My "This Old House" theory of the week

We have been watching an inordinate amount of This Old House Classics since we bought the house (thank you, Comcast DVR). My theory is that everybody on the show hated Steve, the previous host from most of the 90's, and the set was full of tension and recriminations. If you watch closely, everything he says is negative -- it is either a passive-aggressive criticism or a forecast of impending doom. For example adding the molding to an external window -- he says "you have to trim the clapboards without destroying them." Not "Hey Tommy, how do you get the molding to fit?" or "Wow, Norm, that's a tricky operation." He has to throw the "destroyed" in there just to make us nervous.

The other thing I noticed is that they'll sometimes show segments with Bob Vila, but they never mention him by name or really acknowledge his presence. I'm kind of surprised they didn't do the Stalin thing and airbrush him out.

[We will eventually get up some pertinent posts about the actual house, so prepare yourself for amusing/cautionary anecdotes about discovering what lurks behind our demolished kitchen cabinets, figuring out our inscrutable phone line configuration, or Jen's ace painting job of our bedroom.]