It was 20, maybe 30 years ago when Norm Abrams was a guest of Home Improvement Week at the Riverside Convention Center in Rochester. As he entered the hall, the audience sang:
"Ordinary! Ordinary! Ordinary! Ordinary!"
Abram couldn't remember the exact time. But yes, to put it mildly, he admits that's what will happen. Iconic image of public television. He is perhaps the most famous carpenter since Joseph's time. Abrams says he has accumulated more frequent flyer miles than he could ever use.
For 43 years he has repaired houses, made more furniture than you may remember, and cleaned the wood of his famous plaid shirt. But not before getting his autobiographical documentaries chronicling the highlights of his years at That Old House and New Yankee Workshop. The one-hour episode of “The House That Norm Built” airs Mondays at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and will air on October 8 at 5 p.m.
"Forty, forty years later," he said by telephone from his home in Carlisle, Massachusetts, "I looked back and said, 'Wow, what happened?' I told him.
Not without prosperity. It just happened. Abrams is a contractor who builds a small workshop in television producer Russell Morash's backyard. Morash is a producer on Julia Child's PBS show The French Chef, and has glimpsed other shows created by Abrams.
Morash commissioned the 13-episode television team of Abrams and host Bob Villa to renovate a Victorian home in Dorchester, a Boston suburb. Unexpectedly, Morash was now clapping his hands. A hit, in a simple PBS way. Over the next decade, the Old House continued to build a cult following, even with a small storyline. Abrams and Villa had a fight, after which Villa was reportedly fired from the show for bringing in a personal sponsor as opposed to a show sponsor.
Ibrahim continued. It still looks like the person who answered no one knows his name, let alone sings his name. He remembers his first public address at the Chicago Convention Center.
"It was like a stadium inside a building, and there were no people," he recalls. “Why did I go to Chicago for this? And when I entered, it was full. And it was my first experience knowing that - without realizing it - "This Old House" is so famous. And people love it."
I loved it until a friend of mine searched the Internet for "The Abram Moment" found a photo of a man with a famous carpenter tattoo.
Most of his followers are not sects. Abram seems to have easy relationships with people who have strong ties to the tree.
"People always say, 'Oh, we don't want to bother you. I say, 'Look, this is what I do, don't bother me, I love what I do and I'm glad you like what we do.'
These scenes were not written. They met, discussed what problem the unit would solve, turned on the camera and started chopping wood.
Home renovations can be a puzzle even for experienced hands like Abrams. "You can see them and you don't know until you start digging them," he said.
Abram was not alone in this matter. Other contractors like Tom Silva have a hand. "Tom and I like to find dirty things and try to build and fix them," Abrams said. He left the old house to die until the car arrived: "Sad to see."
"The New Yankee Workshop" is literally a different machine. All of Abram's dream equipment is mainly supplied by equipment manufacturers. Including his favorite, a 36-inch sander that weighs 2,600 pounds. While Abrams worked with a lot of scrap wood, sanders and what he called "sandpaper" worked best with old wood filled with nails.
For making furniture, Abrams says your two essential tools are "a very good table saw and a very good mixer". He said the strangest designs he had ever made were a giant birdcage and bird feeder.
Programs like PBS' The French Chef usually share the same passion: the disdain for making the process look like a fantastic product. In the old "Victory Park," audiences could feel the enthusiasm of the late Peter Seabrook in his beautiful British accent, especially the amaryllis.
Oh, Abram had his moments. It once stood on the Golden Gate Bridge. In another broadcast, he said they took out the astronauts. But those moments just passed. Abrams holds a lot of home improvement shows these days that look like game shows.
"Building and renovating houses is an individuality, not a technique," he said.
Abram was not lost in the forest. Employees of "This Old House" have offered to stop by from time to time. He built a pottery workshop for his wife, he talked about building a small boat. and participate in woodworking in local schools. "It's very sad to see him disappear for so many years," he said.
And there is also a house.
“Because of the amount of time I spend on shows, I ended up in the house I live in now, which I built 30 years ago,” Abrams said.
