January and Mike Furer waited excitedly under a big shade tree half a block from their home in Freeport. They could hardly wait to see what Steve and Leanne Ford have done to their house for an episode of the HGTV show “Restored by the Fords.”
The Furers had not seen their home since they turned it over to the brother and sister team from Pittsburgh, who are in their second season of refreshing, redoing and reviving homes in Western Pennsylvania. Their first glimpse of their renovated, redecorated first floor came with the cameras rolling.
“This is amazing,” they kept repeating as they made their way through a home they hadn’t seen in two months.
The episode, which was taped in April and May 2018, aired April 2 and was the second show of the new season. Like so many before it, the former home of a river boat captain was in ship-shape by the time the Fords were finished. Once again, Ms. Ford’s eye for design and Mr. Ford’s construction know-how came together to update and enhance an old home.
“Restored by the Fords” airs at 9 p.m. Tuesdays. In the Freeport episode, Ms. Ford said she tried to make the 1910-built house more comfortable for the Furers and their two young sons without erasing its charm.
“We always try to respect the history of the homes,” she said.
Behind the scenes, the Fords work long hours to bring everything together in time for the big reveal.
“What usually would take a year we have to do in a couple of months,” said Ms. Ford.
“You have to plan better,” added her brother.
“The fun part about the show is we can focus on the client and their style and the house,” she noted. “The challenges become the budget and time restraints.”
Often a challenge brings out the most creative solutions, Ms. Ford said.
“I don’t want my brother to hear this, but sometimes the most creative ideas come when the budgets are low.”
Mr. Ford joked that his sister is his biggest challenge.
“What we find in Pittsburgh are a lot of confined spaces — lower ceilings, smaller rooms. When we come in, we want to make it a bigger space with more light in general,” he said.
In the Furer home, he took down walls to open up the kitchen area. He suspects the rooms were once bigger but that previous owners put up walls to reduce their utility bills.
To see an encore of this episode and others from season two, check the schedule at HGTV.com.
The season’s eighth episode was filmed in September and October in Ben Avon at the home of Jamie and Rachel Kardell.
“Standing here in the kitchen, I feel like I am in someone else’s house,” said Mr. Kardell minutes after the reveal.
Although he grew up in the house, he and his family had just moved in three years earlier.
“We knew we had to redo the kitchen, so I was online looking for contractors, and I started thinking, ‘You know what would be so much easier is if we just had someone do this for us,” Mrs. Kardell recalled.
She decided to apply to be on the HGTV show; her husband was skeptical.
“I just thought it would never happen, and then we just kept getting closer and closer in the process. I said to my boss at one point, ‘I think this is real. I think this is going to happen,’” he said.
The couple, their three children, three dogs and two cats were out of the house for eight weeks during renovations.
“I am amazed. It is like coming into a different home,” said a smiling Mr. Kardell.
“It’s the positive reaction [of the homeowners]. That is what we go for, what we work for,” said Mr. Ford.
There was some behind-the-scenes excitement while the siblings were filming season two last year. Mr. Ford was cited in December by the city for removing a fence and building a new one without a permit. The fence issue has been resolved, according to the city’s permits database.
The bigger story: Ms. Ford was pregnant with her first child during most of production.
“She’s amazing! We are in love,” she said of her baby daughter, Ever Allen, who was born in March.
The Fords’ own childhood is the focus of “Ford Family Classics,” a new HGTV digital series that premiered March 21. Jackie Ford said she doesn’t mind the world seeing home movies of her son and daughter growing up in Upper St. Clair.
“They haven't changed much, although Leanne was a very quiet child until about middle school,” she said in a phone interview. “I have no problem having people watch them if they are interested,” she admitted. “We were just a normal happy American family, nothing special…just lots of love and a few bad hairdos and outfits,” said Mrs. Ford.
“Steve was a typical boy, always busy,” said his mother.
“After he graduated from high school, he put his kayak on the top of his Subaru, drove to his summer job as a camp counselor before college and never lived at home again,” Jackie Ford said.
She was surprised to hear that her son calls himself a mama’s boy. “He wasn’t one to call home much, either. I’d like to know his description of a mama’s boy.”
She said she would love to have her South Hills home restored by the Fords, but she wondered when they would find the time. “They are busy doing everyone else's house!”
Perhaps that’s an episode for season three.
Patricia Sheridan: psheridan@post-gazette.com.
First Published: April 29, 2019, 11:30 a.m.