With all of this “work at home” stuff, I am getting to see a lot of my co-workers homes (we need a new term—home-work is for students, not adults). This is not a complaint. It is actually fairly refreshing to see folks in their open-concept workstations, by which I mean their living rooms,  guest rooms and kitchens. Heck, the other day my coworker Carl, upon explaining the benefits of working from his kitchen gave us a tour of his fridge. His kitchen is clean, well-organized,  and, most importantly, his fridge had beer. That is something we can all get behind.  

Fortunately, in me you now have an expert in home design. By this I mean that I’ve been watching This Old House for a very long time (and have the Tommy Silva Bobble Head to prove it), and have recently turned my attention to HGTV.  

Let me explain. Every morning, like many of you, I do certain stretching exercises. I suppose it’s a sign of getting a bit older, which I can accept. I turn on the TV and there are these incredibly fit athletes on their Peloton pounding miles and miles of stairs before work, breakfast (which they don’t eat), meetings, lunch, afternoon meetings, afternoon snack (which they don’t eat), post work, pre-dinner, during dinner (which they don’t eat), post dinner, during TV and  after they go to bed.  

I am obviously not one of those athletes with one exception—I do my stretching in front of the TV and then I eat. But what to watch? With the news being so bleak, I have taken to watching HGTV for the sole purpose of being able to view my co-workers homes with a critical eye for proper work-home design elements such as beer in the fridge. And to be on HGTV you can’t have just any old beer – it must come in a rustic antiquey looking can made to look like shiplap. 

So, I consider myself somewhat of an expert on how to properly design a home, by which I mean that once you watch these shows, you realize that your home is horribly out of date and needs home-work. I always thought my home was great, but I now imagine that my neighbors are scoffing at it behind my back.  

My neighbors are doing the same thing. There are no less than 2 houses for sale and three houses undergoing major renovations on my block alone. Really, that is true – I am not kidding. My friends are worried about “staging their homes” by which a realtor hides all of their dirty laundry, removes their furniture, sells their kids and adds a big clock to make the home more saleable. No one, but no one, buys a house that does not have a big clock. 

Big Clock? Yes, that is now essential, as are other things that I will explain. It is time to do the Demolition of HGTV. 

Who does all the work?

The first thing is that, to be an HGTV personality, all renovations must be done by a married couple. No longer do you hire a contractor named “Joe” who shows up in work boots and a tool belt, knocks things down and puts up new stuff. Nope, my besties are now Ben and Erin, Chip and Jo, Chip and Dale, Mickey and Minnie, Bugs and Daffy. 

Of course, they don’t actually do the work. Nope, there’s a whole crew of HGTV-hired contractors (“Joe”) who actually does the work. This is why you only see the hosts on Demolition Day—what can then destroy that is not already destroyed. Or on the “staging” part, karate-chopping pillows to look dented.  

Rustic: For some reason we all want to look like we live in a rustic (but not really rustic) home  from a small town in the country. It is a matter of time until Mar-a-Lago is made over with old  pine beams and shiplap.  

These programs are not, of course, filmed in major metropolises (or is that metropoli? Isn’t that an Ingmar Bergman film?). These are filmed in small towns principally in the South and Midwest, like Laurel (and Hardy) Mississippi. With a small town enduring so many houses being refurbished by the hordes of HGTV hosts, you have to wonder when they’ll actually run out of houses to fix. 

Why? Well, this is because it is cheap. They don’t want us big-city folks to think we can actually do such things. Nope, each reno starts with a price tag of $10,000 for 20 acres of land and an unfashionable (but lived in) home. For $100,000, you can completely gut and renovate the home, add in new rooms, custom cabinets, flooring, big clocks, and designer furniture.  

In LA, for $10,000 you get a cardboard box and for $100,000 you get to meet with a contractor who hands you an HGTV magazine. You do not get Ross and Rachel—that would cost you millions.  

So, how do Hillary and David do it? (Wait, that sounds very, very wrong). Well, the answer is this—what is old (Rustic) is new again (and still Rustic). They simply move their materials from one house to the other, which you cannot do.  

Behind the scenes is where the real action is happening. What the hosts really are doing is this – they clean up on the merchandise. Heck, these folks have invaded Target—yep, you can buy that perfectly new coffee mug that looks like it was old, for only $20! 

Shiplap: When I grew up in the 1960s, there were two things that were considered very fashionable. First were plastic slipcovers so that the kids wouldn’t sit on the good furniture. Neither would the adults, because that stuff squeaked and had the breathability of a sauna. But the nice furniture stayed nice, if you ever got to actually see it. 

The other thing was wood paneling. Over your drywall, you would put up veneers of wood paneling with black lines to give the impression of boards. It was real wood, and it was  considered very fashionable. 

Of course, today some of these homes are shown in their “before” stage. In walks Bert and Ernie (yes, they are a couple) who frown at it mercilessly, as if the people who lived here had no taste  whatsoever. It simply must go, they say to the couple, as if they had a choice.  

So what do they do? The knock down all the walls to make an Open Concept, put up new drywall, and layer the entire room in Shiplap.  

For those of you non-experts, I will explain shiplap. It is wood paneling. There, you have it.  Yes, it is individual wood boards nailed to the wall, where the groove between the wood gives a black shadow line. And if they get really fancy (by which I mean they spend a huge amount of money), these boards are from some barn that was rotten and had to be torn down.  

