The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 240

INSIDE IV While We Are Out, Evan Farmer Has A Blast At "I 1 pened, I put everything on pause for a while and took the best of both worlds. I still get to do home rehab, but I'm not on TV doing it." Farmer is the third host of "While You Were Out," following Anna Bocci and Teresa Strasser. Since its premiere, the show has centered one person's desire to secretly redo a room or garden for someone in his or her life while that person is away for two days. During the process, the host quizzes the person who requested the redo, to see if his or her knowledge of the absent friend or loved one can win some accessories for the room. The cast of "While You Were Out" includes a revolving team of designers Chayse Dacota and John Bruce carpenter Andrew Dan-Jumbo (a tall Brit picked as one of People's 50 Most Beautiful), carpentry and decor jack-of-all-trades Leslie Segrete and the host.

With Farmer, the show not only gets someone attractive and entertaining, but someone who knows his way around a screwdriver. "I have a base of knowledge that people can trust," he says, "so I'm not just shooting from the hip and making stuff up. That's where my background in architecture and construction plays a role. "I actually do the projects. I know what I'm doing.

I wear the tool belt. I use all the tools. I also see myself as a chef, in that I'm throwing ingredients of all the different personalities and situations together in a pot, stirring them up, and sometimes it boils over. At that point, I become damage control. Other times, I'm quite the instigator.

I have to play friend and foe sometimes. It's a fine line. It's like being an older brother in a very eccentric family." By KATE O'HARE Zap2it BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER As the new host of TLC's home-redecorating and relationship show "While You Were Out," Evan Farmer has finally found a job that brings all the threads of his life together. "Oh, my God," he says, "I'm having the time of my life. Every once in a while, everything in the universe comes together.

My challenge in life has been figuring out what I don't want to do, because I do so many different things. I don't have ADD, but I get bored really easily. "I'm a musician; I'm an actor. I'm bouncing back and forth carpenter, architect, I've done it. I was like, 'How am I ever going to turn that into a mon-eymaking I did (acting and singing) at the same time with the MTV boy-band thing, the 'Spinal Tap'-style spoof thing, and now I'm integrating my educational history with entertainment doing this show." Farmer studied architecture at Tulane University and worked for several years at an architectural firm in his hometown of Baltimore.

He also juggled musical and acting jobs with jobs as a host, including occasionally replacing Carson Daly on MTV's "Total Request Live." "He was out of town," Farmer recalls. "He was in Cancun, courting Tara Reid, and he refused to come back because he had fallen in love and found the woman he was going to marry. That's what he told me, anyway. "(MTV's) like, Hey, Carson still isn't coming back from Cancun. You want to keep coming And I'm like, It was a great experience, actually, the most fun I've ever had in my live.

Doing the live hosting, just the adrenaline Evan Farmer is the host of TLC's relationship-redecorating show "While You Were Out," which airs 9 p.m. Fridays. input, being on your toes and having to roll with the punches, all with no choice but to do it it was really awesome." Following that, Farmer says he managed "three years of unemployment," living off savings and a few acting jobs. "I started getting into home rehab," he says. "I was starting a business with a friend of mine who's an architect in New Orleans.

It was just getting off the ground when a music project took me to New York, and I started recording an album. "I was still doing those two in tandem, thinking, 'That's not too much on my plate Then when I auditioned for 'While You Were and that hap 3 Giifstream POOLS SPAS, INC. www.gutfstreampools.com FREE ESTIMATES IftS MiIE Lit RPOO65706 Hillsborough (813)925-0909 Pinellas (727)787-9334 telmLl 75.