TV woodworker is just too busy for his projects

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This article was published 12/05/2002 (8557 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the woman in Ontario who is tired of hearing her husband say, “If only I could get John Sillaots over, we’d have these crown mouldings and baseboards done in an afternoon,” Sillaots has bad news and good news.

The bad is that no, he won’t be dropping by. The good is if she and her husband keep watching his show, they’ll learn how to do the task themselves. And have some fun in the process.

Sillaots is that “guy-next-door” host of HGTV Canada’s In the Workshop, the daily half-hour show that reaches a half-million or so cable viewers in Canada and an estimated few million more abroad. On the show, he and his guests demonstrate how to create everything from a simple toy to a fancy armoire, while managing to make woodworking appear to be so close to effortless that just about anybody with patience and lumber could do it.

Note to disappointed Ontario viewer: John’s sorry. Really. He’d like to help you out, and he knows he’d have a great time. “But if I come to your house, then other people will ask, and — well, I know what my wife is gonna say.”

Projects languish

His wife, Sandy Sillaots, might mention the skylight they’ve been meaning to install. Or their bathroom, still awaiting its new soaker tub. And what about that home theatre they’ve been planning? Fact is, though he’s just put a water line out to the barn on their working farm near Toronto and just completed construction of a new workshop (it is five times the size of his old one “but already too small”), the Sillaots’ home might never get finished.

Which suits him just fine. His home projects often turn up as one of the 52 (this season) to 65 (for 2003) featured annually on the show, or in Canadian Home Workshop magazine, where he is a contributing editor. Recently, viewers have followed along as he made a garden arbour and put up a false beam. Each “made for a good show!”

Although Sillaots the woodworker is always happy to be in the workshop — his own on the farm, or the one at the studio of the show’s creators, ITW Productions in Toronto, Sillaots the performer relishes getting out to meet fellow woodies. He’s in town Wednesday to demonstrate “some simple projects” using Minwax products, part of an eight-day, 10-city cross-country jaunt for National Woodworking Month.

In the Workshop has an annual August-to-December shooting schedule, taping four episodes per day. Each features a project designed by Sillaots and his wife Sandy (a decorator and landscape designer), expert guests and a raft of handy tips. The style is up close and personal — just John, today’s guest and the crew. No audience. Each episode is repeated, usually four times per season, “because watching just once, you miss things,” Sillaots says.

In every show, viewers get step-by-step instructions, along with Sillaots’ homey advice: “Measure twice, cut once,” he tells his audience while reaching for the ever-present safety glasses and parking them above his firefighter’s handlebar mustache. “So let’s get started”

According to Neilsen ratings, half a million or more Canadians tune in at least once a week. (In Winnipeg, In the Workshop airs weekdays at 6:30 a.m., weekends at 6 a.m., repeated at 6 p.m. weekdays and 4:30 on Saturdays.) Another estimated 20 million Americans catch it on digital DIY network and, just since December, Sillaots has joined the ranks of Canadian entertainment exports to England and parts of Europe.

In his late 40s, Sillaots is a shorter, rounder Mr. Greenjeans in plaid shirt and carpenter’s apron, with pencils sprouting from the front pocket. His favourite-uncle appeal spans generations, with fans as young as three and as old as great-grandparents lining up to meet him at tool demos and trade shows. An increasing number of these fans are women, Sillaots reports with satisfaction. Woodworking, he says, is “a growing hobby,” particularly among boomers.

Why do we watch? And why do we trust this guy?

“It’s all just very low-key, very personal, so people see me and my house and they feel they know me,” he says. “I just try to keep it simple and plain. I don’t try to flower it up.”

Which makes for good TV, says Vanessa Case, director of programming for HGTV. “John is so inviting. He has fun making each project, he has fun making the show, and all of this is obvious when you watch. Even if one show’s project doesn’t interest every viewer, they will still be entertained, learn something and be more prepared for the next project they try. Also, the tips viewers pick up while watching In the Workshop can be used in so many other ways around the house.”

It’s all about giving people “the confidence, instruction and inspiration” to try “unique but realistic woodworking projects that can be done by anyone who knows a little and wants to learn more, ” or is an expert wanting to try something different, she says. “He never intimidates viewers, only inspires them.”

Which is not at all like his own early workshop experiences, both at school and at home. School had “the usual lineups to use each machine” during once-weekly shop classes. “A tinkering kinda guy,” his father worked as a mechanic six days a week and had no time for woodworking.

“People would come visit on Sundays and bring their broken watch and he’d fix it. That was his hobby,” he recalls. Unlike the son, Sillaots senior had little interest in passing along his skills. His style was “to virtually take over the project. So what I want to do,” with both his own four children and viewers, “is give a little advice and walk away. Let them do it.”

