Los Gatos Weekly-Times
Cover Story
Photograph courtesy of 'Designing Spaces'
Local TV personality Kim Yonenake (center) and Steve Crook, owner of General Woodcraft, discuss Mataverde Brazilian Hardwood and the benefits of using it to make an outdoor deck during filming at the Thompson home in Los Gatos.
All Decked Out
The Thompsons of Los Gatos have a new deck, and it's a television star page
By Jennifer McBride
Little did the Thompson family know that when they hired local builder Jon Anderson to build them a new deck, it would land them on television. But that's what happened to the Los Gatos family.
The Thompsons were wrapping up the home improvement project when the TV show Designing Spaces called and said, "Can we come over?"
About a year ago, the Thompsons, who live in the Los Gatos hills off Shannon Road and Santa Rosa Drive, found themselves admiring their friends' brand-new deck. The friends told them all about how it was made with a unique type of hardwood called Mataverde Brazilian hardwood, or ipe (pronounced "ee-pay"). They referred the Thompsons to their builder, Jon Anderson Building in Los Gatos.
"We liked the deck, and we liked Jon, so we decided to do it," Toneh Thompson says.
The Thompsons and Anderson planned a balcony for the upstairs and a spacious deck downstairs, with open railings made of wire to help open up the deck and allow the Thompsons to admire their picturesque view of the Silicon Valley. Anderson built the upstairs balcony first, and then got to work on the downstairs deck.
"Our old deck used to [have solid railings]; I hated it," says Thompson. "I love the openness of our deck now."
Not long after the downstairs deck was finished came the call from Designing Spaces.
"Basically, our show is about designing your space," says director George Tweddle of O2 Productions out of Florida, the arm of Quorum Productions that produces the show. "It's ideas and tips, and commentary on decorating your home both inside and out."
The 30-minute show is not currently syndicated, Tweddle says, so they buy time on certain networks, aiming for at least two episodes per month. Currently, the show can most often be seen on WE, the Women's Entertainment network, and TLC, The Learning Channel. Soon, it hopes to strike a deal with Lifetime.
For the episode Designing Spaces was planning on outdoor living spaces and decks, a company called General Woodcraft agreed to sponsor the show and provide materials. General Woodcraft and the show decided to center the episode on ipe.
What's so special about 'ipe'?
"It's the kind of wood you can put in the dirt or ground, and it will last longer than wood that has been chemically treated to last," Anderson explains. "It's really dense; it has a bending and breaking capacity 10 times stronger than that of redwood. It's stronger and more attractive. So you get a nice look, and less splitting and cracking and stains."
Thompson loves how little work her new deck requires. Other than sweeping it now and then and cleaning off any bird droppings or tree sap that falls on it, she says she rarely has to do anything.
"There's virtually no maintenance; you don't have to seal it or clean it," she says. "And it's too hard for bugs to get into, which is great."
This isn't to say the wood has no issues at all, Anderson says, but certainly fewer than other types of softer woods.
"You still need to maintain it to prevent splits and cracks, but it's less vulnerable to the outdoors than other woods," he explains.
Anderson says he was first introduced to ipe several years ago, before he started Jon Anderson Building, when he was working with local landscape architect Jim Murray. The two were working together on a 2,000-square-foot deck in Saratoga.
"[Murray] was at the end of his career, just before retirement, and he had found this wood and said he had never seen anything like it," Anderson recalls. "So, he started using it in all his [deck] projects."
When it came time to plot out the location of the episode, Designing Spaces called Steve Crook, president of General Woodcraft. Crook told them about Anderson, to whom he supplied ipe to for projects in the Bay Area--the Thompson home, and the Rissi family home in Portola Valley.
The show contacted Anderson, who sent Tweddle and the staff photos of the two projects. Tweddle and his crew loved them, and decided to fly out to California to film the episode.
Since the work was already complete, the producers had Anderson build a mini-deck to demonstrate the sturdiness of the wood and the special EB-TY hidden fastening system he used to secure it. EB-TY won the MVP 2005 award for most valuable product in the building industry.
"We can't always show the 'before' in all situations, but we do whenever we can," explains Tweddle. "So, for this episode, we just said, 'If you're thinking of putting in a deck, we recommend this product, the Mataverde wood,' and we showed the finished [deck]."
Thompson laughs as she recalls the day the crew showed up for filming--she wasn't even home. It was a busy day for her, so she left her 18-year-old son at home to greet the crew and said they could come in and do anything they liked. So, the show features Anderson, Crook and Kim Yonenake as the field correspondent. Yonenake has been a TV news anchor with KTVU Fox 2 and a few other local broadcast entities.
Unfortunately, the Thompsons don't appear in the episode--but now they can say their home is a TV star.
The outdoor living/decks episode of 'Designing Spaces' is tentatively scheduled to air May 26 on WE and May 28 on TLC (check local listings). Visit www.designingspaces.tv or www.quorumproductions.tv.
