Vanilla Ice Project Season 4

Vanilla_Ice_Project_Season_4_Premiere

Vanilla Ice Project Season 4 premiered March 8, 2014 at 10PM on the DIY Network. In it’s 4th season, the Vanilla Ice Project is one of the hottest shows on the DIY Network (owned by Scripps Networks who also owns HGTV). Rob Van Winkle, aka Vanilla Ice, renovates dilapidated mansions in his hometown of Palm Beach, FL and turns them into pimped out palatial estates fit for a rockstar. In addition to being incredibly entertaining, you also discover just how talented and passionate Vanilla Ice is with fixing up houses. What used to be a hobby has turned into a very profitable side business for the international music superstar.

Here is what some of his fans have to say about the show:

“You’re the only guy on TV with the balls to buy, fix up and flip a multi-million dollar mansion!”

“Best f$*%&# show on cable!” — Prime Minister Rosa

“I really enjoy your house flip show” — Robin Dickson

“Hi Vanilla Ice, Love Love Love all your DIY Network shows!!! You and your crew do absolutely amazing work!!! Ice Ice Baby…Word to your Mother!!” — Kevin Benn

Check out the show that has become the hottest house flipping show on cable television, the Vanilla Ice Project Season 4.

Vanilla Ice Goes Amish

Vanilla_Ice_Goes_AmishVanilla Ice Goes Amish is a new DIY reality TV show starring Vanilla Ice as he discovers the art of construction from the Amish. Set in a Amish community in Ohio with no frills, no music and no power tools, Vanilla Ice will live and learn from the best craftsmen in the business. “Get in where you fit in, and I’m sitting in with the Amish. LOL,” tweeted Rob.

Rob Van Winkle is already a DIY network reality TV superstar from his hit show The Vanilla Ice Project where he buys undervalued single family homes in the Palm Beach, FL area, renovates them and resells them for a big profit. DIY also launched the show Ice My House this year which showcases Rob’s renovation style, touch and creativity as he transforms other people’s houses.

Vanilla Ice Goes Amish will air later this year and is currently in production. His other two shows on the DIY network have been smashing successes so expect more of the same from this new one.

The Vanilla Ice Project Season 2 Starts This Week

The  New York Times ran a story this weekend about the start of the second season of the Vanilla Ice Project.

Read it here…

“JUST Bulldog it!”

It’s advice, sure, but really it’s an order. In my hand is a piece of thick burgundy 3M sandpaper, and in front of me is a stubborn knot of wood, jutting out maybe half an inch from an otherwise elegant circular staircase. Surely there is a power tool designed to address this situation, but on this balmy day I am the power tool.

Minutes before, trying to maneuver in the tight space, I stepped on a Bostitch nail gun, resulting in a bitter hiss. Obstacle avoided, I go back and forth with the sandpaper for a few seconds at a time — any more and the heat generated sends my fingertips into paroxysms of agony, as if I’m gripping matches by the lighted end. Sandpaper on, sandpaper off. Sandpaper on, sandpaper off. The aggressive bursts of heat begin to numb my fingers as wood bursts into sawdust, and the grain gets more beautiful and the surface more smooth. That’s when Vanilla Ice, seeing that the goal is near, leans in and commands again, “Bulldog it!”

Yes, Vanilla Ice, once the most famous and reviled rapper in America, a towering figure of hip-hop crossover and identity crisis. He’s still making music, but he’s also now flipping homes.

Next Saturday marks the start of the second season of “The Vanilla Ice Project,” the unlikely DIY Network hit. But even more notable than its popularity is its accessibility and authority. Watch just a few minutes of the show and it’s clear that Vanilla Ice, 44, is a man in command of his kingdom. He’s at ease with all aspects of renovation, having flipped or built more than 100 houses in the last 15 years, he estimates.

So on a sunny, optimistic day in September I reported for work about midway through the renovation of the Season 2 house, hoping to imbibe some of that cold Ice wisdom, and to avoid causing problems that would infuriate the home’s future owners.

