Debuting in June 2020, HGTV's Renovation Island follows the adventures of contractor Bryan
Baeumler and his wife, designer Sarah, as they and their children move to the Bahamas
to undertake an ambitious renovation of an entire vacation resort. This is the untold
truth about the amazing series.
While Sarah and Bryan Baeumler may be unfamiliar to American HGTV viewers, their series Renovation
Island has already enjoyed a successful run with viewers on HGTV Canada, where the series
was titled Island of Bryan.
The show proved to be a massive hit for the Canadian iteration of HGTV. According to an
HGTV Canada press release, the series' first four installments were the most-watched individual
episodes of any program on the network in more than 10 years.
In those debut episodes, the Baeumlers say goodbye to their home in Canada and start
their new life in the Bahamas' South Andros Island, which is home to just about 2,000
people. In addition to stunning natural beauty, tropical sunshine, and white-sand beaches,
the family also experiences the unforeseen challenges of undertaking such an ambitious
reno in a remote location, forced to overcome the type of obstacles they'd never encountered
in their native Canada.
"You know when you leave the island and you take a break, and you don't think about the
island, until you come back? I want to do that one day."
Because Renovation Island is a repurposed and retitled show that's already aired in
Canada, the renovations undertaken in the series' first season have long since been
completed. In fact, the resulting resort, the Caerula Mar Club, had its grand opening
for business in early 2020.
The revitalized boutique resort had been shut down since 2011 before the couple decided
to mount a renovation resurrection and bring it back to life. In terms of available accommodations,
guests have the option of a 300-square-foot clubhouse suite or one of the larger private
villas, which are available in one- or two-bedroom options. Baeumler told the Toronto Sun,
"The great thing is, viewers can come down and sit around the pool and walk the beach
and spend some time somewhere they've watched be put together."
Sarah and Bryan Baeumler have actually been featured on a fairly large number of HGTV
shows in Canada over the years. While viewers in the USA and elsewhere may just now be learning
about them, the couple developed into seasoned reality show pros long before embarking on
their Caribbean adventure in Renovation Island.
Bryan was first seen, solo, in the series Leave It to Bryan. That series follows couples
as they pitch the licensed contractor three different possibilities for a dream reno,
with Baeumler maintaining the final say over which renovation he'll move forward on. He
also headlined House of Bryan, a show featuring him and his wife building their "forever home"
in the countryside, a building project that ultimately took more than one season to complete.
The couple also starred together in Bryan Inc., which found him hiring his wife as project
manager as the two purchased run-down homes they could transform into spectacular abodes
to sell at a profit. Bryan told the Edmonton Journal,
"If you'd asked me 15 years ago where I'd be today, I'm not sure I'd have guessed it.
I've always been entrepreneurial, but between the construction company and the shows it's
certainly taken us in an unexpected direction."
Buying a rundown hotel on a tiny Caribbean island certainly wasn't the game plan when
the Baeumlers took their children on a family vacation to the Bahamas in 2017. While visiting
South Andros Island, they came upon a badly neglected hotel that hadn't been in operation
for years. While most people would see a decaying dump and move on, Bryan saw a life-altering
opportunity. Sarah told the Toronto Sun,
"We were there for about 10 minutes and Bryan looked at me and I could tell by the look
in his eyes that this was something he wanted to do. He looked at me and said: 'I think
we're going to buy this hotel.'"
Given the Baeumlers already had extensive experience with home renovations, they weren't
disillusioned about the scope of what they were about to embark upon. Sarah told the
Caribbean Journal,
"We knew that transforming the property into Caerula Mar was going to be a massive undertaking,
but we also saw its potential as a place where travelers could get back to the basics, reconnect
with nature, and savor the simplicity and beauty of this incredible paradise."
Undertaking an extensive renovation project on a remote Caribbean island with a population
of just about 2,000 people presents its own set of unique challenges, which taught the
Baeumlers some serious life lessons. Key among them was ensuring the renovation has enough
flexibility to handle whatever's thrown at them. Bryan told the Vancouver Sun,
"There are only two ships a week to bring materials, and even though we can set up a
charter, it's expensive. If something doesn't arrive on schedule or if it got left out of
the order, we adjust. We'll work on something else, or we can go fishing and work the next
day instead."
That philosophy is something that the entire Baeumler family has had to adopt in their
everyday lives, not just when it came to the resort renovation. He told Global News,
"You can't sweat the small stuff. If there's no milk on the island, you're not getting
milk until the boat comes in so you better be willing to just have something else. Here
in Andros, you get what you get and you don't get upset."
Pulling up their roots in Canada and moving to a small island in the middle of the Caribbean
required a paradigm shift for the Baeumlers. After living in the spacious "forever home"
the couple built for their family on House of Bryan, the couple and their four children
had to adjust to their new living situation as the family of six crammed into a 550-square-foot
villa during the reno.
Bryan broke down the family's daily routine in an interview with lifestyle blogger Kari
Skelton. A typical day, he explained, began with the family having breakfast with the
camera crew and the construction workers. Then the kids will focus on schoolwork while
the Baeumlers and their team tackle the ongoing renovation, all while the cameras roll. He
told Skelton,
"Our days are filled with filming, building, tracking down material shipments...and of
course we sneak away for a swim or island adventure whenever we get the chance!"
