Bryan Baeumler will share his Bahamian adventures when he headlines the home show
Credit to Author: rebeccakeillor| Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2020 14:38:54 +0000
Celebrity contractor Bryan Baeumler will share the trials and triumphs of his latest project, an ambitious resort renovation in the Bahamas, when he headlines the 49th annual BC Home + Garden Show at BC Place Stadium, February 19 to 23.
The HGTV star and his wife, interior designer Sarah Baeumler, bought the abandoned hotel in 2017. After a major overhaul, they just opened what they’ve called the Caerula Mar Club on February 1. Their journey, which involved moving their four children to the Bahamas, recently aired on HGTV Canada as Island of Bryan.
The hotel, which the Baeumlers discovered on the island of Andros, known locally as The Sleeping Giant (the largest but least developed island in the Bahamian archipelago), had been abandoned for 12 years when they discovered it.
“It looked like the set of The Walking Dead. It had been completely abandoned in situ. The furniture was still there, the table settings still in the restaurant, but everything was literally falling apart,” he says.
It took him and his wife about five minutes to decide they wanted to put in an offer. “It was the right place, the right state of disrepair, the right size, and the right time of our lives,” says Bryan Baeumler.
The biggest obstacles were logistical. They involved sourcing local labour, bringing in materials and living in a 600-square-foot villa with his family of six for the year-and-a-half that it took to renovate. “It got a little tight,” he admits.
The Bahamas is hot, says Baeumler, so in the middle of summer people were falling over from heat stroke and dehydration. They also had to deal with termites and ongoing issues with salt, which corrodes everything.
Friends and family initially thought they were nuts when they announced they were picking up and moving the family to a small island in the Bahamas. “We sat and had a talk about it, and I said, ‘I hit 45 [years old] last year. I’m playing the back nine now and I could spend the next 30 years getting up in the morning, sitting in traffic, going to work and coming back.’ We’re only here for a limited time and we decided this is a great opportunity and great experience for the kids,” he says.
Besides, they wanted to show their kids that there was more to life than eight-lane highways and video games.
“Some people on the island have nothing. They have dirt floors in their homes, but they’re the happiest people in the world and the most giving people in the world. They’ll come in from a day’s fishing and stop by to offer some fish. They have this attitude that once I have what I need I’ll support people around me,” he says.
The Baeumlers are currently living a very nomadic existence, splitting their time between Palm Beach, Florida, where their kids are in school; Canada, where they have ongoing construction projects; and their resort in the Bahamas.
If he has any regrets, Baeumler says, it’s that they didn’t do it sooner.
“That’s one of the great things about an adventure like this. You realize that you don’t have to stay on the hamster wheel and the options ahead of you are wide open,” he says. “It’s almost hard to decide what’s next.”