The house is nice but not ostentatious for this relatively well-to-do neighborhood about 15 miles southwest of Palm Beach, one of several planned communities that unfold to the west of the Ronald Reagan Turnpike, just past the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame. Vanilla Ice began exploring the areas around Palm Beach after Miami, where he lived, became “invaded by tourists,” he says. “I never even came up here before.”

What’s here is a sea of expensive, secluded homes, surrounded by multiplying luxury strip malls and big-box stores. There are new developments, foreclosures, short sales and plenty more to occupy a real estate investor’s time. “I keep up on foreclosure statistics, population growth, where everybody’s going,” he says. “I find out where’s the next artery on the turnpike, ’cause I’m going to buy some land up before they put that in. Where’s the next Walmart being put up? Where’s the government putting money?”

He likes to drive, so once the knotty wood has been tamed, we hit the road, heading to some home-supply shops. When we pull up to Lowe’s, he takes a V.I.P. parking spot, which is to say he drives his S.U.V. right up to the door and hops out. Mostly we’re hunting for decorative moldings to give the staircase a quick hit of faux dignity. After scavenging through the store, he finally finds a handful of light wood ones — the better to curve with the staircase — and scoops them up.

As he heads back to the cash register, a little girl, maybe 6 or 7, freezes up when she sees him. “She loves you,” her mother says, as Vanilla Ice stops for a picture and some conversation. As he pays from a wad of 50s and 100s stuffed in a clip in his pocket, he reaches into a small fridge in the store and grabs a sugar-free Red Bull. I mention that I’ve never had an energy drink before, which he takes as an invitation, grabbing one more, this one with sugar. “You’re going to love that,” he insists. Back in the S.U.V. I start to take slow sips, as if it might burn holes in my esophagus. It tastes like formula for baby robots.

Then it’s on to the Radio Shack at a mall, where an older woman tosses him an “I love your show” as he’s telling me how health issues lead him to go vegan, and to quit smoking weed. The Red Bull is taking hold, because I find myself extremely interested in the particulars of blood oxygenation. Also I’m sipping slowly, because now it tastes like clouds and glitter.

By the time we return to the house, I’m ready to work work work and am set up with one of his garrulous friends and four or five silent laborers who are slapping wet concrete on stone slabs and then attaching them to all sides of some square columns at the back of the house, giving a more rustic edge to a house that began as pretty modern. I pick up a trowel and try hard to spread the concrete evenly. “Think of it like peanut butter,” Vanilla Ice’s friend says, which doesn’t help. I put a couple of dozen pavers up, pressing them hard against the column so they stick. I get the sense that everyone else is putting theirs around the columns more tightly to compensate for mine.

At one point Vanilla Ice takes a break to let me drive a Bobcat loader, but it appears to be out of hydraulic fluid. Miffed, he dispatches someone to call the maintenance company. A little bit later, after the laborers have moved on, he checks in on the work. “See this? Carelessness,” he says, as he bends down to wipe up some stray concrete. Then he gazes over the backyard: “Damn, that looks rich. I don’t see how you’re not going to want to live in this place.”

And he’s right. Despite my best efforts, everything looks flawless or on the road to it. There’s a tiki island in the middle of the pool (that he excavated himself) with a grill and TV, all controlled by iPads. In the pool are reverse osmosis filters. “It’s what the space shuttle uses,” he says.

Inside, the house has preposterous details. There’s a walk-in humidor and wine room beneath that circular staircase, designed to envelop a pneumatic elevator. One room will have electronically controlled Murphy beds, and another has video gamer chairs by X Rocker with wireless functionality and built-in speakers. There’s a helicopter landing pad in the front yard. During lunch he signs off on an elaborate sprinkler system, dripping hot sauce on the property appraisal form.

“When we were in high school, what did we do? Find the new rap record,” he says. “Now I want to show you how you can put a flush-mount iPad in every single room, even the laundry room. Maybe you just want to watch a soap opera in there.”

“We’ve lost a lot of hope in America,” he continues. “Let me get some encouragement in these people. It’s not about the resale value. It’s about enjoying living.”

