Old North Knoxville Residents' House to be Featured in TV Restoration Show

On Friday, June 1^st, Ron Hazelton of the nationally syndicated television show Ron Hazelton’s HouseCalls paid a visit to Old North Knoxville (ONK) residents David and Beth Booker. Beth had requested the visit to help recreate missing woodwork in their 1904 Queen Ann Victorian home.  

Ron Hazelton said he envisioned HouseCalls as a cross between a home improvement show and the late Charles Kuralt’s On the Road. That’s why the show travels from city to city, town to town, focusing both on “weekend projects” and something about each area in which they are visiting. He said he hoped the homeowners they visited would gain both the knowledge and encouragement “to get involved and learn by picking up a tool and working alongside me.” This in turn would show the viewing audience that there were many things that they could do themselves.

Traffic on East Scott Avenue slowed due to the presence of a large motor home, two vans, and two equipment trucks carrying everything from filming equipment to home-improvement tools and materials. The crew of nine and Ron Hazelton spent 13 hours with the Bookers, including positioning lights, a camera, a cart with monitoring equipment, laying down cables, air hoses, and drop clothes, checking and adjusting wireless microphones, changing camera angles and doing close ups, as well as filming several takes of many of the scenes. This in addition to measuring and cutting and nailing into place the casing around the bathroom door in the master bedroom, and creating two segments of missing baseboard and toe-kick trim.

Yes, that’s 13 hours to film what will be edited down to a 10-15 minute segment. The Bookers worked alongside the crew to use a compound miter saw, router, and pneumatic nail gun to craft and install the new woodwork. Beth expressed a particular fondness for the nail gun; something the show’s director hopes comes through on the final cut.

Several ONK residents stopped by to visit the work site and Ron greeted a few enthusiastic fans. Even Laura Parham, one of the former owners stopped by briefly. As a parting gift, ONK provided Ron and the crew with ONK tee shirts. The HouseCalls show graciously left enough routed casings to finish the other doorways in the house, and both Ron and the director gave the Bookers autographed mugs. Ron said that although he had been to Knoxville several times, he had never been to Old North Knoxville and did not know that such a neighborhood existed. He hopes to see more of the neighborhood sometime.

While it was not something the Bookers said they wanted to do every weekend, it was a good experience and something they will remember as they hang the other door casings. David was even heard to say once, “I wouldn’t mind doing this again some time.” 

Look for the episode to air this fall. Locally, WATE-TV Channel 6 carries the HouseCalls series at 6:30 AM on Sunday mornings.