I love a good home show, I love seeing how visions of homes come together and the purpose the home will serve. I enjoy doom scrolling Instagram pages of interiors people and magazines to get a sense of how homes function and the purpose each room, each corner serves. The vision home people create and the intention behind it, which is why Home Town is one of my TV obsessions… Erin and Ben I can watch them for hours without getting bored and I have watched every single episode on Amazon prime at least three times, some even more. Ben and Erin warm my entire heart, they bring something more, more than the home they capture the heart of the community. I am sucker for a good community story and what they are doing here is simply incredible. Rebuilding their town of Laurel one home reno at a time, but this is not about tearing things down but more about reusing and using what you have, making every item serve a multi-function and capturing that essence of what home is and what it means… I do adore this show.
My favourite episode was early in Season 3 is a home on a milk farm that sold for $12,000 USD, I mean I call it a home but it was dilapidated and uninhabitable; but through Ben and Erin’s eyes the potential comes to life, they did not make it about the structure itself but about the history of the land and the lives that passed through the home as it was. They gave the home, a lot of love and a lot of heart. It was a first-time home for a young woman who was limited on budget of $75,000 all in including the price of the house and my goodness did they revive this home, complete with swing set at the back. And as a first time home owner of a few years now, this moment is one that can never be recaptured or re-lived, a first home means something to so many of us who are privileged enough to climb that ladder but it is bloody hard work to get there, savings, sweat and tears and lot of noodles and toast consumed in between so when you find a home and a team willing to capture its essence, your essence in it… it means a hell of a lot.
What I truly love about this show and about this couple, is their recognition for knowing how to make things work, Ben carves things in his wood workshop, Erin utilises her her arts and crafts talents stencilling to make a unique backdrop or creating a backsplash from a fifty-dollar mirror. And colour… oh my goodness there is COLOUR on this show, none of that boring beige or all white nonsense you see on many, many, MANY, home shows. Erin and Ben are not afraid to paint a house black to offset the natural wood, not afraid to source an old bath tub where a rockstar may or may not have taken a nap and paint it burgundy. It is that innate desire to make things work not just to patch but to make it work and last a lifetime. They see beyond the bricks and mortar of a house, they see the history of a town and the many histories involved in it and the stories telling it, in the many different ways they come.
There is more than enough room at the table for more than one story to be told and that is the heart of the show. WATCH IT.