Vanilla Ice (real name: Robert Van Winkle) has had nice houses since at least the release of his 1990 multiplatinum major-label debut, “To the Extreme” (SBK), which spawned the genre-reshaping single “Ice Ice Baby.” After that, even as he music career rose and fell, he splurged on everything, including homes, one of which was on Star Island in Miami. “I felt like I was living in a frigging nightclub,” he recalled. “It became lonely and miserable.” So he started liquidating his properties, and came to realize that real estate held its value. A second career was born.

An offhand comment to a TV producer about his side hustle a couple of years ago led to the opportunity to turn it into a reality show. On site the filming is pervasive, with several parts of the house being worked on and documented at once. Throughout the day he is so focused on the tasks in front of him that he often forgets to look at the camera and explain what he’s doing. He’s meticulous, and he’s efficient; the cameras, you sense, may be cutting into the bottom line by slowing him down.

It’s a nice life, this. He home-schools his two daughters, “to protect their innocence,” he says, and to give them the stability that he never had as a child, when he moved from house to house, school to school. And he enjoys it here, in this least urban of places. “My house is pretty nice,” he says with a laugh. He lives in the nearby gated community Versailles.

The house from Season 1 was sold to a Chinese family who saw the show on TV while visiting Disney World, drove to see the house and closed quickly. And Vanilla Ice already has his eyes on a home for the show’s third season. It was hit by lightning, and “the whole roof is laying in the living room,” he exults. “It’s waterlogged, but I know the structure is fine.”

By this point it’s dark, we’re outside, and bugs are eating us alive. Having abandoned all pretense of work hours before, I’m more than ready to punch my card.

“You know what I’m going to do?” he says. “Get some Liquid Nails and stick that vent in that no one seems to want to do, for the dryer.” I’m curious, but there isn’t enough Red Bull in this town. The bulldog rests.

Happy New Year and Advice from Ice

This was originally posted on Forbes.   

Welcome to 2012. If you’re like most of us, you’ve broken at least one (if not all) of your New Year’s Resolutions even though we’re only a couple of days into the new year. What can you do about it? Here’s some advice for a great new year based on the first line of Vanilla Ice’s breakthrough hit “Ice Ice Baby.”

1. Stop. Perhaps you think this is the year to start a bunch of great and worthwhile endeavors. You might still be going strong during the first week of January, but my guess is that life will eventually get in the way. Act first, and find something to Stop.

What can you Stop? Your social media habits are a good place to start. How many of your tweets and Facebook status updates can be translated as “I’m awesome; check me out” without losing information? You just tweeted that you’re in an awesome place with an impressive person. Does this give your friends and followers useful information on which they can act, or does it just tell them that you go to awesome places and hang out with impressive people? I’m trying to follow Jon Acuff’s advice by asking “why” about whatever I write for public consumption so as to improve the quality (and if anything, reduce the quantity) of my output.

To the best of your ability, Stop saying “yes” when people ask you to do things. Productivity expert Jason Womack suggests making an inventory of your commitments. This will help you tell if you have room for more or if you need to scale back. I suggest that you follow Biblical wisdom on this and count the cost: what will you have to give up in order to do whatever you’re planning? Is your estimate accurate?

Here’s one that’s harder: Stop emphasizing and claiming credit for good intentions. Economicsteaches us to be mindful of the law of unintended consequences, and the sad reality is that a lot of initiatives undertaken in the name of the poor actually work to the detriment of the poor. I’ve touched on this before (12); I’m reading When Helping Hurts right now and will have much more to say about this in 2012. Honestly, my sense is that carefully washing your hands with soap and water after using the restroom does more to alleviate suffering than a lot of things people do in the name of helping others. By all means, be generous and diligent about extending the right hand of friendship, but making sure that hand is clean rather than full of SWEDOW probably does more for the people you’re trying to help.

2. Collaborate. Economics shows us how specialization and division of labor create wealth. We can accomplish far more when we work together than when we work alone. I know I am a lot more productive and a lot happier as a result of an extensive network of collaborators, friends, mentors, co-authors, and students.

The old saw is true: the best way to learn something is to teach it. In looking for collaborative opportunities, find ways to teach others and find ways to be teachable. This extends to all areas of life. Perhaps you can adopt a new professional mentor on the job. If you’re going to get married someday, find someone with a successful marriage who is willing to take you under his or her wing. And so on. This cuts both ways. You have knowledge and experience you can use to mentor someone else, and you will learn a lot in the process.

