Bob Vila vs. Tom Silva vs. Zack Dettmore: A Tom Fan Scores Five Rounds

Three Guys, One Tool Belt

I'll put my cards on the table before anybody else does. I'm a Tom Silva guy. Always have been. So when I decided to stack up Bob Vila, Tom Silva, and the newest general contractor on the show, I knew going in that this wasn't going to be a neutral exercise. I'm also still getting used to the new guy. That's the honest starting point.

But a fair fight needs evidence, so I went digging: 1989 press clippings, oral histories, cast pages, and for once, real episode captions from PBS. Any Tom or Zack quote I credit to an episode is word for word from those captions. Bob's quotes come from interviews, because I couldn't find captions anywhere for his decade.

First, a spelling check, because I've typed it both ways myself. It's Zack Dettmore. That's how This Old House spells it on his cast page, on the episode pages, and in the Ask This Old House 25th anniversary cast list, and it's how he signs off on air ("And I'm Zack Dettmore"). The confusion makes sense. He's Zachary, and This Old House's own copy slips into "Zach" now and then. Fans use both.

The Lineup

• Bob Vila, host, 1979 to 1989. The original. Ten seasons, then out the door over commercial endorsements.
• Tom Silva, general contractor, on the show since 1986 per This Old House (the Boston Globe once quoted Russ Morash dating his promotion to primary contractor to 1988). Ask This Old House is calling its 25th season the "Silva anniversary" in his honor.
• Zack Dettmore, general contractor from northern New Jersey and founder of Dettmore Home Improvements. He led the Glen Ridge project in Season 45, came back for Ridgewood in Season 46, pitched in on the Carolina Comeback rebuilds in Season 47, and is leading the Essex County Colonial in Season 48. He's also on the Ask This Old House roster and co-hosts the spinoff This First House with his wife, Camille.

First question I had: is Zack Tom's replacement? Nothing I found says so. The 2026 Ask This Old House press release lists both as general contractors, side by side, and Tom worked the Glen Ridge and Ridgewood jobs alongside Zack. Nobody's handing anybody the keys. I'm just comparing.

Five rounds. One winner per round. Let's go.

Round 1: On-Camera Presence

Bob Vila basically invented this job. In a 2010 Television Academy interview, he said a producer had approached him to shoot a pilot after his restored house near Boston College got written up in the Globe and Better Homes & Gardens. That pilot was a different show entirely, a magazine format called House Calls. It didn't go anywhere, but the producers noticed something. "The bearded guy who had just done the work had a natural ability with the camera," Vila said. "I've never paid much attention to the camera." Becton, a former WGBH president, told Boston Magazine much the same: "Boy, when Vila looked at you through that camera, there was something that really connected."

He also said, "I ad-libbed my way through from the first day." Give Bob a cornice and a camera and he'd tell you which Greek temple it came from.

That presence came with a catch. Series creator Russ Morash wanted the host to ask the homeowner's questions, and he told Boston Magazine that Bob drifted away from that over time: "As Vila matured, he became the expert. What kind of cuckoo land was that?" And Tom, who overlapped with Bob for the last few seasons, gave the most Tom Silva review possible: "With Bob, you were more just saying yes or no. He liked to control the scene."

Tom on camera is the opposite. He's patient, dry, and doesn't perform. Zack is closer to Bob than Tom in one way. He's comfortable talking to a lens, and he came to the show's attention through social media, according to his This Old House bio. But he doesn't hog the scene. In the Season 48 premiere he spends a good chunk of the episode letting Richard teach him about the steam boiler, and in Episode 3 he hands the tile layout to Charlie Marshall and gets out of the way.

Winner: Bob Vila. It pains me a little. But this is the one category where Bob is the reason the category exists.

Round 2: The Hands

Bob was a builder and developer before TV. He told the Television Academy he was the project manager "getting splinters in his hands, doing demolition, learning how to fill a dumpster efficiently." I believe him. But on This Old House, by Bob's own account, it was Norm and the crew who "worked their tails off," and at least one homeowner noticed. A Santa Barbara homeowner from Season 9 described "a classic shot of Vila with Rolex watch pounding nails" to the Washington Post in 1988. (He also added, to be fair, "He does have integrity, though. He knows what he's talking about.")

Tom, meanwhile, is the guy who started his career by digging a 20-by-40-by-12-foot fallout shelter under his family's 1787 Colonial in Lexington. By hand. Starting in 1962, with his brother and his dad. "It took us two years, and I felt such pride in what we had accomplished that I knew I wanted to do this for a living," he told This Old House.

