HGTV’s ‘Renovation Raiders’ host and licensed contractor Amy Matthews talks behind-the-scenes athleticism and intense planning that goes into a successful raid. Find out how she and her team renovate a home in just a few hours without the homeowners knowing.
Mark: And you are back inside MyFixitUpLife with my wife Theresa.
Theresa: And my husband Mark.
Mark: I am not a mistake.
Theresa: You’re not a mistake?
Mark: I am not a mistake.
Theresa: No. Are you saying that your parents planned for you? They actually planned for this to happen to the planet?
Mark: No, I was actually thinking about your marriage and stuff.
Theresa: Oh.
Mark: But we’re talking about …
Theresa: Because I don’t think you could be planned. I don’t think anyone could write down all of the different things that you are and that you would become.
Mark: That would be a giant white board right there.
Theresa: It would be a giant white board and there would be a lot of experts that would have to weigh in on that.
Mark: Oh, yeah. Flow chart that, baby.
Theresa: And they would actually put timelines in for when they’d need different kinds of medical and psychological experts to come in to help you at key points in your life.
Mark: And new white boards.
Theresa: Yes.
Mark: Which actually kinds of build in to planning, which is when like home improvement mistakes can get away from you.
Theresa: They can get away from you. We have someone on the line who is an expert at planning for a really exciting adventure like you are in our lives.
Mark: Yes.
Theresa: Yes. Amy Matthews how are you?
Amy: I’m great. How are you guys doing?
Theresa: We are doing fantastic and I am curious are you on break from filming right now?
Amy: We actually just started back up. Yesterday we finished day two in our warehouse space and tomorrow we are headed into our first raid for season two. So we are pumped to get back to work.
Mark: And we’re talking about HGTV’s Renovation Raiders right now.
Amy: That’s right. Yeah, you know the first season was so crazy because nobody had seen the show because it hadn’t aired yet and people would come home after we completely demolished and renovated their space and they’d walk in the door and I’d be like, “You just got raided.” and people looked at me like I was a crazy person and they were going to call the police because nobody knew what that meant. So, now hopefully when we do that in a house they’re going to, you know, be psyched more than just a renovation, but they’ll understand what’s going on.
Theresa: I can’t imagine going out for dinner or going out and doing anything and come home and having a totally new space. Like having my house changed over. I would probably faint. I would cry. I would run out of the house, check to make sure I was in the right building. It would be crazy.
Mark: Yeah, what kinds of reactions? Obviously you get the oh wow this happened, I can’t believe it, but the over the top or under the top reactions where people are like on the verge of passing out. Like what have you seen?
Amy: We’ve kind of seen a little bit of everything. Everybody knows those traditional shows that we’ve seen so long on home renovation TV where someone walks in the door and they’re like, “Oh, oh. It’s a new couch,” or whatever. So people walk into the space and it’s always a completely different reaction. We’ve had everything you like you mentioned. We’ve had people that thought they were going to pass out, people that thought they were drunk, people that ran out of the house. They just have no idea what’s going on, I think the differences is it’s not just their initial reaction. It’s like this slow burn of them actually understanding what’s happened to their space. So they have the initial shock and then by the time the dust settles and we’re still there and we’re starting to do the interviews with them, they’re starting to kind of comprehend what’s going on and then weeks even months later … I just read a blog from one of our homeowners that wrote seven months after her renovation how she is more blown away and her husband is more blown away than they ever thought they’d be. So, it’s really fun to see their reactions down the road.
Mark: Oh, wow. Have you heard back from people yet that they are enjoying the spaces, that they’re just more pleased than they could express because it took so long to sink in?
Amy: You know it’s one of those things where people start to appreciate it the longer their in it because they understand the planning and the effort and the money it would have taken them to figure the whole process out and to actually do the renovation. I think the biggest thing is the quality of the work, and that’s what I feel so proud of and I’m so proud of my team for is that we could leave these houses and people could be like, “Oh my gosh I got this new kitchen this is amazing.” Then you start kind of looking at the details and that’s what everybody on the outside asks us is how good can that actually look.
