On HGTV’s new renovation competition series, “100 Day Hotel Challenge,” married real estate developers Brian and Mika Kleinschmidt are splitting up to transform two dated hotels in Salter Path, NC—with help from a stacked roster of HGTV superstars.
The seaside showdown is the latest building challenge for the couple. They have renovated countless homes within a tight timeline on “ 100 Day Dream Home,” redid the Sunburst Inn on “100 Day Dream Home: Beachfront Hotel,” and are HGTV’s winningest duo as the champions of “ Rock the Block” Season 2 and “ Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge.”
This new show, which premiered Aug. 13, will give one of them an extra winning credit to their name, though it’s the struggling properties’ owners who will truly come out on top after the $225,000 renovations are complete.
Eager to hear how the Kleinschmidts handle competing against each other, we got Brian and Mika to reveal behind-the-scenes intel about the TV production—including the Property Brothers, who serve as judges. Check out what went wrong, the upgrades they love, the surprising reason they never host guests at their own home—and the one thing all renovators should consider adding to their homes.
(HGTV)
(HGTV)
This is the second show you’ve done that focuses on renovating hotels. Is that a direction you want to continue?
Mika: It could be hotels, but I don’t want to limit it to that. We always like to do something outside of our comfort zone and challenge ourselves. Whether it’s hotels [or] other commercial spaces, we want to keep the possibilities open, but we most definitely love collaborating with some of the other HGTV talent. We have so much fun.
Did you have a hand in picking the HGTV all-stars for your teams?
Mika: We had a lot of names on the wish list. The biggest challenge is getting everybody to have availability at the same time to film this kind of show. I think this is the most amount of talent they’ve ever done, which is amazing. Some of the people we knew, some we didn’t, but we’re always open to meeting and learning from other talent and designers.
Brian: We both feel like we had the best team. It meant a lot that they enjoyed this and enjoyed making a difference with us.
(HGTV)
You typically compete together as a couple. How was planning and production different this time around? Did you have to keep secrets from one another?
Brian: It was so hard, but yeah, we had some secrets. We’d have preproduction calls in the house, and I’d be hiding in one corner of the house; Mika would be hiding in the other corner, she was in her car. We wanted this to be a genuine competition. The first time we saw each other’s spaces was after all the judging was done. Mika’s hotel blew me away.
Do you have a favorite upgrade you made to your hotel?
Mika: It’s a tie between my outdoor lounge and my kitchenette room. For the outdoor space we literally had nothing, so we added so many amenities, which is added value and that means higher room rates.
Brian: I’m super proud of the lobby that Michel Smith Boyd and I created. It was a closet when we started. The lobby’s super important; it’s the first impression and the last impression. You won’t believe how we transformed that lobby. It’s a five-star resort now when you check in.
(HGTV)
(HGTV)
Did you face any renovation challenges?
Brian: More things probably went wrong than went right, but it’s how we reacted and made it work. [There are] a lot of surprises when you’re renovating hotels that are decades and decades old. We’re used to new construction. We’re still getting into renovations, but there was a lot of unforeseen things when we started peeling back the onion that was this hotel.
We also had to keep top of mind that these hotels are actual businesses—and the longer that we’re doing production and construction, they’re losing revenue. It was a lot of pressure to get them done, to get them done right, to get them back open.
Mika: My luxury suite—I’m using the word luxury suite [but] I had to convert basically a trailer into a luxury suite—there was so much wood rot that half the budget had to go to structurally just making it safe. Unfortunately, that’s not the pretty part, so the viewers aren’t going to appreciate necessarily that we had to make the floor structurally sound, and that took half my budget.
The day we judged the luxury suites was a monsoon, and the weather was awful. I remember trying to walk with the Property Brothers and hold an umbrella over their head—they’re 6’5” so that didn’t work out well!
Are there any materials or finishes you used in your hotel that would also work for a residential home?
Brian: Whether it’s a hotel or a house, you want durable goods in there for years to come for people to enjoy. You’ll see a lot of stuff we put in the hotel that viewers can totally do at their house.
Mika: LVP (luxury vinyl plank flooring), we did quartz countertops for maintenance, added storage—and that always adds value.
What is your biggest design pet peeve?
Mika: Space planning is important. I think less is more.
Brian: Drapery in any bathroom, like over a toilet, is never a good idea.
We saw a lot of things in this hotel that the viewers are going to able to experience with us that might’ve made sense 50 years ago but they don’t make sense any more.
I personally think shiplap has sailed its course, so that’s probably one of my biggest pet peeves lately is shiplap everywhere.
There’s other wall coverings, and we show some different options that people can use. People think that shiplap’s the only option out there. Tambour is the new shiplap. We love using it. Especially the white oak. You can stain it, you can paint it. We did quite a bit in the hotel.
(HGTV)
(HGTV)
What advice do you have for making a small room feel larger?
Mika: My first tip would be light and bright but, unfortunately, the mood and the tone of my hotel did not match a light and bright palette. We had a lot of dark, moody, deeper tones ,and I’m like, “We can’t make this feel like a cave.” The placement of where the natural light was coming in [and] the lighting had to be on point.
