Real-Life Renovation Is Nothing Like HGTV: Part 1

We’re HGTV junkies here in the Bross household, and for good reason. The number of home-improvement shows have proliferated since Bob Vila’s This Old House, and in watching them, the casual viewer stands to gain a lot of knowledge. It’s actually how we found the Lincoln School: After watching HGTV’s Cheap Old Houses, we subscribed to the show’s newsletter and were among the first to know when the schoolhouse went on the market! Unfortunately, such shows—which are highly edited—can create a lot of false expectations, too. Like, for example, that you as the homeowner just go on a show or hire someone and voila, they make everything happen.

Real-life renovation, it turns out, is nothing like HGTV.

First, depending on where in the country you live, you may not have a glossy company like Magnolia in your backyard ready to offer the full-service experience. You may have exactly one contractor to choose from in the whole village, and while they’re no doubt extremely experienced, they also tend to have project backlogs as long as their arm—meaning they’re going to work on their schedule, not yours. 

Chances are likewise low that there’s a TV show in your area you can apply to be on. In 2021, we applied to have the schoolhouse featured on Maine Cabin Masters and never heard back. Not only would being on that show have saved us money (the cast has hinted that the show pays for their labor, and the customer only pays for supplies), but having our story out there on a streaming service would have been excellent press for the up-and-coming Lincoln School Writers’ Retreat. Alas, no dice.

Then, you can forget about someone sitting down with you, listening carefully to what you want, and a week later presenting a beautifully rendered 3D model of their “vision” for what the finished product will look like, complete with paint chips and fabric swatches. No, Brandon and I have been the “architects”/“interior designers”/“planners” for every stage of the schoolhouse renovation to date, and there have been many stages despite nothing physically changing yet! That’s because our first plan—to put a walk-out basement beneath the building—was foiled when the contractor discovered ledge (or bedrock) three feet down. We’d already had blueprints drawn up that showed the location of every proposed door and piece of furniture, but they went out the window once we realized Plan A wasn’t possible.

Trust me, if it was possible to want a thing into being, we would have made it happen already.

Plan B, which we’re currently angling for, is to move the schoolhouse forty feet back on the property, setting it atop a fresh frost wall foundation. Will it work? Only time, not a TV show producer, will tell.

So, just know that when it comes to renovating in real life, your schedule is not your own (unless you’re doing it all yourself), the process costs top dollar, and there’s no Joanna Gaines or Jenn of No-Demo Reno to take the hard work of decision-making, and the harder work of Plan-B-making, out of your tired, callused, bleeding hands. (Just last night, Brandon sliced his finger open trying to cut a piece of foam noodle. That part, at least, seemed par for the manufactured-drama course of an HGTV show.)