When the Dougherty family left its home on Sunday, there were windows blown out by the heat of the Waldo Canyon fire, blackened trees nearby and unknown water damage hiding behind the walls.

By Thursday, the burned trees were gone, windows were replaced and mold from the water damage had been removed. As an added bonus, the family room and the kids’ bedrooms got a makeover.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” said Lindsay Dougherty after seeing how her home had been transformed by a reality television and local construction crew. “All I could say was ‘wow.’”

In four days, the crews did work that would normally take about a month to renovate the Dougherty home and make it a safe and happy place for Lindsay and Glenn Dougherty and their four kids. The renovation will be part of a new television series on HGTV about restoring homes after catastrophes. The Dougherty’s episode is expected to air within six to eight months on the network.

To help the family, crews had to first make the Mountain Shadows home safe, said Ed Ranieri, one of the show’s experts. Along with the heat damage, he said crews were surprised to find water damage more extensive than previously thought. To save the house, firefighters drenched it with their hoses. The family is thankful those efforts, but the water leaked through the walls and caused damage and mold grew behind the walls.

“Saving the house was a good thing,” Ranieri said. “Unfortunately, the mold was a byproduct of that.”

Another unforeseen problem was the damage to the wood floors caused by the soot. Ranieri said soot is acidic and it can eat at a floor’s finish. The finish on Dougherty house was so badly damage that crews had to replace the floor.

While making the house liveable was important, the kids were most thankful for their new rooms. Designer Kari Openshaw gave the 7-year-old twin boys an adventure-themed room with bunk beds, sheets with snake designs on them and a map of the world on the wall. The girls’ room, which had been the most damaged by the fire, was a bright pink with flowers on the wall and their great-grandmother’s furniture cleaned and polished.

Right after the fire, memories of the evacuation gave the girls nightmares and the youngest, 6-year-old Morghan, refused to go back in the house for a few weeks. On Thursday, it was tough to drag her out of the new room.

“It’s awesome, beautiful, great, all of those words,” said Reaghan, 10. “It smells better too.”

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