Boston PBS station WGBH-TV originally created the program and produced it from its inception in 1979 until 2001, when Time Inc. acquired the television assets and formed This Old House Ventures.

In 2016, Time Inc. sold This Old House Ventures to executive Eric Thorkilsen and private equity firm TZP Growth Partners (although it continued to have a special partnership deal with its former parent company).

Other underwriters throughout the show's tenure have included Parks Corporation, Glidden, Montgomery Ward, Ace Hardware, Kohler, Schlage, Century 21 Real Estate, Toro, ERA Real Estate, Angie's List, Amica Mutual Insurance, GAF, Mitsubishi Electric, and Lumber Liquidators.

[10] Begun in 1979 as a one time, thirteen part series airing on WGBH, This Old House has grown into one of the most popular programs on the network.

The series covering the renovation of the Westwood house (Weatherbee Farm) became something of a cult classic because of an escalating dispute between the hosts, Vila and Abram, and the homeowners over the direction the project was taking.

As the show evolved, it began to focus on higher end, luxury homes with more of the work done by expert contractors and tradespeople.

Earlier in 1989, Vila had been approached by Supermarkets General Corporation, the owner of the Rickel chain of home improvement stores, to replace Bruce Morrow as the company's television spokesman.

To celebrate its 30th anniversary season, This Old House worked with Nuestra Comunidad to renovate a foreclosed home in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood.

Nuestra Comunidad is a non-profit development corporation that acquired this 1870s era Second Empire style home from a bank foreclosure.

[6] To celebrate the 40th season in 2019, a retrospective and revisit of some of the more-notable projects were incorporated into a handful of episodes, with some of the original homeowners providing tours.

In later seasons, the spin-off program added landscape expert Jennifer Nawada Evans, eventually replacing Roger Cook, who retired due to unspecified health issues.

Ross Trethewey is the shows building engineer and leads the TV segment called "Future House", covering home automation and related technology.

The segment was so popular that it would sometimes feature notable celebrity guests such as Jimmy Fallon, Nick Offerman, and Richard Mastracchio, the latter of whom broadcast from space.

In both versions, after the van pulls into the barn driveway, the footage cuts to Richard Trethewey handing out the coffees to the other three regulars.

The original opening sequence has since been modified, and still shows the travels of the small trailer which has the Ask This Old House logo prominently displayed.

The show was very much like Ask This Old House: it was shot mainly in the "loft", was hosted by O'Connor, and featured the regular experts listed above and also Abram (master carpenter).

Each episode ended with a segment called "Inside Out", which featured one of the two guest commentators, Jimmy Dunn and Doreen Vigue, and one of the experts, with a brief and comedic overview of what was discussed on the show.

It is also hosted by Kevin O'Connor and is repurposed to meet E/I regulations for people 13 to 16 years old as part of the One Magnificent Morning program block.

Trade School features the stars of This Old House, Norm Abram, Tom Silva, Richard Trethewey, and Roger Cook, showing what it is like to work alongside these seasoned pros.

Bill Nye the Science Guy parodied the show as "This Old Brain", as well as "This Old Climate"; both featured Pat Cashman as Bob Liam.

In 1985, PBS produced its own parody of This Old House titled "This Old Shack", which featured "Bob Villa" and master carpenter "Paul Thumbs" in a three-part rehab in Arlington.

The Disney Channel's The All New Mickey Mouse Club parodied the show as "This Old Home", which featured renovations on the candy house from Hansel and Gretel.

In 1988, John Larroquette portrayed Bob Vila on the NBC late-night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live in a parody of This Old House with homeowners Tom (Kevin Nealon) and Peggy McGuinness (Victoria Jackson) in which he rehabilitates an 1865 Victorian farmhouse to have load-bearing walls that sweat blood.

Fox's long-running sketch comedy show Mad TV did a parody called "This Cold House".

Damon Wayans portrayed a homeless person named Anton Jackson, who talks about renovating a large cardboard box where he lived.