapled to an unsuspecting family's bathroom walls.

But there have been many, many, many more entries into the scrum, like While You Were Out, which does a surprise room make-over for a vacationing homeowner, and, my current favorite, Monster House, which guts an entire section of a house and remakes it in a distinctive style, like a sultan's palace or a medieval castle.

If it weren't for the British, we wouldn't have nearly as many of these shows, which are exponentially increasing like mushrooms after a spring rain. Most of these shows' concepts have been lifted from British versions. Trading Spaces is the hour-long American version of the Brits' Changing Rooms. And To the Rescue is no different, borrowing its concept from a similar show that airs across the pond.

Rescue's spin is deceptively simple. Handy homeowners have gotten in over their heads on a renovation project and need to be rescued by a crack team of hosts. We certainly fit the description. When we bought our house over four years ago, we thought we could have it looking like a showhome in a year or two. Before Schwartz' visit, we'd managed to finish the bathroom and the baby's room. They both are gorgeous—but two rooms do not a finished project make.

Along the way, we'd encountered a few obstacles. Frequently, we found ourselves cursing the house's previous owner, who seemed to believe that all problems could be solved with caulk and wads of paper towels. The master bedroom, where our rescue would occur, was done in a style I like to call Early Tenement. Underneath the wallpaper was '70s-style faux-wood paneling, which was attached to the plaster with liquid nails. Taking that layer off required hours of chiseling and spackling and sanding. It was ugly, time-consuming work that we kept putting off. Rescue, which will air on Scripps' DIY network in October, was the perfect excuse to get our butts in gear.

One the first day of our rescue, the crew was late, which should have been an omen.

In an effort to save on production costs, the crew shoots two episodes at the same time. A house down the street from ours was in the middle of a remodel as well. The two-house situation causes no end of problems—and is the reason the crew is late to our place. The truck dropped their stuff off at the other house first.

(A note: Rumors fly between the houses, speeded by the crews' walkie-talkies and cell phones. The house up the street has a better raft service spread, we're told, but our house has the best air conditioning. At one point, messages started flying from the other house. The contractor, Jim Brunton, had had a small accident. One of his fingers was pretty much flayed and he was rushed to the ER. On his return, we all start calling him Jimmy the Finger. During the wrap party, he's presented with a lifelike bloody digit crafted by one of the women on the crew.)

Eventually, the truck is unloaded at the other house and work commences at ours. The game plan is explained. Our dining room is filled with all manner of camera gear, monitors and crew. Then, the first day collapses into chaos, more or less.

The director and the crew have never worked together before, which adds to the madness. The hosts and the contractor have to keep running from house to house to tape specific bits. The schedule gets tossed out the window. Tempers get short when the snack table isn't refilled, which we all suspect is a nasty plot devised by the other house to hog all of the pretzels.

As the homeowners, we had expected to be in on all of the action, up to our elbows in plaster and power tools. But that's not how it all works out. What we did a lot was hang out and wait for shots to be set up. What we didn't realize about TV is how much downtime there is while the crew moves lights and props and talent. For example, demolishing a closet is something that should take an hour at the maximum. When you have to stop to explain each step and get very specific shots, it takes three times as long. It can be maddening, all the starting and stopping. (And work froze any time a network bigwig dropped by. You could tell where a new visitor was on the food chain by how quiet and obsequious everyone became.)

What makes it fun is the people you're working with. Even though this crew was relatively unfamiliar with each other, they all seemed to have one heck of a good time. The soundguy was full of dry wit. The camera guys were kind and conscientious—and always let us know when the female host was showing a bit too much cleavage for the DIY network. The hosts were a hoot and actually had some real construction experience. Host Amy, a former furniture maker, helped me tear apart the closet, cracking jokes the whole way. Host Karl, a former contractor, was full of wonderful advice and sincerely wanted to do the best work possible, staying into the wee hours one night to help us get some sanding done. In terms of the folks who showed up, we had a wonderful time and I actually missed them when they left.

The downside is that having a dozen extra people essentially live with you for three days can really get on your nerves. The mess was fabulous by day three, a combination of people debris and construction debris. Our kitchen floor was actually sticky. You don't want to know what the bathroom looked like. After I got the whole thing mopped up, I just sat in the living room and enjoyed the quiet. It was wonderful.

Was it worth it? Sort of. We did get a fabulous, if hastily completed room, complete with a new snazzy bed and wood blinds. It was certainly a learning experience—but it isn't something I'd ever do again. Still, we are sincerely grateful to those who made the work possible and intermittently enjoyable. But we do feel a little strange that we are now somehow complicit in the dangerous falsehoods television sends out. Oh, the shame.