All language subtitles for Amazing.Interiors.S01E07

Inside of my house,
which is an aircraft hangar...

I have a 19th century cottage.

If I had to describe our home to
somebody who'd never been in it before...

it's like Willy Wonka
and Pee-wee Herman had a baby,

and that baby exploded onto the walls.

I'm gonna bet that the coaster
we build at home

is gonna feel twice as tall
and twice as fast as that.

Are you okay, buddy?

I love the San Francisco Bay Area
more than any place

I've ever lived.

We've lived in this house
for about six months now.

So here's the thing,

I've got this yard
outside my house.

The normal person
would look and say,

"You know, we should probably put

one of those awesome
swimming pools out there.

It's just built exactly for it."

I'm not convinced that a swimming pool
is really the way to go.

I want a roller coaster in my garden

because I want a roller coaster
in my garden.

That's really the reason why.

When I look at this yard,
I see an amazing roller coaster.

What I have in mind
is a 568-foot-long roller coaster,

has a 450-degree Helix turn.

It's also gonna have
20 feet vertical

from the top of the track
to the bottom of the track.

It's gonna go
almost 22 miles an hour.

As a reference point,
Space Mountain at Disneyland

goes 28 miles an hour.

So it's gonna be fast.

I get my love of roller coasters
from my kids.

When my son was very young,

he asked if we could build
a roller coaster in the backyard,

and I just couldn't think
of a reason to say no.

I had no expectations that he was actually
gonna build a backyard roller coaster.

I was just in shock.

I did not expect that to happen.

So I've built four roller coasters.
This will be the fifth one.

This last coaster will be longer

than all of the other
four coasters combined.

Best of all, I am gonna be able
to ride this one.

No coaster that I have ever built

has ever been big enough
for a full-on adult,

but I am gonna build this one
so that I can finally ride

one of my own crazy creations.

Right now, we have that and then our little
Helix. Big Helix. I like to call it a big Helix.

It's always good to see a father and son
working together on something.

He hasn't told me really.

What he is going to be doing
with the roller coaster.

It's gonna be a surprise.

He and... best that I don't know.

That was a really weird handshake.

That was a high-five.

I'm probably gonna do
most of the work myself,

but my friends, John and Chris,
are also gonna pitch in.

What we want to do now
is get some ideas, some inspiration.

Go. Why?

This is gonna be one of the really
hard parts, building the chain lift.

I don't think your chain's
gonna be that big.

I love the combination
of engineering

and rock-solid certainty,

with thrill and horror
and amazement,

and the kind of screams
that you hear on a roller coaster.

That concept just lights me up.

This is twice as tall and twice as
fast as what we're gonna build at home...

but I'm gonna bet
that the one we build at home

is gonna feel twice as tall
and twice as fast as that.

From the time we stick
a shovel in the ground

until the time it's finished,

we'll figure it's gonna be
about two months.

For this coaster,
we're gonna use a hybrid design,

which means the rails and the ties
of the track are gonna be steel,

and it's gonna be supported
by a wood frame.

The thing that keeps me up at night
about this project,

the part that I really
will struggle with,

is that we can't predict
what the next meter away

is gonna look like in terms of the base
that we're building this whole thing on.

The last steel coaster
that I built,

I built it on perfectly flat ground.

So we had a dead-level
asphalt parking lot.

Out in the yard,
it's not that kind of environment.

The first big challenge is gonna be
what's called design validation.

We need to build a piece of track
to make sure

that we can repeat that process...

568 times.

I honestly cannot imagine
that massive thing

just towering up there
and then spreading our entire yard.

It's definitely
a lot more terrifying than.

It would be
if we manufacture-made it.

Like, if you're at an amusement park,

you know that there were hundreds
of people working on it.

It's crazy.

This area is kind of a leafy suburb
of New York.

I share my home with
my wife Jocelyn and my toddler, Maximus.

If someone drove up to my house,
they would not know what is inside.

It's a bit of a surprise.

Inside of my house,
which is an aircraft hangar,

I have a 19th century cottage.

So it's a little bit
of a ship-in-the-bottle

kind of arrangement.

There is a glass structure
at the end of the hangar.

It's sort of nine cells,
three on top of three.

It's kind of a stable end to the
house, and something sort of conventional,

just usually you don't see it
on a house.

So we come into the main space,
and there are two main elements here.

On the left, is a replica
of a Park Avenue office building.

Glass facade, very sort of modernist.

A building that I used to admire
when I would walk past it.

On the right,
is that 19th century farmhouse,

With wooden shingles
and green shutters.

So we have these two buildings
that are kind of right next to each other

in some fake piece of history.

I had the opportunity to buy
this sort of dilapidated house.

I was just starting a family,

and I knew that I needed a house

that could have a lot of room
for fun, and kids,

and also room for thinking, and peace,
and cooking, all the good things in life.

But one of the important contrasts
that I wanted to bring up in this house

was how do you bring urban
qualities to the suburbs or the country?

So I thought taking something
that was large and metal

and putting it over a petite,
intimate, little wooden thing

might make an interesting conversation.

The base cost of the hangar
was probably a hundred grand.

