Paul Dimeo talks National Geographic’s ‘Building Wild’

Paul DiMeo talks about leaving the city and ‘burbs behind to head into the wilderness for National Geographic Channel’s Building Wild.

This Extreme Makeover: Home Edition vet, along with partner Pat “Tuffy” Bakaitis, go off  the beaten path to design and build crazy cabins deep in the woods.

The Building Wild adventure begins when they have to cut roads to haul in their materials and continues through building with found materials along side the family who will use the cabin.

Get ready for a wild ride.

Mark: You’re inside MyFixitUpLife, and as much as Theresa and I love Dialed-In Design, totally, totally tricked-out crown molding, cabinets, the whole thing … sometimes, for us, the biggest piece of energy that we find, is when a stack of wood shows up.  The lumber slides off the truck, and it’s about taking just a hunk of sticks and turning it into something that’s just off the charts.

When it comes to taking this to an extreme level, we are joined by Paul Dimeo, formally of “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” … if you can evenly say formerly for that juggernaut show … who is now the host and designer on a new National Geographic show that takes the whole lumber pile, and makes it into “Building Wild”.

Paul, you’ve got to tell us about this show.  What is “Building Wild” all about?  We’re excited to see this show, because like I was saying, we get all wound up for this stuff, but you’re taking it to an entirely new level, out in the wilderness.  How far away from roads … infrastructure … are you cutting in roads to these places?

Paul: Yes, we had to cut in a road.  That is a world I do not know.  I come pretty much from the city. On “Extreme” we never really had to build roads.  We got there, and we built a house.  Here, we’re about … the deepest I think we went was about 2 ½ miles.  You’ve got to put water bars in, so when it rains, all the farmers all know this.  There’s no erosion, so that road kind of remains cut into the hillside.

We’re not talking about paved roads.  This is just enough to get our material in there; whether we’re pulling it in by horses, whether we’re pulling it in by a four-wheel-drive tractor.  We’re trying to just get the stuff wherever our clients want to build these seasonal cabins.

Mark: Are these places full-on houses?  Do they have running water and septic tanks and power, or yes, no, a little of both?

Paul: No.  No septic tank, very little power.  I’ll go ahead and wire in maybe three, four outlets, and then the landowners can go ahead and bring in a little putt-putt generator, and plug it into them.  I give them an outlet outside of the cabin, the generator plugs into it, and there you have it.  You want 4,000 watts, you have 4,000 watts. There’s typically enough to run a light and maybe a hot plate.

We bring stoves and the likes of that, but no running water.  It’s an outhouse.

Mark: This begs the question; obviously, on “Extreme Makeover,” you’re building a house.  You’re in places with driveways, so you go home, you go somewhere where there’s a hotel, a restaurant, whatever.  If you’re on a mountaintop in the middle of … I’m making it up … North Carolina, or Utah, where do you go at the end of the day?

Paul: End of the day, I … well I was there for about 4 ½ months.  This company we started is called Cabin Teams, and Nat Geo decided to follow … I guess I should go back in time.  Nat Geo wanted to follow this company getting started off.  The guy I partnered with is a gravel and excavation guy from Hoosick Falls, New York.  His name is Tuffy, and he is the complete opposite of me.  He runs heavy machinery.  He doesn’t work in 32nds and 54ths of an inch; he works in feet and yards.

We teamed up, and Nat Geo was following us.  What I did was, I rented a house in the Bennington area of Vermont, which is right across the state line from Hoosick Falls, New York.  That was my home, for 4 ½ months, while we built these ten cabins in southeastern Vermont and upstate New York.

Mark: That’s fantastic.  That’s a beautiful part of the country, too.  How did you hook up with Tuffy?  Do you know him from some event in your life, or did you just find him somehow?

Paul: Traveling around with “Extreme”, you get to meet all these crazy folks, who are just wonderful, wonderful people.  One of the people working with me on “Extreme” grew up with Tuffy in that area of the country and said, “Hey, you’ve got to meet this guy.  He is a hoot, and you’ll really like him.”

I did; I went and spent some time with him.  He has five cabins of his own, on his property.  I thought, “What if we went around and tried to build these things for people?”  We could keep costs real low by having them bring the labor to the table, and I certainly know about managing people to be quick and efficient.  We’ll do that.

Mark: This is … I’m going to say it … I’m actually a little upset with myself when I say, “That’s wild.”  It’s literally wild that you’re doing that.  Are you building conventional cabins?… I don’t know what a conventional cabin is, but like log cabins and timbers and woody, rustic kind of stuff?

