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Amy Matthews: Raider of the Lost Art

This Renovation Raiders host is a woman outstanding in her field.

This Renovation Raiders host is a woman outstanding in her field.

Going out to dinner? You may come home to find a brand new space, if Amy Matthews is in your nabe.

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The HGTV star of Renovation Raiders is uber-handy and quick with a sledgehammer. She has a world full of ideas for your little corner of the world.

Meanwhile, on DIY, her hit series Sweat Equity seeks to increase the value of your home by $10,000 in just two weekends. Seem impossible? Ye have little faith (unless you’ve watched her in action).

Amy is a licensed contractor, and also gives back with her contributions to Habitat for Humanity and The Jimmy and Roslyn Carter Work Project.

Her deal: take on any project, and break it down so that even beginners could grasp it completely. No contractor double-talk.

Here, Amy takes time out of her incredibly busy schedule to chat with Modern Home.

I hope this doesn’t sound sexist, but I don’t know of too many female contractors.

I am continuing to take [contracting license classes], and I laugh because I am literally the only female in the room. I definitely find myself as an anomaly.

But as far as do-it-yourselfers, so many women are doing their own projects. I know a lot of guys who say they had come home from their office jobs and their wife had tiled the bathroom floor.

So women are doing it and loving it, obviously. But yeah, I haven’t met too many female contractors.

What drew you to this vocation?

At first, I came into it from a teaching aspect. I was doing home improvement and helping friends and just giving advice in general.

Anybody who is in the trades learns from someone next to them, or they seek out the best advice.

If there are ten contractors in the room, there are ten different ways of doing things. I just started learning from everyone around me.

I had a base of knowledge and I just kind of took it and ran from there. I just tried to soak it in.

Where do you find the rewards?

I love getting in there and getting my hands dirty. In any kind of creative work, you really see the beginning and the middle and the end of your project.

It’s such a great feeling at the end of it to stand back and look at your work. I love to help people through that process.

You’ve definitely come a long way from your original, humble contracting aspirations.

I started getting so passionate about the deeper levels of home improvement.

I really got interested in the envelope of the home and how our building practices are working for us, and the different technologies that go into the home — everything from insulation to the way you frame the home, and all different types of energy-savings ideas.

That kind of information became my passion, and passing that on to homeowners.  There is so much information out there and people don’t know where to start.

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To me, it’s really exciting because I always do something different. And there is always something really different for me to research. A lot of people in the trades, they do have one facet that they focus on. For me, I’ve been able to work with a lot of different experts in their particular field.

What kind of advice are people seeking from you?

First and foremost, if you can just do a bunch of little things that cost you a little and save you a lot, I find that people always love that kind of advice.

Where do home-improvement seekers usually go wrong?

Getting realistic with your money. And really setting a timeline. Most people really don’t think about that.

As a contractor, you are always basing everything on a timeline. So I think for a homeowner to look at it from a project manager standpoint, sitting all your ducks in a row, ordering products.

There is always a lead-time on products. You may not always be able to run to the home improvement store and pick it up.

You start tearing apart your bathroom on a Friday, and you think you are going to put everything together by the next weekend. But then you realize you have a lead-time on certain things.

It’s really that project management that people stumble over. They don’t struggle with it once they have the tools. 

How can a homeowner envision a timeline and make it a reality?

People have an idea of what they want to do with their projects. They may have a vision for the end results. They may have an idea about what product to use or what they want the project to look like. And they might be really willing to get their hands dirty. But from a project management aspect, that’s probably one of the things that people find the most challenging.

So we are really looking at the beginning to the middle to the end of a project, and you’re setting your budget and being realistic and accounting for 10% to 15% more into your budget for those surprises, incidentals and extras, overages.

Does every project have to be 100% do-it-yourself, or can you seek help?

That’s the other part of it: what part of the project do you want to do yourself?

Where do you want to save the labor costs? What are the best projects to save on labor and yet have a really good finished look?

The return on your investment is only as good as how you finish it. If you are not a very good tiler, you may get more of a return on your investment if you get somebody to help you.

It’s really about looking at your skill sets and what do you want to learn to do really, really well. And then feeling comfortable to hire someone else for the rest of the things you need to do.

With your outlook on projects, you seem like a natural to host shows on DIY and HGTV.

It was just one of those things that clicked, that I really, really enjoyed — looking at challenges and problems and being able to explain it; to simplify it for the regular viewer. Break it down for them and to explain how to go about fixing it.

The complaint I find with a lot of homeowners is that they’ll have an issue with something and they’ll call a contractor to help them with it. But contractors often don’t often speak in lay terms. Nobody really knows how to break it down.

That’s been one of my fortes and that’s why I’ve been able to continue in the business: home improvement broken down in a very accessible way so that you can make educated choices as a homeowner and move forward.

With a series like Renovation Raiders, it must be really rewarding to surprise homeowners with a completely new space.

They fall on their knees when they come into the house. They just can’t imagine that their house can turn into something so beautiful, with quality. There is this visceral reaction to the instant beautification of something.

Also, we are really trying to cater to their needs. We’re going to figure out, while talking to their spouse, what they are looking for.

You always want to remember who your audience is at the end of the day. Perhaps it’s a person who has never had a good quality home to live in, and we want to blow their mind.

It’s about bringing your best work and the best attitude you can possibly have. That is going to create an amazing project.

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To find out more about Amy Matthews, click here.

 

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