The father-daughter team of Ray and Crystal Moon teamed up to take on three other pairs in a new home renovation competition show airing later this month.
Billed as W Network’s biggest competition show ever, Game of Homes premieres Tuesday night. The show follows four teams of amateur home renovators as they transform houses slated for demolition into dream homes.
The homes were all moved to an empty lot on Vancouver’s waterfront, which became the set for the show. Each team was assigned a house it had to renovate both inside and out.
The teams lived in the houses and worked around the clock to transform them, battling tight deadlines and even tighter budgets.
Crystal Moon, who grew up in Tsawwassen and now lives in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood, said each episode of the eight-part series centres around the renovation of a different room in the house.
Two expert judges, Cheryl Torrenueva, who has appeared on Colin & Justin’s Home Heist, Restaurant Makeover and Restaurant Impossible, and Jeremy MacPherson, from The Re-Inventors, assessed the teams’ work every week with the help of a slew of celebrity guest judges, including Jillian Harris and Todd Talbot from Love It or List It, and Drew and Jonathon Scott from Property Brothers.
Crystal said she heard about the show back in the summer when she was recovering from a broken foot. She said she discounted the idea initially, but after some prompting from her boyfriend and a few friends, she decided to give it a try. However, she needed to find a teammate.
She said her boyfriend works in the hospitality industry and would likely not be able to take the time off work, so she called her dad, semi-retired football coach Ray Moon, who coaches the provincial champion South Delta Sun Devils.
“I roped him into it,” Crystal said with a smile.
The pair started the application process, which included submitting a video, examples of home renovations they’ve done — Ray helped Crystal and her boyfriend renovate their bathroom when they moved into their Kits condo — and an in-person interview.
“We had no idea it would get this far,” Crystal said.
The pair said they did the show with the goal of winning the house to give Crystal a leg up in Vancouver’s expensive housing market.
Ray said while he has no professional background or training, he’s always done projects around the house. Crystal has a passion for design and runs a small residential interior design firm on a part-time basis.
The renovations and filming took place last year, however the winner has yet to be chosen. The winning team will be announced in a live finale in May.
Crystal and Ray say they are both excited and a little nervous about what will make it on air.
While they work well together, Crystal said they butted heads right off the bat with the first major decision they had to make.
Game of Homes airs starting Tuesday, March 17 at 10 p.m.
