John Colaneri talks designing in his free time, the pressures of working on a set, and experiences from Cousins Undercover.
Mark: And your inside MyFixitUpLife with my wife Theresa.
Theresa: And my husband, Mark.
Mark: And we are talking big builds and making it happen.
Theresa: We are. And we have cornered one of the cousins. We cornered him. I’m just kidding.
Mark: It’s their new show, Cornered Cousins.
Theresa: Cornered Cousins.
Mark: On this episode, Fright or Flight.
John: Well hey listen, the show has changed three names so it might as well be that. You never know.
Mark: Can you say what the names were, the working titles?
John: We did have a ton of names. I mean, it was suppose Overhaul with the Cousins, like Big Build with the Cousins. I mean it was crazy. We have had them all. People loved, of course they loved, Kitchen Cousins. They loved Cousins on Call and finally the Cousins Undercover that finally stuck because we were going in for the big surprises.
Theresa: And for anyone who doesn’t know which cousin we are talking to, we are talking to John.
John: Yeah the good looking one.
Theresa: Yes the good looking one. Your actually coming up on an anniversary; in just a couple of months.
John: Yes in June, I will be married for a year.
Theresa: How is the honeymoon phase going for you?
John: It is going phenomenal. My wife and I have actually been building our own home this entire time so of course, I have the construction company, and building our own home and designing our home. It has been a blast. We have had an incredible … actually I’m coming from our design studio, picking out all of our interior closets and things like that so it never stops. Even in my personal time, I am constantly designing and building. It is crazy.
Theresa: Now in doing your own home and doing your own home with your new wife, it is probably, of all three things we talked about. Your business, working on TV shows. Those are stressful, those are vague, those are amazing but then working on something personal with your new wife, and trying to find how you guys work together and your different taste and what is important, that probably, I would imagine is the hardest one.
John: Interesting that you say that. Actually the easiest at all of them.
Theresa: Really?
John: Yes.
Theresa: Okay.
John: It’s crazy right. My wife and I have the same exact style so we go in and we pick things out. It’s like I was going to be that exact color, I was going to be that exact material. So it has actually been one of the easiest builds that I have been involved in and it could have been very difficult, because I am building a very different house, it is a contemporary barn, very different. I have, outside of the house, corrugated metal. I have snap clyde roof, I mean all these crazy materials but actually it has been a seamless process though.
Theresa: Now everyone who is listening to you talk right now is completely jealous and so am I that It sounds like you are walking around in a Disney show where you open up the windows and there are bluebirds flying in and you are singing to them and butterflies are flying around you while you pick out tile; like that doesn’t happen. Like no two people agree on everything. Like you and your cousin don’t agree on everything, right?
John: Believe me, I understand that. I deal with it all the time because even in our own construction company, on the show when we are designing, You do, you get the husband and wife, always constantly butting heads and we say that we are a design therapist because we are trying to mend people to come to decisions in the middle and, you know, luckily we have the same taste. She trusts me and she knows that this is my business. She is a teacher. When it comes to teaching, I’m not going to tell her, let’s do it this way. I would trust her so when I bring any material or things that I like, it is very easy and we work together. It is a great teamwork atmosphere that we have in building a house.
Theresa: Now I just want to share with you. We talked to you …
John: I might not look good by the end of …
Theresa: No, no this isn’t about you. This is Tom Silvia from This Old House.
John: Okay.
Theresa: Now he was telling us a few years ago, that he wanted to put radiant heat flooring in his home. His wife said, well you can’t do that because our neighbor put it in and it didn’t work out for him. Tom Silva … well for how long … 33 years on This Old House. It’s like, how do you disagree with Tom Silvia? Don’t you think he will be able to put it in his own home but his wife wouldn’t let it because his neighbor said it didn’t work.
John: Yeah, he couldn’t even play the Tom Silvia card.
Theresa: So I’m saying that you have a fantastic relationship because that even happens at Tom’s house.
John: Well, I mean you guys are husband and wife, you guys are working together. You know how it is. Luckily my wife and I, we are more like best friends so it makes things very easy and we get things done. I actually do have radiant heat drop in my entire house. Maybe Tom Silvia doesn’t have it but we have it.
