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Before and after: In New England, the ‘Ugliest House in America’ gets a makeover

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Before and after: In New England, the ‘Ugliest House in America’ gets a makeover


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Before its transformation, Retta described the house as a “mishmosh hodgepodge color-block animal sanctuary.”

Before: A Vermont house dubbed “Mishmash Hodgepodge” won season 7 of HGTV’s “Ugliest House in America” and received a $150,000 makeover.
HGTV

“Treat yo self” was Retta’s tagline in “Parks and Recreation.”

And that’s just what a New England couple did when they won a $150,000 home renovation from HGTV after their Vermont home was deemed the “ugliest” in America.

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Hosted by Retta, HGTV’s “Ugliest House in America” sees the comedian travel across the country to “tour properties nominated by their owners as the ugliest home around,” per the show description. In the finale, HGTV designer Alison Victoria surprises the winners with a total home renovation.

On the season 7 finale, which aired Feb. 4, homeowners Brooklyn and Dylan teared up when they saw their remodeled Vershire, Vermont, home. (HGTV did not provide last names.)

“Ugliest House in America” host Retta and interior designer Alison Victoria show Vermont residents Brooklyn and Dylan their remodeled home in the season 7 finale, which aired Feb. 4, 2026. – HGTV

The couple and their three sons were introduced in episode four when Brooklyn explained the house “is our nightmare.”

Retta named the home “Mishmash Hodgepodge.”

The bright orange and blue house— three stories high, built on stilts, and 3,344 square feet, per the show description — may have been deemed the ugliest in America by HGTV, but the view is gorgeous. It sits on 14 green acres, with panoramic views of the White Mountains.

“Is there a significance to the colors?”Retta asked of the bright exterior.

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Before: The living room looking into the dining and kitchen area. – HGTV
After: The living room looking into the dining and kitchen area. – HGTV

“At least you never get lost when you’re driving up to it,” Dylan quipped. The family said they had lived in the home for 10 months when they appeared on the show.

As for the chaotic inside, Dylan said, “We definitely want to make it less circus-like.”

Before: The living room and staircase. – HGTV
After: The living room and staircase. – HGTV

There were green monkeys carved into the cabinets and birds carved into the staircase railing. The primary bedroom and bathroom ceiling was thatched. Parts of the interior were painted in blocks of yellow, orange, and blue.

“I feel like I need to center myself,” Retta said.

She pointed out that the living area had built-in couches made of stone and concrete. “I look at your couches and I think: hemorrhoids,” she joked.

After looking into their mirror-filled bathroom, Retta remarked, “This is sensory overload. This is a fifth-grade project.”

Before: The powder room. – HGTV
After: The powder room. – HGTV

Retta pointed to the thatched ceiling in the primary bedroom: “You’re asking for mice.” Walking into the upstairs bathroom, her eyes popped, as she took in another thatched ceiling. The couple shared that spiders kept them out of the bathtub.

At the end of the episode, Retta dubbed the home a “mishmosh hodgepodge color-block animal sanctuary.” She scored the Vermont house a 6 out of 6 for appearance on the “Ugly Meter.”

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Before: The primary bedroom. – HGTV
Before: The en suite bathroom in the primary bedroom. – HGTV
After: The primary bedroom. – HGTV
After: The en suite bathroom in the primary bedroom. – HGTV

In last night’s finale, we learned that of the 15 houses Retta toured this season, the Vermont house was “uniquely ugly.”

She and Victoria announced to the New Englanders: “You have the ‘Ugliest House in America!’” as confetti rained down.

Victoria pointed out that the land they sit on is “amazing…This could be very picturesque… The view’s ridiculously beautiful,” the designer said. “I want the outside of your home to be as beautiful as the property it sits on.”

Walking inside, Victoria suggested leveling out “wonky weird” floors in the conversation pit area, taking out the bird carving on the stair handrail, taking down the plastic sheeting wall of the primary bedroom, and redoing and thatched “tiki-hut-kind-of-feel” ceiling, among other things.

“I don’t know where to start,” she told the camera. “This is seriously one of the wildest, craziest, ugliest houses that I’ve ever taken on.”

After demolition and remodeling, the couple was brought blindfolded before the house for the big reveal.

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After: A Vermont house dubbed “Mishmash Hodgepodge” won season 7 of HGTV’s “Ugliest House in America” and received a $150,000 makeover. – HGTV

Gone was the orange and blue paint. “It’s like a painting behind your house,” Victoria said of the green woods and hills. “And now your house is part of the painting.”

“This doesn’t even look like the same house,” Brooklyn said touring the interior.

The primary bedroom, totally redone, now boasts sliding glass doors to an outdoor hot tub. They also see a madeover patio area with a new walkway.

“I am blown away,” Dylan said.

“It reminds me of a fairy forest house,” Brooklyn added. “And I love that.”

Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.

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Lauren Daley is a longtime culture journalist. As a regular contributor to Boston.com, she interviews A-list musicians, actors, authors and other major artists.





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Vermont

Star bartender raised in VT hunts the ‘big shebang’ of a James Beard

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Star bartender raised in VT hunts the ‘big shebang’ of a James Beard


Ivy Mix knew only small-town life growing up in Vermont. In 2003, she decided that needed to change.

“I realized the world was a very big place,” she said recently. “I thought I might want to go someplace and see something.”

She left for Guatemala to volunteer and teach photography in an orphanage. She hung out daily in a nearby bar, enjoying the environment at least as much as the imbibements. When she realized she couldn’t pay off the tab she had racked up, Mix started pouring drinks to offset her debts.

A celebrated bartending career began.

