Kitchen Cousins, take two,
Move over Ray and Debra — there’s a new Everybody Loves Raymond family in town, or rather, in New Jersey.
Cousins Anthony Carrino and John Colaneri, the hunky duo from HGTV’s hit kitchen renovation show Kitchen Cousins, say their tight-knit family is reminiscent of the one from Ray Romano’s popular sitcom of the late ’ 90s, because, like the fictional characters on the show, their own family lives close by.
Carrino and Colaneri, whose new home renovation show, Cousins on Call, premières on HGTV Monday at 10 p.m., live in a 22-condo building they built five years ago in Jersey City, where they were born and raised. Several members of their extended family are just a couple of floors away.
They’re known for their over-thetop kitchen designs, but their new show will take them outside of the kitchen to bigger and bolder projects — from double-stacked decks to entire homes. They will even work with celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres on a few relief efforts.
“We have quite a number of really heartfelt episodes,” Colaneri says during a phone interview from Toronto. “Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey and the surrounding areas. With the show we just really felt like it was our responsibility to get out there and bring notoriety to what happened and help those people who were having a really hard time building back.”
Many of the projects the pair will take on for the show will be surprises for the homeowners. One episode will follow the cousins as they make over their aunt and uncle’s beach house, which was destroyed during last fall’s hurricane.
Viewers can expect all of the humour they’re used to seeing from the cousins in the new show, which was proposed by the network following the success of Kitchen Cousins, but they’ll also get to see that this renovating duo can build almost anything thrown at them.
“We really strive to get a whole variety of projects to show the reach of what we can do,” says Carrino.
Both Carrino, 34, and Colaneri, 32, went to school to study business but ended up in construction, thanks to the work they did when they were young.
“We did a lot of the grunt work at a very young age and learned really quickly,” says Colaneri. “Then we were doing project management and running complete jobs and mil- lion-dollar projects with our private company.”
Carrino and his father, Alfonso, started their construction company, Brunelleschi Construction, over 10 years ago, before any TV show had been conceived. He says he and Colaneri fell into television and that it was never something they had imagined themselves doing.
“My grandmother still beams every time a new episode comes on,” he says with a laugh.
Despite an already hectic schedule with their private company and the two shows, they’re set to take on yet another show for HGTV: Undercover Overhaul. The show will be comparable to Extreme Home Makeover and will surprise a local hero each episode with a big renovation upon their return from a vacation.
Even though they’re very busy, they still try to spend as much time with family — including Colaneri’s fiancée and Carrino’s girlfriend — as possible.
“It’s a very thin tightrope we walk,” says Carrino, “but we find time for everything.” Cousins on Call premieres on HGTV Monday at 10 p.m.