Last night on Home Town 2018, Ben and Erin helped a local pastor find a home to call his own. Pastor Luke Ponder has been renting apartments for his entire adult life and really just wants enough space for his cooking and gardening hobbies. He is looking to find something that isn’t going to cost him more than $100,000.
The first house they show Pastor Luke is the Lindsay House. It’s a three bedroom, two bathroom and 1400 square feet. Ben thinks that he can get this house for about $50,000 and spend the other $50,000 on the renovation. The inside of the house is bright and even Pastor Luke, who is colorblind, thought so. The living room really just needs paint and floors, the dining room is mostly paint and a new light fixture. The kitchen is dated, but a really good size. Erin tells him her vision for the kitchen and he is pretty pleased with it. The master bathroom has to be extended because it is super small, but there is a guest room that they can take some space from.
The second house is the McRae House which is a two bathroom, one bathroom and 1400 square feet, but it’s only going to be $36,000 which leaves them an extra $14,000 in the budget. In this house, the plumbing has never been updates so that’s going to have to be done and it will probably cost about $10,000 to complete. The living room is just paint and a new light fixture and Erin brings up an idea for the dining room. Pastor Luke likes to collect old books and vinyl records so her and Ben were thinking that he can use this room for a built in book and record case with some storage. The kitchen is a complete gut job.
Pastor Luke decides to go with the McRae house because it’s closer to his church and there is more room in the budget for renovations or anything that might pop up. This is what the house looked like before Ben and Erin worked their magic.
Gallery: Before the Home Town Renovations
During the demo on the front porch, they found that not only is the wood painted with lead paint, but behind the wood they have a pretty bad carpenter ant infestation. One of the beams is rotted and has to be replaced, but the floor of the porch is solid. They are going to use some of the wood siding from the porch to wrap the beam on the inside of the kitchen to make it look much cleaner and nicer. On the back porch, which has doubled as a laundry room, they are taking down the exterior walls and closing it off for a real back porch.
The front walk is a concrete sidewalk which is kind of busted up and not really safe so Erin has an idea to have a long time friend of theirs and her cousin come to help them break it up. Erin will then use the concrete pieces as stepping stones instead of having a sidewalk. Meanwhile, the team is going to continue to work on getting the porch reinforced. On the back porch, some of the flooring is rotted so it needs to be replaced, but some of it can be salvaged and Ben uses that to make Luke a gardening bench out of it. It looks awesome when he is done putting it together.
On the inside of the house, the cabinets in the kitchen are being installed and the built in for all his records and books are being installed in Pastor Luke’s new study. During the course of the episode, Ben is talking about something and Erin compares it to crunchy peanut butter. Ben makes a comment about it always being about food with her and she tells him she is going through something right now. He says something about her eating for two and she says “1.25.” Erin announced back in October that she was pregnant and announced the birth of their first daughter, Helen, on Instagram on January 4th.
Back to the renovation, Erin and her best friend are looking at stoves and kitchen appliances for Pastor Luke’s new kitchen. Erin and a friend refinish a kitchen table that Pastor Luke had in storage already and it looks brand new. After some final touches and decorating, Pastor Luke’s house is finished and they are ready for the big reveal! Are you ready? Here is what Pastor Luke’s house looks like after the renovation was complete!
Gallery: After the Home Town Renovations
The transformation of this house was amazing, but with Pastor Luke being color blind, he couldn’t really see the house like we can. Erin had one more surprise for him. She got him a pair of glasses that correct the color blindness and allowed him to see the vibrant colors they used on the outside and inside of his new home.
What did you think of this project? Let me know in the comment section below, on Facebook or on Twitter!
Can you tell me what the brand of stove is that they put into Pastor Luke’s kitchen? It was a wonderful reno and my mom would love that stove.
I’ll see if I can find out, but because we are a fan site, we don’t have any information they don’t mention on the show. You can always try to contact the production company to see if they can give you the information.