On the House | Marking two decades of no-frills home how-to
By Al Heavens
Inquirer Columnist
I'd always assumed that Dean Johnson's TV persona was the same as his real-life personality: the knowledgeable next-door neighbor who helps you drywall the family room and will accept nothing more than a beer for his work.
And after spending part of a day with the Hometime host, including dinner at which we had to forgo the beer for a couple of glasses of wine, my assumption proved more than correct.
Come January, it will be 20 years that Johnson, 53, has been hosting the show, a coproduction of his company, Hometime Video, and WHYY-TV (Channel 12). Its ratings have never approached those of This Old House in that show's heyday. Neither has Johnson succumbed to the screaming-meemie syndrome of such shows as Trading Spaces and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Instead, Hometime has preferred to stay just below the radar, sticking mostly to its home base of Minneapolis-St. Paul; staying away, for the most part, from This Old House's multimillion-dollar makeovers; and regularly participating in Habitat for Humanity projects instead of sobby giveaways designed to boost ratings.
But Johnson is too nice a guy to criticize the other shows.
"Russ Morash [This Old House's producer emeritus] always maintained that his was not a how-to show," Johnson said.
Hometime is a how-to show, however. Like the 24-hour convenience store, it's there when you need it.
"I know most people haven't been watching us every week for the last
20 years," Johnson said. "But we do know that when they are interested in what we are doing, they tune in."
Then there are the Hometime videos, which Johnson acknowledges are very popular. I learned to tile from one of them, watched many, many times.
Of course, as Johnson also acknowledges, these videos deal with standard situations. When I had to install and grout tile under an impossible-to-move cast-iron tub, I was pretty much on my own.
"I'll have to look at that video again," Johnson said, "just to see if it has to be updated."
Of course, he was saying this as he laid 12-by-12 tiles in a Habitat kitchen in North Philadelphia, his notched trowel creating perfect swirls of adhesive, and every tile perfectly spaced.
(The aforementioned bathroom-tiling project was my first, and noticeably flawed. My next project was the bathroom at my brother-in-law's house, and it looked so good that his general contractor offered me a couple of other jobs. My brother-in-law would have had to come, too, however, to stand over me and tell me whether the tile was straight.)
I learned to drywall by watching a show called Do It Yourself, which I thought Johnson also had been involved in.
"Wow, what a memory!" he exclaimed. He added that he was not in the show - it was Avian Rogers, who was briefly his Hometime cohost when the show began in 1986.
Was Rogers the first of his TV "wives?"
"We now refer to them as partners," Johnson said.
The latest is Miriam Johnson (no relation). The others were, in order, Peggy Knapp, JoAnne Liebeler, Susanne Egli and Robin Hartl.
As we sat in an Old City restaurant, his real wife, Kathi, was seated across the table from us. She's probably used to the "wives" stuff, so I didn't ask her about it.
"JoAnne [Liebeler] can be really exuberant early in the morning," I said.
"How do you know this?" Johnson asked, a puzzled look on his face.
I quickly explained that she had hosted a 7:30 a.m. function at the International Builders Show a few years back and didn't really need the microphone.
He laughed.
"JoJo is a lot of fun," he said.
Liebeler and the rest of the Hometime cohosts had been featured in a five-minute bloopers clip earlier in the evening at Channel 12.
"We've sold some to NBC for its 'Bloopers' show," Johnson said, adding that a lot of the outtakes on other shows and at the end of movies look contrived. "Even after 20 years, we don't have enough for an entire show."
Will there be a big 20th anniversary Hometime celebration in January?
"We're not planning one," Johnson said, sort of surprised that anyone would suggest it. "We're just going to continue doing what we've been doing."
Which, I guess, is celebration enough.
On the House | ONLINE EXTRA
Alan J. Heavens answers questions about real estate and home improvement in an online forum at