Home ready for its close-up

By Jennifer Brett

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

There goes the neighborhood. In a good way.

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Elissa Eubanks, eeubanks@ajc.com Michael Haggerty, with Steady Hand Painting, paints an East Atlanta home for the HGTV series "Curb Appeal" Wednesday. Each episode features a real house and homeowner with guest experts who discuss the owner's needs and propose projects to improve the home's appearance.

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Elissa Eubanks, eeubanks@ajc.com Roberto Lopez and Filipe Escobar both with Shady Grove Landscaping work on the front yard of an East Atlanta home for the HGTV series "Curb Appeal" Wednesday.

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HGTV is gussying things up for some lucky homeowners selected to be featured on the show “Curb Appeal: The Block.” The show searches for folks with compelling stories and fixes up their homes, then spruces up neighboring homes with less extensive touch-ups.

Among the residents living in sparkling new digs is Fran Coleman and his wife, Ruth Leinfellner. Their cute little East Atlanta Village house, built about 1905, was just perfect for the two of them. Then daughter Una arrived and suddenly cozy became cramped. From birth to age 3, she shared her parents’ room. Coleman and Leinfellner added space with a renovation, but their budget didn’t stretch far enough to complete every project on their dream list.

“We had an eyesore of a porch,” he said. “We had a dirt pile.”

Serendipity struck, as Leinfellner came across HGTV’s call for homeowners needing help.

“It was perfect timing,” Coleman said. “We literally just finished the addition. We know we’re extremely, extremely lucky. The transformation is so good.”

Producer Shveta Berry said HGTV arranged for a number of improvements to jazz up the home’s outside appearance. There’s a new front porch with trellis, a new patio, landscaping with retaining walls and a path to the front door, and the home has been painted.

“They finally had enough space for their family but didn’t have enough left in the budget to make it look good,” Berry said, explaining why they were selected. The work cost more than $20,000. Neighboring homes received about $1,000 worth of spiffing up, she said.

Coleman and Leinfellner’s newly glammed up block will be among those featured as part of the series. The episode about their home should air in March, Berry said.

“It’s been very cool,” said Coleman, who said he and his wife and their neighbors celebrated as filming wrapped up with a party and bluegrass band.

His neighbor Audrey Ferguson, who received landscaping and a new stone wall, says the work and filming has made for some fun neighborhood bonding.

“We were already really close as a neighborhood,” she said. Unfortunately there’s a dramatic twist to this reality television tale — thieves swiped some of the flowers the HGTV crew installed in her yard. But it doesn’t detract from the positive experience, she said.

“They’re going to be cramming it all into a 30-minute episode,” she said. “It’s going to be interesting.”

Michael Haggerty plays something of a starring role in the series. His company, Steady Hand Painting, was hired for a number of the properties. Given that his job is generally a pretty solitary pursuit, it took a while to get used to doing his thing while a fleet of contractors and landscapers were working as well.

The first day of filming was a bit jarring, but once he got used to having cameras in his face, things settled down. He even provided some comedy, as the paint he was working with sort of exploded one day.

“I think they got that on camera,” he chuckled.