This Old House

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For other uses, see This Old House (disambiguation).

This Old House

Genre	How-to
Running time	30 Minutes
Creator(s)	Russell Morash
Starring	Kevin O'Connor Norm Abram Tom Silva Richard Trethewey Roger Cook
Country of origin	United States
Original channel	PBS
Original run	1979–present
No. of episodes	664, as of 18 June 2005
IMDb profile

This Old House is a television program on the American public broadcast network PBS that follows remodeling projects of houses over a number of weeks.

1 Overview
2 History
3 Ask This Old House
4 Inside This Old House
5 Trivia
6 Cast
7 Production team
8 External links

[edit] Overview

This Old House and its sister series Ask This Old House are often broadcast together as The This Old House Hour (originally known as The New This Old House Hour). Both shows are owned by This Old House Ventures, Inc. and are underwritten by GMC and The Home Depot. This Old House is also underwritten by Andersen windows, and State Farm Insurance. Ask This Old House is also underwritten by Toro lawnmowers and Bellawood floors. The third series to share the name is Inside This Old House, a retrospective featuring highlights from previous episodes. Old episodes are also shown under the program name This Old House Classics and were formerly shown on The Learning Channel under the name The Renovation Guide. Only the episodes with original host Bob Vila aired under that name. As of 2006, Classics is also carried on the commercial non-broadcast DIY Network.

[edit] History

Begun in 1979 as a one-time, 13-part series on the Boston PBS station WGBH, it has grown into one of the most popular programs on the network. It has produced spin-offs (notably The New Yankee Workshop hosted by Norm Abram), a magazine and for-profit web sites. It was even able to survive a rift with the original host, Bob Vila, who left in 1989 following a dispute about doing commercials and created a similar show.

Steve Thomas took over hosting duties after Vila's departure, remaining with the program from 1989 to 2003. Kevin O'Connor is the current host. Before O'Connor joined the cast, he was a homeowner who appeared on Ask This Old House having problems with wallpaper removal.

[edit] Ask This Old House

Ask This Old House began in 2002 and was spun off from a section of This Old House Magazine of the same name. Readers of the magazine or viewers of the show submit questions about various home repair or improvement projects which are answered by the experts. The regulars on the show are O'Connor, Tom Silva, Richard Trethewey and Roger Cook. Guest experts appear to answer more specialized questions. The show takes place in "the loft" of a rural barn somewhere in the Boston area. Most of the questions are answered in the loft, but one or two homeowners on each episode receive a visit from a specialist from the show to get the project done in the field. There is a regular feature called "What Is It?" in which the regulars try to guess what an unusual tool does.

[edit] Inside This Old House

The most recent spin-off of the This Old House franchise is Inside This Old House. It is shown primarily on the A&E Network. The show is very much like Ask This Old House: It's shot mainly in the "loft", hosted by Kevin O'Connor and features the regular experts listed above and also Norm Abram (master carpenter). However, unlike Ask This Old House, usually one or two experts are used throughout the episode and a specific theme is discussed. The theme is usually a particular topic (i.e. landscaping, installing doors, etc). Along with the in-house expert, and sometimes a guest expert, clips are shown of past episodes of This Old House (mainly the very old episodes with Bob Vila) to further illustrate the point. A segment called "Inside Out" features Jimmy Dunn with a brief and comedic overview of what was discussed on the show.

[edit] Trivia

This Old House was the inspiration for the American television situation comedy Home Improvement, in which Tim Allen played a Vila-like character. Bob Vila also guest stars in Home Improvement as Tim's rival and archenemy.

The original theme song for This Old House was "Louisiana Fairy Tale", composed by Haven Gillespie, Mitchell Parish and J. Fred Coots and performed by early 20th-century jazz artist Fats Waller. The theme song was changed after This Old House Ventures acquired the series from WGBH. The current theme song is "This Old House '97" composed by Peter Bell.

Seattle's skit comedy show Almost Live did a parody called "This Here Place".

Fox's In Living Color also ran a parody titled "This Old Box" which starred Damon Wayans.

The Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club did a parody called "This Old Home", which featured a house with wood, bricks, and so forth, made out of candy.

Saturday Night Live once did a home-improvement parody when Liam Neeson was the guest host. Supposedly set in Ireland, the show was called "So You Call This a House, Do Ya?" Improvements to the dwelling consisted mainly of emptying all the ashtrays and moving furniture to hide stains on the floor. It ended in a brawl when the homeowner took offense at the repositioning of a particular furnishing. ("Me mother hung that mirror there before she died!")

[edit] Cast

As of 2006, the cast is as follows:

[edit] Production team

As of 2006, the production team is as follows:

Russell Morash (Creator)
Bruce Irving (Executive Producer)
David Vos (Senior Producer and Director)
Deborah Hood (Producer, This Old House)

[edit] External links

This Old House official website
This Old House at the Internet Movie Database
Ask This Old House at the Internet Movie Database
The TV Tome entry on the series

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