I caught the do-it-yourself bug early in life. I was only a boy when I first began watching, with wide-eyed interest, home-improvement shows on television. Perhaps one of the best such programs is Hometime, a series I began watching in the late 1980s as a youth and still watch to this very day. One of television’s earliest home-improvement shows, Hometime brings both fixer-upper and large-scale projects alike into the viewer’s living room in an entertaining, informational, and easy-going fashion. The show first aired in 1986 and has always been hosted by Dean Johnson; however, he has had several female co-hosts over the years. Currently, the show’s primary co-host is Miriam Johnson (no relation). As this veteran Hometime fan can say, the show has long been known for its humor (often through presented outtakes, asides, and general wit) and always entertaining and engaging chemistry amongst its on-air talent.
The show’s format has changed somewhat over the years. Up until recently, Dean Johnson and his co-host would be the primary (if not virtually only) people on the camera, and they would team together as they seemingly did all of the work themselves. Perhaps one of the most memorable episodes was from the early 1990s, when an entire 20,000+ square-foot, steel-and-concrete office building was filmed as having been constructed—from foundation to paint—with only the four crafty hands of Dean Johnson and then-co host JoAnne Liebeler. It was not until the comical ending of the program when the whole rest of the crew that were not featured on camera—a number of workers—popped onto the screen en masse. In recent years, the show’s format has turned toward greater on-air inclusion of homeowners and other crew. While there was once a time when the show captured virtually nobody else’s images or voices but those of Dean Johnson and the co-host, recent Hometime episodes have featured a larger on-air crew, and almost every episode includes interviews with and actual work-participation from the homeowners.
The show is based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and most episodes are filmed in that vicinity. While the majority of the homes remodeled on the show have been built over the past fifty years or so, there have been several homes on the show that date back to the early twentieth century, and some older than that still. In just the past few seasons, Hometime has featured a number of historical homes, including a tour of a ritzy street in the twin cities area comprised entirely of century-plus-old mansions, a partial renovation of a nineteenth-century lakeside vacation home, and the segmented restoration of the actual homes featured in the classic Betsy and Tacy book series.
Over the years, Hometime has featured a number of fascinating projects. The complete construction of a home was always fun to watch, and there were several filmed over the years. Perhaps one of the most interesting was the ground-up construction of a log-cabin home on a beautiful, wooded expanse. However, the “smaller” projects also are amazing to watch take place, including attic and basement conversions, bathroom and kitchen makeovers, and landscape projects. Some homes have seen recurrent visits from the Hometime crew. These sites typically are homes which saw one or two rooms remodeled a bit earlier in the series and are playing host to further renovations. In recent seasons, there have been a few strings of episodes that have been uniquely entertaining to watch. These include a renovation project in the condiminium unit of Dean Johnson’s parents, construction of attractive but cost-effective furniture for the dorm room of Johnson’s college-age daughter, and a special treat for Hometime viewers: a bathroom project in the home of former co-host JoAnne Liebeler—who lent a helpful, humorous, and familiar hand in the project.
Hometime seems to have generally pulled away from building project homes from scratch. More recently, the show has tended to focus on smaller projects, such as finishing a garage, remodeling a kitchen, and even building a child’s treehouse (but an elaborate one at that!). One short, recent set of episodes featured the renovation of a bachelor’s three-story townhouse and included the construction of a unique element—a master bathroom, complete with a whirlpool tub, directly visible from the master bedroom via an inter-room, open-air “window” (privacy shutters were provided).
Though the show has filmed fewer new-construction projects as of late, one sort of complete home-building project the series still maintains is the continuation of a benevolent tradition for the show—involvement in the Habitat for Humanity program. For years now, Hometime has devoted a few episodes every year or two toward filming the complete construction of a Habitat for Humanity project home. The series goes beyond presenting to the viewer only the construction of such a home. It also often takes the opportunity to reveal some of the interesting aspects of the operations that go on within the Habitat for Humanity organization, a number of the special circumstances that must be addressed when building a Habitat home, and a realistic conveyance to the viewer of what it is like to volunteer for the organization.
Hometime is a fantastic show to watch and, after over twenty years, is still among the best and most entertaining home-improvement series on television. The show never fails to present fresh and new renovation concepts, always has a sapient piece of do-it-yourself advice to offer the viewer and, by and large, features projects that—with enough time (and a bit of money in some cases)—can actually be pursued and sometimes even executed by the average homeowner. Indeed, there are few shows like Hometime on T.V. All people who enjoy a well-made, entertaining, and informative home-improvement program should not only tune in but, also, hope this gem has many seasons of hammering, drilling, sheetrocking, lighting, tiling, plumbing, and landscaping to come. Hometime, while a PBS production, is sometimes aired on other networks (check local times and listings).
Resource:
Internet Movie Database. “Hometime.” 20 July 2007. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0127999/fullcredits#cast