It's about
a 3000-square-foot footprint.

It only took about
two weeks to put up,

because it's all made and cut offsite,

so it's really just an assembly job.

The east and the west ends of the
building are both almost entirely glass.

So those were expensive bits
of construction.

The entire renovation here
cost about $400,000.

Come on in. We come into the library.

This is a very traditional part
of the house.

I think you can mix, in a house,
traditional and contemporary.

This is a piece of furniture

just designed with some kids' blocks.

Little piece of glass over it.

It's fun to do little projects
as well as big projects.

This room... This is a project room.

Sometimes, we do
little art projects.

Over here, this window,
you see the office outside over there.

Often, you're looking
from one room into another.

Sometimes you're looking through rooms
and through windows,

so the space is very layered.

This wall is where I cut off
some of the old house,

So that is the former living room
of the house out there.

So there's a lot of making
indoor spaces outdoor,

Making outdoor spaces indoor.

And so here is another small division
of this house.

It's a nice combination of things,

because you have kind of
the intersection of the kitchen,

and a little breakfast area,
and a play area.

These little spaces
are in contrast to this big space.

I designed this bathroom for my kids
about three-quarters scale

to give kids a sense that something
is kind of made for them.

This concrete wing

has a tremendous variety
of spaces in here.

Some rooms are sunny,
some rooms are sort of darker.

It's fun, it suits me,

and there's beautiful parts about it which I enjoy every day.
In the words of Ben & Jerry, "If it's not fun, why do it?"

The learning curve has been
pretty steep on this one.

We're about half as far
as I thought we would be by now.

It's a little bit worrisome

because we're having to custom build
every single piece of track,

And we started out thinking that we wouldn't. There is
no book that you can read to figure out how to do this,

because nobody does it.

It's not like people do this
in their backyards all the time,

building steel roller coasters.

So there's a lot of it
that is totally "learn as we go."

From the beginning
of the end of the track,

there's maybe like an 18-inch whoo...

I think that what you should do instead
is just, like, get, like,

a straight-on shot down.

So you can collect
as much speed as possible.

Lyle's kind of the supervisor
to this whole project really.

He's got great ideas.

He knows everything about roller coasters.

It's...

it's hard to get a shovel in his hands
for any period of time though.

It's really starting to look like
a roller coaster.

By the end of the day,
I'm thinking maybe we'll have

80 or 100 feet of track completely built.

I want to test that before we go build
the other 500 feet of track.

I need to know that this works.

So the way you do that
is with a crash test dummy.

This is the first time
we get to find out...

if reality matches with the plan.

And for Todd's sake, I hope it does.

Ready? Okay.

In three, two, one.

Oh, Todd.

Todd?

- Speak to us, Todd. Speak to us.
- Are you okay, buddy?

The wheels are still spinning.

What happened was the wheel assembly
just banged into this post

and split the wood, knocked it down,
and that's what happens.

So this means
we got a little bit of work to do.

We got to go back
to the drawing board.

We got to figure out a way to reengineer
these posts at the bottom of the track

so that the wood is farther away,

so then we have more clearance
around the track.

We'll do that by...

some smart means
that I haven't quite figured out yet.

What's the saying?
We're gonna science the hell out of this.

We've modified our approach to
building the track since we first started.

The difference between
Todd's last try and this one,

Is what we've done is we've put
up-stop wheels on the cart.

All the clearances of the track
seem to look okay.

That means we can push Todd
around the course...

And see if it works according
to all the math we've done.

The big moment is gonna be when we
strap the crash test dummy onto the cart.

And hope for the best.

Head against the headrest, Todd.

- Yeah.
- Yeah, just...

Keep all body parts
inside the ride at all times.

That was perfect!

Things went a lot better
than I had expected today.

We managed to get Todd up into...

the cart with up-stop wheels.

Where we are now,
is we've probably built.

About 120 feet of track.

We've installed 60 feet of track...

Which means we really only have
about 540 feet to go.

We'll catch up with the schedule,

and we'll certainly be done on time.

Almost certainly.

My name is Apryl, and I'm an artist.

I moved to New York City
31 years ago almost to the day.

I'm Lyris.

I'm Dylan.
We're sisters.

We feel relaxed and centered
in this environment,

but a lot of people don't.

I think of this house being
the house of personal expression,

because that's really important
to myself and my daughters.

It's like Willy Wonka, Dr. Seuss
and Pee-wee Herman had a baby,

and that baby exploded onto the walls.

When I first came in
this apartment,

I just thought, "Wow, it's just
so nothing. It's so blah."

And so what I did with this space,

is I created something that has
a life force of its own.

Maybe when you first walk into it
you think, "Oh my gosh.

It's overwhelming.
It's too much patterns, colors."

Like, "No, no, no, no."

But also there is a feeling
of peacefulness and calm.

To me, the secret is I never match
colors, I never match patterns.

And if I am matching, I made a mistake.

I had to make and/or design
my own furniture,

because I couldn't find anything else
out in the world that I wanted to buy.

All these pieces, I call them
sculpture masquerading as furniture.

This is called Peekaboo Arriba.

