The birth of any show is always a rough one.

You need to have a home to go back to, whether it's a hotel room or a barn. It's only home when he's there.

That was always my frustration with so many of these shows, because design is not an ambush... it's a relationship. You have to know how people move and live and work to be able to design for them.

But instead of that stuff you get relationships with people and neighbors that you would never get in a city. People in small towns are a lot more open.

It's about the power of design and the power of the human spirit. It's above paying anybody to do something stupid for money like reality television does - like ambushing people.

I think that, in comparison, New Yorkers and Northerners are so guarded.

Like I said, TLC has enough of my life. I have to keep some of it for myself.