I always thought the purpose of tearing down of a structure was to get rid of worm-eaten, termite infested wood products. Nope—what they are doing is tearing it down in one location and then put up in an entirely new location.  

What you therefore have is an entire pyramid scheme, made up of old lumber. Laurel and Hardy remove wood from one house because it makes it look old. They put it up in another home to make it look old (er, rustic). Then Stan and Ollie come in a few years later, declare it old, and move it to another rustic location. Same boards, no real work, and HGTV gets the profits. I’m on to you, HGTV! 

Open Concept: Growing up, a house had rooms (and secrets, per John Mulaney). Everyone wanted their own room for privacy. We wanted a den to watch TV and not bug the others in the house with the noise. We had had a kitchen, where we actually prepared food rather than ordering on Postmates from Martha Stewart (or at least I assume she’s cooking the food).  

Nope, not anymore. In waltz Fred and Ginger, and the very first thing out of their client’s mouths are ‘we want an open concept’. You could walk into a barn (really, I just saw this) and complain that it’s too closed in.  

It’s gotten to the point where the entire house will soon be one big room with no walls (well, maybe a bathroom door. Hope springs eternal.) 

The truth is, this will seem just like an emergency shelter during some crisis.  

“This is Beth the Reporter here, and I’m standing in the high school gymnasium with Fred. Fred, I see you lost your home in a recent flood (Fred nods). What are you going to do?”

“Well, we’re going to rebuild, of course. I know that our home has been destroyed by fires, floods, ravaging bison, locusts and HGTV Crews, but that doesn’t change that. It is our home.” 

“And what will you rebuild?” 

“Open concept. I love what they’ve done to the Reseda High School Gym. The concept is so open it is wonderful. And the shiplap they installed around our cots is so pretty. Plus, they have a really big clock up on that there scoreboard….” 

Big Clocks: For some reason, no one can tell time anymore. We have apple watches, iPhones,  dashboards and ‘smart fridges’ all timed to the second on the internet, but we simply cannot tell  time. I blame daylight savings. 

The solution – Put a really big clock on the wall. My wife and I have made a drinking game of it  – we wait for the reveal, see the clock and get hung over by morning. I do not recommend this practice as a result. 

My house has a big clock, so you would assume I’m fashionable. Nope. It’s my parent’s grandfather clock from the 1970s. It says “Tempus Fugit” on it, which always reminded me of a prog-rock band from the 1970s (Led Zeppelin, Electric Light Orchestra, Yes, No Maybe,  WhatEverrrr – that was the boy-prog-rock-band version). In any case, I’m hopelessly out of date, until it becomes somehow cool again. 

What I find interesting now is a new trend. These huge clocks have no hands. So, whereas a ‘broken clock is wrong twice a day’ (like the big clock in a small home we once rented—the hands were so heavy the motor could not turn them), a clock with no hands is never wrong. Or right. Or useful, but that’s not the point of the clock (drinking is; Gracie and George are hopeless alcoholics).  

So, I will make a prediction—Sundials. Yep, soon Archie and Edith will waltz in to the house and decorate it with a sundial. To make it work, they’ll have to install an “open concept roof”, by which I mean a house with a retractable roof. Imagine the Astrodome – A huge cavern with no walls, no roof, with a giant TV and clock (even a 2 minute warning) and lots and lots of “open concept” to enjoy. That is the house of the future, my friend. 

Islands and Big Tables: They say no man is an island. But there is Renovation Island, so obviously times have changed. 

You cannot have an ‘open concept’ without a really large island, like the Big Island of Hawaii or Madagascar. To make room for this, Lucy and Desi knock down all the walls so that you have enough square footage to house an island. I believe that the proper ratio of island to home square footage is something like 99.8%.  

And if not an island, then you need an extremely large dining table. I just saw an episode where they made a family of five a 17-foot long dining table, because their Foyer (really, that is where they put the table) could handle a table that size. 

The justification for this is that everyone will be eating at the island, all the time. They line up something like 50-60 uncomfortable (but fashionable) metal barstools along the bar to prove the point.  

Mind you, no one actually does this. Our home features a peninsula which was fashionable and functional 20 years ago and did not require us to remove the walls of our home. We never eat there. We eat on TV Trays while watching HGTV and Peloton commercials, feeling just a little bit guilty for it. Admit it, so do you. 

En Suite: My house has a master bathroom. That is what we call it. Everyone else has an “en suite”—a bathroom pronounced with a fake French accent. Just by admitting this, my house has  lost $100,000 in value (enough to buy and renovate a house on HGTV).  

So, Sid and Nancy walk into a perfectly usable bathroom. It is always too small. And they all frown at the jacuzzi tub (it is soooo 90s!). What do they put in – an old clawfoot tub from the  90s—the 1890s. Which no one will use because they took all the jacuzzi tub fittings and hung them in the shower—14 nozzles, misting, and so forth.  

So what do we take away from all of this? My friend Joan in Vermont had a way of putting it—Take a $20 out of your wallet, write your name on it and wait—it will return to you. Whatever is old is new again, and somehow expensive. 

Wood paneling—your shiplap has sailed. But it will return as “retro”. Just wait.