The Gray-Haired Golden Rule - Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 67

Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 1 - January 23, 2026

Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 66 - June 24, 2026

The start of this blog in 2011, aimed for something of a how-to tone, sharing advice and writing the steps to help aspiring DIYers progress through their own rehabs. Yet with the reflective storytelling, it’s understandable how some may consider it memoirish or a hybrid how-to/memoir. And this whole series is closer to the second of the two genres.

This post is more than a response to questions or comments. It’s backstory worth sharing as I conclude with cheerful memories making Restoring Charleston.

 

The Golden Rule is a universal beacon for civility: treat others the way you want to be treated. The Gray-Haired Golden Rule, is this guidance with a twist: treat seniors as you’d want someone to treat your own grandparents. And if you don’t have solid relationships with your elders, Lord watch out for the silver headed nearby.

In 1994, I moved into a Cincinnati apartment managed by a widow who was spread thin and beginning to fray. Oversights and reasonable lapses led tenants of this twenty-unit building to move out. However, I stayed. And by year’s end, it was down to just us in this three-story brick in Hyde Park.

Rather than virtuousness, my hanging in there was rooted in my grandparents and this landlady reminding me of them. Perhaps it was because her life had mirrored theirs—the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor leading to WWII, followed by the post-war boom, space race, and the seventies. For the lack of a better way of describing it, what loomed was some hazy obligation to help her as I would want someone to be there for my own elderly relatives.

After becoming disoriented out and about in the Queen City, this childless woman found herself at The Christ Hospital. She had no family in the area, and it had taken me two weeks to figure out where she was. Due to cautionary abundance wrapped in legal reasons beyond me, TCH staff was obligated to detain her.

It eventually became clearer how this would culminate in her becoming a ward of the state, whatever that may have meant. After I tiptoed around this news, she revealed how she was well aware. “I know what they’re saying, young man,” was her reply.   

Mrs. Drollinger never said my name, and young man registered with my ears like an accepted nickname that she used at her convenience.

She understood the future she might be faced with but wasn’t having it. Even though it appeared as if her fate was sealed, she then set me straight as she grabbed a phone and opened up the yellow pages. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” she said before adding, “And I’m getting out of here.”

Then against some tall odds this detainee proved the hospital know-it-alls wrong and found a way to be discharged.

Five years later, after buying a condemned house that I was determined to rehabilitate, inspiration was drawn from this triumphant pathfinder from my past. And when construction authorities explained how bringing on a full-time GC was paramount, her words echoed in my head. When some said the smoke smell was unconquerable, I remembered her resolve. When the twelve-month schedule was deemed inadequate, I reminded myself that “where there’s a will there’s a way.”

And just like how it worked out with the hospital forecasters, the construction expert’s pre-determinations were sidestepped.

What would eventually inspire me to find a way of reconnecting her with distant family living in Oklahoma, was an oven fire in her apartment. My first attempts to put it out with my pintsized extinguisher didn’t work and the 9-11 operator dispatched the emergency brigade. Then, after persuading this septuagenarian to step outside, the army of responders flooded Linshaw Court as we walked out the front entrance.  

Although the flames had been snuffed out—the third time had been the charm for my extinguisher—they’d come prepared for the worst. Besides the hook and ladder truck, there was the fire chief, an ambulance, and a couple other red vehicles.

The building’s owner was genuinely amazed. And naturally, passively, she simply asked to herself more than me, yet aloud, “Is all this for me?”    

 

We were just into the first summer week of 2016 and I was filled with intense excitement, nervousness, and a healthy anxiety that would keep me necessarily focused until the circumstances wrapped in August. The production phase, the process of filming the projects for Restoring Charleston, had begun in the small southern town of St. George.

The Appleby House sat on the edge of town and had been vacant for fifty years before being condemned by local building officials. At least, that’s what I’d been told and everything pointed to this being true. Following an invitation to have a look, I took a chance and became the owner. The windows and doors were still partially boarded up, and I was likely a schoolboy the last time the wood siding or trim had been painted.

