CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — In 2013, April Wilkerson started a blog talking about her DIY projects.
Nine years later, Wilkerson’s YouTube page with tutorials for at-home projects has nearly 1.5 million subscribers, and she is set to premiere the second TV show she is hosting with Tim Allen and Richard Karn.
It originally started with Wilkerson wanting to fix up her house and turn it into a home.
She said she had limited funds and had to learn how to build and use tools. Most times it came down to not being able to afford to buy what she wanted.
"I didn’t know anything; didn’t know how to use a drill, didn’t know anything about screw lengths, or picking out wood, but I started this slow progression of learning how to build everything that I wanted to fix at my house,” she said.
After teaching herself, Wilkerson realized there weren’t many ways for people to learn how to do projects around the house at the time.
So she thought maybe, she should put out tutorials for people seeking to learn DIYs.
Wilkerson said it was a learning curve for her because she had to learn most skills along the way.
“It’s been crazy, the amount of skill sets I’ve been able to build up over the last eight years,” she said.
When Wilkerson made her transition to YouTube, she also had to learn how to shoot and edit videos. She wasn’t trying to amass a big following, she was only trying to help people.
“I was just trying to pass on information,” she said. “I figured people would search for it, find it, maybe replicate it, maybe take a tip or two, and then never see my page again.”
Wilkerson said everything happened organically, and The History Channel reached out to her to host 'More Power' alongside Allen and Karn.
“I’ve always just kind of leaned into the things that make me happy,” she said. “I leaned into building, I leaned into sharing information, and it produced me a very large audience, and that lead to The History Channel finding me, saying, ‘hey, what you’re doing is what we’re doing, let’s hook up and do it together.’”
More Power is the second show Wilkerson will host with Allen and Karn. The trio also hosted 'Assembly Required,' which premiered on The History Channel in 2021.
Wilkerson said working alongside Allen and Karn, who played co-hosts on the fictional TV show 'Tool Time' in the 90’s sitcom 'Home Improvement,' was a delight, and they all got along pretty much immediately.
“Working with Tim, and his personality, is so great and fun, I mean, he’s Buzz Lightyear, and the Santa Claus. And Richard is incredibly down to Earth and warm and welcoming,” she said.
Wilkerson called More Power a “fun show centered around really cool things.”
Each 30-minute episode of the show will focus on the history of one tool.
The hosts will teach viewers how the tool came to be, and how it’s evolved to be used in today’s society, and then they will take the tool into the field to show it in action.
More Power debuts on Wednesday, June 29 on The History Channel at 9 p.m.
