Former Mansfield resident Evonna Dunn Bruner, her husband, Lazarus, and their children were recently featured on HGTV’s reality television series Buying and Selling with the Property Brothers. As a result, the couple renovated a “dream home” gone bad, then sold it to purchase their own dream home as part of the national television series.
“We have been in our new home for a few months and we have been enjoying it,” said Evonna Dunn Bruner from her Atlanta home.
Things weren’t always so bright. Just five years ago, when the young couple bought what they thought was their dream home, they thought they had accomplished their goal of buying a house before age 30. They had no idea that their “dream home” was a disaster with water damage in the basement, mold in the master bathroom and an outdated kitchen.
Through working with an Atlanta based real estate agent to find a new home, Bruner said, the agent brought up an idea that “Buying and Selling with the Property Brothers” were shooting shows in the area and she may want to apply for the show. The show is based around the activites of handsome twin brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott, who help homeowners take their next step in home ownership.
Jon Scott helps to renovate the family’s home and Drew Scott hunts down the best options for the family’s next home and oversees the buying and the selling.
Bruner said she exchanged emails back and forth and had a Skype interview with the producers of the show for almost six months before she got word that the producers decided to film the reality series with her family.
“They called us in January and said that we got it, so we started filming February 18th and it went for a month,” she said. “This is the first time the whole family has been on national television.”
“It was a little nerve-racking at first because you don’t know what to expect,” Bruner said. “You see the shows and you watch how it is but there is editing and those other things, but the film crew was awesome. After a while, it actually became second nature. It wasn’t anything that was too daunting, so after a while, the nerves just went away and we just continued with filming like it was nothing.”
Bruner’s mother and retired Mansfield City Schools teacher, Betty Dunn, was also featured in the episode. She helped her daughter repaint the dining room table and repurpose the seats of the chairs in a printed cloth to match.
“I had brought my mom up in a conversation and they asked, ‘Well can your mom come,’” she said. “And I told them that she was coming anyways to help with the kids because it was hard for us to film at some points with the kids.”
Bruner said her mother is always a huge help when they need a babysitter for their three children: Jalen, 9, Jordan, 8, and Jada, 4.
“She [mom] was a little nervous [doing the show] but Jonathan warmed her up. Her and Jonathan are buddies, so to speak,” she said with a chuckle. “It was really nice to have that connection, not only with family but also that connection back to home.”
Bruner is an entrepreneur with her own educational consulting business and Lazarus is a basketball coach and trainer at the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta.
Bruner said she is grateful for the show and the opportunity to be showcased on national television.
“Where I think the show helped is the fact that our inventory down here in Atlanta is extremely low,” she said. “During that season, we may have had, at any given time, probably 10 houses on the market in our entire area and it would be that way for months on end.”
The episode entitled “Evonna & Lazarus” will be featured on HGTV again during marathons, which typically begin at 1 p.m. on Wednesdays.
Twitter: @angelnichole222
