When Patrick Hansford graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1983 with his Bachelor of Science degree in architecture and environmental design technology, he didn’t think it would lead to him being featured on a reality TV show.
All it took was a move to Maine.
Maine Cabin Masters is a cabin renovation show based in Maine that airs on the Magnolia Network. The show centers on a contractor, Chase Morrill, his designer sister Ashley Morrill and her carpenter husband Ryan Eldridge.
The premise of the show typically begins with Chase introducing Ryan and Ashley to a new cabin each episode, known as “camps,” and their respective owners.
Here enters Hansford, who found himself at the center of the Aug. 4 episode.
Hansford, who taught at BGSU for three years, earned his master’s degree in architecture from Miami University, which led him to own his own architecture firm for several decades.
Hansford and his Falcon Flame wife, Sheila, recently moved to Maine but had never heard of the show before.
“What’s interesting is when we were moving out here, my wife started telling her friends, ‘Oh, I’m moving to Maine,’ and all of her coworkers — the guys — were like, ‘Really, have you ever watched this show?’ It’s like, ‘Well, no — now we have,’” said Hansford.
The Aug. 4 episode featured the Cabin Masters team building a two-bedroom, 890-square foot cottage from the ground up on Lake Cobbosseecontee for around $150,000 after the location was destroyed in a series of severe storms in December 2023.
The layout of the cabin pays homage to Hansford’s late aunt for whom he was developing plans to build and design a cabin in Ohio.
“It was this great collaborative thing where they had a design from me and then used their own skills and sort of did an interpretation, which to me is an ideal way to build where there’s this collaborative effort,” Hansford said of working with the Cabin Masters team.
The episode was filmed in three parts, with Hansford participating in nine hours of filming spanning from last winter to this May, part of which was filmed at his current college, the University of Maine.
“It’s funny — it eventually became an open secret at the school because I had to get approval from the administration and all the attorneys with the university that we could film on campus,” Hansford said. “I had a group of students that I worked with over the years and I said, ‘Hey, I’m doing this special thing, but you can’t tell any of the other students,’ and it’s hard to keep it a secret when the Cabin Masters show up on campus and there’s students in the building and we’re like, ‘We’re filming here today, stay out of this area.’”
Hansford said the show is an example to his students of his real-life architecture work.
“Once my students started to find out I’m not up there espousing things in the classroom, I’m actually building stuff, and I’m building stuff that is approachable,” he said. “I’m not using parametric programs — I’m doing stuff that actually gets built and gets used by people. We’re not just talking about it — we’re actually building stuff.”
In addition to the construction, Hansford said the filming process was interesting.
“I could never wear my BG shirt or hat on the site, or they’d tape over it. You film the same scene over and over and over, because it’d be like, the camera’s here, then we come and we have a mark and we hit the mark, and then we start again, and now we’re looking here, the camera’s here,” said Hansford.
Despite being featured on a TV show, his students being able to see his tangible work and even being invited to the final reveal of the renovations, Hansford joked that his favorite part of the episode was one for a furry friend, Hans.
“One of the things the Cabin Masters talked to us about was if there’s something specific we’d like, and we were like, ‘Yeah, we’d like to have a doghouse.’ Part of the final episode of the show is that you can see Hans (Patrick’s son’s dog) getting his doghouse,” said Hansford.
If you missed the episode’s original airing, you can find a full list of recent episodes on the Cabin Master’s website.