Appleby - Before

After thorough reviews, I felt at ease about structural integrity. It looked decidedly worse than it actually was, my type of project house for sure and ideal for a TV rehab.

Built circa 1895, this home had been crafted by skilled tradesmen of its era, surviving over a century of scorching summers and countless hurricanes while racking up more years than anyone still alive. It was laced with artful interior trim, mantels, and doors that were salvageable, with heart pine floors to accompany bead board walls and ceilings.

Occupied by spiders, dead rodents, and one mummified cat, it was a prime candidate for generating Halloween season unease. Although some locals were convinced that this place was inhabited by ghosts, I’d been all through the home, alone multiple times with only a flashlight keeping me company. I felt no creepy vibes nor heard any questionable noises. Nothing had given me serious pause.

In the early days of getting up to speed with the task at hand, producers had been overheard speculating on Appleby as the most challenging rehab effort in the network’s history. This may have been a stretch, but still, it made me feel good, this possibility of being placed atop this unofficial mountaintop.

Coupled with my faith, what allowed me to be worry-free in that moment, was my confidence in the pros mobilizing around me. But being straightforward, fair to myself, I’d taken on more awful with much less help. It was simply a great old home, with palpable potential, and too special to ignore. By way of the pictures I’d taken and emailed, the producers in New York and Los Angeles had fallen for it too.

In this first week, the site was humming with grips and assistants busy setting up cameras and equipment. There were production crews staffed by people from all over the country, along with dozens of local contractors, tradespeople, and an interior design team. A production trailer had landed in a back corner of this parcel, strategically placed to be out of site throughout filming. A large storage container for equipment, supplies, fixtures, and materials was behind the office box. Dumpsters, work trucks, and trailers filled the fringes of our lot. The planted cotton field directly behind us was off-limits, but vehicles had spilled over into the vacant area across the street. Icing on this cake was an air-conditioned restroom trailer—one side for women, the other for men—tucked within an enormous cluster of towering azaleas. In three decades, I had no memory of any jobsite perk topping this.

In addition, were the two other houses on the opposite side of town. This St. Geo trio had been acquired to revive this summer, yet we were only rehabbing and filming two of these three simultaneously. Without a doubt, it would be my greatest professional challenge yet. The third home had been placed on the back burner. Along with apologies, were network assurances of them returning next year to be part of its rebirth.

This bustling scene was radically different from my first pig’s ears in the early years of the new millennium. Suddenly, from some dusty corner of my mind, a question leaked out, “Is all this for me?”

More than a case of me hearing voices, it was a spewed memory in the form of a rhetorical question. Insinuations of unworthiness were absent here, with me willing to believe that travels on the road to this point had made me deserving.

Then this internal monologue was interrupted. The sound of cheerleaders practicing on the other side of the street busted through the usual cacophony of jobsite activity—barking and banter, tools banging, equipment revving. These peppy teenagers were likely hoping to witness some filming or perhaps even get captured on camera.

The atmosphere was circus-like.

“Is all this for me?” Those were the words spoken by my landlady years back as we emerged from the smoke-filled building as vehicles of the rescue fleet took positions in front of our near-empty building.

Now, it was as if she was pridefully haunting me, like a fifth grandparent.

Mrs. Drollinger had been amazed then, just as I was in that moment looking over the energized scene. It was radically unlike my history of solitude on desolate house projects in my rearview, years of long days spent alone, thinking things through by myself. I knew that with all the support, the upcoming months would be comparably different than those early unwanted home restorations; teams and crews tackling the lion’s shares of the work as production assistants brought me coffee, offered water, or took my lunch order each day in between direction and questions with cameras recording.

Appleby - After

I was filled with awe and appreciation, imagining five satisfied faces sitting in the bleachers of heaven, giving me an extra reason to smile as I put forth my best efforts to deliver for producers.

