Ok, you might feel a little nervous, but the excitement outweighs any fear, right?
We didn’t think so.
So how did they do it?
What will the second season of “Renovation Island” bring to the screen?
The List sat down with Bryan and Sarah for an exclusive interview to get all the answers.
How have Bryan and Sarah Baeumler’s lives changed since Season 1 of Renovation Island?
So you’re going into the sophomore season of the show.
Let’s start with an easy question.
How have your lives changed since the first season?
Bryan: Well, we’re both 10 years older.
I mean what you’re going to see in the show is six weeks after we open.
Season 1 kind of finished with the party.
Hurray, we’re open.
And we kind of looked at it and said, “This has to end at some point.”
But we never thought what we would actually be filming is part of the crazy shutdown.
So I think for us, Season 2 is equally as unknown as we were going into Season 1.
Will travel open, will people get here?"
Bryan: Yes and no.
And once everyone quarantined on the island, we were just a herd.
We’re all living in this little bubble at the hotel and life seemed pretty normal.
Sarah: I think it also depends on the key in of personality you are as well.
And Bryan and I quickly realized, the first few weeks of COVID is one thing.
Sarah: But you have to kind of get up every morning with purpose.
So we don’t want to think about this time as just sitting here doing nothing.
We kind of sat there for six, seven months, hitting the beach every morning.
Sarah: Not even, by a few weeks we were bored.
Bryan: Fishing … well, yeah, true, true.
Yeah, you just declare it over.
I don’t know.
you’re free to walk down the beach, not see another person for 30 miles.
So, I mean it is the ultimate pandemic, safe social distancing kind of place.
And we focused on those kinds of experiences because we think the way people travel is changing.
I don’t think cruises are going to be as popular as they were.
I don’t think high-density activities.
And that’s definitely what we’ve got.
Is Bryan and Sarah Baeumler’s hotel back open for business?
I know that things are slowly starting to get there.
I mean we’ve been open since what?
Bryan: The end of November and it’s slowly been building it.
There’s a lot of people flying in to have that experience and getaway.
I mean, there’s so many routing options to get in there.
And right at the hotel, we provide
Sarah: Onsite testing.
Bryan: Yeah, we do onsite testing on the hotel
Oh that’s fantastic.
Bryan:When people arrive and before they depart, they can get the test right there.
And it’s really simple travel back and forth.
Sarah: We’ve covered a little bit of that in the show.
No elevators or anything.
Everything’s on one floor with lots of outdoor opportunity.
So we were really in a position that we could open, as Bryan said, by November.
We had protocol to follow for the Bahamian government, but we were in a good position.
But it was a good reopening.
Bryan: The grand reopening, yeah.
And I’m sure that was a really exciting thing to be able to do again?
So yeah, that was bad.
So reopening for us, it was the light at end of the tunnel.
And I mean a big relief that we can start to bring some revenue in.
You guys did a great job."
Because we really hadn’t had that before.
So now we’ve got some experience under our belts.
Bryan: Yeah there’s always a scramble to open.
Sarah: Yeah, I think there’s positives and negatives to both.
When you look at staffing, it was very disheartening for us.
We’ve just gone through training.
And for that island, our hotel, we are the major employer on the island.
So I think that was the hardest point when we first said, “You know what?
We have to close, but we want to keep you all on.
So we
Bryan: And we’d become friends too.
Sarah: But we weren’t on an island where that would be possible.
What set Bryan and Sarah Baeumler off on their ‘unpredictable’ real estate path?
Sarah: Unpredictable, yeah that’s one word.
And then really we tried to find reasons not to do it.
I want to do something crazy.”
The kids were at the right age where they would stay with us and travel with us.
And it was kind of a reset, a recharge and it’s been incredible.
Sarah: A little bit.
Bryan: We’ve got lots of crazy stuff on the horizon.
Bryan: Yeah it’s kind of addictive.
Sarah: It’s an adrenaline boost.
And we really looked at everyday like that in every challenge like that.
Bryan: Everyone we know was busy writing those lists for us.
And we sort of looked at them and said we’re going to do it.
And people are like, “What about this?”
We said, “We’re going to figure it out as it comes.”
There’s always going to be some reason as to not do something.
We share so much in common just as people that I think people forget about that at times.
Bryan: Oh 100%.
That’s such a lovely byproduct of this whole experience.
I wasn’t anticipating that, but I’m sure that was amazing to see as parents?
Let’s go for it."
What ‘wacky’ projects are in store for Bryan and Sarah Baeumler?
Bryan: We never thought we’d beat the ratings of our last show.
No, I think in Canada we’ve been just growing exponentially over the past 10, 15 years.
And I think the reason for that is we got to a point where we’re not creating TV.
And we’re so happy it was well received in the U.S., and there’s more to come.
Sarah: We’ve never had that question.
Sarah: So, isn’t that amazing?
First time we’ve ever had that question.
Bryan: The five-year plan.
Sarah: I don’t think we even know.
I don’t think it’s been announced down there yet.
Because Season 2 hasn’t been aired right?
Sarah: No, this is Season 2.
So we’re actually starting Season 4 in two weeks between Palm Beach and The Bahamas.
That’s going to take us a little while.
There’s some really crazy projects on the horizon.
Sarah has got some wacky ideas.
Sarah: Oh, your ideas are even wackier.
Bryan: Oh yeah, I’m working on a good one.
I think we’re just going to continue to operate our existing companies, the hotel.
We’ve got some new brands coming out.
We get some different fun things that we’re getting into.
We’re pretty just, you get what you get.
You got to get the bad and the ugly.
We always just want to sort of share our life with people.
So we’re going to continue down that path.
And then we look at each other and like, “Okay, how do we beat that?”
I think we’re going to beat it.
We’ve got some fun stuff we’re working on.
Sarah: This is genius.
I’m going to get younger on television.
Sarah: This is perfect.
Sarah: I don’t think
Bryan: What do you think, like motivational quotes?
Sarah: Pull out a dad quote.
Bryan: A dad quote, oh God.
Sarah: We’ll be here all day.
Bryan: “Put that back where you got it.”
So this is the battle between …
It’s that classic line, “What could possibly go wrong?”
Bryan: compared to the real story.
So there’s lots of great family stuff, there’s lots of great adventure.
It’s very relatable I think to a lot of families, it’s very aspirational.
Sarah: And we’ll be here for therapy sessions if they decide to do it.
That could be our next show.
We’ll offer therapy for people as crazy as we are.
Watch “Renovation Island” Sundays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV.
New episodes are available to stream on discovery+.
