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Bryan Baeumler wasn’t lacking in confidence when he and his wife Sarah Baeumler arrived in Colorado to film the latest season of HGTV’s Rock the Block. With decades of experience building luxury custom homes – and having renovated an entire resort in the Bahamas – the Renovation Island stars were prepared to go all the way in the series, which pits teams of pros from different HGTV shows against each other as they renovate four identical homes and vie to see who can add the most value to the property. But the couple faced stiff competition from their fellow HGTV stars, he shared with Showbiz Cheat Sheet in an interview ahead of the show’s March 6 premiere.

‘Renovation Island’ star weighs in on his ‘Rock the Block’ experience

Rock the Block Season 4 features four teams who have six weeks to renovate four identical 5,000-square-foot properties in Berthoud, Colorado. The setup is the same as in previous seasons. But this time around the budget’s bigger – up to $250,000 from $225,000 – and the home are worth more, with each valued at $1.9 million prior to the start of renovations.

In addition to the Baeumlers, the other Rock the Block Season 4 competitors are: 

  • Michel Smith Boyd and Anthony Elle from Luxe for Less 
  • Jonathan Knight and Kristina Crestin from Farmhouse Fixer 
  • Page Turner and Mitch Glew from Fix My Flip 

Each team brought a unique set of skills to the table. But Baeumler said he felt his and Sarah’s background in luxury home renovations was their secret weapon heading into the competition.  

“We’ve been at this for 25 years, and this is, this is what we do,” he said. “We build custom homes in the $2 to $5 million range. This is our bread and butter. So we kind of thought, OK, well, this you know, this is just what we do every day. We’ll just meet a bunch of new people and do it in Colorado.” 

“We kind of went there like ‘We got this.’ And everybody had to have that mentality going in,” he added. 

But once the hard work of transforming the homes began, reality began to sink in. 

“I think the level of talent that was there, you know, our secret weapons all shrunk on day one,” Baeumler said. 

And once he finally saw what the rest of the Rock the Block contestants had accomplished, he was truly impressed. Although the teams work side-by-side on the street, they don’t get to see what’s happening in the other homes until the competition is over. 

“We didn’t get to see what everyone else was doing till the end,” the Renovation Inc. star said. “And it was mind-blowing.”

Managing the budget was a challenge, Sarah Baeumler said 

As with any renovation, managing the financial side of the project proved to be tricky. While the Rock the Block teams have a hefty pot of cash for their renovations (which they can boost by winning weekly challenges), the budget was still an issue, Sarah Baeumler said. 

“You have to play the game. You’re like, ‘I think we’re going to win in this area.’ So you maybe put a little bit more of your money in your budget there,” she explained. “And then if you don’t win in that area, you’re scrambling for the next week because you’re like, ‘We have no more money. We thought we’d win and we didn’t win. How are you going to make this work?’ … You have to be good at problem-solving.”

Budget constraints meant the teams had to get creative in their attempts to win over the Rock the Block guest judges, who include Dave and Jenny Marrs from Fixer to Fabulous and Alison Victoria from Windy City Rehab. Turner even confessed to scavenging for materials at one point.

“You will see us dumpster diving,” she said. 

Host Ty Pennington says each ‘Rock the Block’ team did the impossible

'Rock The Block' Season 4 cast, including Bryan Baeumler, posing outside
‘Rock the Block’ Season 4 | HGTV
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Trading Spaces star Ty Pennington returns as host for this season of Rock the Block. He said that even though everyone starts out with the same house, each team put its own stamp on the space. The result? Four houses that are all wildly impressive in their own way. 

“It’s absolutely impossible what these guys pulled off,” Pennington said. “Every single episode, it’s so hard to pick which room stood out because they focused on different things. And so each place you go into, you’re blown away by one particular thing you see and you’re like, ‘Wow, I don’t know how they even pulled that off.’”

“These guys really knew they also had to go to another level … this is the Taliesin, I would say, of the Colorado house community,” he added. “It’s top-notch.”

Rock the Block Season 4 premieres Monday, March 6, at 9 p.m. ET on HGTV and is also available to stream the same day on discovery+.

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