Former host of popular PBS series still fixing up homes — including his own partial adobe

From the Santa Fe New Mexican.com - Home-renovation expert Steve Thomas, who gained fame as a TV host and is now promoting Habitat for Humanity's model for sustainable housing, says renovating his tiny, winter home on Santa Fe's east side is challenging. "For a guy who's cut his teeth in New England on wood-frame houses and timber-frame houses," he said, "wrapping my head around mud as a building material has been ..." Thomas' voice trailed off as if searching for the right word, then he added theatrically, "You can build with mud? Come on!" Soon after taking over as host of PBS' This Old House in 1989, Thomas came to Santa Fe to work on the renovation of a house with contractor John Wolf. Thomas said he and his wife and son, then 3, stayed in Santa Fe for a few weeks during the project and have returned at least once a year since. In 2007, the Boston-based Thomases bought a 1,000-square-foot "fixer-upper" — partly adobe, partly frame and partly Pen tile — off Gonzales Road. They rented it out for two years, and when the renter left they began to spend their winters there and their summers in a camp on an island in Maine. "Like most boomers who [have become] empty nesters, we want to downsize, so we're going from a 3,500-square-foot historic home in Boston to 1,000 [square feet] here," he said. Thomas said the Santa Fe house needs a lot of work, is currently gutted, and he's still considering how best to remodel it. Read more

Former host of popular PBS series still fixing up homes — including his own partial adobe