DIY Network flips for East Nashville home rehabber
Rats skittered over broken syringes, trash and dog feces. Broken toilets were stuffed with waste from squatters.
Troy Dean Shafer sometimes gagged through his respirator mask as he and his songwriter friends shoveled garbage out of that Hermosa Street house in North Nashville.
“It was pungent,” he said slowly. “You didn’t know what you were breathing in.”
Through the stench, Shafer beamed, full of hope. He knew he’d arrived.
A struggling musician, Shafer — son of a successful homebuilder — had just cleared about $10,000 after a six-week restoration on another home.
“That, to me, was a huge payday.”
He was about to make the same on the North Nashville home, and, despite the smell, Shafer loved it.
He loved the relatively quick money, loved being able to give $12-an-hour work to his buddies, loved making something nice out of complete garbage.
“At that point, I was hooked,” Shafer said.
With his parents’ help, Shafer started his own company, “Nashville Flipped,” which has grown into its own DIY network show of the same name. The show launches at 9 p.m. Wednesday.
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Shafer began his construction career at age 13, when he hauled materials on job sites for his homebuilder dad in Erie, Pa.
After college, though, Shafer, a burgeoning musician, moved to Nashville in 2005 to become a country star.
He fell in with singer/songwriter Billy Falcon and Falcon’s weekly music jam, the Sewing Circle. Shafer picked up some music gigs here and there, but he worked jobs at Best Buy in Antioch and a high-end sound system installation company to pay the bills.
Shafer also started to make and sell oil paintings of houses.
After a few years, Shafer and his parents worried that he hadn’t found a way to consistently earn good money. Dad said he would come to Nashville to help his son try his hand at home restoration.
It started in 2009 with a run-down home at 506 Arrington St. in East Nashville. He and his dad bought it for $31,000, did six weeks and $40,000 of renovations and sold it for about $96,000.
That second house in North Nashville really got Shafer hooked and led him to start his own company.
After a year or so, some cable TV producers approached him about a reality show. But Shafer was uncomfortable with producers wanting drama and confrontation.
“They’d say, ‘We want to hear arguments with employees, arguments with sub-contractors.’ They wanted to hear bickering with me and my dad,” he said.
“It wasn’t my real life and it wasn’t a life I wanted to portray on television.”
Shortly after, Shafer met Mike Wolfe of “American Pickers” at a Nashville Wal-Mart, and the two hit it off and became friends.
Wolfe eventually introduced Shafer to producer friends at HGTV and DIY networks, and that sparked the “Nashville Flipped” show debuting this week.
Shafer said taping a TV series has a few challenges. Work goes slower when cameras are around, and some sub-contractors aren’t very understanding.
But Shafer hopes the inconveniences and the national exposure will help him grow Nashville Flipped, maybe even into other markets.
“The worst is behind me — the long hours and the cameras,” Shafer said.
“Even if they don’t do a second season, I’ve got nine 30-minute commercials about how passionate I am about historic homes and what I can do with historic houses.”
Reach Brad Schmitt at 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.
Tuning in
What: New DIY network show "Nashville Flipped," starring East Nashville home flipper Troy Dean Shafer.
When: Season premieres with two 30-minute episodes airing back to back at 9 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Comcast/Xfinity channel 121, AT&T U-verse channel 454 and DirecTV channel 230.