Healing Houses, One TV Show at a Time

This is a re-post from Jester Creative’s web site (my company)…I thought some of you might be interested in what goes into putting together a reality TV show. Enjoy!

If there are two things Jen really loves, it’s making television, and home renovation. A little more than four years ago, she and I were sitting around one evening sipping a glass of Valpolicella, when Jen told me that she was considering flipping a house. She’d caught the renovation bug a few years earlier, when she bought her first home in Ottawa, and had transformed it from gross to gorgeous. Now, she was ready to take things to the next level, and the best part? She was willing to put the whole thing on TV.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever been on a reality TV show before, but it really is one of the most invasive things you can do. Not only are you subjected to having a camera in your face 10 hours a day, but you have to be willing to share the good, the bad and the ugly with the world. Lucky for us, Jen was up for it, and thus, The House Healers was born, with Jester Creative at the helm to produce the show.

Four years and 26 episodes later, we’re about to launch our third season, and although there have been a lot of changes in Jen’s life – a new marriage, a couple of kids, and three houses healed – The House Healers are staying true to their roots, continuing to take the most run down, beaten up houses in the city and transform them into things of beauty.

This time around, The House Healers are taking on suburbia. Jen and her new husband and co-healer, Brennan, have purchased a house in Kanata, on the suburbs of Ottawa. This house is not in quite as rough shape as some of the previous projects, but it is totally stuck in the 80s. It’s in serious need of at 21st century update, and The House Healers have big plans. In past seasons, the renovations were big, challenging, long projects.

If you look at our past projects, the Elmgrove house took 11 months. Park Place took 10. Well, this is still going to be a challenging reno – The House Healers’ most spectacular renovation to date, in fact. The catch? This renovation has to be move-in ready in just SIX WEEKS.

We couldn’t do it without the team.

Jen and I produce and write the show, and Jen is the host as well, but we’ve got plenty of other people working behind the scenes to make The House Healers a reality. Brennan Cartier is Jen’s husband and House Healer #2, and he also helps us out as Associate Producer. Dustin Langlois is our amazing camera guy, director and editor. Not only is he running around getting everything captured on video, he’s busting his butt to get a technically sound and visually pleasing product on the air each week.

Tom Martineau and Jordan Arscott helped us develop our awesome web site and we continue to add new features all the time. Check out past episodes, blooper reels, our blog, and our Go Green page, which contains lots of tips and news on living and building green.

And of course, last but not least, we have our amazing sponsors, without whom none of this would be possible. Special thanks goes out to this fantastic group, you can see a full list of our sponsors on the House Healers Web site. Please check them out! Renovating a whole house AND producing a TV show about it is one of the most challenging, exhilarating, exhausting and rewarding things we’ve ever done at Jester Creative.We hope you enjoy the series and please, drop us a line and let us know what you think!

Currently, The House Healers is being distributed locally in Ottawa by Rogers TV, but we’re actively seeking distributors, both in Canada and internationally. If you’re interested in discussing distribution of the show via television or the Web, please get in touch!

The show airs on Sundays at 7pm, on RogersTV Cable 22 in Ottawa. For now, here’s a sneak preview of what you can expect to see this season!