A Connecticut family will step into the TV spotlight this weekend on “House Hunters,” a popular show on HGTV.
Bristol natives Benn and Erika Gawitt and their twin 12-year-old daughters, Pearl and Vivian, are featured in an episode that will premiere on Saturday at 10 p.m. ET.
The family is unsure how they will view the episode on Saturday night. The Gawitts, who live in Canton, were toying with the idea of having a big viewing party or just watching it as a family because of the later hour. Either way, the couple that has been together for 21 years and married for 18, said friends were not surprised to learn that they agreed to be on the show because they are known as a fun family.
Benn Gawitt is biology teacher at Canton High School. He also performs with his band Acoustic Marshpit throughout the state, most recently at the Plainville Hot Air Balloon Festival. He said his daughters join him on stage as well.
Erika Gawitt is a former hairdresser that owns Kindred & Crew, a boutique in Simsbury.
The couple are both from Bristol and graduated from rival schools in town. Benn Gawitt is a 1995 graduate of Bristol Central High School, and Erika Gawitt graduated from Bristol Eastern High School in 1996. Both are frequent viewers of HGTV and were happy to be a part of the show as they searched for their new home.
The couple was limited to what they could say before the airing of the show. Erika Gawitt said the show “kind of fell in their laps through their realtor.”
“We are ‘yes’ people,” Erika Gawitt said. “We’re going to add to the storm of us moving and I moved my store at the same time we were filming and that we were looking for a house. There was just a lot going on. … But it was a very comfortable environment, and we felt we made fast friends with everyone. It was an excellent experience. It was amazing.”
According to the HGTV website, “House Hunters takes viewers behind the scenes as individuals, couples and families learn what to look for and decide whether or not a home is meant for them. Focusing on the emotional experience of finding and purchasing a new home, each episode shows the process as buyers search for a home.”
House Hunters has been a staple on HGTV since its premier in 1999, and the show has produced more than 2,400 episodes.
Benn Gawitt said he has no idea what the show is going to be like and is excited to see it live. The couple said they have had no previous experience on television.
“I understand how, after being on camera, you almost forget that there’s a camera,” Benn Gawitt said. “And we were really talking about what we wanted in a house, and we would really banter and that was the real thing. We are saying what we want and what we don’t want to each other.”
The family announced that they were going to appear on HGTV on Saturday on a Facebook post that threw some people off.
“The picture we showed we had just taken in Spain, and we’ve been using it as our promo with the HGTV,” Benn Gawitt said. “People have been asking if we are moving to Spain. “Are you closing the store?’ We don’t have an answer for them. I send a zipper emoji and say, anything is possible. That photo is really throwing people off.”
