The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Smart home in HGTV’s 2024 giveaway is in metro Atlanta
HGTV, which has been giving away smart homes since 2013, has come to metro Atlanta for the first time with a residence in Marietta.
It was HGTV’s first smart home using an existing space. In past years, they built the homes from scratch.
“This particular home had been a 1980s riff on mid-century modern, totally outdated,” Tiffany Brooks, designer of HGTV’s Smart Homes since 2016, told the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It needed to be gutted. It was not a mess, but architecturally it had amazing bones. The fact we were able to go in and reconfigure an already-standing house, I’m proud of the results.”
Brooks, who lives in Chicago, also wanted a location in a major city near parks and not too far from a major airport. Marietta, she said, fit the bill.
Over six months, she opened up the kitchen and living room, adding bookshelves and skylights. The dining room features a banquette with seating for eight. The kitchen has no upper cabinets to maximize windows and natural light. The sleek pantry has an icemaker, a beverage fridge and microwave.
The master bedroom on the main floor has a king bed headboard embedded with Bluetooth connectivity and a reading light. The adjoining bathroom has an open shower with terra-cotta tile and a soaking tub. One of the three bedrooms upstairs is converted into a media room with a snack bar. (That space, too, could be converted into a home office.)
The backyard deck is huge, with a fire pit, plenty of seating, a pergola and a kitchen and bar.
And since it’s a “smart” house, you can control different aspects of the house remotely from anywhere in the world, Brooks said.
To make the house more green, she built out a place to plant herbs in the atrium. “We were able to marry being green with technology,” she said.
Until June 10, you can enter your name into the sweepstakes twice a day at hgtv.com/sweepstakes/hgtvsmart-home/sweepstakes. Along with the home, you win an all-electric EQE SUV from Mercedes-Benz and $150,000 cash. A winner will be announced by July, Brooks said.
In the past, she said, some winners have taken the cash equivalent. Others have moved in. And some sold the house.