Spokane’s Café Coco home to HGTV home makeover show
Celeste Shaw-Coulston happened across a casting call for a Spokane home makeover show – and encouraged her daughter-in-law to apply.
“I saw it on Instagram, and I said, ‘You need to enter.’ Their house needed repairing so badly.”
When Megan and Jeff Shaw experienced a harrowing birth with their fifth child, plans to renovate their old farmhouse on the outskirts of town had been put on hold. But the Shaw family ended up being selected for the pilot episode of a new, unnamed, HGTV home renovation show. Filming took place September through December.
The show follows Kasey Dobbins of Foxwood Design Company as she renovates a Spokane-area home – and lives her daily life. That includes taking a coffee break at Café Coco, where New York-based freelance executive producer Ben Hatta ended up meeting Shaw-Coulston.
“She’s the kindest, warmest person,” said Hatta, who was hired by a Los Angeles-based production company to work on the pilot. “She made Spokane sort of feel a little bit like home. I was there for three and a half months, following the renovation. It was just a lot of fun to be able to call her a friend at the time of my time there.”
Spokane “is a character” in the show. And, “That was sort of a draw for me,” Hatta said. “With all of their renovation shows, they have the Midwest covered. They have the South covered. But they have nothing in the Inland Northwest. That’s what makes this show a little bit different.
“One of the things we wanted to do was showcase Kasey’s life in Spokane and the city itself. We wanted to showcase some of the places she goes and visits, and one of those places is Café Coco. We followed her getting coffee, and it’s just this great, eclectic coffee shop with amazing pastries.”
This job marked Hatta’s first time to the Lilac City.
“I fell in love with it,” he said. “I had a great time. I love Spokane. It’s a fun city. I love the neighborhoods and the architecture. The houses are so eclectic and historical. The downtown is super-cool and very easy to navigate.”
The renovation’s big reveal took place just before Christmas. Hatta isn’t part of the post-production. But, he said, “it usually takes a few months for that process.” It’s a safe bet to look for the pilot “sometime in 2024.”
Meantime, Shaw-Coulston is thrilled for her son and daughter-in-law and their family.
“It was their dream property, and this changed everything,” she said. “I really believe they deserved this. It came back around for them in this beautiful way.”