My favorite Tom story isn't from the show at all. In 2004, a Boston Globe Magazine writer asked Tom to judge his hammering. Tom set two scraps of 2x10 in a T and handed him four nails. The writer took about 20 strokes on one nail. Tom looked at him and said, "There's no hope for you." Then Tom buried a nail in two strokes. When the writer asked if he should take on a big project himself, Tom said, "You'd better call someone." Holy moly. Twenty strokes against two.

Zack's hands are legit, too. According to This Old House, he started in carpentry around age 9 building cutting boards and stools, went to timber framing school at 13, and left college in 2010 to do carpentry full time. On Glen Ridge he built the kitchen island out of salvaged 1887 floor joists. "It took many hours of stripping and sanding to be able to reuse the old floor joists, but it adds a tangible sentimental value to the room," he said. In Season 48 he said he'd been jacking up sagging basement framing "for about a month" before sistering in new lumber. That's not a guy afraid of real work.

Winner: Tom Silva. Two strokes. No contest.

Round 3: Teaching

This is the round I was most worried about, because it's the one Zack might actually take.

Tom's teaching style is part patience, part needling. Watch the miter segment from the Ask This Old House Season 25 premiere, which I recapped here. Kevin keeps guessing at the angle of an outside corner with scrap pieces. Tom's reaction, straight from the captions: "That's a bad guess." Then: "Three tries. How long before you're gonna try to figure it out?" And then the line I'd put on a shop wall: "Keep guessing, you get it wrong." Two boards of the same width, a pencil line, and you've got your angle. "As simple as that." Same energy in his Season 24 caulk rundown.

Zack teaches differently, and I'll admit this is where he started winning me over. He teaches the money. In the Season 48 premiere, when Richard floats ripping out the steam system for heat pumps, Zack has the number ready: "It's at least $50,000 to $100,000." Then he explains the tradeoff. "We're not gutting this house. And we're not necessarily insulating the whole house. We're keeping some old windows." That's the kind of answer that helps a homeowner more than any trick with a saw.

He's good at the "why" stuff, too. In Episode 3 he held up old 2x4s from the 1893 house next to new ones and asked Jenn why the modern ones are 1.5 by 3.5 inches. His answer: "I'm gonna say shrinkflation." Then came the planing explanation, and why old-growth heartwood is denser and more stable. And then he admitted he wasn't going to reuse the old studs anyway, because an hour of a carpenter pulling nails costs about what 20 new studs do. "It just doesn't make sense." I appreciated that he said the unsexy part out loud.

Bob taught by giving the tour. Great at why a house mattered. Not the guy showing you how to hold the tool.

Winner: Tom Silva, by a nose. Zack's budget talk is more useful to most homeowners in 2026, and I'll fight anybody who says otherwise. But Tom has 40 years of making one simple thing click, and "keep guessing, you get it wrong" is still the best one-line lesson on the show.

Round 4: Running the Job

This is Zack's round and it isn't close.

This Old House's "Celebrating Craftsmanship" profile walks through his system. Every room has its own section in a binder. Layout signs go up so homeowners (who mostly can't read plans, he says) can see where fixtures will land. QR codes on his van's hardware bins take him straight to the reorder page. On Glen Ridge he put QR codes inside every doorway. Scan one, as he explained to Tom, and it "actually brings up all the specifications, elevations, specs on, you know, vanity, tub filler, all those items. And the cool thing about it is it's updated in real time from the office, so we're not chasing updated plans or working off of old, outdated ones." He leaves his tools on site and unlocked, because he'd rather a sub borrow his saw than go hunting for theirs. In Season 48 he built a job-site "command center" and walked Kevin through an AI-assisted lumber takeoff.

And the people part. His dumpster driver Scotty told Kevin on camera in the Season 48 premiere, "I've known Zack probably almost 20 of those," meaning 20 years. You don't keep your dumpster guy for two decades by being difficult.

The funny thing is that one of Zack's management lessons came from Tom. In the same This Old House profile, Zack said he tends to "add a lot of fluff" when he gives directions, and that Tom's way of saying just what's needed, like "Give me that board," gets the job done faster. Tom's own job-site wisdom is less app and more scar tissue. He told Boston Magazine that "the four magic words in construction that always extend the project and always raise the budget" are "while you're at it…." He's not wrong. Every homeowner reading this has said them.

Bob was never really running the job. By his own account, his role was "limited to being the host," and he said that was "a source of some dissatisfaction" to him.

Winner: Zack Dettmore. If I were hiring someone to renovate my house tomorrow and could only look at how they run a site, it's Zack. Tom would understand.

