Erin and Ben Napier’s Home Town is back for season 8 — with some big changes.
Us Weekly can exclusively reveal that the HGTV show’s new season will premiere on Sunday, December 29, starting with a brand-new opening sequence.
“Any worthwhile journey should be like a great book that you can’t put down,” Erin, 39, says in Us’ exclusive clip of the show open. “Our homeowners give us one part of the story and the houses give us the other. There’s so many opportunities [and] so many unloved houses.”
Erin and husband Ben, 41, have helmed Home Town for HGTV since 2016, documenting their renovation business in Laurel, Mississippi — and their family life. The couple have been married since 2008 and share daughters Helen, 6, and Mae, 2.
“When we started trying to revitalize homes in Laurel, we wanted our kids to grow up in a place that they loved,” Ben adds in the footage. “And now, we’re doing it!”
Erin chimes in, noting that they have “plenty of work left to do.”
The rest of the clip teases Erin and Ben’s upcoming projects, including the “problems” they will face along the way such as a major time constraint.
“Should we have them come to the house?” Erin asks her husband in a confessional.
Ben and Erin Napier Courtesy HGTV
He responds, “Nah, I think we call them and walk them through. I think bringing them here and breaking their hearts would be harder.”
The premiere, titled “When Life Gives You Tomatoes,” introduces Tally and Mike Scully as they enlist the Napiers to find their dream midcentury modern home. They also want a huge garden and a specialty kitchen to accommodate their growing salsa and hot sauce business.
Thanks to HGTV, real estate agents, general contractors and interior designers have become household names. “Home building [and] home design 20 years ago was this deep, dark mystery,” the network’s cofounder Kenneth Lowe told Architectural Digest in July 2019. “People just didn’t understand it, and a lot of what HGTV has done is educate the […]
“Tally and Mike Scully have started this cottage industry of growing peppers and tomatoes and making these salsas and hot sauces that people are crazy about,” Erin explains in the video. “They want to have a farm that’s in the city limits. They’re also gonna have a greenhouse wherever they land and they need a kitchen that works for entertaining but is also for making these salsas and hot sauces.”
She continues, “So, this is unusual.”
Later on in the Home Town season, Erin and Ben will work on a lake house expansion, save a historic homestead and update one of their previous fixer-uppers.
Home Town season 8 premieres on HGTV Sunday, December 29, at 8 p.m. ET and streams the next day on Max and Discovery+.
