If you think ABC milked The Brady Bunch franchise, HGTV is squeezing every last residual drop from that cash cow. Get ready for the rerun of your lives—2019 will be a very Brady year.
Since buying the iconic “Brady Bunch” house, HGTV has gone all-in, employing its top on-air talent and The Brady Bunch cast to faithfully restore the Los Angeles home to its 1970s pop culture glory before its upcoming big reveal. Filming is already under way.
Behind the White House, the mid-century modern San Fernando Valley estate is the second most visited home in the USA. Only the home’s façade was prominently featured in the cult hit TV series, which aired from 1969 to 1974. But that hasn’t slowed its status as a tourist attraction. HGTV bought the house for $3.5 million last summer, outbidding all parties for the $1.89 million-listed property.
HGTV is marketing the hell…(sorry Brady fans, the heck) out of the under-renovation house in imaginative fashion. That includes a future home makeover show featuring The Brady Bunch “kids” (A Very Brady Renovation); a behind-the-scenes digital series (Building Brady); an online crowdsourcing search for authentic Brady Bunch furnishings (A Very Brady Scavenger Hunt); and a just-announced charity auction which offers one lucky Brady Bunch fan a design consultation and a chance to tour the landmark house before it’s officially unveiled.
Did you hear that Lance Bass? You’ve got another shot at this! Former NSYNC singer Bass was outbid on the house and expressed his disappointment until he found out HGTV was the new owner. His fans petitioned HGTV so passionately, rumors swirled that the network may cast him in one of these Brady-centric projects (perhaps as a cousin Oliver-style cameo or a pitty producer). Or, are these rumors just more Bass fishing?
HGTV has all hands on deck to renovate the famous house—Hidden Potential’s Jasmine Roth; Property Brothers twins Drew and Jonathan Scott; Restored by the Fords siblings Leanne and Steve Ford; and Good Bones mother-daughter duo Karen E. Laine and Mina Starsiak Hawk. This project truly is a family affair.
The hosts are toiling night and day to genuinely makeover the home with the familiar extra-long long staircase, shag carpets, and lots of groovy retro furnishings, aided by fans and Flea Market Flip host Lara Spencer.
“It’s been 50 years since The Brady Bunch originally aired, but when you step into this fully-renovated house, you will swear it was yesterday,” says Roth, an HGTV designer and owner of Built Custom Homes. “We are restoring the house to mimic the exact Brady Bunch set, down to the most minuscule detail (think wall color, furniture, even those iconic orange kitchen countertops). Remember the [Jack and Jill] bathroom the boys and girls shared? The den where Mike had his drafting table and all the tough conversations? And who can forget the staircase?”
Speaking of steps (sisters and brothers), The Brady Bunch stars Barry Williams, Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight, Eve Plumb, Mike Lookinland and Susan Olsen are looking over the HGTV hosts’ shoulders, verifying the authenticity and actively assisting the renovation in a real-life Brady homecoming.
They’re helped by millions of scavenger hunting fans encouraged to locate and donate grandma and grandpa’s Brady-like furnishings that resemble those of the original show. Good luck finding those functioning cathode-ray tube TVs.
“We have watched every episode of The Brady Bunch, paused, screenshot, and most importantly asked the people that would know best—all six Brady kids, to completely recreate the iconic Brady Bunch house,” says Roth, who admits working with these Brady icons is “100% surreal.” “We’ve knocked down walls, shopped for furniture from 50 years ago, sang in the rain, danced to Broadway tunes. I wasn’t sure how much they’d want to get their hands dirty, but let me tell you—Marcia can swing a sledgehammer!”
Sorry Maureen, you’re still Marcia to us. The house recently unlocked its new “Honey I’m home” mid-century modern double door, courtesy of the Scott Property Brothers, McKnight (“Peter”) and McCormick (“Marcia Marcia Marcia”), who considered bidding on the house herself last summer.
Roth will offer the winning bidder a private design consultation for their own home and personally give the exclusive room-by-room Brady Bunch home tour into the 1970s along with Olsen (“Cindy”), courtesy of a special charity auction sponsored by IfOnly and Discovery Networks (parent of HGTV).
IfOnly creates “unforgettable experiences for great causes,” working with 350+ charities and more than 3,000 celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Jennifer Lopez, Katy Perry, Chris Rock, James Corden, Keith Urban and Ray Romano. The auction just went live and ends May 7. Bidding starts at $5,000 and proceeds will benefit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.
“This tour will be a trip into the past,” says Roth. “[It’s] a once-in-a-lifetime experience for one lucky fan. As Brady Bunch fans, we grew up watching our favorite TV family grow up in this house, never imagining that we would be able to walk through it one day. It really is a groovy opportunity.”
It’s groovy, cool, excellent, awesome, dope, lit and other fantastic slang that’s come, gone and come back again since The Brady Bunch series ruled the airwaves. Beyond the house, it seems the hosts are literally traveling back in time. Either that or they’re overworked at the moment.
“We are still working around the clock to get this project done, but the finished product will be the grooviest, hippest, and most Brady project in existence.” See?
Maybe it wasn’t the stories, plots, laughs or lessons. Maybe this house is the way we all became The Brady Bunch?