The stars of HGTV's hit home renovation show Windy City Rehab have been in the news quite a bit lately, but it's not all just about how gorgeous the homes they work on look after they get their hands on them. In fact, it's mostly been for the exact opposite reason, as stars Alison Victoria and Donovan Eckhardt have been facing numerous complaints and actual lawsuits for their renovations since the early 2019. Now, though, Victoria is going to work on yet another series for the network, despite all of the legal issues with Windy City Rehab.
HGTV would, truly, be nothing without its wide spate of home renovation shows, each with their own particular focus on just the right aspect of the process to get viewers well and truly hooked. A new show is now on the way for 2021, and it will bring Windy City Rehab's Alison Victoria together with former Trading Spaces and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition host Ty Pennington for Ty Breaker, which has its own intriguing concept.
Ty Breaker will see Pennington offer his design skills to desperate families, as they try to decided whether or not to update their current home, or renovate a totally different house so that it better fits their needs. Pennington will try to convince each family to stay in the place they've called home for many years, while each episode will see either Alison Victoria, Grace Mitchell (One of a Kind) or Sabrina Soto (The High Low Project) attempt to lure each family away to a brand new property which can be renovated just for them.
The eight episode series is set to debut early next year, and promises to give each family the home of their dreams, whether they choose a completely new place, or stay put. Pennington sounds pretty excited about having the chance to work on this new project, and along with his fellow design stars, and said:
I am so happy to be back in my element on Ty Breaker— helping people to not only love their space but showing them how to LIVE in it. We’ll address challenges that families face every day, but we’ll mix it up with friendly competition from my super-talented friends. You’ll see us having a lot of fun and creating killer designs!
If you've ever seen an episode of Windy City Rehab, it's no doubt that Alison Victoria certainly classifies as being "super-talented" when it comes to designing homes. But, it also seems as though the business side of things might not be her strong suit, seeing as how many of the homes featured on the show have led to some serious legal problems for Victoria and her co-host. Season 2 just began airing on September 15, but the show has mostly been in the news because of the number of lawsuits and other issues surrounding their renovations.
Problems with things behind the luxury renovation scenes started coming to light in March of 2019, as Season 1 of the hit was wrapping up. Neighbors began making complaints about work sites which were messy to the point of being dangerous to those who lived near the properties that Victoria and Eckhardt were working on, and many also had problems with the noise associated with those projects, with the trouble escalating from there.
After Chicago's buildings departments realized that their renovations had led to illegal work, which was done without the proper permits, and also endangered workers, Eckhardt's company, which handled construction on the homes, had its permit privileges revoked. He also had his contractor's license temporarily suspended last year, and then allowed it to expire. Meanwhile, neither he nor Alison Victoria are currently allowed to take out new building permits in Chicago. On top of all of that, there are still lawsuits alleging both shoddy workmanship and the misappropriation of funds from several of the former duo's flipped homes.
Did you notice how I said "former duo"? Well, Season 2 of Windy City Rehab, which has dealt with the fallout from all of the legal proceedings, stop work orders and other troubles, has made it pretty clear that there is big trouble between Alison Victoria and Donovan Eckhardt. The series has shown the dust-ups between them over the way he ran the contsruction side of their business as she (apparently) happily went about designing, supposedly with no knowledge of how he was making those designs come to fruition, and it appears that Eckhardt will not be a part of the series for much longer.
Victoria has gone on record before to say that she'd be willing to put her own money into fixing Eckhardt's mistakes to make sure their clients can finally be satisfied, so it's probably a good thing that she's getting her hustle on and signing up for Ty Breaker. We don't have a release date for the new show just yet, so stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest. In the meantime, be sure to see what else you can watch with our fall TV premiere schedule!
