Fixer-upper
By Krys Stefansky
Tonight, nobody call me, text me, come to my door. By 8, I’ll be on my sofa, glued to the TV.
I’ve discovered Renovation Island, the most insane HGTV fixer-upper show I’ve ever seen.
Two Canadians - crazy rich - buy a 10-acre, 50-year-old resort, an entire RESORT! on an island somewhere in the Bahamas.
The abandoned, decrepit property is replete with 18 hotel rooms, 22 little free-standing villas, a pool, a bar, a commercial kitchen, a laundry, a spa, a clubhouse and gawd knows what all else.
And, people, it is a wreck. A delicious disaster if, like me, you love, love, love home renovation. Particularly if the dust, the dirt, the money, the bad news is somebody else’s headache.
And there‘s plenty of all the above.
The entire place is rusted, rotting and in complete and total disrepair because - besides standing empty for nearly a decade - it’s steps from the beach, the wind, the salt spray, the tropical storms.
And there are termites.
YESSSSS.
Nevertheless, this husband/wife team bought it and, according to the show promo - a series wildly popular in Canada before it started in the U.S - has four, maybe six months to fix it up and get their boutique property operational before they go bankrupt.
But remember, they’re loaded. Of course they have a passel of kids with grandparents they fly in to amuse them and a Canadian nanny somewhere on the fringes who shows up and turns out to have some sort of resort-friendly skills. What a gal.
Even so, this nightmare of a renovation project is absolutely mesmerizing with all the ingredients needed to make it a must-watch.
First of all, there’s the island setting, which means scheduling, ordering and shipping in all the building materials.
Everything arrives - sometimes on time, sometimes not - by boat: siding, doors, windows, furniture, planters, and then has to be fetched via the solitary island road with their ONE forklift and bumpity-bumped back to the resort where there’s pressure to install it all immediately because, hahahaha, there’s no place to store anything!
Every single building on the resort appears to be under construction at the same time. There‘s miles of decking to build, corroded plumbing and leaky roofs to replace, a quarter of a million dollars of commercial kitchen and bar equipment and appliances to install.
Secondly, the tradespeople? Some are jovial locals or neighboring islanders. Others are imported from the far north. Not exactly a hardship for visiting Canadians trading cold at home for work under the tropical sun.
Thirdly, the personalities: She‘s a wee bit high-strung and snappish with a great eye for design. Her love of white is pure and extreme and her designer’s eye constantly adjusts and changes things, which, of course, aggravates the heck out of her husband.
He, the contractor, is perpetually patient. Even during a madcap ride into town to pay a $25,000 utility bill with minutes to spare before the resort‘s power is cut off.
So, need a break from the Coronavirus, politics, protests, masks?
Get your fix with escapist TV.
Will there be trouble in paradise? We can only hope.
