If Jillian Harris had her way, she would have been holding a hammer in her hand rather than a rose.
Not that the Canadian interior designer regrets appearing on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette – after all, she met fiancé Ed Swiderski on The Bachelorette – but she actually had visions of appearing on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition first.
“I did The Bachelor because I wanted to find someone, so I shot an audition video and sent it off (to ABC),” Harris says on the phone from Vancouver.
“I had a friend staying over, and I was tossing and turning that night, and she asked me what was wrong. I told her that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on The Bachelor, and that being on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition would be more my thing. She told me to get out of bed and I did an application video for that show too.”
Her dream came true a few weeks ago when Home Edition called and asked her to help host Ty Pennington out on his latest project (“I almost peed my pants,” she recalls) – along with the rest of the Extreme team and rapper Xzibit – in aiding the Skaggs family.
Brian and Audra Skaggs of Slaughterville, Okla., are having a tough time. Their son, Jhett, survived a heart transplant at just 10 months old, and although he’s made incredible progress over the past two years, the poor condition of the family’s mouldy, rotting, termite-ridden home poses serious risks to the boy’s weakened immune system.
It takes just a week for the Extreme team and an army of volunteers to build them a new home, something that amazed Harris.
“I think a lot of people are skeptical about a show that can build a house from the ground up in seven days,” she admits.
“I would dig trenches for the foundation, and I would come back eight hours later and they would be pouring the foundation and putting up the framing. It was just incredible. The house was built like any other house.”
While she won’t dish on exactly what happens during the episode, the perky brunette does reveal that used up as many tissues helping the show as she does at home watching it.
“I pretty much cried the entire time, but in a good way,” Harris laughs. “It was a profound and touching experience. I really connected with the Skaggs’ daughter, Merit. She is such a little sweetheart. I stayed up late coming up with paint colours and ideas for Merit’s room. I was very nervous that she wouldn’t like it.”
Harris’s episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition air this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on Citytv/ABC.
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