FL contractor rejoins home renovation crew
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The 112-acre island has lush landscape, winding trails, a six-room inn with a historic restaurant and famous bar, six cottages and a couple of homes
- Jonathan Walters, a Fort Myers resident and construction company owner, is the general contractor for season three of HGTV’s “Home Town Takeover.”
- Walters was previously featured on the original “Home Town” series but left after three seasons when he moved back to Fort Myers.
- The third season of “Home Town Takeover” takes place in Sebring, Florida, where Walters and the rest of the crew renovated homes, businesses, and public spaces.
He’s been away from the “Home Town” crew for years. But now Jonathan Walters is back on camera and reunited with his home-renovation buddies for the HGTV show “Home Town Takeover.”
The Fort Myers resident serves as general contractor for season three of the show, which takes place in Sebring, Florida. The six-episode series ends Sunday, April 13.
Here’s everything you need to know about Walters and his work on the show:
Fort Myers’ Jonathan Walters has been part of ‘Home Town’ since day one
Walters, 40, used to be a familiar face on popular HGTV renovation series “Home Town.”
He appeared in the pilot episode and the first three seasons, when he lived in southern Mississippi. The series is based in Laurel, Mississippi.
“I was blessed enough to be involved from the beginning on ‘Home Town,’” he said in March, before the new season started.
Then Walters moved back to his own former home town, Fort Myers, in 2019 and took over local construction company Royal Corinthian Homes. And the Evangelical Christian School graduate thought that would be the end of his TV career.
Until he got a call from “Home Town’s” producers.
That changed everything.
Joining the cast of ‘Home Town Takeover’ in Sebring, Florida
The show was filming the next season of its spin-off series, “Home Town Takeover,” in Sebring, the producers told him. Would he be interested in returning as construction manager?
The answer, of course, was “yes.”
“It was an opportunity in Florida that I couldn’t turn down,” he said.
Walters said it was great reuniting with the show’s hosts, Ben and Erin Napier, and working side-by-side with them to revitalize downtown Sebring.
“They’re still good friends,” he said. “They’re about as genuine as they can be. How they come across on the TV screen is how they are in real life.
“Ben’s immediately your best friend. Erin’s got some of the most creative, cool ideas. They’re just really down-to-earth, genuine people, and it’s a lot of fun getting to work with them.”
‘Home Town Takeover’s’ 14-week renovation in downtown Sebring
Walters joined the rest of the “Home Town Takeover” crew for a single, monumental task: The “whole town renovation” of historic Sebring in Central Florida, including more than a dozen homes, businesses and public spaces.
The season was filmed in spring 2024, he said. “It was a 14-week project, start to finish.”
As construction manager, Walters was the general contractor for all the show’s commercial and residential projects in Sebring. He handled the schedule, the subcontractors (including some from Southwest Florida), quality control and the budgets, he said. And he generally made sure everything got done properly and smoothly.
City leaders had already started a grassroots effort to revitalize Sebring, he said. So he and “Home Town Takeover” just helped turn that “entrepreneurial spirit” into reality.
“The show comes in and just kinda of helps them put all that together,” he said. “They’re already doing things, but in some sense we help them accelerate the effort and help them get all their ideas together in one place and execute them.”
Season three of ‘Home Town Takeover’: Termites, lead paint and more
Walters and the rest of the “Home Town Takeover” team stayed busy in Sebring, doing everything from tearing down cabinets to repainting to expanding a kitchen.
Every time they went into a renovation project, they didn’t know what they’d find. It could be lead paint, termites, rotten wood or one of many other problems.
“It’s like peeling back an onion,” Walters said. “You’re peeling back the layers. Until you start peeling them back, you don’t know what you’re actually dealing with.”
But that’s part of the fun, he said. He loves the challenge.
“You have to adjust and find solutions on the fly,” he said. “Because the timeline doesn’t change. And the end product still has to be high quality.”
In the end, he’s always impressed that the team accomplishes what they do on “Home Town” and “Home Town Takeover.”
“Every project’s special,” he says. “But these just have that extra layer of ‘This is really cool.’ … It’s extremely satisfying, especially seeing it start to finish.”
More about ‘Home Town Takeover’
New episodes of “Home Town Takeover” air every Sunday on HGTV. They’re also available to stream on Max.
Learn more at hgtv.com/shows/home-town-takeover.
Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. To reach him, call 239-335-0368 or email [email protected]. Follow or message him on social media: Facebook(@charles.runnells.7) and Instagram and Threads (@crunnells1).
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