Saultbies make the cut on Worst Handyman TV show

This story is about what can happen when you're a regular reader of SooToday.com's Entertainment section

Back in September, friends and relatives of Terry Cress were reading our story about how the Discovery Channel's popular Canada's Worst Handyman show was looking for really, really bad home renovators as it started its second season.

So they nominated their man, shown at the right in this photo.

Earlier this week, a Canada's Worst Handyman crew was in town to see whether anyone could possibly be as inept as the nomination letter suggested.

And Cress, whose construction skills (or lack thereof) are a bit of a legend among the City of Sault Ste. Marie's building and property standards staff, got the word yesterday.

Yes, he's really as bad as everyone says.

Yes, he made the cut.

And yes, he's going to be on national TV this spring.

Harvey 'Hammertime' Houle

Cress was nominated by his best friend Harvey Houle (shown, left), who will also appear on the show.

The engineering-challenged duo did a casting tape on Wednesday and were notified on Friday that they've been accepted to appear jointly on Canada's Worst Handyman.

"I don't know if I'm really Canada's worst handyman," Cress told SooToday.com on Wednesday during a break in filming. "But maybe I'll learn a thing or two - maybe."

Cress was also nominated by his wife Angela and his daughter.

And, he's well known around City Hall as the character with the really weird shed.

City spy planes take pictures over his house

Cress informs us that the City sends airplanes over his house on a regular basis to do aerial photos of his yard so they can see what he's doing.

"Every time a plane flies over me I wave and smile nice for the picture," Cress says.

Maybe it was a City spy plane or maybe it was just a complaint from a concerned neighbour, but either way City Hall has had to send inspectors over to the Cress house several times over the past few years.

Angela Cress said the first year, the City complained that the deck out back was too high.

The incredible collapsing deck

"Terry thought we should just cut the supports off and it would be fine," said Houle. "I didn't think it would work but when Terry gets an idea in his head, there's no arguing with him."

Cress confessed that the whole thing came crashing down around them as the inept duo tried to fix the problem.

So Cress made sure they re-used the wood and the nails to build the deck all over again.

"The wood is fine if you just flip it over and the nails can be straightened out real nice," he said.

Shed made of I-beams, 50 pounds of nails

And speaking of nails, Cress said he used 50 pounds of them in his shed, which is constructed mostly of I-beams - I-beams and nails.

The infamous shed that got him a nomination on this year's Canada's Worst Handyman, also got him in some trouble at City Hall.

"When the inspector came, the place was a shambles," recalls Cress's wife Angela. "It was raining and power tools were plugged in and there was no roof on the shed."

Later, she brought a hand-drawn floor plan to the planning department at City Hall to obtain the necessary permits.

'You know your husband is a bit of a weasel?'

"The man sort of leaned over and whispered to me, 'you know your husband is a bit of a weasel for sending you down here, don't you?'," she tells SooToday.com. "He should be here himself," she was told.

On their casting audition tape, Cress and Houle put a mini-deck on that very shed for the Canada's Worst Handyman crew.

Cress fondly refers to his shed as a 'man shack' and dreams of big screen TVs for it, while Harvey fantasizes about funky places to store stuff.

Two weeks of filming in Toronto

Filming begins November 11.

Both Cress and Houle will be in Toronto for about two weeks between November 11 and December 2.

The second season of Canada's Worst Handyman begins in April and is being produced by Proper Television for airing on Discovery Canada.

The nine-episode series will take the five contestants and their nominators through a series of challenges, culminating in the construction of the ultimate Canadian shed.

Check Proper Television's website or the Discovery Channel's website for more information.