Jon and Maranda Meyer of Latonia won a spot on DIY’s Sledgehammer show to demolish their old kitchen to make way for a new one — and in the process, opened up the space in their home to a new living room as well.
Below is the NKyTribune story by Greg Paeth about the project, before the televised Sledgehammer show on Monday night. Now, we’re sharing Greg Paeth’s pictures — before and after — of the couple’s home, where they live with their two young children.
By Greg Paeth
NKyTribune contributor
Maranda jokes that her sister, Margo Menefee, believes her sibling owes her an immense debt of gratitude for at least two reasons.
Reason one goes back 12 years when Maranda was visiting Margo when she lived in California. Margo, who now lives in Ft. Thomas, convinced Maranda that she should attend a taping of “The Price Is Right,” the long-running game show where contestants win prizes if they can guess the correct price of an item.
Maranda, wearing a Northern Kentucky University T-shirt, was selected from the audience to play and wound up winning $10,000.
Reason two is far more recent.
Margo spotted a news item on TV last summer about the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) network series “Sledgehammer,” where homeowners get a chance to use a sledgehammer on a room – or rooms – that they want renovated. “Sledgehammer” agrees to rehab whatever room or rooms the homeowners can entirely demolish inside of 30 minutes.
Margo urged Maranda and her husband Jon to follow through on the “Sledgehammer” application process, which began about a year ago.
By last November, Jon and Maranda knew that their home, located directly across the street from Ninth District School in Covington’s Latonia neighborhood, had been selected for the show.
As the cameras rolled, the two of them grabbed sledgehammers and spent 30 minutes whacking away on the kitchen, which was located between the living room and the family. Viewers will get a first chance to see Jon and Maranda and a “Sledgehammer” crew headed by Jason Cameron at work on the Indiana Avenue home at 11 p.m. Monday on the DIY network.
The two-story, four-bedroom brick had been built in 1958 for Jon’s grandparents, Eugene and Dolores Meyer, who raised six children in the home.
“The whole project was much easier for her (Maranda) than it was for me because I was knocking down my grandma’s stuff,” said Jon, who bought the house with Maranda after his grandmother died in 2009, six years after her husband.
“I was negative throughout the whole application process,” said Jon, who owns the LaRosa’s Pizza restaurant in the 400 block of Madison Avenue in downtown Covington. “I thought it was a waste of time and that we would never get on the show.”
But Jon and Maranda’s surprise is evident when the cameras caught their reaction to the news that they had been selected for the show and that they had just minutes to prepare for their demolition duties.
Jon said he also was surprised when he started whacking away at the soffit above the kitchen cabinets.
He said he thought the soffit would crumble with a couple of whacks from the sledgehammer. Instead, he found out quickly that rather than drywall, it was made of plaster that had been affixed to a steel mesh screen.
Jon said the entire 30-minute demo was spent in the kitchen, which ruled out moving on to another part of the house that the Meyers had hoped to renovate with help from the “Sledgehammer” crew.
A number of the homes that have been featured on the show are located in and around Greater Cincinnati because the production company, JayTV, is based in downtown Covington. Former WCPO-TV reporter Jay Shatz heads the company, which also produces “Desperate Landscapes” for DIY.
Cameron, a Toledo native, heads the home renovation and landscape crews that are featured on the programs.
The Meyers are prohibited from showing photos of the finished product or even discussing it in any detail until the show airs for the first time Monday. “Sledgehammer” publicity materials, however, explain how the home was given a “Mid-Century Modern” feel with work that was completed over a six-week period in November and December of last year.
Both of the Meyers are appreciative of the work that was done, for a variety of reasons.
“There was no counter space and we were concerned that one of the kids would get a hand stuck in the lazy susan,” said Maranda, who is the assistant principal at Covington’s Latonia Elementary School. “It’s so much more functional now and you can move around the room more easily.
A kitchen table and a counter peninsula that jutted out from the wall had made it difficult to maneuver through the room
“I kept saying you can’t do that because this is my grandma’s house, but I knew it would have to be changed,” Jon said.
Besides having someone else come in and do most of the work, Jon said another advantage is that the “Sledgehammer” crew makes all of the decisions about the design, the colors, materials and, to a degree, the furnishings.
“That took a lot of the fight out of the game because there was no arguing about what colors, for example, to choose,” Jon said. “How many people have had that fight in the paint department at Home Depot?”
One other surprise for Jon involved his grandparents’ old living room couch that had been down in the basement, where its next stop was to be the landfill.
But revealing too much about the fate of that couch might violate some of the “Sledgehammer” rules about what can and can’t be revealed before the show airs.