We have this standard if we wouldn’t do this in our own homes we’re not going to do it. So like any renovation there are some things, some paint touch ups we’ll leave them tools to fix little things that they might have to tweak and the people are more than happy to do those things. So I think when they start looking at the quality of the work that’s what I’m most proud of and their thrilled with.
Theresa: Well, I’m really curious about the planning. To get that kind of quality and to be able to do it as fast as you do, to be able to plan for that kind of renovation, you guys must be doing some kind of military kind of special ops training to be able to do all that stuff.
Amy: That is what it feels like. Let me tell you about the last two days in the warehouse. The first day we get there Andy and I, kind of the guy that go on with the intel, he was on the show last season as well. He and I have taken measurements, we’ve looked through it, we’ve given all that stuff to the designer, the things have been looked at and ordered. So that preplanning happens as soon as we go into the house get our measurements and take a look at what the ideas of the design. Then our designer goes to town, orders things, puts that all together. So, our first warehouse day, that part of the preplanning has been done. Then my construction guys come in. We all talk through all the pieces of the puzzle. The whole first day is putting cabinets together, laying out the kitchen, making sure we have everything, looking at furniture that’s there, all of that.
Then the second day is literally, like yesterday, we did the actually run through of what we will be doing tomorrow, but of course you don’t know what 
you’re going to find until you open up the walls. So what we end up doing is we time it. I double the time that it takes us to get everything into our mock-up space, add time for cleanup at the end and then I usually pad an extra hour into it. We’ve still only got five to six hours and within that is an hour padded for those unknowns. So instead of getting in there and scratching our heads and trying to figure out, we stand around in our run-through and we figure out contingency A, B and C and so we have a plan. So there’s hardly any thinking when we’re there. It’s just, hopefully, pulling from the truck everything that we’ve brought just in case. That’s really the only way that these things will actually work.
Mark: You must have three trucks of just in case.
Amy: We have 12.
Mark: Just in case I need 40 more 2 x 4s. Just in case I need …
Amy: Yeah. That’s exactly … The people that have it the worst are the electricians and the plumbers because all of us have got our pattern down. We know where the tools are going. We know where the garbage goes. We know what cabinets go in first. I’m making it sound easy. It’s still like a nightmare, but the electrician and the plumber have no idea. We take pictures of the box and we look for the crawlspaces and we figure out what’s open in the mechanical room underneath, but these guys literally … The kitchen that we’re doing tomorrow is galvanized plumbing and we’re going into PVC so we’ve got to bring all these random connections and things that who knows what he’s going to find as he delves into the plumbing.
Those guys have to go to the home improvement store and literally pack for what if for every scenario, and they don’t know what’s in the soffits. The electrician doesn’t know if he’s got a two-hour job ahead of him or if it’s a 12-hour job that he’s got to squish into five. I feel bad for those two.
Theresa: It sounds like Renovation Raiders, you are putting sort of a spotlight on all of the possible problems and scenarios that can happen. So it would be really good training ground for anybody that is interested in doing any kind of home improvement project because you are just like pinpointing all of the places that there could be a pitfall along the way.
Amy: We are, and that’s a really good point. Most construction, you take an average kitchen, what is it going to take? Maybe a month to five weeks if you have a contractor in there doing it for you or maybe you’re doing part of the project. Most people aren’t troubleshooting anything until they get into the space. So instead of having like a day of work of demoing it and looking at it and just jumping on it and putting it back together. They open it up and scratch their head and go so okay what do we do here. A lot of them have an idea of what they’re going to find behind but there’s so much time taken with those question marks and trouble shooting things. So, yes. I think if we were to run a school for tradesmen people would go flying out of there rocking every job out and making millions because they’d have this little tool in their back pocket of problem solving. It’s pretty amazing when these guys get into it and they love the problem solving of it.
Mark: That’s Amy Matthews beating mistakes before they happen. Renovation Raiders on HGTV.
Theresa: So, follow her on Twitter at DIYMatthews and we have to go to break.
Mark: We’ll be back with more MyFixitUpLife.
Nice show to watch.
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