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GIMME
SHELTER
Belville
house gets star turn on TV home renovation show.
Staff photo
Thursday, December
2, 1999
By JOE STALVEY
Brunswick UpClose Editor
Wilmington Morning Star
Copyright 1999 Wilmington Star-News, Inc.
WILMINGTON, NC, BELVILLE
— When a TV home renovation show wanted to highlight a North Carolina
house, this town on the Cape Fear River turned out to be the right place.
A house being built by Maritime Homes & Development in the upscale Rice Hope subdivision will be the focus of an upcoming episode of the cable TV show Gimme Shelter.
Nelly Shifman, a researcher for the show, produced by Philadelphia-based Banyan Productions, said she had looked at Maritime's Web page and was impressed after talking with people at the company. "We were looking to do a North Carolina show," she said, "they seemed really interested."
The show considered several other building companies before settling on Maritime.
"Two days before Floyd hit, they called and said 'You're it,'" said Steven O'Rourke, Maritime's president.
Mr. O'Rourke said he was thrilled to find out the Rice Hope house, which he is building for himself and his wife, Kathy, made the cut.
"To be chosen by a national TV show is quite an honor," he said.
Ms. Shifman said the Gimme Shelter crew went to the Rice Hope house the last week of October to film. Mr. O'Rourke said a crew from the show was scheduled to return this week to shoot more footage. The show featuring the house is expected to air early next year, Ms. Shifman said.
Richard Monahan, producer of Gimme Shelter, said the show, which is in its second season, usually focuses on renovations of older homes, mostly in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
"But we've also been doing some new construction," he said, adding that the audience for the show is mostly people interested in working on their own homes.
"Home improvement is very popular nowadays," he said.
Mr. Monahan said the Maritime house was a good subject to film hurricane-proofing techniques, something the show wanted to highlight.
"We were interested in looking at what things do you do ... to make a house stay together when a hurricane hits," he said.
The show almost got more than it bargained for: A week before the film crew arrived in late October, Hurricane Irene sideswiped the Cape Fear coast to put an exclamation point on the wettest, nastiest storm season in local memory. The TV people were left wondering if there would be any shelter from the storms.
"We were really nervous," Ms. Shifman said, "we called them up and asked if the roads were closed and could we get there."
In one segment of the 60-minute show, Mr. Monahan said, Mr. O'Rourke and an associate demonstrate how metal strapping can be used to reinforce the wood frame of a house in a high-wind area. The Rice Hope house didn't need that type of strapping, but it does have metal joist straps designed to keep the roof from flying off, he said.
Mr. Monahan said the show also looks at the house's brick exterior, which is designed to look old.
''It's a type of brick veneering that we haven't seen before," he said.
Mr. O'Rourke said the old look is achieved by using specially manufactured bricks that look rougher than standard ones and by leaving the mortar between each brick unfinished. He said the 3,300-square-foot house, built on a lot surrounded by old oak trees, has the look of older Southern homes.
A native of Long Island, NY, Mr. O'Rourke, 47, got started in construction building houses in the ski country of Utah. He moved back East in 1987 and worked for building companies in the Washington, DC, area and in New Jersey before coming to Wilmington four years ago.
Mr. O'Rourke said he's looking forward to seeing the house on TV. He said he's seen Gimme Shelter, which airs weekdays from 5-6 p.m. on the Discovery Channel, but has to tape it.
''I'm never home by 6," he said.