Massachusetts homes are invading HGTV right now
You walk in the front door and the first thing you see is a toilet. Or maybe you take a staircase that leads into a closet.
They’re called “Frankenhouses,” and Stoughton’s Mike and Denese Butler are out to fix them.
The Massachusetts-set “Fix My Frankenhouse” — premiering on HGTV Sunday at 9 p.m., and streaming on discovery+ — sees the couple tackle what HGTV bills as “the oddest homes we’ve ever seen” in Wareham, Dedham, Rehoboth, Millbury, Weymouth, and Hanover, according to the Butlers.
Actually, Massachusetts homes and local renovators are all over HGTV right now: It’s also season 2 for the Massachusetts-set “Houses with History” hosted by a renovation team from Plympton. Let’s take a tour of the two shows, starting with: What’s a Frankenhouse?
“HGTV and the production company came up with that name,” said Mike Butler. Think “nine different floor types on the first floor alone. Or a Juliet balcony in your bedroom that oversees your dining room.”
The homes the show focuses on, Denese added, are “disjointed, patched-together, lacking flow. They just don’t make any sense.”
Mike, 39, is the builder; Denese, 36, the interior designer, and together they run The Perfect Vignette, a full-service interior design and build firm they founded in 2017.
“A production company that works with HGTV discovered our design company on Instagram; they reached out directly, which was really cool,” said Denese.
Both their fathers, John Butler and Peter Doyle, who are carpenters and general contractors, also star on the show.
“So you get some humor there,” Mike said with a laugh.
Houses become Frankenhouses over time, Mike said. Owners might update the kitchen one year. Then five years later, build an addition. Then another. “It just solves an immediate need and not necessarily like a long-term thought-out plan,” he says.
To fix them, he says, “We take a step back, listen to the owners’ needs and their wish list. Then we look at the bigger picture, look at the floor plan as a whole,” Mike said. “We reorganize the heart of the home.”
Meanwhile over at the Massachusetts-set “Houses with History,” season 2 premiered earlier this month on HGTV. It’s hosted by a team from Plympton’s Full Circle Homes: history buff Mike Lemieux, his wife, designer Jen Macdonald, and carpenter Rich Soares.
As their name suggests, Full Circle’s bread-and-butter is restoring run-down historic properties to their full potential. The show focuses on the house and its history.
New episodes air Saturdays at 9 p.m.; past episodes stream on discovery+. The first two of this season’s episodes saw them renovate homes in Fairhaven and Middleboro. Next up is Scituate April 22, they said. Synopsis: The team restores a 1700s center-chimney Cape with a rich maritime history.
“There’s a little bit of a history on shipwrecks in the Scituate area,” Macdonald said. “This house has some links to that.”
Similar to the Butlers, Macdonald said four or five years ago their business caught the eye of producers. “This is our normal business — it just became a show, as well,” she said.
Historic homes face the typical problems of any older home: “Rot, water infiltration, bugs,” said Lemieux. “The bigger problems are the ways they’ve been changed over the years and have newer work done that may not have been of the same standard as the original craftsmanship. The trick is trying to peel those layers away, make it functional for a modern homeowner but also do justice to the story.”