Magnolia’s ‘The Story of Home’ follows a four-year reno
Tara Mangini and Percy Bright aren’t sure why they decided to buy and renovate a 19th century farmhouse in upstate New York.
The home in Parksville, near Binghamton, needed almost everything – plumbing, electrical and heating systems, walls and insulation. Floor joists were rotted away in one section thanks to a leaky roof and drainage on the property was bad. And don’t even ask if there was a toilet or shower.
But the married founders of the design company Jersey Ice Cream Co. had a vision and a feeling that this could be a real showplace and so they took the project on, which is documented in “The Story of Home.”
Airing Tuesdays on Magnolia Network (and also streaming on discovery+), the six-episode series follows the couple as they work on the home while living in it – which in the first few months meant living in one small room with a woodstove and little else.
“When we moved into the house it was January,” Mangini recalls. “I think it was literally like the coldest night of the year and no heat in the house, no running water, no insulation. So we basically locked ourselves into this one tiny room that had the woodstove and that’s where we would just live essentially ... while doing this project. You know, just tending to the fire at night, just trying not to freeze to death. It was pretty brutal.”
It’s been four years since they started and the home is still a work in progress, which they suspect will always be the case. But they’ve moved into their own bedroom, the kitchen is about to be finished and they’re no longer using a bucket for a toilet.
While they were doing this, they were also working for clients, hence their slow progress. But the finish line is getting closer but the couple aren’t allowing themselves to enjoy the fruits of their labors just yet.
“It’s a big house and I think realistically we will continue to work on it forever,” Mangini says, “like there’s always a project and there are things to do in the attic and things you want to do outside. It’s just an endless thing . ... The end feels still kind of far away and not like a reality.”