‘Lights-Camera-Home Improvement!’

Acorn Staff Writer


MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn  UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT-Grace Bartsch prepares to be interviewed for the television show

MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT-Grace Bartsch prepares to be interviewed for the television show “Weekend Warrior” in her Oak Park home on a recent Saturday. The TV crew spent nearly two months filming the Bartsch family as they remodeled their house.

‘Lights-Camera-Home Improvement!’



By Michael Picarella


Acorn Staff Writer

A home improvement project involving a typical American family could be funny. It might even include the comment, "We should have taped that—it might make the funniest home video show."


For the Bartsch family of Oak Park, it’s happening. For the first time, they’re taking on a major home improvement project—and they’re being accompanied by a video crew from the Home and Garden Channel.


Grace Bartsch, wife of Wolfgang, and mother of Katie, 11, Sky, 9, and Annabelle, 6, said she saw an ad in The Acorn looking for a family that would be interested in participating in a home improvement show called "Weekend Warriors." The family, by themselves, would have to undertake an improvement project in their own home, without professional assistance.


"(The TV show staff) met us in November," Bartsch said. "They came out with a handheld camera, they interviewed us and saw what we were thinking of doing, and then they had to take it to the network to see if they liked us."


The screening process took more than a week, Bartsch said. The show’s staff then returned to the Oak Park family with good news; the Bartschs would be subjects of a "Weekend Warrior" episode.


"Normally they don’t use whole families for the entire shoot," Bartsch said. "The kids are normally there in the beginning and come back at the end." But the show wanted to use the entire Bartsch family; they must have noticed some excellent family chemistry.


The Bartsch project was to combine the dining and family room into one big family room. The work consisted of stripping wallpaper, opening up a wall, painting and much more.


"We did all the work," Grace said. "My husband and I—before that—really only hung pictures. We borrowed tools from friends and we got to know the manager at Home Depot."


Most of what the Bartsch family learned came from the Home Depot. And they did get some very limited help from a few friends, one who knew about electricity.


A camera crew taped her family’s project since the second week in January, said Grace, and they just finished taping the last sequence of the show in which the family is enjoying the finished project. The crew didn’t shoot every weekend, Grace said, but on the eight or nine times they did come, they spent the entire day.


The initial "Weekend Warrior" episode of the Bartsch family will first introduce the family to its audience—with footage of them washing cars, spending time as a family and discussing the Bartsch family dynamics in interviews.


And then they go to work.


Some funny incidents, Grace said, do occur.


Not having experience when cutting into drywall, the Bartsch family found a plywood sheer wall behind the drywall and "freaked out," wondering if it was supposed to be that way.


It was probably one of those moments where "you had to be there," but it should be entertaining on TV. And you can be there for that moment and many others when the show airs on the Home and Garden Channel next September.




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