"Are you going to want to be here when there are a bunch of people sitting around, a bunch
of adults relaxing?"
"No!"
"No?"
As a contractor in Canada, Bryan Baeumler was all about efficiency, with a goal of ensuring
projects were completed on time and on budget, to exacting specifications. While working
on Caerula Mar Club during the filming of Renovation Island, however, he realized he
had to be more fluid with schedules. Although supplies were supposed to arrive via boat
on a weekly basis, he told the Toronto Sun that some weeks, the boat didn't arrive at
all, which delayed things by a few weeks. He told the Vancouver Sun,
"On the island, when the material you ordered doesn't show up or something is broken, you
have no choice but to accept it, change your plan and move on."
However, this aspect of island living also gave the Baeumlers a fresh perspective. He
told the Toronto Sun,
"Things that will get you ramped up here in Canada, waiting five minutes for a coffee
or waiting for someone to finish pumping gas, those aren't concerns at the forefront of
people who live on a tiny island. Their biggest concern in the morning is, 'What are we going
to eat today?'"
The renovation of the new Caerula Mar Club resort wasn't without issues. In fact, as
Renovation Island documents, a variety of factors pushed back the planned opening. After
original plans to open in May 2019 were quashed, that date was then pushed to November 2019,
then to February 2020 when the resort finally opened.
The new resort did not go unnoticed by travel magazines like Condé Nast Traveler, which
trumpeted Caerula Mar Club as the first new hotel on Andros Island in almost two decades
and declaring the resort as a vacation spot to watch in 2020. Meanwhile, the Robb Report
listed Caerula Mar Club as one of its "12 best hotels for a Caribbean escape," writing,
"A trip to Caerula is a lesson in relaxation, with outdoor living spaces, meditation paths
and hammocks aplenty."
The experience of renovating a Caribbean hotel led Bryan Baeumler and his family to some
epiphanies about what is really important in life. As he explained to Global News, there's
a tendency in modern society to, quote, "focus on small things that really aren't that important
in the grand scheme of things."
He also said that he fully understood how making such a drastic decision, moving to
a tiny island with a goal to ultimately run a tourist resort, something with which he
and wife Sarah had no prior experience, may seem "kind of crazy" to most people. However,
he's also a firm believer in pursuing one's dreams, no matter how outlandish they may
seem to those looking from the outside in. He ultimately came to realize that it's all
finite. He told the publication,
"At the end of the day, I think my perspective would be that you have a limited time left
to do whatever it is you want to do."
When living on a small Caribbean island, sustainability isn't just an environmentally-friendly choice,
it's actually necessary for survival. While filming Renovation Island, Bryan Baeumler
told Global News one thing that really hit home was just how much people in North America
take garbage for granted, calling the continent, a place, quote, "where the stuff just disappears
and we don't know what happens to it."
This was the polar opposite of the family's experience on South Andros Island, where anything
that can be reused or repurposed will receive a second life. Bryan explained,
"We're looking at recycling programs for plastic waste and we'll recycle that into pellets
and packages that we can then resell to pay for the cost of the equipment to companies
that will reuse that as a secondary source."
In fact, Bryan added, during the demolition phase of the old hotel, everything from furniture
to building material was donated to locals. He told Global News,
"We've literally seen houses finished with the material and furniture that came from
the hotel, which is incredible. The people here are very resourceful at limiting the
amount of garbage because they'll reuse it."
The Baeumlers jumped right in to restore the 50-year-old hotel that would become their
Caerula Mar Club resort. However, the stars of Renovation Island admitted they weren't
entirely prepared for everything they encountered during the process. Bryan told the Woodstock
Sentinel-Review that he had, quote, "a very, very dark pair of rose-colored glasses on."
In fact, his romantic idea of living in a tropical paradise came with some challenges
the couple didn't really see coming. Admitting that it's been a struggle, Baeumler explained
that dealing with Bahamian bureaucracy and the logistics of running a Canadian business
in the Caribbean presented a steep learning curve. He told the outlet,
"The stresses that it brought upon us were monumental. We did not anticipate all of this."
And then there were the financial concerns, the constant fear of running out of money
before the project had been completed. Bryan admitted.
"As a father and a provider, all these fears, are my kids going to be safe, are we making
a massive mistake? There is all that."
During the course of Renovation Island, the Baeumlers and their four children all lived
together in one of the hotel's villas, measuring just 550 square feet. While sharing such close
quarters may not have offered a whole lot of personal privacy, it did bring the family
closer together.
While Bryan Baeumler told Kari Skelton that the whole project had been much more of an
adventure than he had anticipated, he was adamant that any hardship experienced was
more than offset by the new friends they had made and the experiences that he and his family
have enjoyed.
In addition, Bryan added, every member of the family has learned the difference between
what they "want" and what they "need." He told Skelton,
"Living so closely together with the kids and family has been amazing...It really has
surprised us how little you need to be happy and fulfilled."
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