Familiar Faces: New ‘Battle on the Beach’ Team Starred on Past HGTV Show

Heavy/HGTV One team on "Battle on the Beach" season 4 may look familiar to some viewers

When HGTV premieres the fourth season of “Battle on the Beach” (BOTB) on June 3, 2024, three pairs of competitors will have six weeks to renovate similar beach homes in Oak Island, North Carolina. Completing a different renovation project each week, the team that adds the most value to their home will win the $50,000 prize.

Teams on the show are usually unknown do-it-yourselfers, matched up with one of the show’s famous mentors —Ty Pennington, Alison Victoria, or Taniya Nayak. But when fans tune in for the season 4 premiere, they may recognize at least one of the duos.

It turns out married Michigan couple Sean and Sam Kilgore’s appearance on BOTB won’t be their first project with HGTV. They also starred in the network’s four-part docuseries “I Bought a Dump…Now What?,” which premiered in late April 2022.

It’s possible viewers will recognize other competitors, too, given that one is an aspiring country singer and another’s home renovation projects have attracted a significant social media following.

Sean & Sam Kilgore Took Their 5-Month-Old to North Carolina to Film ‘Battle on the Beach’

Despite having experience working with HGTV, the Kilgores say they hesitated before agreeing to do “Battle on the Beach,” in part because they had recently welcomed a baby boy, Leighton, and the show would require them to be away from home for two months.

“It was a tough decision to go on the show, because our baby was only five months old at the start of filming,” they wrote on their blog. “We also both work full time jobs. Up and leaving on such short notice felt insane.”

“Luckily, our families were super supportive and excited for the opportunity,” they continued. “They alternated coming down to North Carolina to help with Leighton and helping back home at our house with our cat Atlas and flock of chickens.”

On June 2, the Kilgores posted a video recorded in February to their Instagram Stories, showing all the gear, diapers and suitcases they had to pack in order to take their baby along for the ride — not only for a 14-hour drive to North Carolina, but to last the duration of the competition, with Nayak as their mentor.

When the couple appeared on HGTV in 2022, they didn’t have to leave home. Rather, they were one of three couples cameras documented as they restored their own properties. Kilgore and Sutton renovated a 150-year-old farmhouse in rural Richmond, Michigan, where they still live and run their After Hours Farm blog.

Other ‘Battle on the Beach’ Competitors Have Significant Social Media Followings

The two other duos competing against the Kilgores may be recognizable to fans, too, given that some of the competitors have strong social media followings.

Married Texas couple Kristin and Chyenne Smith, who are matched with Pennington as their mentor on BOTB, own a luxury Airbnb in downtown Dallas that’s been featured on CNBC’s “Crash Pad.” Kristin works as a realtor and entrepreneur with close to 40,000 Instagram followers, while Chyenne is a social media influencer and aspiring country singer/songwriter with nearly 100,000 Instagram followers.

The third team of competitors, who will work with Victoria on the show, are friends Brendan Parker and Teresa Robinson from Norfolk, Virginia. Though Parker’s Instagram account is private and has less than 1,000 followers, Robinson has racked up over 112,000 Instagram followers as she’s documented the renovation of her 1912 home.

Even if viewers do recognize any of this season’s competitors, the BOTB mentors went into the show not knowing who they would be working with.

“We go into (it) not knowing a single thing about our teams,” Nayak told the Charlotte Observer. “We don’t know who they are, we don’t know where they’re from, we don’t know what their experience is. We don’t know anything, you know, so when we meet them it’s always surprising to see what they’re capable of.”

HGTV’s “Battle on the Beach” premieres on June 3 at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Nayak, Victoria and Pennington have each won a season with past teams, so the mentor whose team takes home the prize during season 4 will take the lead in wins.