Trentovation

Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 33

I stand in awe of people who move on without contingencies in their back pocket. A long time ago, I realized how I must have alternative ways to get me where I need to go if I lose a wheel on my first best option. What some see as problematic, I consider pragmatic. 

In November 2013, we were awarded an unnamed TV series. Then the network programming director handed me over to the production company in Minneapolis. This was when I learned that my project would need to be completed in a three-month timeframe. It was so ambitious, filling me with impressed envy at their brashness. But in addition to this, I was also appreciative. Not only would I have a front row seat to this miracle, but I’d also then own a completed house ready to be on the RE market during the busy spring season. And since the network was paying the lion’s share of all this work, I’d be guaranteed a profit, likely during the summer. This would go a long way at jumpstarting my fizzling renovation career and I was stoked for all of it: getting to plan and prep with producers, the ninety days of imagined activity, and then what I had a better idea of that would follow. Icing it off would be any facetime on television and what that would bring into our lives.   

But even before this call with the production company ended, I reached a conclusion: in order for there to be a chance of pulling this off, I had to rework my Plan A to make it simpler. Significant adjustments would give us a chance.

This alternative floorplan was not difficult to flush out, and because of the reality of the need, I found the task extra thrilling. And the facts behind this work erased any hesitations I held about hovering over a clean sheet of oversized graph paper to whip out a fresh vision.

This was the beginning of my efforts to accommodate the network and production team. And my thinking went this way.

First, I was flattered by the opportunity and didn’t want to balk. Yet three months for my original redesign, with all the unknowns I was facing, was a risk I was unwilling to take.

Secondly, I liked the challenge of this new and different excitement being wrapped up and woven within one of my projects. I didn’t want this chance to dry up and blow away.

Thirdly, and perhaps most obvious, the financial details made it a no-brainer. After the recession and breaking even on two consecutive properties, I needed a win.

And finally, every rehab is an adventure, and I was itching for something exciting like this that was also interesting. A chance at getting a TV show made the risks and uncertainty more palatable than I could resist.  

Looking back, this was all way too much for me, but also far beyond what the network, or their assigned production company would actually be willing to tackle. Even the downsized Plan B. But more pointedly, the likelihood of success started with me. It was my house and opportunity to impress, and I wouldn’t have what was needed in this moment. The saddest part may be how I also lacked the ability to recognize my own deficiencies.