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The Tunbridge native is a semifinalist in the Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service category of the James Beard Awards, the top honors in the American food-and-drink industry. The nod recognizes her work at Whoopsie Daisy, the bar she co-owns in Brooklyn. The author and five-time nominee hopes this is the moment she can finally call herself a James Beard winner.

The 20 bartenders in her category include Kate Wise, who grew up in Stowe and works at Juniper at Hotel Vermont in Burlington. Wise said she’s stunned she’s in the same category with a woman she saw give a cocktail-making demonstration years ago at Waterworks Food + Drink in Winooski, the sort of event celebrity bartenders do.

“She is so talented,” Wise said of Mix, who has owned two successful bars.

Catching on to the cocktail boom

Mix spoke with the Burlington Free Press while driving from New York City to Tunbridge. She splits her time living in Brooklyn and her hometown.

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“Tunbridge when I was growing up was small and really rural,” Mix said. “It’s still rural, but it was before the demise of the dairy industry.”

Mix and her twin sister, Tess, are the daughters of glass blower Robin Mix and Susan Dollenmaier, founder of the Vermont-based textile company Anichini. They lived off a dirt road with only one house nearby. Mix attended a Waldorf school and then Chelsea High School and became obsessed with horseback riding.

“I horseback rode all the time,” she said. “Before I went to college that’s what I thought I was going to do. Olympic riding was my goal.”

She stayed in Vermont to study philosophy and fine art at Bennington College. While in college she spent time in Guatemala, sowing the seeds of her bartending career.

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Mix graduated from Bennington in 2008. She sold her horse and thought she’d become a professor. The economic collapse that year changed her plans. She lived in New York, worked for free at art galleries and hated it. Mix began working at cocktail bars just as that trend was catching on.

“I was like, ‘OK, this is cool,’” she said. “The cocktail revolution was really booming.”

Shining a spotlight on female mixologists

The cocktail revolution, though, felt like it had little room for women.

Mix said the speakeasy “meme” was big then, which meant men in moustaches, arm garters and suspenders. She and friend Lynnette Marrero in 2011 started Speed Rack, which as the movement’s website explains has “been able to shine a spotlight on female mixologists thriving behind bars around the country; and while they are at it, raise money for breast cancer research, education and prevention.”

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That’s when her career really took off. She was named one of Food & Wine magazine’s most innovative women in 2015 and honored by Wine Enthusiast as Mixologist of the Year in 2016.

The first time she was up for a James Beard Award was two years later. Her bar, Layenda, was up for the Outstanding Bar Program category. (It would also be a semifinalist in 2019 and last year before closing.) She scored a second Beard nod in 2025 as a media-award nominee for her book “A Quick Drink: The Speed Rack Guide to Winning Cocktails for Any Mood.”

She co-owns the Brooklyn wine shop Fiasco! Wine + Spirits and runs Whoopsie Daisy with Piper Kristensen and Conor McKee. Mix said she used to play Little League baseball against Kristensen, who’s from Strafford.

‘I want to go to the big shebang’

Mix said Vermont helped shape her career because of the sense of community it inspires.

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“I can make a good cocktail, but if you’re not having a good time and you don’t feel welcome, it’s not going to taste good,” she said.

The small-town tendency to take good care of people “has really infiltrated my sense of hospitality,” Mix said.

She would love to finally win a James Beard Award after her string of nominations. She said she’s been lucky to have “a mountain of accolades” that she’s proud of. But the Beard honors are different.

“Accolades — it’s such a funny world. Do they matter? Yes. Do they dramatically help your business? Absolutely,” Mix said.

“For me to get a medal around my neck, that’s the one I really want to get,” she said of the James Beard Award. “It kind of puts you on a whole different playing field.”

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Finalists will be announced March 31. Winners will be revealed June 15 in a ceremony in Chicago.

“I want to go to the big shebang,” Mix said.

If you go

WHAT: Whoopsie Daisy bar

WHEN: 5-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 5 p.m.-midnight Friday; 3 p.m.-midnight Saturday; 3-11 p.m. Sunday

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WHERE: 225 Rogers Ave., Brooklyn

INFORMATION: (347) 365-4193, whoopsiedaisybk.com

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.



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Skier dies after fall at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, police say – The Boston Globe

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Skier dies after fall at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, police say – The Boston Globe


A man died Saturday after falling while skiing at Sugarbush Resort in Warren, Vt., officials said.

The man fell and slid into a wooded area while skiing Stein’s Run, a double-black diamond trail on Lincoln Peak, Vermont State Police said in a statement.

The double-black diamond rating is the highest difficulty designation in skiing, according to the National Ski Areas Association.

The man was found unresponsive by ski patrol members and was brought to an ambulance at the base of the mountain, police said. He was pronounced dead due to his injuries, according to the statement.

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The man’s name was not released pending notification of his family, officials said.

Police said the death did not appear suspicious. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Burlington, Vt., will condut an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death.

No further information was immediately released.


Collin Robisheaux can be reached at collin.robisheaux@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @ColRobisheaux.





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Skier dies after fall at Sugarbush Resort

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Skier dies after fall at Sugarbush Resort


WARREN, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont State Police are investigating the death of a skier at Sugarbush Resort.

Police were notified at about 3:26 p.m. Saturday that a skier had died following a fall on Stein’s Run at Sugarbush Lincoln Peak.

The male victim fell and slid into a wooded area off the trail, according to police.

Ski patrol members found the man unresponsive and brought him to the base of the mountain, where they were met by the Mad River Valley Ambulance. The victim was pronounced dead due to his injuries.

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Police say the death does not appear suspicious. An autopsy will be performed at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Burlington to determine the cause and manner of death.

The victim’s name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.



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