People often ask where he used to teach. He didn’t — he was a Toronto cop for 28 years. It wasn’t until the mid-’80s, when he and Sandy bought an old house in the city, that he tried his hand at renovating. Once a farmhouse, it produced one of the few truly bad encounters John Sillaots has ever had with a tool, and changed the course of his life.

After stripping layers of wallpaper in a bedroom, he uncovered lath-and-horsehair plaster, the great-grandparent of today’s drywall. Wanting to know how solid these old walls were, he took a hammer “and just tapped the ceiling in a corner” which brought the entire room crashing down around him.

“Wow, what a mess!” Sillaots recalls. “I was covered in dust,” but fortunately not injured. “Seems that wallpaper was the only thing holding it all together. So that’s when I learned how to drywall. It was all just trial and error.” He went from teaching himself how to do “rough renovation” to finished carpentry, to building furniture by just “trying things, and asking people when I didn’t know.”

In 1989, the editors of Canadian Home Workshop magazine wanted to do a piece on backyard play equipment, just when Sillaots was trying his hand at designing and building a set for his kids. The editors liked the plans, and that led to more assignments, which led to appearances on Canada AM, Toronto’s City-TV, and guest spots on In the Workshop, where they “just kept inviting me back.”

When the show’s original host left, Sillaots was surprised to be invited to do a screen test, and astonished to win the gig. “So I asked, ‘Why me?’ And they said, ‘We could pick an actor and 20 years from now he might be a woodworker. Or in two years, we could teach you how to be an actor.’ ”

In his five seasons as host, “I haven’t become an actor. But I have become more comfortable with the camera and with the guests. They’re the real experts. I know a bit about everything, but every episode, I learn something new.”

Despite a heavy schedule of shooting, appearances and other commitments, not to mention farm chores, it wasn’t until last July that he “retired” from his day job as a police staff sergeant.

‘I’m still me’

Fans frequently spot him and say, “You’re John Sillaots. Isn’t that neat?” and laugh. This amuses him. Despite the fame, “I’m still me,” just a regular Joe who likes wood. He still shops at his local lumber store. He still makes every project on the show, with Sandy doing the finishes, then loads them into the truck and carts them into the Toronto studio. Those that he doesn’t “buy back” for his home are sold at an annual Alliance-Atlantis charity auction, with proceeds, after materials costs, going to Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

It’s May, the middle of lambing season, and Sillaots has 27 expectant or new woolly mothers to attend to. And there’s this trip to get ready for, other interviews to do, other deadlines to meet. Despite this, he has the same friendly, leisurely manner on the phone as he does on the show. He can take all the time we need to do this right.

Nothing seems to faze him. But behind the kindly nature lurk a few strongly held opinions developed over the two decades or so he has spent becoming a master renovator and woodworker.

Most people tend to renovate too quickly, he says. “Everybody does it. Sandy and I used to, too. But you need to sit back and assess what needs to be done, how extreme you’re going to go. Tell the truth, we’ve reno’d our whole house three times. Some of that was just out of boredom. You know, you do it, then you get the better idea.”

So slow down. And get kids involved. Too few kids get to learn how to use tools, a concern that has led him to squeeze high school appearances into his schedule.

Then, of course, there are tools themselves. Tools are “neat,” but not as neat as what you can do with them. No tool junkie, he says you can get into the workshop with just a hammer, saw, screwdriver and some wood. With just these basics, “you can’t fine-tune,” which translates to: You need more tools to create things that are the essence of neat.

“The better the tool, the better the finished product,” he says, though he tends to avoid the snazziest on principle. “I’m hesitant about buying things that are expensive, because a lot of people will just buy it when they see I have it,” he says. “I tell people to buy a good product and look after it. You collect your tools. It’s an ongoing process. And if you don’t have a given tool, I always mention an alternative way to do it.”

Of course, the toolmakers all send him samples, both to test and in the hope he will use them on the show. “I’m careful what I use. If I like it, I buy it. If not, it goes back.”

With a growing number of fans in a growing number of markets, there are increasing demands and even less opportunity to just tinker in his own workshop. What he’d really like to do, when he gets the time, is a series of books. He already has three planned: on workshops, indoor and outdoor furniture.

Say you somehow missed the episode where John Sillaots made that great little potting station, the perfect gift for Mum. With his book, you could still get John’s guidance to make it in your workshop. Now wouldn’t that be neat?

To learn how to meet John Sillaots in person, and win a Minwax/LePages woodworking tool kit, see page E8.

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