Brian: There are some optical illusion tricks you can play. A lot of spaces really did feel small, but with paint selection, lighting, lighter flooring, [and] smaller-scale furniture, these rooms feel quite big. The ceilings feel higher even though we didn’t expand the ceiling height or the square footage.
(HGTV)
How did you incorporate the renovation wishes of the hotel owners?
Mika: It was challenging because the hotel owners, at the end of the day it’s their business, and so there were certain decisions that I had to go with that personally I would have went [in] a different direction. But it ended up turning out beautifully.
We’re used to it. On our show when we’re building houses, we work with the families. We’re not making decisions for them. It’s a team effort, and so it was the same thing with the hotel.
Brian: Mika, her challenge was her hotel owners wanted to honor the past because the hotel’s been in the family for generations.
My owners wanted to almost forget the past because soon after they acquired the hotel, a hurricane came and demolished it.
We had two different hotel owners [who] wanted two totally opposite things and directions for their hotel. That’s what’s going to make the show interesting: they’re side by side, but they’re miles apart.
For homeowners welcoming guests, what makes a great guest room?
Mika: You probably use a guest room one week out of 52 weeks of the year, so it’s important if you’re going to allocate that square footage, it should be a flex space where it can also be used as either a home gym [or] home office.
Modular furniture or things that are convertible are key because then that space can be used on a daily basis, but when a guest is over you can convert it into their own little oasis.
Does your home have a guest room?
Mika: Nope! We’ll put [guests] up at the Sunburst Inn because it’s more comfortable for everyone.
Brian: We have a guest room, but we use it as our gym, and Mika uses it for extra closet storage.
When guests do come visit us, we like to show them the nicest resort in the area and put ‘em up there. It makes them comfortable, it makes us more comfortable.
Did this design experience inspire you to make any changes at home?
Mika: For my hotel, I embraced color and making a little bit more bolder choices in design.
Our house, when we were designing it, we wanted to keep it really light and natural. There’s not any really bold accent walls or anything crazy. After working in the hotel space I was like, “You can get risky, and it can look really cool.”
Brian: I have been inspired to add a lobby to our house, so when people come over they have to now check in and check out.
What did you miss most about your own home while filming?
Brian: We love our house so much. We almost feel like we’re on vacation when we’re at home, which was always our goal. Every time we have to leave to film somewhere or we go on vacation, we find ourselves longing to be back home very quickly. We live right on the lake, right on the water, so we always miss the view when we’re gone.
Mika: [Our daughter] Jade and Bear! It’s more so the family component because we live 10 minutes from Brian’s parents. Jade wasn’t traveling with us when we were filming [this show] because she was still in school. And our fur baby! Those are the comforts you miss.
And then I’m not going to lie, I’m going to say the weather here in Florida because I hate being cold.
Brian: It was January, February, March [when] we were filming; but for us Floridians, it was freezing! We were trying to make it look like we weren’t that cold because we were on the beach, but we were cold.
Did you both make the 100-day deadline?
Mika: Oh yeah, we made the deadline.
My hotel owner, they were expecting their first little one. When we started, I saw that belly, [and] I was like, “I don’t know if I’m going to get this done before that baby comes.” It was literally like three days before the finale that the baby was born. It’s super cool because now when they come home, it’s like they have a new generation in their new renovated hotel, and it was really sweet.
Brian: They gave birth to a future employee!
(HGTV)
How is business going at the hotels now?
Brian: We haven’t been able to go back yet. We definitely want to.
Our goal in this whole thing was to leave Salter Path better than we found it; and we really feel like we did, and that’s the real win.
These hotel owners, they’re already starting to increase their nightly rates and people are staying longer, which was also a goal. Before, people would check in and out just one night. We want people to stay for four, five, six days at a time.
Mika: I hope, too, that the season will last longer because [of] some of the amenities we added to our hotel. Some of those months that they don’t get guests, I think they can now because now if it’s too cold to go to the beach, we added a lot of other fun factors to where it would be a fun stay even if you’re not necessarily jumping in the ocean.
How is business today at the Sunburst Inn?
Brian: Well, we can’t even get a reservation! That tells you how the Sunburst Inn is doing.
We’re super close to the owners and they told us the night it aired, Sunburst Inn was one of the number-one Google searches. They have tripled their room rate, and you can’t get a reservation. That definitely feels like a win for us.
(HGTV)
Are there any fun, behind-the-scenes stories you can share about working with so many HGTV stars on this project?
Mika: In our holding area for in-between scenes, we would go get a snack, take a break, whatever. It was for Brian’s team and my team, just one space, and I wish they would’ve had a camera in there because we were goofing around. We had so much fun. We had some New Kids on the Block moments when we were dancing with Jonathan Knight—just so much random stuff.
Brian: Their concert was so much fun. We went to the one in Tampa; and there was like six HGTV talent there supporting Jonathan, so we partied the night away together.
We took the competition serious, but we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. The stuff that didn’t make it in the six episodes, there’s actually a surprise seventh episode—and it’s a behind-the-scenes episode.
“100 Day Hotel Challenge” airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on HGTV and streams the same day and time on Max.
