The initial slogan for USA Network's new home-building challenge show, "House Wars"-in which families compete to transform rough shells into dream homes-was "Four families ... four designers ... twenty-four days."
Now it's "Four families ... four designers ... four houses."
Executive producer Denise Cramsey explains: "That was our original plan, 24 days. Then when we got to Arizona, we had a number of monsoons and sandstorms and at least one citywide gas shortage, fuel for your car, so that became 21."
Premiering Monday at 10 p.m. EDT, and airing for 8 weeks, "House Wars" is Cramsey's first TV project after a stint as executive producer of TLC's successful room-makeover show "Trading Spaces."
In her new show, the families acquire the shells of the houses and, with the help of an assigned designer, have to finish a room in their assigned houses each week.
One by one, families are eliminated (or "evicted"). In the end, the audience chooses which family wins the ultimate prize - the house it designed and built.
Along with Cramsey, Ben Silverman of Reveille ("Coupling," "The Restaurant," "Nashville Star") is executive producer. H.T. Owens, Mark Koops and Joel Klein are co-executive producers.
The designers are Darla Blake, Nicole Facciuto, Barclay Fryery and Jakob Hawkins. The families are the Andersons from Texas, the Dahms (among whom are blond, 25-year-old triplet models) from Minnesota, the Garays of New York, and the Hasselbachs (headed by former Denver Bronco Harald Hasselbach). Kelly Packard ("Ripley's Believe It or Not") is host.
Cramsey originally wanted to do the show in Las Vegas, thinking the finished homes could be either primary or vacation residences.
"But it turns out," she says, "when we started talking to builders, (asking) who's going to build me four houses all on the same street, who's going to give me one to keep and three to use, who's going to let me decorate it however I want inside-we found D.R. Horton, the builder we went with. They said, 'We'll tell you where we can get you four right now - Phoenix, Ariz.'"
So crew and participants braved the conditions Cramsey already mentioned, plus 120-degree heat, to create their 2,700-square-foot homes - all without the expertise of a carpenter.
"The families did it themselves," Cramsey says. "We did have a safety guy on set that helped out. As it turned out, each of the families but one had one person who knew how to do it. One family was total novices to the how-to arena, although they did spend the weeks before they came to Arizona taking those Home Depot classes."
In Cramsey's view, the appeal of "House Wars" begins with the same challenges that make "Trading Spaces" such a hit: time and budget, plus the added pressure of living in the house as it's being built and working side-by-side with one's relatives.
"With the other shows," Cramsey says, "there's jeopardy, but if you don't like your room, you can just repaint it. But on 'House Wars,' you spend 21 days, three weeks, making over room after room after room, and at the end of that, you have to turn in the keys.
"That's serious business. It's not about the materials; it's about the love that you put into your room; it's about doing it with your family. Then all that stuff just gets turned over to someone else.
"It would break your heart. It broke my heart when I was there. The nights of our evictions were the hardest nights for me, because there's someone who has to give up their dream."
But conceivably that someone could get his or her dream back, because the remaining three houses revert to the builder to be put up for sale.
"They're pretty good-sized," Cramsey says. "They're right along a golf course, so that's nice. They have little back yards and little patios, air-conditioned, of course. That goes without saying, right?"
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