He was a lifelong Californian, living the Hollywood dream, hosting do-it-yourself TV programs, when an episode of HGTV’s Yard Crashers took Matt Blashaw to Kansas City, where he met his future wife, Lindsay [Archer], a container gardening expert, on the set. Blashaw fell hard for the girl and her hometown.
Today Blashaw owns Blashaw Residential Construction, a full-service construction company specializing in outdoor living spaces and pools, in Leawood, where he lives with his wife and their 5½-year-old son, Jace.
On a recent Friday afternoon on his way to Home Depot after a typical day spent “putting out fires,” Blashaw spoke to IN Kansas City by phone from his truck about the arc of his life, bouncing from working the shipping docks in California at 13, to film school to Hollywood, to a spec housing business that went bust, to trading in a successful TV career for a real-life remodeling company and full-time family life in Kansas City.
When did you first get interested in using tools?
I spent a ton of time as a kid at the export packing business that my dad took over from my granddad in Orange, California. We built giant boxes for oil refineries, and we shipped things overseas. I worked on the docks at San Pedro when I was a kid, probably before I should have. I was 13 and working with pneumatic nailers and drills, and I was so light, they would crane me up to the top of these 30-foot boxes to put the finishing nails on top. So I was lifted quickly into the building world.
Literally lifted.
Literally. I loved it from the beginning.
You graduated from Chapman University. Where is that?
It’s in Orange, California. I went through 12 years of Catholic education, including four years at Servite High School in Anaheim, which is an all-boys preparatory school, just like Rockhurst here.
I went to Chapman to be a pre-med major. I wanted to be a physical therapist. But organic chemistry and I did not get along. I tried for two years, but it was like someone was talking Mandarin Chinese to me. No comprende.
I was also doing film and television—I liked being in student films, and I liked the behind-the-scenes stuff, too. Chapman University has one of the best film schools in the nation. So I got my BFA in film and TV.
I worked on major motion pictures and large-scale commercials using my carpentry skills. I did that for a couple of years. But the Hollywood life was really tough on me.
How so?
You’re working 13-14 hours a day. So I thought, I don’t necessarily want to do that. So I got a job at Disney as an automation specialist. The guy who pushes the button for Tinkerbell to fly over the castle, hoping she doesn’t stall over 50,000 children—that was me.
You always come to a place in your life where you say, gosh do I need to work for somebody else, or am I going to be better off working on my own? I decided I wanted to be on my own, so I became a remodeler.
You hear some people say working construction is a “fallback.” It’s not a fallback. It’s a great living. My plumber makes $150,000 a year. Electricians make a good living. You make an honest living and you’re your own boss.
And you’re doing meaningful work that there is a strong demand for.
I’m attention deficit, but I’m not medicated for it. I don’t think any kid should be medicated for it, because I don’t think it is a deficit. I think it’s an asset. It’s a different way of learning. I have found that a lot of people who are attention deficit excel at building.
If you look around, not a lot of young kids are wanting to do construction. We need to debunk this idea that construction is a fallback and you should go for business and finance. That’s not really the way.
I work with Skills USA, who get kids when they are in 7th and 8th grade, and we try to build our trade because it’s kind of dying right now. We try to show them that after high school, you don’t have to go to college.
So I did remodeling for a while, then I got into spec home building in 2007, and you can guess what happened.
That was a bad year to get into spec building.
It was awful. I went bankrupt. I had six projects going. I was ready to do really, really well, and IndyMac (Independent National Mortgage Corporation) was the bank I was using for construction loans, and they were the first bank to go down. So I was holding six properties that all went into foreclosure. No one was loaning money, no one.
What did that experience teach you?
I think a lot of people try to force their way in life and say “coulda, woulda, shoulda,” but I’ve learned now, looking at where my life has gone, that sometimes the worst thing in life brings you to the best parts of life.
If that bankruptcy didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be in Kansas City with the love of my life and a son who I love more than anything.
How did you extract yourself from the failure of your business?
I was doing very small remodels, because no one had any money. And I still had my real estate license and I was doing short sales, if you know what those are.
Not so much.
You’re basically begging a bank—because we had to sell these homes for less than was owed on them—to take this lower amount of money. And it was so much work. Because the bank would say, “Well, we’re taking a hit, so instead of giving you 3 percent, we’re going to give you 1.5 percent.” So I was doing twice the amount of work for half the money.
So that is when I got into TV. In Hollywood, we always look at Backstage magazine. They were having this audition called the Studfinder Competition to be the next home improvement host. I didn’t know what home improvement television was back then, it was just starting to get ramped up. It was for a six-episode show, so I thought, OK, that will pay the bills.
