Netflix's Hack My Home inspires us to transform our living spaces

Design solutions make us look anew at our seemingly cramped homes to see if we can craft pull-out cupboards under the stairs

Thu, 10 Aug, 2023 - 09:43

Carol O’Callaghan

Have you noticed how everything is a hack these days when it comes to doing jobs in the home?

Trending large are the bicarbonate of soda and vinegar hack as a cure-all, from cleaning grubby grouting to unblocking a kitchen sink drain, and dolling up a flat-packed bookcase to look more bespoke.

Hosts Brooks Atwood and Ati Williams chat to Zany Dunlap and her daughter Minnah after transforming her bedroom in episode six.

So, when the American interiors show Hack My Home screened on Netflix I was happy to soak up what I thought would be handy tips and tricks in the spirit of have-a-go-yourself.

But, this is a series that will have us casting new eyes over our seemingly cramped homes here in Ireland to see if we can craft some pull-out storage cupboards under the stairs, or stop prevaricating over emptying out the garage that’s never seen a car within its walls — that garage might just be an extra room in the making.

Because it turns out the US production is a full-blown renovation and interior design show, with some episodes focused on renovating entire floors right back to the wall insulation as we saw in the home of Chuck and Melissa Westbrook and their four energetic little boys in episode one.

“We love our house,” says Melissa from Atlanta, Georgia. “It’s the only place our family has ever called home but we’re maxed out on space.”

Hosts Brooks Atwood, Jessica Banks and Ati Williams explore utilising more space in episode five for homeowners Justin and Madison Collier and their five children, including infant quadruplets.

But like lots of homeowners who think they’re cramped, the Westbrooks simply aren’t using their space efficiently, including a large, underutilised basement.

Typical of the American housing stock, basements spanning the entire footprint of a property are pretty much standard, but like Irish garages, basements can be dumping grounds in need of a visit by Marie Kondo, while problems like growing families, evolving needs and intergenerational living means the show’s participating families struggle for sufficient and efficient space.

Jessica Banks, Mikel Welch, Brooks Atwood and Ati Williams unveil a newly renovated space, including baby changing stations, to Justin and Madison Collier in episode five.

Enter the design professionals and it quickly becomes apparent that the amateur nature of hacks will not resolve these problems. Big-time creativity is unleashed in storage solutions integrating electronics and computer screens hidden in custom-designed and built furniture, and innovative storage solutions, often mobile and motorised to divide spaces and open them up again as necessary.

The ideas and designs are the work of the show hosts, engineer Jessica Banks, builder Ati Williams, innovator Brooks Atwood, a nutty professor type who looks like a candidate for the part of Doc in a reboot of Back to the Future, and interior designer Mikel Welch who might look familiar as one of the hosts of HGTV’s Trading Spaces.

But it’s the space-planning resolutions that the show triumphs in, instead of adding on that beloved feature of Irish home improvements, the extension.

Episode three sees Paul and Emma Buckman raising their four granddaughters in a pod-style house which Emma says, “has tons of personality but it’s not a practical living space”.

With just one bedroom and a loft space for the girls located in a cavernous domed ceiling, it prompts the hilarious Mikel Welch, who the camera loves, by the way, to exclaim, “Y’all living like ‘Little House on the Prairie’.”

It might have felt exciting and adventurous as a child to want a cool loft bedroom, but the reality for the growing girls is no personal space and inadequate storage and functionality despite Paul doing hacks to try to make this unusual space work, including installing a second bathroom himself.

The pros get to work and the result is a spectacular bedroom, homework, and bathroom space, which reduces the girls to tears of joy.

There’s certainly an emotional element to some of the episodes as it’s clear these families could not have afforded to do much, if any, of this work, let alone achieve the level of innovation, craft and implementation.

Mikel Welch and Brooks Atwood demonstrate a motorised retractable column of computer screens allowing a dining table to become a desk for space-strapped Terrence and Erica Redmond in episode eight.

It transpires Netflix paid for everything, confirmed by episode two’s homeowner Jen Chan, who posted on her Instagram account, “They paid for everything including housing while we were out of the home.”

Even though it’s the four hosts — heavyweights of American interiors — getting all the gratitude for the finished projects, it’s the tradesmen who are the unacknowledged heroes, especially carpenters Freddie Romero and Paddy Collins, geniuses at taking ideas, some of them bonkers, and making them a practical reality.

Episode seven’s collapsible staircase is Freddie’s work, installed to climb to a bedroom made from clawing space out of a double-height ceiling, and then unobtrusively folding widthways against a wall. Homeowner Elizabeth Norris exclaims, “It’s a work of art.”

As yet, there’s no announcement from Netflix about a second series, but if a starring role was given to Freddie Romero, Mikel Welch and his wry soundbites, and a guest starring role for Marie Kondo, I say bring it on.