Kayley Letendre and her family will be featured on a special Christmas episode of the HGTV show.
“I grew up in Vernon, I moved to Vancouver in my 20s and had my first baby there. And we moved back to Vernon for five years. And then we went from Vernon, we moved to Lumby, we went from Lumby to France,” said Letendre.
Letendre moved to the Bordeaux region of France with her husband Michael Letendre and their two children.
She says homes in France were quite a bit different than ones in Vernon, or anywhere in B.C. Where Canadians are used to wood frame houses, Letendre says the homes they toured in the Bordeaux region were a beautiful soft coloured stone.
Newer built homes aren’t as pretty as people might be picturing, but she says they will last forever. The house the family is currently in is very old but the inside has been renovated to have the comforts they’re used to from B.C. Letendre says it’s not as efficient with heat as Canadian homes, the roof is being fixed and she can tell.
She says being on the show happened by chance. she had joined a number of Facebook groups for expats and saw a post asking for expats to do some filming. Letendre says she reached out to the poster explaining her family were Canadians who’d just moved to France and asked for more information. A few months later, a recruiter messaged them and asked if they’d heard of House Hunters.
“My husband and I wrote, we’ve watched House Hunters forever, like it was part of our desire to move abroad,” she said.
Viewers of the show might expect Letendre and her husband to have ridiculous jobs with a budget of a million dollars, but the duo has normal jobs. Letendre is a freelance photographer and her husband is a marketing consultant.
Letendre says the family had a great experience filming their episode. They spent five days filming with the crew. Letendre said most days were about 12 hours long.
When asked how realistic the show is, Letendre said it’s a reality show but the crew does a great job of showcasing the journey.
“They didn’t follow us around for a year to actually see our full circle journey here, but they stay very true to the actual storyline of your journey,” said Letendre. “They really spend a lot of time doing interviews and lots of questionnaires to really get your story cohesive with the truth of what you experienced, but as far as the timeline, it's condensed.”
According to the HGTV website, the Letendre’s episode will be premiering on the HGTV channel on Monday at 10 p.m. Letendre says producers have told her all the Christmas episodes will be running as a marathon on Christmas eve, but that’s in the United states and she’s not sure if Canadians will see that as well.