Was all that for me?

My people would answer yes.

Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 68 - June 29, 2026

Unspanned Leadership Gaps - Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 64

Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 1 - January 23, 2026

Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 63 -June 17, 2026

From the start of this TV break, I’d formed an impression that each production phase was operating on a shoestring budget. However, in reality, both shows had been robustly funded. The network had set us up quite nicely.  

It was a me issue front and center.

The running theme that flowed steadily throughout this opportunity was my inability to lead as needed. I suppose, as an excuse, I’ll put forth my reasoning that the programming director in Manhattan was in charge. She should have been. But looking back, I think the production company was in the driver’s seat, or at least they thought they were or wanted to be. And maybe this was some sort of male/female issue between them. Again, ignorance on my part prevails. Perhaps, like they wanted and needed me to be an expert of historic restoration razzle-dazzling Charleston, they also needed me to grab the reigns of this break and hit the ground running much more effectively. In this speculative beacon of guidance role that I never commanded, I seemed to have come up short for them again.

I suppose that my leadership style tends to be more organic, and I sure hope authentic. Rather than walking through a door and trying to start steering a ship like Thor in Avenger’s: Infinity War, I prefer to serve while learning and understanding. Eventually my voice will carry more weight, and if it doesn’t, I’ll make more of an effort to bring out the best in those around me.  

In my mind, and again this might be my ego leaking out, I think I could have grown into that role. But as I saw it, I was unknowingly in need of knowing and understanding more about TV than I did; the process, sequencing, industry terms, and so much more. Or at least finding a way to pick up these things much more quickly.

I found it disrespectful for me to insert myself too much. And I think most of the producers would agree. Once, while trying to suggest a solution to some filming issue, I upset an executive producer who cut me off saying, “Don’t tell me how to produce!” Within her moment of stress, she’d been candid with me, teaching some of what I lacked, shedding light on the dimness I struggled to work within.

From the beginning, I was out of sync. In 2013, it felt as if some producers were excited to work with me, while others were more indifferent. There were those who were ready to start three months of filming in January of 2014, and others more comfortable spreading the process over fifteen months. There was this same discordance in filming the pilot, the wait in between it and the pick-up, and throughout that filming. And then heading into 2016, some of the team really seemed receptive to the measures I laid out, but clearly, others were unmoved.

Along with this polarization, were the quantity of minds and voices weighing in, deserving of consideration. Not only were some taking my points into account, but they were also simultaneously weaving through the views of others with actual television experience, discussions about me, yet without me. And to add even more nuance to this dynamic, these players were often working together over the phone from each coast and flyover locations in between. FaceTime-types of meetings were less common then and although I was sometimes on a conference call speaking with multiple people, I didn’t always know who was sitting in until someone introduced themselves before their question or comment. So, I didn’t actually know who was in the loop and who wasn’t. I thought they were all comparing notes, but it would have been a lot to keep up with. And adding to this, I was one person and one show amongst dozens.  

There was consensus in my takes on the different steps I felt strongly about. But it may not have been resonating as necessarily with the right voices. There was compromising, but I wasn’t negotiating. I wasn’t suggesting twelve things as a setup to get the six we actually had to have. I’d laid out the key things we needed, and wiggle room was minimal. Without the right resolutions and results, we’d be filming rehabs in 2016 on fumes. I never said it so bluntly because I wanted us all to succeed. Pessimism may be in my nature, but I didn’t want to show these cards. And hindsight provides clarity.

The bottom line is. I was unable to adequately and clearly make my points as truly needed, in a way that resonated and moved the needle. They could say I didn’t try hard enough, and they would not be wrong. But being straightforward and even more honest with myself and as I write, I realize that I just didn’t know how to do it. And that’s on me, further evidence of what I’ve said before in previous posts of this series. I did not meet this moment.  

Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 65 - June 22, 2026