Paul: Yeah.

Mark: Or are you just coming at it with some of the Paul Dimeo out-there design mojo?

Paul: Yes, yes.  I know you’re going to appreciate this.  Do you remember, when we were little, someone would get a new refrigerator, and they’d give the box to the kids in the neighborhood?  We’d build a fort out of that refrigerator.  Do you remember that, building forts in the back yard?

Mark: Are you kidding me?  Guaranteed.  You’d make stuff in the woods; what else?  It’s perfect.

Paul: Right, what else?  We’re just doing that on a little bit of a bigger scale.  The tools have gotten a little bigger.  The cabins are about 400 square feet.  If you have a bus or an old container sitting on your property, we may use that to begin, and work that into what we’re doing.  In five, six days, we walk away.  We go in, we put in some gears, we have some pressure-treated lumber that we got, and we’re getting a lot of rough-sawn.

In the case of one of our cabins, the owner … he has like 3,000 acres in Bear … oh boy, not Bear Creek, not Bear Farm, but something Bear.  Bear something, it’s a Bear … Beartown.

Mark: Beartown.  Did you fear for your life from being gobbled up by a bear in that place?

Paul: I saw a bear; I saw bear poop.  I did see a bear.

Mark: That’s it.  That means they’re coming for you.

Paul: They’re coming for me.  Anyway, he had an old wood mizer, and he was milling.  He’s 68 years old.  He had been milling wood from felled trees off his property for his life; for really his life.  He had this enormous barn full of wood, and I mean spalted maple.

Mark: You’re kidding me.

Paul: No, stuff like that … I’m just drooling.  He said, “Build me a cabin.  I want everything done from what I’ve taken off this land,” and we did.  That was a blast.

Mark: Now a wood mizer … just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing … that’s a band saw mill that you can cut a tree into planks with.

Paul: Exactly, it’s a portable mill.  It’s a band saw, yes.  It’s got that big blade.  As a matter of fact, man, I know if I ever get my little place, that’s out in the middle of nowhere, I want one.  You can mill your own wood, and let it sit for a year, and the next thing you know you’ve got one-by stock, and you’re good to go.

Mark: Holy smokes.  What did you make?  What was it … I’ve got 300 questions.  I’m going to try to funnel it down to one.  We’re talking construction, let’s go to interior detail stuff.  Did you get to do some kind of woodworking, designing kind of stuff … make awesome counters or shelves or something like that?

Paul: I’m going to stay with the same story; I’m going to stay with Reggie up there in Beartown.  We … I mentioned spalted maple.  I was able to take spalted maple 6×8 and 6x10s, and make a cathedral ceiling using that as my … I’m remembering … not my rafters, but I was able to use that as my collar ties, and the A-frame that gave me … that I was able to put my rafters across.  All spalted maple; all pegged together.  It was a carpenter’s dream.  That was a blast.

Mark: I’m going to have to get a drink of water, because I just got cotton mouth.  That is awesome.  I saw on the “Building Wild” Facebook page, a nest on top of a cabin, with a … do I have this right … a chair in it?

Paul: Yes, you do.  We were building on this swamp, and we learn midway through our week, the guy says … we hear from his side, because what’s cool … Mark, you certainly have been on a number of extreme builds, where there were 2,000, 3,000 volunteers helping.  I am down to about eight carpenters now.

Mark: Do you look around and say, “Boy, could I use some blue shirts right now”?

Paul: I’m telling you, man, there are times.  It’s a new learning experience for me.  I’m on a learning curve here.  What’s cool is, you’re doing it with all of the land owner’s friends, and him or her self.  They’re there, so you’re learning about them all week long.

We used to send the families down to DisneyLand or wherever we sent them, but they really missed the best part of the week.

Mark: Wow, so in the ten seconds we have left … did you really get to get inside people’s lives while you built for them?

Paul: Yeah, You find out things. For example, this kid used to catch birds with his hands, and they called him Bird Boy.  He loves watching birds.  We said, “Let’s give him a nest on top of this, and he’ll be able to sit up there with his binoculars, and watch the sunset and watch the birds.”  That’s how the nest got to be on the top of that roof.

Mark: “Building Wild” and flying high; check out Paul Dimeo on Twitter @PaulDimeo.  Check out “Building Wild” on Facebook.  Check out Paul on Facebook, and check us out after the break.  We’ll be back with more of “MyFixitUpLife.”

MyFixitUpLife

Mark & Theresa created this honest and personal guide about home improvement to share the tips, techniques, and trends that help you make smart decisions about updating and personalizing your home.

See Full Bio