Mark Bowe (Photo courtesy barnwoodliving.com)
Mark Bowe, host of DIY Network’s “Barnwood Builders,” will appear at the Richmond Home Show Oct. 13 and 14 to share the secrets to his success and provide a behind-the-scenes look at his show, which is currently filming its sixth season.
Bowe, who worked his way through West Virginia University as a coal miner while earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration, founded his company, Antique Cabins and Barns, in 1995, through which he and his crew have reclaimed more than 500 pioneer-era structures.
In 2016, he expanded that business into what is known today as Barnwood Living, based in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
We recently talked to Bowe by telephone about how he came to be featured in a reality television program and about what’s it’s like to work on the show.
You can catch him on the Richmond Home Show stage on Friday, Oct. 13, at 3 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 14, at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.
R•Home: How did the show come about?
Mark Bowe: I had an office in Lewisburg, West Virginia, and one day a guy came in and said he wanted a cabin in upstate New York. I sent him up to our boneyard, and he met some our guys and came back to talk to me. … He asked, ‘What’s your story?’ I told him my background and history, and he said he was a film producer who worked for Ken Burns. … We shot a pilot in 2005, a 20-minute documentary that was entered into some film festivals, but it sat on the shelf until 2014. ... We had offers from other people who wanted to see a lot of drama and fighting [as on many reality shows], but we turned them down. The DIY Network said, ‘We’ll take it like it is.’
R•Home: What is the appeal of log cabins and timber frame homes?
Bowe: The craftsmanship. And the type of wood. Every day we work with beams that one of our pioneer forefathers has hewn by hand. They dug it out with an ax … then used old-fashioned hand tools and notched it to build a house. I just love that lifestyle, being connected to the earth. … It’s funny how we are so digitally connected but we have never been more emotionally disconnected from the earth and ground as we are right now.
R•Home: How do you find the properties you feature on the show?
Bowe: After 21 years I have learned that if you are kind, and you do what you say you are going to do, and you pay a fair price, word spreads. There are still tight-knit communities out there. If I go and have lunch in a country diner or feed store and just start talking to people and do business on a handshake, word travels. I think that honesty is appreciated by country folks. … But the good [properties] are getting harder to find and we have to travel farther for them. It is not lost on me that every time we take down a building, we start to deplete our livelihood.
R•Home: How to you balance the old and new in your projects — preserving the past while still creating a home that is livable in the 21st century?
Bowe: [laughs] Nobody wants to walk outside and pee. Nobody wants to walk to the outhouse anymore. … Think about an old traditional farmhouse. Underneath a lot of those are the old log cabins. You have to build tastefully around it. We might build one rustic room and in the next room use some old beams. … By the time you get to the master bedroom, maybe you just use some old wood in the flooring. And nobody wants splinters in the bathroom. Anywhere you’re cooking or naked, we try not to have barn wood.
R•Home: Barn wood and other repurposed wood has become a popular design element in recent years. How does that effect what you do?
Bowe: There are very few of us that actually take down original houses — we don’t use as much barn wood because as a company, it’s hard to compete with a guy with a pick-up truck.
We take the wood and improve it. We make it a product. We supply beams that are harder to get and take more labor. We go in and remove everything. We can repurpose the wood as furniture, or mill it into flooring. … I think that’s where our niche is. There are so many people out there who sell barn wood. When you grow a company, you have to figure out how to stay ahead of competition. But when I first got started, I was the guy doing the barn wood, with a chainsaw and a pickup truck.
R•Home: What will you be talking about during your appearance at the Richmond Home Show?
Bowe: I have three things I like to talk about: Work hard. Be kind. Take pride.
Regardless of what the political climate is, or where you are in your life, whether you’re sitting at a desk as a CEO or working construction, if you work hard, be kind and take pride, you will have a fulfilling life.
I will also be telling stories. … I want to be connected with the audience. I want to let them into what we do and who we are through storytelling. I want to answer questions about what we do … People want to know about the show and feel more connected to us, and I’m the one who’s that connection.
R•Home: Anything else you want people to know about you?
Bowe: I’m a passable break dancer, and I have a genuine love of pickles.
