(Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 13 - February 20, 2026)
I had not
spoken with Nicole Curtis, the star of the hit TV show on HGTV and DIY called Rehab
Addict. Nor had she talked to me. And yet, through my blog and her comment
in April 2012, we had sort of communicated. I suppose, without intending to,
I’d said, “I get what you do” and she’d answered with a simple, “Thank you.”
And maybe it was as basic as appreciation going two ways, up to Minnesota and
then back to me in South Carolina by way of the internet.
It could
be seen as more. I was promoting her and her show. But I was also applying what
I believed as the key to being a good teacher, by directing followers or
readers of my blog where they should look to learn, as if I was saying in my
own way, “If y’all want to understand what I do and how I do it, find Rehab
Addict on television and watch Nicole Curtis. After a few episodes, you’ll
see and hear how you can save time and money by making use of what’s already
there rather than tossing good stuff and replacing it with pricey new things.
You can see how she makes something unwanted beautiful again, and at the end valuable.
You’ll get a better idea of why renovating an unwanted house is so
gratifying.”
My blog
was started for my own personal/professional reasons and ambitions, but it was
also to inspire and educate others on how to renovate a house with potential,
maybe even a property that real estate and construction experts were convinced
was unsavable.
With most
of my projects, I’d done what people with experience and wisdom and authority
genuinely believed was undoable. And through my blog, I wanted others to
realize that they could do the same, that they could buy a house that looked a
lot worse than it actually was and step by step, bring it back to life. My
message wasn’t only about resurrecting houses left for dead. But I felt if I
could show how I save a property that was condemned, officially labeled Uninhabitable,
then others could take what I had learned and was able to share and use it to
help them revive the worst house on the block, or in some neighborhood near
them. They could put their blood and sweat into something, make it their own
silk purse, a special place to call home. Or maybe they could use what they
learned to have a cool rehabbing career of their own.
Right or wrong, I thought that in her show Rehab Addict, Nicole Curtis was doing that same thing.
(Response to TV Show Viewers: Post 15 - Coming Soon)