It Takes Two

by Jonathan Scott

  While filming a Property Brothers scene, my clients, Jonathan, and I were walking up to a house to tour, and a crazy neighbor came running out of her house with a large chef’s knife in hand, screaming that we were trying to rob her and she was going to call the police. I could see why she might think Jonathan was some drifter up to no good, but I was standing there in suit and tie. “I must be the best-dressed robber you’ve ever seen,” I politely pointed out. I explained that we were touring the house next door to hers, and she finally calmed down.

  A lot of our homeowners get worked up when it comes to budget, renovations, hand-me-down furniture we want them to get rid of, and so forth. We do trim content that might make them look unlikable. We’re notorious for teasing and bantering with our homeowners for a laugh, but it’s all in good fun and more often than not, we make ourselves the brunt of a joke. We would never intentionally humiliate anyone for entertainment’s sake, and we’ll save our homeowners from themselves if we have to. That was the case once on Buying & Selling, when our client walked into her house renovation while Jonathan and his crew were working and called everything to a halt with an important announcement: “If my cat walks into the room while you guys are working, you all must stop immediately. No one is allowed to work until my cat decides to leave on its own.” She was serious. We removed this from the show because she looked kind of nuts. (But hey, we’re keeping it here because it was years ago . . . we’ve moved on. And cats can’t read.)

  While filming in front of a flooring store in Atlanta, this guy on a bicycle zipped by in the middle of the scene, ringing his bell. If we had the person sign a release to be on camera, no problem. But this video-bomber happened to be the R&B artist Usher. Everyone was so star-struck, he was already two blocks away by the time our director thought to ask him if we could keep him in the scene. Usher, come baaack! Lesson learned. You can bet we kept our eyes peeled for Blake Shelton on a moped while filming in Nashville.

  Sound* is a very important part of any show. If you don’t have clean audio, the viewer is going to be distracted. One day, as I was trying to talk with the homeowners, sound issues kept popping up one after another after another. No joke: plane, train, bus, motorbike, MARCHING BAND (c’mon!), dogs, baby in stroller, more dogs, the local school letting out. Just when we thought that—at last—all was good, a bird with the most obnoxious wailing cry ever landed in the tree above me.

  *Property Mimes, anyone?

  What makes more sense? Doing a scene chatting with homeowners when a loud train rolling through makes the audio unusable, or re-delivering those lines so audio is clean and the viewer gets the content loud and clear? I don’t consider the latter “faking it.” Faking it would be if those homeowners were actors pretending to buy and renovate a house. Staging it would be if the cat walked into the room wearing a little hardhat.*

  *Now THAT video would go viral . . .

  Speaking of hardhats and do-overs . . .

  Little-known fact: I was originally cast as the contractor on Property Brothers, and Jonathan was supposed to be the real estate agent. Both of us had a ton of experience in construction and real estate, but the producer thought I looked a little more brawny, and as Jonathan was the broker for our company, they thought he was more the “suit” debonair guy. The reality was, I wasn’t a licensed contractor, nor did I go to college for construction like Jonathan did, and he hadn’t been licensed as an agent nearly as long as I had. But we thought this was a great opportunity and didn’t want to rock the boat, so I didn’t challenge them on it. I remember feeling the butterflies in my stomach back when we arrived in Toronto for our first day of filming. We knew our stuff when it came to real estate and renovations—that wasn’t worrying me at all. What rattled me was the thought that this could be the gateway to a whole new direction in our lives. All those years of hard work were seemingly about to pay off as our TV and real estate worlds were suddenly colliding. It was kind of like that classic cartoon where the dog finally catches a car after a lifetime chasing them, then sits in the street, mind blown, wondering: Now what?

  Ever since we were little boys, I’ve had the sense that we were not your typical kids. We weren’t outcasts or, as far as I know, junior aliens exiled from some distant planet that wanted some peace and quiet. But there was no doubt that we marched to the beat of a different drummer, and we generally marched in double-time, changing directions at whim. We were a two-man scramble band, and the half-time show never ended.*

  *Just say it loud and say it proud: We’re weirdos.

  While in high school, Jonathan and I made a pact that we would become wildly successful one day. Jonathan even wrote himself a post-dated check for a million dollars and carried it around in his wallet along with a picture of the silver Camaro he planned to buy himself once the check had cleared. For the record, Jonathan didn’t fully grasp accounting practices* at that point. In his mind, the Camaro would be free because it was being “written off” as a business expense. Why didn’t more people think of this?

  *I stand by my theory that my calculations were sound . . . though somehow the Camaro never showed up . . .

  We were going to do something special with our lives—we just knew it. And the emphasis was on doing, not daydreaming. All the wacky business ventures we got into as kids—starting with those decorative hangers at age 7—had shown us that extra effort always paid off. We couldn’t wait to see where hard work and perseverance would eventually take us.

  And now, at the age of 32, we were about to find out.

  It was just before we arrived at the production offices that I clarified our real estate resumes, and almost immediately they swapped the roles to maintain authenticity. I can safely say that even though I am very competent with the hands-on side of renovations, the show would not have seen the same success without Jonathan in that role. His knowledge as a licensed contractor is deeper than mine, and I still cringe at the thought that I could have been spending every day of the past eight years on a dirty, dusty construction site.* Yuck. LOL.

