5 minute read
VICARIOUS | Perspective: Bryan Baeumler Takes a Seat
Canada is renowned throughout the world for our talented home decorators, designers, builders, renovators and realtors. If you are not convinced, watch HGTV and count the number of shows featuring a Canadian host. North America, and countries around the world, count on Canada to show them how to fix up their homes. And if there is one person in particular who best represents Canada and why our home improvement talent is so loved, its Bryan Baeumler. He is the cream in your Tim Hortons coffee.
We caught up with Bryan at a Habitat For Humanity build site as part of a Nissan Canada workday event and sat down with the reno-icon to discuss home building, family, life, what’s new and, of course, cars. True to form, Bryan is as likable in person as he is on TV. But what did you expect, he’s Canadian eh! True north to the core. So what is his favourite car to drive? The answer may surprise you.
You’ve renovated a lot of houses over the years, what do you enjoy most when you are actually working on a site?
If I had to choose one job to do for the rest of my life it would be taking old damaged structures and figuring out the logistics, engineering, replacing beams and structural issues, just finding solutions to all the problems. I think it’s in my DNA. If I see something that is broken, I feel like I have to fix it and it’s fun for me.
Have you done a lot of work on old houses and bringing them back to life?
Yeah, I spent a lot of time driving in my earlier days of construction, back in simpler days as an owner-operator myself with three or four other guys. Driving to Scarborough, the beach, you name it to fix hundred year old plus houses and you always find stuff behind the walls. But some of the issues and changes in the code over the years, puttng that mystery together and giving them something that is old but it’s safe, structural and modern is something I enjoy.
So the opposite, what’s your least favourite thing to do?
Well, the least favourite I would say is waiting for, uh, bureaucracy; waiting for paperwork, for permission and we all know how to do it. Obviously the permit process is very simple, that’s not what I am talking about.
What I am talking about is if you are building in the environmental zone, there are certain developmental rules in the municipality and you are trying to make changes. It makes sense and that’s great, but the system could be streamlined a little bit.
How often do you go in the offce?
You know, I don’t even have an offce. Our offce is just down the road here on Fairview (Burlington, ON). My wife has a beautiful glass offce and there is a couch in there. When I go into the offce, I sit on that couch and that’s it. I think I’ve seen that maybe on a few episodes. And that painting on the wall. I don’t actually have an offce. If I am in the offce, I am not at my best, in the best place suited to my skills.
So is there a project that you haven’t taken on yet that you would really like to?
I don’t know. Yesterday I was on an island in the Bahamas at a hotel, that’s pretty much a dream project. There are a few things left in my dream world. I’d like to do some multi-plexes, converting an old church would be fun. I am looking forward to going down south to do some overwater houses that are strictly solar-powered and fully self-powered, stuff like that.
Monday morning coffee- double-double, cappuccino or espresso?
Double-double.
We are currently shooting “Island of Bryan” at our hotel in Bahamas, so Monday morning looks like gettng up at 6 am and going fishing for a couple of hours with my boys, ha!
What do you catch down there?
Oh, tuna, mahi-mahi, yellow-tail snapper, right off the beach it’s unbelievable, and well we take the boat out a bit. Yeah. And then I watch Sarah do yoga for a half an hour or so, have a shower and go to work.
Favourite place to travel?
Anywhere on a boat.
Any dream bucket-list car that you want to drive? And how often do you take advantage of your celebrity status and have the opportunity to go on a track?
Last year I had a good friend of mine gettng married, so we had quite an interesting group of friends from LA and we went down to one of the tracks. We had McLarens, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, the whole thing. For the morning and the afternoon we went to a go-kart track. We had so much fun and the first thing they said was “don’t run into each other” We all just sort of looked at each other. The first question my friend asked was “what are these karts worth?” I said, “I know exactly what you are doing here!” We had a lot of fun.
I recently took some space back in my garage, I had a little Ferrari F430 black-on-black, it was a fantastic car, but it was time for a change. I’ve really being eyeing up the new Nissan GTR Nismo, well actually the Italian-design concept, it is beautiful.
I think you would look fantastic inside Godzilla.I think that might be the next one.
Watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPWBjbUFvoA
