Abram builds on popularity of improvement shows

BOSTON -- Norm Abram may be television's most unlikely star.

Instead of Hollywood leading-man looks, the host and master carpenter of "This Old House" and the PBS series "The New Yankee Workshop" has a flannel shirt.

"Those shirts are who he is," said executive producer and director Russell Morash, who first brought Abram into American living rooms nearly 30 years ago.

Abram's easygoing manner and expertise in crafting furniture have earned him the admiration of his peers and recognition from millions of Americans, inspiring amateur woodworkers and dazzling those with no experience.

Leaning on a bench at the neat workshop in suburban Boston, where the tangy scent of paint and adhesives mixes with the sweet smell of sawdust, Abram said he expected "The New Yankee Workshop" to go off the air after a few years. Instead, it recently kicked off its 20th season.

"It just picked up some momentum and it just keep rolling one year after the other," he said. It's now shown on nearly all PBS stations and attracted an average of 1.5 million viewers per week last season.

Abram is stopped by fans at airports, mobbed at trade shows and receives thousands of e-mails from amateurs who send in pictures of their projects inspired by the show. When he brings his mother to the doctor's office, all her doctor wants to talk about is the show, he said. Even children send crayon portraits.

"Norm could be your neighbor or your shop teacher in high school," said Henry Becton Jr., WGBH-TV's former president, who was program manager when "This Old House" got its start. "He's got an avuncular quality, which inspires trust in the audience. And kids pick up on that. They know this is an honest guy."

One man told Abram at a trade show that his wife banned him from watching the show until their toddler son learned his grandfather's name.

"Every time this little boy would hear my voice he'd shout 'Norm!' and go running into the room to watch the show with his father," Abram said.

Abram has kept the show fresh over the years by tackling a range of projects from the simple to the complicated, from the functional to the ornamental. He has built a sailboat, a garden shed, an ornate tallboy, a clock, a variety of chairs, chests and more.

"We kind of go on our gut feeling and we've been lucky because we've kind of hit it," he said.

This season Abram tackles the show's most ambitious project: a custom kitchen built entirely in the workshop. The project will take up nine of the season's 13 episodes. No previous project has ever taken more than two episodes.

"The kitchen is the most functional room in a home and kitchen improvements are one of the best investments a homeowner can make," he said, explaining the reasoning behind the project.

Abram takes a visitor on a tour of the kitchen, explaining everything in detail. He doesn't just explain how to do it, but why it is being done, the economy behind it, its practicality, and the materials and tools needed to do the job.

"He's a perfectionist and the audience knows they're seeing quality work," said Tom Silva, the general contractor on "This Old House" who has worked with Abram for about 20 years.

The new season also dips into the archives to update one of the show's most popular projects, an Adirondack chair Abram built in the second season. But even this project has a twist. For the first time he invites a woodworking novice -- the show's production coordinator, Sara Ferguson -- to build an Adirondack chair, table and footrest alongside him.

"To see a woman on the show, trying her hand at it, hopefully other women say 'Wow, if she can do it, I can do it, too,' " Ferguson said.

Building stuff has been virtually a lifelong pursuit for Abram, who was inspired by his father growing up in Milford, a suburb of Boston.

His father was always handy with his tools, and eventually gave up a job as a mechanic in a woolen mill to work as a builder. Abram remembers at age 9 helping his father lay hardwood flooring at a job site one Christmas Eve.

It wasn't long before he was doing his own projects. "I was always playing around with something, I could just get lost for hours in the basement just hacking around with pieces of wood and just using my imagination a little bit," he said.

He worked with his father during summers all through high school and while at the University of Massachusetts, where he took engineering and business classes to complement his craftsman skills.

"My father didn't want me to be in the trades, but I just always had a feeling that I wanted to have a construction business," he said.

If he hadn't, he never would have met Morash.

The two crossed paths while Abram was building a home for a friend of Morash's on Nantucket. Morash was impressed with his work and hired Abram to build a barn on his property.

That gray barn with blue trim stands today as the front end of the workshop.

At that time in the late 1970s, Morash was just formulating the plans for "This Old House." He needed a woodworker, and Abram was the perfect fit.

"We've been working together ever since," said Morash, who was also the man who brought Julia Child and original "Victory Garden" guru Jim Crockett to television.

The three PBS icons share common traits, including the ability to make what seems baffling appear so simple through a step-by-step process.

"Julia and Norm can both think in the abstract," he said. "Julia could taste something in her mind before even making it. Norm can look at a project and figure out the problems ahead of time. That's what makes him so good."