  *It’s not dust and dirt. It’s man glitter.

  Jonathan was pumped about the Armani suits he expected to find waiting for him in Wardrobe, and was no doubt hoping I’d end up dressed in canvas carpenter overalls with a nail apron, or maybe baggy painter’s pants. Then, presto change-o, Magic Man, I’m the one sorting through my rack of tailored suits and artful array of silk ties while Jonathan can be heard protesting in his deflated-but-brave voice, “But I don’t wear flannel.” I was too busy admiring my Italian leather shoes to hear how he managed to ditch the lumberjack look and feed his plaid-diction instead.

  The network couldn’t have known this yet, but that last-minute role reversal saved them a fortune in wardrobe replacement and dry cleaning bills . . . because Jonathan has a history of bleeding dramatically. If I cut myself, even deeply, it stops bleeding almost right away. Jonathan can get a paper cut or a ripped hangnail, and he bleeds a loooooong time.* We’re both sticklers for safety, but there have been some injury situations over the years, so we try not to become complacent.

  *Good thing I have a perfect match ready on standby if I need transfusions or a new kidney.

  Whoa. Not so fast, Frankenstein.

  The scariest incident was Jonathan cutting a second-story window opening from the inside with a reciprocating saw on an episode of Property Brothers. He had asked the construction team to make sure everything was clear on the exterior, and they had given him the go-ahead. After cutting across the top, though, the saw got caught on something. Assuming it was just a nail, Jonathan kept going. After about ten seconds, though, something just didn’t seem right. He busted a hole in the wall a foot or so to the left and peered out, only to discover that he was about to cut through the house’s main power line. For some reason—fear of interrupting a scene, maybe—the contractor watching from the outside hadn’t said a word. If Jonathan had cut throug
h, he would be dead. Thereafter, Jonathan implemented a rigorous safety and communication protocol.

  I nearly lost it over another close call, this time in Austin. I was showing a house to clients while Jonathan was working on a reno across town. My phone rang: “A beam fell on Jonathan and he’s on the way to the hospital!” the producer reported breathlessly. I felt this jolt of pure shock slam me in the chest. Beams can weigh upwards of 1,000 pounds. A horrifying image of my brother crushed beneath flashed through my mind.

  “What the hell happened?” I shouted into the phone as I raced for my car. There was no way such a serious accident could have happened if all our safety precautions had been followed. Anger was the only way to push back my fear. Nobody had any answers, and I needed to get to the hospital, fast. My phone rang again just as I was leaving.

  “He’s okay. It wasn’t a beam, it was just a piece of wood that fell from the ceiling and a nail punctured his wrist,” I was told. It had hit an artery, and Jonathan the Bleeder had apparently finished his scene like Julia Child on that famous Saturday Night Live skit with a butcher knife. Then he blacked out, probably not so much from blood loss as from his body just hitting its limit.* He’d been working four months without a day off, and his immune system had already staged a series of protests, including cases of mono and shingles. Being spiked by a rogue nail dropping out of nowhere was merely adding injury to a series of bodily insults. Of course, Jonathan was right back on site as soon as he came to and coagulated.

  *We had to replace the floor and repaint the blood-spattered wall, though, so the buyers wouldn’t suspect we’d flipped a murder house.

  Exhaustion is unavoidable when you’re filming up to fifty episodes a year across five separate series, a feat possible only because we shoot multiple shows in each location and hire local construction crews, design assistants, and real estate agents to help us. When you add the production crew, caterers, and other folks who help us keep our traveling circus in peak form, we create about 150 local jobs wherever we end up shooting.

  In Toronto this fall, for example, we are scheduled to reno seventeen houses during our three-month stay for Property Brothers and Buying & Selling. That means looking at several houses for sale every day for me, and jumping between multiple construction sites on any given day for Jonathan. Of all those renovations, we can find ourselves actively running up to thirteen at a time. (Yes, we’re a well-oiled machine.) Each of the job sites is assigned its own full-time local general contractor as a construction lead—essential not just because of the time crunch, but because they know the local bureaucracy inside out when it comes to pulling permits, scheduling inspections, and dealing with the mountain of paperwork that goes with any building project.

  Our biggest priority is making sure the homeowners are taken care of and have a warranty on all the work long after we pull up stakes and leave town. Having local designers work with us, too, speeds up the process of sourcing the best products, whether it’s a unique mantel from a salvage yard or custom work from a local artist. And it’s fun to keep building such a great network of local friends to pal around with if we pass through town again. That’s true with the homeowners, too. There are some we always look up and hang out with when we’re back in New York, as well as others we worked with in Toronto who come visit us and stay at our house in Las Vegas.

  And yes, of the 272 houses we’ve renovated on-air to date, there are a few that we’ll remember even though we’re not hanging out and having pajama parties. There was one place featured in Buying & Selling where the homeowner carried around this massive angora rabbit that could have doubled as an overstuffed ottoman. Rabbit Lady was married to a guy who seldom spoke while we were around and didn’t seem to notice the missus had her flirty ways with me. I smiled through clenched teeth every time she called me “Drewy.”*

  *I still laugh when I hear that.

  The house was a cluttered maze of chopped-up little rooms with random walls, and the couple’s décor was uber-traditional with a splash of dog hair and rabbit droppings. Jonathan proposed knocking down a bunch of walls to give the house some breathing room. We explained as diplomatically as possible that the hoard of kitschy knickknacks and jumble of furniture in every room was not going to attract buyers, but the wife resisted clearing it out and her husband mostly stood by, still saying nothing. We probably should have cut our losses and run for the hills then and there, but thanks to Dad and his sacred Cowboy Code, we felt honor-bound to persevere and finish what we started.

  Amazingly, the house turned out to be a small diamond buried deep in the coal mine. With bigger, brighter rooms; clean, modern staging; and no more angora rabbit fur floating off every surface, it promised to sell well. But the whole process was like pulling teeth, and right up until the very end, we couldn’t convince Rabbit Lady that her taste was . . . one of a kind.

  It happens quite often on Buying & Selling when we fix the house in preparation to put it on the market that the homeowners seriously reconsider leaving once they see what we’ve done. They momentarily forget the reason they wanted to move in the first place: their house didn’t have enough bedrooms for their family, or it wasn’t in the right school district. They look at that gleaming new kitchen or spa-like bath and try to convince themselves that it could work. This is where I really have to become the mediator for the couple—or a therapist, even. Most assume they’re the first homeowners ever experiencing their dilemma, but we’ve pretty much seen it all.*

  * Seriously, remember the homeowner who wanted a cabinet-free kitchen? How does that work, exactly?

  Besides the occasional wasp nest in the walls, secret possum headquarters in an attic, or Twilight Zone-y collection of old baby dolls, we find some . . . let’s say, unique, items in these houses. While renovating a hoarder’s former home, Jonathan opened the walls to discover a vast assortment of stolen road signs used as sheeting instead of plywood. Our most exciting discovery was an unlocked safe hidden under the carpet in a master closet. Inside were some old family photographs and cash. Jonathan and I enjoy solving mysteries and puzzles so we were eager to play detective and track down the proper owner of the found treasure. We were, in fact, able to follow property records and identify the children of the since-deceased homeowner, but the network refused to show the footage of us appearing on her doorstep to give back the safe for fear it would somehow make us look like “plunderers.”*

  *Usually people listen to me when I’m carrying power tools.

  We’ve only ever had to pull the plug once during filming. While we want homeowners to feel we appreciate their situation, we still have to try to encourage them in the right direction for their needs. One homeowner was hearing none of that.

  He had been cast because he seemed like the ideal ready-for-prime-time candidate: He was a handsome firefighter with quirky taste, and he had all our female colleagues swooning at first sight. Even better, he would be bringing his firefighter buddies along to help him with the labor. Jonathan was finally going to have a run for his money in the slow-mo-reno-in-tight-jeans department.*

  *Do you think a contractor calendar would outsell a firefighter one?

  Like many of the potential buyers who apply to be cast on our shows, the fireman had already done a lot of his own legwork to narrow down the list of homes he was interested in. That’s always a plus: We learned the high price of client indecision on our very first episode of Property Brothers, which ended up being the most expensive pilot Cineflix had ever shot thanks to the drawn-out agony of our buyers poring over every listing on the market and making me show a ridiculous number of them.

  The firefighter hadn’t merely narrowed his options, it turned out: He had decided—absolutely—which house he wanted. When we arrived to check it out, we discovered that the place was sinking. Literally. The neighborhood was built atop an old landfill that had been converted to residential zoning. The firefighter’s dream house had su
nk so much on one end that the living room floor felt like a ski slope. The homeowner wanted Jonathan to do a cheap, quick fix, and his idea was to just level out the floor but not do any repair to the structure—completely illegal home “improvements” that would leave the front end of the living room with an 8-foot ceiling but the back corner of the house 18 inches lower.

  We warned the buyer that everything we do has to be completely to code, and we would not represent him if he was buying this particular house. I showed him several better options on the market. He ended up buying the sinking house to renovate on his own, which is a shame, because it was definitely a money pit and he’ll never see any value from the investment. The firefighter’s fiasco remains the only episode we started to film that never made it to air.

  Before everyone with a 1989 kitchen and a firefighter’s uniform from last Halloween starts bombarding us with pleas to put their house renos on the show, some full disclosure: We have nothing to do with where we shoot or who gets cast. I’m not kidding . . . Jonathan and I can’t get you to the top of the list. I swear. So PLEASE stop sending us bribes/gifts, as they go directly to charity anyway. (Except the disturbing ones that go straight to a faraway Dumpster or to the proper authorities. We mean you, weird artisanal soap-maker who mailed us a bar containing locks of your hair and lingerie. And you, suspicious distributor of gold bars who sent us an unsolicited brick in hopes we could be bought. And especially you, creepy person who cut the heads off people in a series of family portraits like a serial killer and pasted ours in their place.)