“You Can’t Turn That Into a House” got its start in northwest Missouri

The guys from, “You Can’t Turn That Into A House.” Photo courtesy of FYI/You Can’t Turn That Into a House.

Brothers Taimoor and Rehan Nana and their longtime friend Kyle Davis have turned what started off as a hobby into a career in front of the camera.

While the three are from the Kansas City area, their FYI show, You Can’t Turn That Into A House actually got its roots on farmland just north of St. Joseph nearly 10 years ago.

“We had an old grain bin that you see a lot in Missouri and Kansas…and we had an old barn that was 100-years-old and had kind of partially collapsed due to a tornado,” said Taimoor. “We harvested some of the wood out of the old barn and made a two-story cabin inside of the grain bin.”

Taimoor said, after that, they kept building things for fun and then started doing it for other people. He said, eventually, Red Arrow Industries, a production company hooked up with them and the FYI Network.

Kyle, Taimoor and Rehan. Photo courtesy of FYI/You Can’t Turn That Into a House.

“We take structures and we build them into luxury cabins now,” Taimoor said.

Some of their structures have included a dumpster, school buses, a stock trailer, storage tank, and dairy trucks. The guys have tackled projects in northwest Missouri, central Missouri, as far west as Manhattan, Kan. and down to Texas. Rehan said each project is unique.

“A lot of them would just be left rotting in a field or something like that. So to be able to reuse them and make a house out of them is really incredible,” Rehan said.

Platte City project. Photo courtesy of FYI/You Can’t Turn That Into a House.

A project they worked on in Platte City will appear on an episode of You Can’t Turn That Into A House that will air at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 23 on the FYI channel. It included converting a dilapidated round house into a french-farmhouse style summer home. Davis is the architect of the group and said the Platte City build was one of his favorites.

“There’s not many opportunities that you get to build a clear roof,” Davis said. “It was a really cool space because you have the nice heavy stone and then we had these big wood timbers and then you have that clear roof so you’re really incorporating a lot of the elements.”

Some projects they want to turn into homes but haven’t yet include: an airplane, a cattle trailer and an upside-down sailboat. They said the sailboat is next on the to-do list.

Photo courtesy of FYI/You Can’t Turn That Into a House.

“No matter what it is that you have, the real answer is: You can turn that into a house,” Davis said.