Cincinnati renovation duo Colin and Christina Beck are best known locally as The Renovated Family on Instagram. But the two recently took a short break from their company, Vero Home, to bust down walls and test their DIY chops on HGTV’s latest home reno show, Flipping Showdown.
Photograph courtesy Christina Beck
The show premiered November 17 and airs on Wednesdays (the Becks posted a sneak peek of their reno on Instagram). On the show, hosted by HGTV’s Ken and Anita Corsini, three teams are assigned homes to flip on a budget, with the winners taking home the grand prize of $100,000.
We caught up with the charismatic couple to learn more about what it’s like starring in an HGTV show hundreds of miles away from home, in Atlanta.
Tell us about Vero Home and the work you’ve done here in Cincinnati.
Christina: We started flipping houses on the side of our full-time jobs in 2016. Colin was in an outside sales job and traveling most of the week, so we were kind of weekend-warrioring it. We started with, let’s buy a house and pay off some of our debt. And so we did one. I think because we were so hands-on with it, we were able to make a pretty decent profit.
Colin: One led to another one and we continued doing it on the side until 2019, when we were like, hey, let’s go all in. I quit my full-time job and we started really trying to wrap things up and flip as many as we could.
Let’s get right into Flipping Showdown. How were you scouted to be cast on the show?
Christina: When you [flip houses] and post pretty before-and-afters [on Instagram], it’s not terribly uncommon to have production companies reach out to you. They’re usually looking for something pretty specific. The couple of companies we talked to before really never turned into anything. So when we got another message on Instagram, it was like, oh, I don’t know that this is going to turn into anything.
Colin: When they pitched the show to us—when they said you’re going to flip two houses with two teams over a six-week show—I was like, let’s go! That sounds like so much fun.
How does something like this really happen? What are we not seeing?
Christina: Now, having seen an episode, it’s like, Holy cow, this is fun! What everybody is getting to see is a pretty …….