3. Listen. What problems did you have in 2011 that could have been avoided if you had listened more carefully (I can name many)? What can you learn by really listening rather than just waiting for your turn to talk?

If you aren’t careful, consuming information is like drinking from a firehose: you end up soaked from head to toe, and a quenched thirst is almost an accident. The volume is much lower from a drinking fountain, but you come away refreshed. Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know, but consider something I once heard from a preacher: it doesn’t matter how much of the Bible you get on you. What matters is how much you get in you. It’s an excellent thought for the 21st century information environment.

If you can rap “Ice Ice Baby” from memory, it’s a pretty sure sign you were raised in the 90s. If you can rap “Ice Ice Baby” from memory, you’re probably also at a point in life where you have to be very discerning about what you’re doing and why. It’ll be easier if you stop, collaborate, and listen.

Captain Vanilla?

Vanilla Ice will star as Captain Hook at Chatham's Central Theatre

Rapper Vanilla Ice has arrived in Chatham ahead of his first pantomime.

The Ice Ice Baby star, who will star as Hook in Peter Pan at this year’s Central Theatre show, attended his first rehearsal yesterday.

He said he was excited to be here and revealed that Jedward and even Hollywood actor Adam Sandler could be sitting in the audience this year.

Ice, whose real name is Rob Van Winkle, flew straight from America to the UK for his first rehearsal and admitted he hasn’t even had time to read the whole script.

The American said: “This is my first day here and I’m super jet lagged and tired, but it’s great because the cast are so energetic and it energises me.

“I haven’t seen anything in Chatham yet. I came straight from the airport and I didn’t even look out of the window because I was just reading my lines. I’m only half way through the script.”

Ice, who said he had fans flying in from all over Europe to see the show, added that a few more famous faces might make an appearance.

“Adam Sandler is a really good friend of mine and he said he was coming over to see the panto and Jedward are definitely coming as well.

“Adam might be kidding, but I’m going to let him know that I’m two shows a day, buddy – so come on down and bring the kids over – they’ll love it.”

Ice, who will be spending Christmas in England this year with his family, added: “I sure do love all these little adventures and I never thought I’d do theatre. It’s all an adventure for me.”

Peter Pan is at the Central Theatre, Chatham, from Thursday, December 8, to Saturday, December 31. To book, phone 01634 338338 or visi twww.medwayticketslive.co.uk.

Read the original post here: http://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway_messenger/news/2011/november/29/vanilla_ice.aspx

Vanilla Ice Working on “Ice My House Contest” Winner’s Home

Vanilla Ice , aka Rob Van Winkle, returned to Dallas today and was employing mad DIY skillz in the brutal North Texas heat. He’s working on the home of Sean and Erica Heatley, North Dallas residents and avid fans of Ice’s Vanilla Ice Project on the DIY Network.

Vendor and construction cars lined the street near the Heatleys’ home as Van Winkle started work on their poolhouse. Production crews surrounded Van Winkle as he and the Heatleys started working on the poolhouse’s outdoor shower.

Van Winkle, whose rap single “Ice Ice Baby” made him a pop icon, attended high school in Carrollton and regards Dallas as his hometown. He was all smiles about being back home.

“It’s been twenty-something years since I lived here, but I see some changes,” Van Winkle told neighborsgo ‘s Gloria Salinas. “Well you know, I used to ride dirt bikes in this place they call Frisco. It used to be just trees, it’s like they have these cities now with names that I don’t even remember because they weren’t even developed cities. It was kind of the outskirts.”

Van Winkle now lives in St. Lucie, Fla., and his mom and sister still live in the Dallas area.
“So yeah there’s been quite a few changes, but I see a lot of growth here and I see a lot of excitement here and you know it’s my hometown still,” he said. “I still remember a lot of these roads and everything.”

One of neighborsgo’s Facebook fans already had a rap written for his visit: “Stop. Collaborate and Listen, Ice is back in town doing some demo-lition.”

Word.