Want a private tour of the ‘Brady Bunch’ house before its TV debut?
A lucky “Brady Bunch” fan will be able to tour the Studio City home being remodeled for “A Very Brady Renovation” before the HGTV show premieres in September.
But only the winner of a charity auction and their guest will receive the private, room-by-room showing.
Hosting the tour will be Susan Olsen, who played Cindy Brady on the popular ’70s show, and Jasmine Roth, a custom home builder in Huntington Beach and star of HGTV’s “Hidden Potential.”
The auction is being sponsored by fundraiser IfOnly and Discovery Networks, the parent of HGTV. Proceeds will go to the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization. Bidding is scheduled to end on May 7 at 12 noon.
A one-hour home consult with Roth is among some of the extra perks the “Brady Bunch” tour winner receives.
But the private showing won’t come cheap; minimum bids in the online auction are $5,000.
Discovery closed sale on the house on August 10 for $3.5 million – almost twice the asking price of $1.885 million. The residence, which represented the Brady family home on the sitcom, hit the market in July 2018 for the first time in 45 years.
Roth, 34, grew up watching “Brady Bunch” reruns. On Tuesday, she talked about how the renovation is going, despite a rainy winter that held up some of the work. “We are slated to be finished – the entire project – by the end of May,” she said. “We’re close.”
In addition to Olsen, the other five actors who played the Brady children – Barry Williams (Greg), Maureen McCormick (Marcia), Christopher Knight (Peter), Eve Plumb (Jan), and Mike Lookinland (Bobby) – have all joined in to work on the project. The show will include Property Brothers twins Drew and Jonathan Scott and other HGTV personalities.
“We didn’t know how excited or involved or hands-on they would be,” Roth said of the actors who played the Brady children. “Every single one of them has surprised me. They’ve been swinging sledgehammers … they’ve just been super helpful.”
Their memories were handy, too. “We wanted to make the house exactly like it was, down to the accessories and the fabric and the paint colors and the wallpaper,” Roth said.
View this post on InstagramLeave it to @thebarrywilliams to turn installing a window into a photo shoot!
— But for real, so much fun working on @verybradyrenovation for @hgtv today. We laughed, we fake cried, we even danced and sang!
— I’m not an actor/singer/dancer or anything even close. I loved spending the day with Barry (you know, Greg Brady) who is a TOTAL PRO at all of those things. He definitely schooled me!
— We’re so close to finishing a full renovation of the original Brady house. We’re redoing it to be EXACTLY like the TV set from 50 years ago. Did you watch the #bradybunch growing up?
— #verybradyreno #surreal #womenwhobuild
Only the home’s exterior appeared on the show. The indoor scenes were shot in a studio. The remodel would add 2,000 square feet to the home’s original footprint, HGTV said, but the final result would be “true to the spirit” of the Brady family house.
That meant watching every episode of the original show to capture the home’s details, Roth said. And the real-life design of a fictional house had to meet building codes.
The split-level home would be reconfigured to look like the sitcom’s two-story interior, so the workers dug down to sink the living room, allowing the dwelling on Dilling Street to accommodate a certain iconic feature.
“We couldn’t do it without that staircase,” she said. “We had to have that staircase.”
Smaller pieces had to be located in equally painstaking ways. “We had to find appliances that looked like the Brady appliances, which were from 50 years ago – and that worked,” Roth said.
The show’s fans pitched in, too, coming up with furnishings and other pieces of their past.
“In order to truly bring The Brady Bunch house back to life, HGTV needs vintage furniture and decor items true to the original TV series,” the network announced earlier this year. “As you can imagine, many of these items aren’t easy to find. From the living room couch and credenza to the home’s front door handles, HGTV has a whole list of sought-after items.”
“We weren’t sure how the crowdsourcing effort was going to go and we have been pleasantly surprised,” Roth said. “America really responded. We were overwhelmed with responses.”
Another list of needed items should be coming out shortly, she said. It’s expected to be posted on HGTV’s site and cast members’ social media pages. (Roth’s Instagram account is @jasminerothoffical.)
Roth lives in a three-story house with a roof deck that she built in Huntington Beach.
On her show, she remakes “cookie cutter” tract houses into homes that are, as she puts it, “unique to the family.” Her company, Built Custom Homes, also develops houses on speculation.
“Hidden Potential,” is halfway through filming its second season, she said, and is expected to begin airing some time in the summer.
A run date for “A Very Brady Renovation” has yet to be announced.
See also:
‘Brady Bunch’ siblings reunite as HGTV renovates Studio City house for new show
‘Brady Bunch’ house closes sale for $3.5 million – almost twice the asking price
Peek inside the real ‘Brady Bunch’ house — on the market at nearly $1.9 million
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