So I put in a quirky video. I and three other contestants were flown out to Minnesota to do this competition show. I thought I did great—I had on-camera skills and off-camera skills. I knew what I was doing. That’s not to say—well, I’ll say it—not every DIY television host knows what they’re doing.
So I went home and I was sure I was going to get it, but I didn’t hear from them. Finally, I called and they said, “We decided to go another way.”
So I didn’t win that, but in the TV world, it’s who you know. And if you make a good impression on someone, they’re going to try to look for a spot for you. So they asked if I wanted to go and do a show in Denver called Deconstruction.
They said, “Oh, you have to fly out there on your own and if you get the show, you have to find a place to live.” I didn’t have anything else going, so I thought, OK, I’ll just try it. So I flew out and was really relaxed because I didn’t really want it that bad, so of course, as soon as I got off the plane in Orange County, I got a call saying, “You got the show.”
I was married to my ex-wife at the time, so we packed up the car with all our clothes in those vacuum storage bags. That was great until we got up into altitude. About an hour and 15 minutes outside Denver, the bags all start to open up. We heard them popping, one after another. We literally could not see each other. They were pressed up against the windshield, and we could not get out because if we did we could never get our stuff back in. So we got to our apartment complex and spilled out like a clown car. That was my big entrance into TV.
We did a full season, 13 episodes. It rated well, we got another season, and then I became a network host. When you’re a network host, you get a contract, everything’s paid for, you do a lot better. I did a show called Project Extreme, and then another one called Money Hunters, and then Yard Crashers was my biggest one. I took over as host after six seasons. It was rating out of the box. I was like, “Are you crazy? This is such a good show. I don’t want to mess it up.” I was nervous. But then a producer said to me, “Have you ever seen the first Cape Fear? I said, “No.” He said, “That’s right. Because everyone only remembers the second one with DeNiro. You are Cape Fear!” [Laughs]
That show went another ten seasons, and that’s what really launched me. And that’s what led me to Kansas City and to my wife.
Are you hosting any shows right now?
The last show I hosted was in 2022. It was called Build it Forward. When you do these shows, you’re gone. I was gone 300 days out of the year. So my son, who was about 3 at the time would get me on FaceTime every morning and say, “Daddy, where are you?” And it just melted my heart. So when the second season came around, I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. So I started my company in Kansas City.
You build a lot of outdoor kitchens. Are they different in Kansas City than in California?
When I got to Kansas City I learned everyone has a smoker. [Laughs] Very different from California. I had to learn about smoking quick.
Also, in California we live outside. And here, not a lot of people want to live outside. So I’m trying to get people outside. I think what’s happened with outdoor kitchens, much like with [indoor] kitchens—it’s all about the finishes and backsplashes. People are using quartz outside—not ground quartz but quartz slabs, because manufactured stone will yellow outside.
I’m trying to get people out of the Leawood stacked-stone zone. [Laughs] I’m moving to tile because there are so many advancements in tile printing. I dare you to see a tile and be able to say whether it’s real or not. You’ll never guess. It looks fantastic. I love tile because it gives you more of a modern look and it’s easy to clean. And there are so many options—stone only comes in limited colors, but with tile, you can have anything. I just did one that had this combed concrete look.
I’m putting in more refrigerators—people ask, “Am I going to use a refrigerator?” I tell them I use a refrigerator in my backyard almost every day. I love it so much.
What’s a mistake people make when they put in an outdoor kitchen?
Where they put the grill. A lot of times people will put a bar with seating right behind the grill. It looks great, but when you turn the grill on, bad idea. Also, if you put the grill far away from your house, you are never going to use it.
You also design and build swimming pools. What are the new trends in backyard pools?
I’m incorporating bar tops. I put seats in the pool. I also put some shade on top, make sure there’s shade in the pool. I want to make it so the pool isn’t just something you just dive into to cool off, but something you can hang out in and enjoy for hours on end.
I love what they call Cabo shelves, or sun shelves, where it’s about a foot deep and you can put chairs right in the water. You can put an umbrella post there as well.
What mistakes do people make when putting in a pool?
Depth. Everybody says, “I want a deep pool.” OK, but anything deeper than 6 feet is unusable, and you’ve got to heat it and cool it. If you want a 9- or 10-foot-deep pool, you are spending so much more money.
When it comes to landscaping, do you find a lot of people’s visions are not in sync with the reality of maintenance?
