All the preparation in the world for the show would have been useless, so it’s a good thing we just showed up for the first day of filming for existing conditions. In a word, the day was fun!

Our first assignment was to walk through the home with David Vos (director), Kevin O’Connor (host) and the rest of the production team. For well by an hour, they questioned us on the history of the home, our buying process, our vision, and the challenges we were facing.

Armed with that knowledge, David crafted a script on the fly, which started with Treff and Kevin talking about the history of the home as they entered, and later joining me and Maddy in the kitchen.

Using Treff’s model, we proceeded to show them how we wanted to take
down walls to open the space. David had us emphasize

what we were going
to do by slapping walls that were going to come down – something I now
do regularly when showing the home to friends.

It took us about six takes and all dawn. In the afternoon, we
stopped by the home we were selling, and talked through our plans to
expand into the back of our large (for Newton) back yard. We couldn’t
convince our younger son to participate until the very end, but he did
finally jump in when Kevin threw some balls for him to hit.

Despite our gaffs, Kevin kept the conversation moving along
smoothly. all through the process we learned to be succinct and focus
the dialogue on the major subjects. We all got a chance to know each
other, learn about the show and…our house!

photo by Anthony Tieuli

Original post by Paul Friedberg