Ari Smejkal has a lot of plans, and strong feelings about the HGTV show “Windy City Rehab” that made the carpenter (more of an artisan, really) a recognizable figure — but first let’s review of a portion of his resume that’s left off the show.

He was once a body building bouncer at Chicago’s hottest club.

The year was 1985. The megaclub phenomenon had just reached Chicago with the opening of Limelight, which had a well-known pick-and-choose policy at the door. And Smejkal, 23 at the time, was hired to man it.

“The first night we opened, 4,000 people came,” he said of the club, which was at 632 N. Dearborn. “I had to pull in Michael J. Fox and all these celebrities and I was grabbing them out of the crowd and picking them up and carrying them in.”

In jeans, a T-shirt and cowboy boots, occasionally with spurs, Smejkal made as much as $3,000 a week — largely from handshakes with cash in them.

“That was a crazy year of my life,” he said.

Smejkal worked a few other doors in town (Big Nasty anyone?) and took a few sucker punches but usually had the upper hand, he said.

The gig lasted about a year. His exit was precipitated by a scuffle that landed a clubgoer, who also happened to be an attorney, with a broken arm.

“I got to fight, meet girls, drink for free. I thought I was invincible when I was younger,” said Smejkal, 60, during a recent conversation, who now laughs at the notion and points to X-rays taken earlier this year on a month-long trip to India to undergo magnetic therapy.

Cheri Eisenberg

They show a neck fracture from a tubing accident in Wisconsin when body building buds were whipping him around a Wisconsin lake and implored him “not to be wuss” after a rough tumble in the shallows. He iced it for two days.

Carpentry work since his teenage years has also done a number on his shoulders. “Tough it out” stopped working when he couldn’t sleep through the night, leading him in February to a clinic in Bangalore, where he stayed at the Ritz Carlton for about $100 a night and spent an hour a day under magnetic forces.

“I felt like I was 20 years old again,” said Smejkal, 60, who parted ways with “Windy City Rehab” this summer after seven seasons.

“I feel like now that I am off the show I feel like I’m just starting again, like my juices are crazy, I’m doing all this cool stuff.”

A Chicago property rental magnate recently flew him to an oceanfront abode in the Florida Keys to build out a Hemingway-style bar and possibly outfit the land with a series of Air Stream campers that will eventually all rent for beaucoup bucks. A gut rehab in Bucktown for a Chicago construction company executive is also keeping him busy.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

“And I’ve got another project coming up for a lady here. Her dad is one of the big mob guys, I can’t say the name because I don’t want to get killed,” he said with a laugh.

Notable clients have also included Joan Cusack, Brent Seabrook, Jeremy Piven, he said.

“I think I made less money by being on the show because I blew off potential clients that would spend a quarter or a half million and just give me an idea and say: We trust you. Do what you want,” said Smejkal, who’s also still making and selling his paintings, priced from $3,000 to $7,000.

And he’s now flipping properties for Charming Renovations, a company he and his wife, Lara Heffernan, just started. Their first project is a 1950s brick home in New Lisbon, Wis.

It’s a short drive from the 10-acre farm where he lives with his wife, three daughters, goats, chickens, dogs and cats.

They hired a local high school kid/computer whiz to film and edit the work — footage that might end up on a YouTube channel entitled HDTV, short for Hammer Design TV.

The couple is also planning to take over an ice cream shop to open a pop-up store in nearby Cedarburg, Wis., this winter to sell housewares and clothing featuring the unique emblem of Smejkal’s Hammer Design Group — and ice cream.

“I can only work so many hours. I’m getting older. I’ve got my young kids I want to hang out with, and lot of time I’ll tell clients sorry I’m going to go play tag instead of work on your project, I hope you understand,” said Smejkal, whose blended brood of six includes daughters Everly, 6, and Scout, 5. 

One things his plans do not include: Network television.

“I’ve had a few offers, but I think that would take away from what I want to do again with my projects,” he said.

The fact that the Alison Victoria-helmed “Windy City Rehab” soared in viewership after soap opera-style drama with former co-star Donovan Eckhardt became the focus of the show is not lost on Smejkal.

“I think TV loves drama — so I don’t know how you would ...” he said without finishing the sentence.

Smejkal said it was hard saying goodby to Victoria this summer as he left the show because they’ve been through some thick-and-thin life stuff together and are actual friends, but he was becoming frustrated with limitations on the show with its shoestring budgets and minimal airtime.

An outgoing conversationalist, Smejkal said his on-air interaction often boiled down to some version of telling Victoria: “I can do that.”

“They literally cut me off every time because I think they didn’t want me growing bigger than Alison,” he said.

Smejkal said he wasn’t paid the first season and later settled for $3,000 an episode after asking for $10,000. He says he never said “No” when Alison asked him to drop what he was doing and do a project for the show.

“She’s a force,” he said of the host.

But Smejkal did say “No” recently when a producer asked him to help choose the carpenters who will replace him on the show — for free.

“It became offensive, like I was going to jump at the opportunity,” he said.

The producer also asked if an episode of “Windy City Rehab” could focus on his work renovating a home for his wife’s Charming Renovation’s company, Smejkal said. He again declined.

Smejkal, who grew up in the far northwest suburbs — the son of a carpenter and school superintendent — sold his Logan Square home five years ago and moved to the dairy state and has no plans to move back to Chicago.

He speaks with a smile of his days here, though, especially in the ’90s when his work studio was in a renovated firehouse across from the Gene & Georgetti restaurant near the Merchandise Mart. The first floor was a showroom with a workshop in the back; the second floor was artists — all the guys who were working for him; and the third floor was a racketball court where Smejkal built a 30-foot bar.

“I can take a piece of s--- building and make it look super cool, that was kind of like my MO back in the day,” he said, noting that he’s built out hundreds of bars in Chicago.

He’s still finishing one last project for Alison — using a vinegar solution to get the exact right patina on the metal hood that hangs over a stove in the massive property on the Northwest Side that was featured on “Alison’s Dream Home.”

“She almost likes it,” Smejkal said with a laugh. “This is like my seventh try.”