Yes. I always ask clients, “How much do you want to take care of your yard?” Not at all? We’re just going to put in boxwoods. Boxwoods are the cockroach of the plant industry, you can’t kill them.
If you don’t mind doing some trimming back and maintenance, we’ll do perennial plantings and leave room for annual beds as well. A lot of people here really have a green thumb.
Kansas Citians love lawns. What is the best choice for grass in this climate?
Synthetic turf. [Laughs] Seriously. I’ve been putting in a lot of it. Everyone is like, “Aww, you California guy. . .” But a lawn is tough out here! The dang squirrels and rabbits. . .
And the amount of water needed to keep it alive in summer.
Oh, I know! Plus you’ve got to aerate it, over seed it, fertilize it four times a year. So, I recommend synthetic turf. It’s not cheap. Because to do it right, it’s got to be on a base of gravel and a layer of sand. It also needs at least partial shade, because it’s so hot here, it can actually get too hot—so if you have pets, it’s not the right choice for you.
But synthetic turf is really versatile. One thing I’ve been doing a lot lately is cutting 24-by-24-inch concrete squares into it.
That is so California.
It’s very California! And people are getting all about it here. Some of the other elements, pergolas and plantation shutters for shade also have California roots, but they set me apart here, which is nice.
How much of an adjustment has it been moving here after living in California your whole life?
[Laughs] The weather has been tricky. This is the most bi-polar weather on the planet. The other day it was 76 and the next day it was 19! My body is not used to that. I’ve also learned the weather report is always wrong.
In California, the weather report is always right: sunny and mild.
Yes! Here, I’ve become an amateur meteorologist, checking my radar app to see if I’m going to be able to work outside tomorrow. But no matter how much you check the barometer and stuff, you can’t understand the weather here, you can’t. So you have to be able to accept that.
But the people are amazing. The first time driving down the street after we bought our house, people were waving at me. I was like, what? Then for a while I was like Elf, you know when he was waving really hard at people? My wife, who’s from here, was like, “Nope, just lift your hand up off the steering wheel, don’t go crazy.”
And when we moved in, the neighbors all brought pies and cupcakes and asked what they could do. The community was instant. In California, we build our walls before we build our houses. We wouldn’t know our neighbors for nine or ten months. That’s why we decided to come here. We’re in Kansas so the schools are fantastic. We’re near my in-laws—they’re in Springfield, Missouri.
We wanted to slow down a little bit and that’s all happened here. People talk about “Kansas City kind” and it’s true. Everyone is so nice, and now that I live here, I try to represent that when I go other places.
You have probably noticed that if you live in Kansas City, you have to be a fan of the Royals and Chiefs. Did that conflict with any pre-existing pro sports loyalties?
That is true. It was tough. I was a Rams fan. But, let’s face it, it’s not really that hard to start loving the Kansas City Chiefs. [Laughs] I think I started putting on a Mahomes jersey on Day One. And we love going to the K. I did the yard of the Royals dugout manager. I also did [former Royals relief pitcher] Scotty Barlow’s yard. I see a lot of good stuff coming for the Royals.
And my favorite thing is that you can get anywhere in ten minutes.
We have pretty good highways.
Holy mackerel, yeah. So, I’m just loving it.
Regarding the saying, “The cobbler’s kids go barefoot,” do you have unrealized projects you’d like to do at your own home?
This cobbler’s kid wears Air Jordans. [Laughs] We bought a fixer upper during Covid when prices were going crazy and everything was selling for like $40,000 over asking—can I digress to tell the story of how I got my house?
Please.
So we see this house come up on a Thursday, and it seems a little underpriced for the market. I figure they’re going to wait and take all these offers over the weekend and pick the best one on Monday. But I decided to offer just $10,000 over asking and also write a letter.
In my letter, I wrote, “I’m Matt Blashaw from HGTV, I’m a contractor. I love this home and I just want to renovate it. I promise I’m not going to knock it down.” Two hours later, we got a signed contract back. The owner was Keith, now my next-door neighbor. It was his childhood home. He could have gotten way more money for it, but it would have been knocked down. I think that’s really special that he wanted to preserve the history and the architecture.
I think the residential architecture in Kansas City is some of the most beautiful in the country, and I have traveled the entire country.
So, after I got this beautiful house, I renovated it upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside, electrical, plumbing. Every single room has been done, including this weird thing they have here called a basement. [Laughs] It’s been a two-year labor of love. You can’t get better than a ranch house on a cul-de-sac in old Leawood. I feel very lucky.
Interview condensed and minimally edited for clarity.