It looks like a Mexican hat dance.

These are actually portions
of two different couches,

and no one ever looks at them and guesses

that they aren't really the same couch.

The carpet in these front three rooms
is all hand-loomed,

and it was totally my own design concepts.

This is a TV room/den.

This is the quietest wall
in the house, I'd say.

We have a dining room, but there's no dining room
table. Our dining room is now called the Chair Museum.

It houses an installation
that my mom made.

It's called The Where and the How.

My favorite room to work on
was the master bathroom.

We had hired a traditional
Italian tile person.

Very old-school.

You do this, you don't do that,
you don't do it that way.

I had all these different colors
of tiles.

I'm trying to explain to him
I don't have a pattern in mind.

Just don't put the same color
next to the same color.

And he was... he didn't understand that.

He didn't understand that.

So when he was gone for the night,

I pulled all his tiles
and thinset off.

And I knew he'd be unhappy,
but I had to do it

because it's my house.

And then I went to town after he quit.

So this is the kitchen.

These are my amazing cupboards.

They're covered in an auto body paint

that gives these shapes more pizazz.

For this table, when I designed the legs,

I knew that they had to have
little shelves cut into them.

So that when my kids
played under the table,

They would have a place
to put their little dolls and things.

I think that they're one of
my favorite objects in the house.

I could do whatever I wanted
growing up in my room.

I definitely felt like I had
freedom to express myself, my creativity.

If I wanted to draw something
on my walls, I could.

If I wanted to paint my door,
I could.

I wanted to make
a very creative environment

in which to raise
my young children.

I was thinking of just how much richer

could I make their lives if I could
do this thing and pull this off.

Growing up here definitely did shape us.

To live freely and colorfully.

To get to this point, we've been working
incredible amounts of time.

I have basically put the whole
rest of my life on hold.

Every day he can be out here,
he is out here.

Every moment that he doesn't
have to be doing something else...

he's gonna be out here working on it.

It's crunch time here,
the big party is coming up.

There's a lot of people
coming to see it.

John and Chris are pitching in
like they always do

to really make it happen.

We have a lot of nerves right now
because we're not 100 percent.

I mean, I already realize
we're going too fast.

We're gonna have to put in
some brake sections on this thing.

If not, we're gonna hurt ourselves.

Before I or anybody else
gets on this roller coaster to ride it,

we've got to make sure
that it is 100 percent safe.

I know Will wants to be
the very first person on it.

More power to him,
'cause it's kind of scary right now.

I've been excited about this
for years.

I've built five backyard
roller coasters by now,

And I've never ridden a single one.

Because I've never built one
strong enough to hold a grown-up.

My whole life has been building this
roller coaster for the last month.

It's worth it,

but I'm definitely ready
to have a victory here.

The total length of the track
is about 480 feet,

there is a 40-foot-high lift hill,

the top speed is 23 miles per hour,

$8500, and I'm gonna save
200 hours of labor.

So, what we're gonna do right now, guys,
is we've finished the track... îsh,

and we're gonna pull the trigger.

We're gonna roll it around
the hill.

And one of two things is gonna happen.

Either it's gonna be an amazing ride,

and there's gonna be "ooh" and "ah"
and "yay" at the end of it,

or we're gonna have a rapid
unscheduled disassembly.

Let's get to it, shall we?
All right.

Okay.

All right, Lyle, you got the motor.

If I'm the one flipping the switch,
is that manslaughter?

Yeah, that's right.

This is the worst idea I've ever had.

I'm really worried
about what might happen.

After four years
of building roller coasters,

and he's never been able to ride one,

it's pretty cool that he finally
gets to go on it.

All right, what do you think, boys?
I think you hold on for dear life.

Ready?

- I'm genuinely scared about this.
- Yeah.

This is the most weight
we've ever put on it.

John.

I prefer that we beef up the brakes
just a little bit more.

I'm very concerned about his
safety. I don't want anybody to get hurt.

Oh, this is f... up.

I changed my mind!

I don't want to...

Oh, my God!

That was so great!

- I forgot to let go.
- I know.

Oh, my God.

It was so freakin' smooth.

There were two places
where it was a little bumpy,

but the whole rest of the ride,
it was absolutely what I would expect

from an actual honest-to-god
professional roller coaster.

It was awesome.

I'm pretty impressed. I mean,
he worked really hard on making it.

I'm very excited to test it out

because I get to ride a roller coaster
in my backyard,

And I think anybody would be
excited about that.

I feel really lucky that Lyle and I
both love coasters the way we do.

A lot of dads begin to struggle
when their kids reach this age.

This kind of tethers us together
in a way that's really special,

- and I'm super grateful for that. -What are you doing?
- The same thing I've been doing

every time you've put on a helmet
your whole damn life.

Teenage kids,
their whole job is to be cool, right?

And the wonder of a roller coaster

is that you can't be cool and have fun
on a roller coaster at the same time.

Yeah!

I'm so proud of what
the guys and I have done here.

We've built something
that's never been built.

More people have been
on the International Space Station

than have built backyard roller coasters.

I am really proud of this accomplishment.