Bob Vila
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Best known as the television show host for This Old House, Bob Vila’s Home Again and Bob Vila, Bob Vila is the most trusted name in home improvement. Now, with BobVila.com, he makes it possible for do-it-yourself homeowners to get all of the information they need to get the job done.
After 29 years as the world’s most successful home improvement television host, Bob Vila remains one of America’s most beloved television personalities and the country’s best-known authority on home improvement.
A Miami native, Bob graduated from the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. He spent time in the Peace Corps and then worked and traveled in Europe for two years. Upon returning to the U.S., he settled in Boston, where he studied at the Boston Architectural Center and established his own residential remodeling and design business.
It was Bob’s restoration of a Victorian Italianate house in Newton Center, Mass., that caught the attention of a Boston Globe reporter who wrote a feature on the house. This article sparked the interest of a producer at WGBH, the Boston PBS affiliate, who subsequently produced a pilot program on home renovation using Vila and the Newton Center home as the focal point, which led to the iconic, groundbreaking TV series This Old House. In 1989, after 10 years as host of the program, Bob left WGBH and founded BVTV Inc., the television production company that produced Bob Vila’s Home Again and Bob Vila.
In 1999, Bob hosted his first original weekly cable series, Restore America with Bob Vila, on Home and Garden Television (HGTV) in which he brought viewers on a state-by-state tour of some of the country’s most beautifully restored historic buildings, neighborhoods and gardens. The series celebrated the people and communities working to reclaim their neighborhoods and preserve America’s culture, heritage and history.
Bob has been a regular contributor on NBC’s Today Show and The Early Show on CBS News and has produced his own series of specials for A&E entitled Bob Vila’s Guide to Historic Homes, touring some of the most spectacular historic homes in the U.S., Italy, England and Ireland. Bob is currently working on a new green building project slated to air in 2009.
Bob’s reach extends beyond television. His award-winning Web site, BobVila.com, is the leading destination for the do-it-yourself community from the most trusted name in home improvement. The site ranks as one of the top home improvement sites on the Web. It offers homeowners valuable, factual information to solve their problems and answer their questions at every stage of the home improvement, remodeling and repair process—usually for a specific project they are undertaking. The extensive content library is updated daily and includes articles, Step by Step How To Videos with written instructions, a blog, video clips from Bob’s 17 years of television programming, forums for homeowners to post and answer questions, tips, a glossary of terms, fix it guides, podcasts and contests. One popular section, MyProjects, allows users to share their own home improvement projects by posting photos and instructions.
Bob is the author of 11 books, including the five-volume Bob Vila’s Guide to Historic Homes of America, and his latest, Bob Vila’s Complete Guide to Remodeling Your Home.
Bob is also active in several charitable organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, The Hemingway Preservation Foundation and the Vila Foundation. He is a board member of The Fledgling Fund—an organization founded by Bob’s wife, Diana Barrett—which seeks to improve the lives of vulnerable individuals, families and communities by supporting innovative media projects and community-based organizations that target entrenched social problems.
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