Theresa: We used to call him Mrs. Silva.
John: Sorry Tom.
Theresa: Have your wife, call Mrs. Silva, and say, you know what, it really does work. I think it might work.
John: That’s good.
Theresa: How does Undercover go? Does your wife go with you on any of these projects that you do?
John: She has not been to any. When we go to Kitchen Cousins, and Cousins on Call, she definitely came to a couple of them like when we went out to California and we were filming out there for a month. But the Cousins Undercover one, she stopped by on one on the last day but in all honesty, and she will attest to this, we are so crazy. When we get there on site, it is between a 14 to 16 hour day, nonstop. We don’t leave. I don’t even have time to talk to people because we are doing such large builds, whether it is the whole first floor, backyard or kitchen/dining/living room, front of the house, we are doing it in just three days. So I have no time. We are literally nonstop and she knows. You know what it is time for you to work and you’ve just got to do it because it is very active.
Mark: Now when you guys and the cameras aren’t on you or if it is the middle of the night, or whatever, are you just walking through there with sheets and spreadsheets and critical past stuff and plans and is this done, is this done, where are you, where are you? Doing all that kind of crazy stuff?
John: Exactly. Yeah, like pretty much when we do have … yes it is a form of reality of TV but the camera guys get a break. Unfortunately the construction guys can’t get breaks because we’ve got to get it done. So when they break down, we are actually walking to project, doing the project management portion of it. Talking to all the subs, figuring out what our next critical steps are in the build process because we had everything timed out so perfectly. If one element, and let’s say, we run into an electrical problem that we didn’t anticipate. If one element is thrown off and it throws off when the inspector is suppose to come, it can throw a serious wrench in the things. And when you are on a 3-day build, you just don’t have that time.
Mark: Oh my goodness.
How many, and you can just use an estimate. How many sentences in your day, start with, “Hey John”?
John: I would say, a minimum of 50. People are constantly calling my name out, sometimes there are a couple of swear words that are coming out at me because people are mad about things because they are not working perfectly. It is intense. All I can say is … anybody that comes to our set, on the day of the build, their head kind of spins. We have just become accustom to it. Their head spins are like, how do you know what is going on because I can’t even contemplate where you are at, who’s doing what because we have the building going on, we have special designs projects. We custom build the special things for people. Last season, we had tables that were built under stairs that kind of levered out on a steel beam that spun out from a hidden pocket. We have closets that look like it is a closet but you open up the doors and there are desks that fold out, tables that fold out. So we are always pushing the limit saying yeah, we are doing this great build, but we want those trick elements that really are accustomed to hero that we are building for because we build and design specifically for their needs.
Mark: I want to ask you what is the craziest, wildest thing but after that story, I can’t handle it myself.
Theresa: No.
John: We have had so many, you know. I tell you man … For example, first episode that we shot, about a month ago. We were in Maryland doing this crazy build. It was for the Ellen episode and it was for a service man in the Army that he had his Hum V attacked by an IUD. He was blown up, the Hum V, he survived. A lot of his counter parts actually were badly injured, some died. It was unbelievable. He received a Purple Heart; unbelievable story. We were there … first of all it was either 0 or below 0 every single day. It snowed. It rained. We had sleet and during one of the nights, we had a totaled power outage, lost power completely to the entire set. No power anywhere. We had to go a neighbor’s house and get a generator and generate and get them back, our production team, television, get their stuff on a generator so we can at least start fixing the problem and getting their electrical service out there to fix all the electric.
Theresa: Wow.
John: Crazy stuff. Crazy, crazy stuff.
Theresa: Unbelievable.
John: Hold on, I think I just had something pop into my head. You can’t make it up. It is wild stuff. It is wild.
Theresa: Wow unbelievable
Mark: That is fantastic. I mean, you’ve got to check out Cousins Undercover. You’ve got to … I want to know more about the heroes. I want to know more about everything but we have to take a break.
Theresa: We do.
Mark: So @ColaneriJohn on Tweeter, Facebook Cousins TV, HGTV Cousins Undercover. Go see it, watch it. Check these guys out. We will be back with more.
