Norm Abram is retired from both his TV shows now, I think. I haven’t had a lot to do with television for a long time now, so correct me if I’m wrong. He was different than every other TV person who made stuff. He banged on houses with Bob Vila and all his replacements on This Old House, and he made sensible furniture on The New Yankee Workshop on the side. I certainly never saw all of his output, but I never saw him say something stupid. No one would ever say that about me, even if they only met me yesterday. He was always avuncular and productive and sensible on his shows. He never built anything ridiculous that I saw.
The internet is now chock-a-block full of people building stupid stuff, stupidly. This Old House has devolved into nothing more than dreadful homeowners picking out the most expensive things from every list put in front of them, and has long been unwatchable. It wasn’t always thus. The crew used to help homeowners repair and remodel their own houses in a robust but sane fashion. The sweat equity was real, and the results were sensible, if not flashy. The sensible but not flashy ethos is as dead as a Pharaoh now. It’s been decades since I’ve heard of any dwelling of any kind on television construction shows referred to as anything other than a “dream home.” No one is willing to settle forĀ a regular home they might be able to afford, or even build themselves. They’ll live in a shipping container, but not a ranch.
Building a boat in the basement was a pretty common thing back in the day. I did it myself, once, though I never launched it. I got to wondering if it was still “a thing.” A quick scan of YouTub seined a huge trawl of ridiculous boat projects. Dream boats, if you will. All the smaller stuff was people wondering if they could make a silly boat out of the wrong materials.
And then Norm appeared. Look what he made. It’s a modest, useful, intelligent thing, made to last. Just like Norm.
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It’s been decades since I saw Norm Abrams on TV. Enjoyed his shows. If there were a tool that Norm needed for a specific job, Norm would have it. My father was a very competent shade tree carpenter, making cabinets, wood panels, and floors, but it seemed he had about a fifth of the tools that Norm had on his shows.
Hi Gringo- I think Norm ended up with all the tools, but if memory serves, he basically started out with the big three: table saw, chop saw, router. You can make almost anything if you have those three, and a few hand tools, and know how to use them. I imagine all the sponsors started giving the producer big-ticket tools for Norm to use on teevee, and they piled up after a while.
A few years ago, I got a book titled “Norm Abrams’ New House”, which was oddly enough, about Norm, post ‘This Old House’, getting a new place and adding a new wing, and yada. They had a reveal party for the contractors before it was completely finished, during the event Norm’s wife getting on to him about the stairway he and his father were working on, was this gonna take forever, etc, etc.
The contractors were hugely amused by “Norm Abrams wife says he always has projects that never get finished, wait till I tell my wife…” and so on.
Bonus fact: Norm and his wife raise parrots, and he had to be real careful about adhesives and paints, because, well, canary in the coal mine and all.
Hi Ed- I’ve seen that book. Norm made himself a perfectly normal Adam colonial house, and wrote down how he did it. People can do a lot worse than a well-built, symmetrical house like that.
“Measure twice, cut once.”
That could apply to many things in life.
Norm was cool…and normal.
Ohh. . .I spent many happy hours watching Norm. My grandpa was a carpenter. He had a workshop out in back that no one–including grandma was ever allowed into–until I came along. Of course, I had the run of the place. He would ask me what I wanted to build and then give me a piece of wood, hammer, and nails. The cutting was up to him of course.
I have one question: if you build a boat in your basement how do you get it out? I am thinking of Gibbs on NCIS, but I have often heard mention of people building a boat in their basement.