Round 5: Staying Power

Bob's exit is one of the stranger stories in public TV. According to UPI's report from March 31, 1989, his contract simply expired and WGBH replaced him. WGBH said his commercial work conflicted with the show's "perceived editorial independence." Vila had done ads for Time-Life books, Amerock cabinet hardware, and others, and when he became a spokesman for Rickel Home Centers, Home Depot objected and canceled some local sponsorships. Weyerhaeuser, the national underwriter and a big Home Depot supplier, didn't come back that season. His lawyer told UPI, "He's hurt."

The money explains a lot. Vila told Boston Magazine they paid him "200 bucks an episode" at first, and "after 10 years, I think they'd gotten up to $800." Morash's version: "I said, 'Bob, you've got to lay off that.' He said, 'I can't do that.'" Vila later told the Television Academy that he offered to drop the home-center deal if WGBH would cover him against a lawsuit, and it wouldn't. "I'm a PBS guy. That's where it all started," he said. Within about a year he had Bob Vila's Home Again and a Sears Craftsman deal, and later guest spots on Home Improvement, a sitcom he called "based on me and Norm." He calls himself "the granddaddy of home improvement," and honestly, he's earned it.

Tom just kept showing up. Forty years of it. His own favorite projects, he told This Old House, include the 2001 Manchester-by-the-Sea house (the one that sold for $8.65 million in my first where-are-they-now post), which "was in rough shape after years of abuse by the elements and some poor design decisions." He's also the house prankster. Boston Magazine has him hot-gluing Kevin O'Connor's paintbrushes to the inside of his cabinets. Burton, a This Old House Productions executive, had the best summary: "That's Tommy. When he likes you, he picks on you."

Zack is about two and a half years in on the main show, counting from Glen Ridge in 2024. He's done four seasons of This Old House, a spinoff, and an Ask This Old House slot in that time. That's a fast start. It's also not 40 years.

Winner: Tom Silva. Forty years beats ten. Easy call.

What Tom Thinks of Zack

I keep coming back to one quote, because it's the best evidence I found and it isn't mine. After Glen Ridge, Tom told This Old House: "Zack did a terrific job on this project because he was always pushing for something better. This house retains the great characteristics of an old house with a nice new interior footprint."

Coming from Tom, I'll take that. And there's a small, great moment at the top of the Ask This Old House 25th anniversary premiere. Tom says, "You know, most people call that a silver anniversary," and Zack jumps in with, "Our 'Silva' anniversary." Nobody passed a torch. The new guy just finished the old guy's joke for him, and Tom let him. That tells you plenty.

The fans seem to be ahead of me. One thread on r/Thisoldhouse is titled "The more I watch Zach Dettmore, the more I'm convinced he's the next Tom Silva," and another asked, "Is Zach going to be joining the cast?" Take that as fan sentiment. I couldn't get into the comments, so all I've got is the titles. Still, they tell you where a lot of viewers are.

The Final Verdict

1. Tom Silva. Three rounds out of five. Hands, teaching, staying power. Still the standard.
2. Zack Dettmore. One round, but the round that matters most to anybody hiring a contractor today, and he came close on teaching.
3. Bob Vila. He wins the camera, and the show doesn't exist without him. On a job site, he's the guy with the Rolex.

So where does that leave me? Still a Tom fan. That's not changing. But I went into this expecting to defend Tom against the new guy, and I came out respecting how Zack runs a job and how plainly he talks about money. My guess is he's watched a lot of Tom over the years. The Season 48 Essex County Colonial premiere is a good place to start if you haven't given him a fair shot yet.

And if you've been meaning to look back at Bob's era, I dug into a couple of his projects, including the Westwood farmhouse fight and the Santa Barbara bungalow, in round two of the where-are-they-now series. Meanwhile my baseboards are still waiting. Somewhere, Tom is telling me to keep guessing.

Sources and Further Reading

• This Old House: Tom Silva cast page
• This Old House: Zack Dettmore cast page
• This Old House: Celebrating Craftsmanship, Zack Dettmore
• This Old House: A Revitalized 1887 Victorian Home in Glen Ridge, NJ
• This Old House: Ask This Old House 25th anniversary press release (Oct. 1, 2026)
• PBS: This Old House S48 E1, "Garden State of Mind"
• PBS: This Old House S48 E3, "Knock on Wood"
• PBS: Ask This Old House S25 E1
• UPI, 1989: "Host of 'This Old House' to be replaced"
• Boston Magazine, 2009: "This Old House: An Oral History"
• Television Academy: Foundation Interviews, Bob Vila
• Boston Globe Magazine, 2004: "House Calls"
• Washington Post, 1988: "This Old House"

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Sources: Episode quotes come from PBS's published captions for This Old House Season 48 and Ask This Old House Season 25. Everything else is from the interviews and articles linked above. Fan comments are fan comments. My Tom bias is my own.