We often find ourselves reading DM’s from people with messages like “HGTV needs to give you guys a home renovation show” which is super flattering so thank you for that if that was you!

Making a renovation show was something both Chris and I wanted to do since 2014, but we wanted to do it in our own way. We love HGTV SO MUCH, but all the shows are formatted the same. There’s always forced drama between the hosts and home owner, or between the home owners themselves. We didn’t want to do that. We also found that the realities of home renovations often get left out of these 30 minute episodes, so we decided to document and produce our own show for our YouTube channel showing the realities of what it actually takes to renovate a house yourself!

Now this wasn’t a new idea for us; we’ve actually been dreaming up our own show since looking for a piece of property to build a potential cabin on in Newfoundland back in 2015. But that’s all outlined in the video below where you can also find a teaser for part 1 of the series!

Episode one of the home renovation series drops on March 27th at 10am ET on our YouTube channel. You can follow us on Instagram or Twitter for countdowns, updates, and more home reno content.

The Story

2014

After winning a DIY competition in 2014 that we entered on a whim, we found ourselves flying to Toronto to take a meeting with a production company to talk about an “unnamed renovation show”. We signed a contract to explore this option but after months had passed and we didn’t hear back, the contract expired.

2015

In 2015, as we were finishing our first home renovation, we started thinking about what was next and decided on doing a cabin project. We started scouring Newfoundland looking for the perfect property to build our little modern, nordic cabin. We wanted to produce a build series around the cabin, but weren’t quite sure how to go about it. We hadn’t even started our YouTube channel yet! At this point we had been writing this blog for 3 years and documenting our projects with photos. Despite having a background in commercial video, the thought of documenting anything through video never even crossed our minds!

Looking for Crown Land in rural Newfoundland during the winter.

2016

In June of 2016 we moved to Vancouver for Chris’ final year of training for work. We launched our YouTube channel, started making travel vlogs, and fell in love with making videos. We didn’t have many home projects besides a couple of room makeovers at the apartment, so we shifted gears into travel and video related content!

But this idea of a renovation show was still in the back of our minds.

After some weird life changes, we found ourselves moving to Buffalo NY. We had been developing our YouTube channel for a year and a half at this point and decided we wanted to do this home renovation series ourselves.

Document EVERYTHING!

Knowing now that we would likely want to produce our own home renovation series, we documented EVERYTHING from moving to a new country and house hunting, to finding an apartment. As time went on we got more and more excited about doing this on our own. This would be another large video project to host on our channel along side our recent pieces: Cold Island and Heading: EAST.

Heavy wood cabinetry lines the wall of the living room in our new home.

We bought this house in 2019 and started the renovation right away. Then came 2020, and with that, the pandemic which put tons of stuff on hold. Building materials got expensive, trades couldn’t enter the house, and decor items were backordered and difficult to get. We shifted to working on what we could with the materials we had around the house. You may have seen us convert our basement into a home YouTube studio, or makeover our home office twice, but now we’re FINALLY ready to show you what we’ve been working on in the REST of the house even if it’s ONLY three rooms so far (we told you it would be real, right?)

We’ve decided to release these videos in 3-4 episode chunks to make things a little more manageable for us, but as always we will be releasing what we like to call “DVD extras”; tutorials, behind the scenes, and the Aftershow Edition of our podcast, all related to the series!

Starting on March 27th at 10am ET, we will be posting weekly the first 4 episodes of The Home Reno Series on our channel! We’re super excited to share it with you and can’t wait to meet you in the comments each Sunday!

BECKI AND CHRIS

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beckiandchris

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/beckiandchris

Twitter: https://twitter.com/beckiandchris

Our Own Home Renovation Show... Sort of

The Home Reno Series