10 Reasons Jesse Tyler Ferguson is the Perfect New Host of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

We aren’t the only ones who were fans of the original series: Jesse Tyler Ferguson reveals he was a fan too back when Extreme Makeover: Home Edition first ran. Now, as the host, he’s basically an excited viewer who gets to see the action up close and for him that’s one of the best parts. “I’m sitting in as a viewer. It is a bit of a fish-out-of-water situation and I am learning on the spot,” Tyler Ferguson reveals to HGTV. “I love watching HGTV shows because I love getting ideas. I find the shows that they produce to be aspirational. So it’s honestly like a viewer has been dropped into the middle of HGTV’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and I’m representing all of you. It’s been very exciting for me.”

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Obviously Tyler Ferguson is used to playing a dad on TV, so he gets the importance of family and having a solid space for a clan to call their own. But now that he and his partner, attorney Justin Mikita, are expecting their first child we have a feeling being involved in a series like this hits home on a whole new level. “[Your 40s is] when you finally become an adult, I feel. Like, I need to start getting serious about things,” Ferguson said on The Late Show With James Corden. “Actually, this is something I haven’t even mentioned to anyone… I’m actually expecting a baby in July with my husband. I’m very excited, but it feels like I’m 44 now, let’s get this thing going.”

Tyler Ferguson is quick to point out that he, like many of us, has some ideas and opinions about design and approach. But at the end of the day he’s pretty confident leaving the big decisions up to the show’s three designers: Carrie Locklyn, Darren Keefe and Breegan Jane, plus those HGTV celebrity guest stars, to figure it all out. “These designers are brilliant and amazing and really don’t need my help,” he says. “There have been a few times when I’ve helped on projects or ideas that they have, but there’s maybe one or two times where I offer a suggestion and they use it or not.”

Tyler Ferguson (seen above with Modern Family co-star Eric Stonestreet) may not be the typical HGTV host in terms of overseeing massive renovations or overhauling properties, but he definitely knows what he likes. And to him, the heart of any home is – and always will be – the kitchen. He makes that much clear in the first episode Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, in which he welcomes special celebrity guest star Tyler Florence to help the family in question make their kitchen a warm and cozy place.

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It seems surreal that a team could tear down, rebuild and design a property in a matter of five days. It’s almost too good to be true, except that it is the actual timeline Extreme Makeover: Home Edition follows. Tyler Ferguson reveals that he too didn’t believe it could be done and then he stepped foot onto set. “I came into this a bit jaded having been on television for a while and having done reality TV before in different formats, thinking they don’t really do this in a week. This is impossible,” he says. “They really do this in a week and it’s insane.”

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Some hosts might try and sugar coat just how difficult some of these builds actually were, but not Tyler Ferguson. He reveals that people would come in to do inspections in the middle of the night to make sure that everyone could keep working on schedule and even then certain problems would still arise. “There are obviously things that happen and that come up. Maybe you’ll see that,” he explains. “That’s part of what makes our show so exciting. We do come across rot or sewage lines that are coming apart and we deal with them in real-time. It’s a true testament to all of the volunteers and to the builders who basically put their businesses on hold to help improve these families’ lives.”

If you’re wondering why now is the perfect time to bring this series back, the answer is actually pretty simple: given everything going on in the world right now it’s just nice to have something warm and fuzzy to look forward to. According to the SVP of production and development at HGTV, Loren Ruch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson is as warm and fuzzy as it gets. “The climate that we’re living in, it feels like the show is the warm hug that everybody needs right now. And who would you rather get a good warm hug from than Jesse and this team?”

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Passion is probably the first and foremost thing you would expect from any TV show host, but Jesse Tyler Ferguson is next-level empathetic. You can see it on the screen when he meets with the families and you can definitely hear it when he speaks about the importance of helping out these people in real life. “We’re finding these families who were living in homes that weren’t suitable to them. It wasn’t about the aesthetic of their home. It’s that they were living in places that weren’t suitable to what they needed,” he says. “They didn’t have enough bedrooms. They were sharing beds. They were sharing bathrooms. They had rot. They had mould. They had issues with their home and they couldn’t get ahead because of maybe where they were in life. So Extreme Makeover came in and give them a new start.”

Another reason it’s so easy to love Tyler Ferguson is his philanthropic background: helping people is something he’s been doing for a very long time. Look no further than the non-profit he started, Tie the Knot. The organization sells bow ties and accessories and then donates the profits to help advocate for LGBTQ equality around the globe. And yes, that’s why Tyler Ferguson can often be spotted with a bowtie.

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Sometimes you look at a host and wonder how they could possible hold it together during a heartwarming and emotional moment in which an entire family’s lives are changed forever. So does Jesse. The host was just as moved participating in these episodes as we’ll be watching them and we may even see him shed a tear or two. Or ten. These are extreme home makeovers, after all.