Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland discusses DIY home renovation show Sight Unseen

If you know the name Wes Borland, it’s probably for one main reason: Limp Bizkit. As one of the original, most famous members of the Fred Durst-led band, he’s perhaps most memorable for being the one who wears a bunch of crazy outfits (and eye contacts).

But now he’s got a new project, and it’s, well, very normal. Sight Unseen is a home-renovation show premiering on the DIY Network this Wednesday. It follows him and his girlfriend, Carré Callaway — singer of the band Queen Kwong — as they fix up a large house in Detroit that they bought before ever seeing it.

We spoke to Borland and Callaway to discuss the show and catch up on the status of their music projects, including Limp Bizkit. Spoiler: Do not ask Borland to play a cruise any time soon.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So tell me some background about the show. How did it all come about?

CARRÉ CALLAWAY: Well, we already decided to move to Detroit. I guess the idea was we wanted to buy one of the houses in the historic neighborhood, and we had no background really with taking on such a large renovation project. This show we thought would really help expedite the process so that we would learn a lot from it.

And Wes, you’ve had a long career in show business, but this is your first TV show. How’s the transition from making music to making TV?

WES BORLAND: Well, I love the TV. Music is a lot more on my schedule and TV isn’t on my schedule, so that takes a little adapting to. Music starts at three in the afternoon and TV starts at eight in the morning. I think for the most part it was good but a little overwhelming… I guess we didn’t think about the day-to-day… process of, like, shooting the show and the production schedule and sleeping in the house, taking all that into consideration.

CALLAWAY: Also, being musicians with our own bands, our music is kind of on our terms, and TV isn’t.

So why Detroit?

CALLAWAY: We wanted to leave L.A. and we were considering a few different places, and we just felt that Detroit was the right choice. We don’t have any ties here and we didn’t know anybody here, but we were really intrigued by the city and everything that is going on with it now. It has exceeded our expectations.

What are the neighbors like? What do they think of living next to rock stars?

BORLAND: I don’t know if we’re rock stars, but our neighbors are really cool. We’ve got publishers across the street, and we’ve got a mortician that lives catty-corner to us who’s kind of like the Great Gatsby.

A mortician? That sounds pretty metal.

BORLAND: [Laughs] Not metal at all… He’s a preppy student that looks like a rugby player and has like a Three’s Company vibe going on over there. There’s four girls living with him in his house and he’s…

CALLAWAY: He’s just the bachelor of Detroit, and quite the hunk.

Do you guys see any parallels between making music and building a house?

BORLAND: Not really… I oil paint and I’m also a sculptor, so all my sculpting skills applied to the show. Like, I work with power tools, I’ve worked with all kinds of different things and materials before.

What music projects are you guys working on right now?

BORLAND: I have a record that’s coming out in September called Crystal Machete. It’s the first thing I recorded here [in the house], and it’s the first record I’ve put out under my own name, not under any pseudonyms or fan names. That’s in limited release digitally, but I’m doing a run in vinyl that comes out in September which is going to be double white vinyl. It’s really awesome. And then we’re currently working on Carré’s second LP right now.

CALLAWAY: Yeah, we’re about halfway through.

So what’s the latest update on Limp Bizkit — are there any projects or developments on that front? I know you guys had a cruise last year…

BORLAND: Oh, yeah. The lowest point of my life, the ShipRocked cruise. What a waste of time. Anyway, yeah, that was awesome. We had a terrible time and we made zero money off of that.

That was the one with all the MMA jocks and everything?

BORLAND: It was worse than…

CALLAWAY: The hallways smelled like vomit.

BORLAND: Yeah, it was like, basically, a bunch of juggalos, I guess.

CALLAWAY: No, they weren’t juggalos, they were a bunch of drunk people.

BORLAND: Just a bunch of drunk people. It was like Mardi Gras but in your house.

CALLAWAY: Yeah. It was like Bourbon Street but you were stuck on a boat with it.

BORLAND: The peak of the whole thing was there was a guy passed out, standing up, snoring in the hallway, somehow. It was Bro-chella. It was the worst.

I guess since then there hasn’t been any other Limp Bizkit activity since then?

BORLAND: We do the same European tour every summer, pretty much, and do festival runs. But we don’t tour as much… We played seven weeks in Russia last year, which no one’s ever done before.

What other types of projects are you looking to do in the future?

BORLAND: We’ve actually kind of started a rescue in our house. We have all these cats in our house right now because we’ve been taking kittens out of abandoned homes in Detroit and adopting them out to people. So right now we’ve got 11 kittens at our house. So if you know anybody who wants any cats…

I’m curious, do you think Limp Bizkit fans will dig the show? A lot of them, especially maybe the original older ones, are probably homeowners themselves now, or at least of that age…

CALLAWAY: Yeah, they’re like parents, so they’re watching that station, right?

BORLAND: Yeah, maybe they’ll go, “Oh, yeah. Now I know what happened to that guy.” Now that guy has 11 cats in a house that he’s renovating forever.

Sight Unseen debuts Wednesday, July 13 at 10 p.m. on DIY.