HGTV’s Jonathan Knight Spent Big on a Custom Luxury Kitchen
When New Kids on the Block member and HGTV star Jonathan Knight isn’t on the road touring or filming home renovations in cities across the country, the Boston native heads to the neighborhood block that truly makes his heart sing—a dead-end street in Essex, MA.
Knight owns four adjacent homes, including a traditional farmhouse he fixed up for himself and husband Harley Rodriquez. The 7-acre rural estate is the singer’s preferred place to recharge, where he also keeps busy tending to the garden and a menagerie of farm animals.
Despite living in the historical coastal town on and off for nearly 40 years, it hasn’t always been a tranquil refuge for Knight. When he first moved to Essex, NKOTB had hit it big with the 1988 release of its second studio album, “Hangin’ Tough.” Fans soon turned his home into an unauthorized tourist attraction.
“When I was 20, I bought my first house. It was 12,000 square feet on 20 acres, and it was secluded. It was the most peaceful place to go in Essex, but that was in our heyday. So when I would go home, people would just pull up the driveway and get out of the car and knock on the front door,” Knight, 57, tells Realtor.com® in the latest Celebrity Sanctuary.
“I didn’t want to be bothered with that, so I would come home and I would just check into a hotel and decompress,” he adds.
Knight eventually left the overexposed property as well as his boy band, which ended its initial run as a group in 1994. He then followed in his family’s footsteps by pursuing a career in real estate at the encouragement of his bandmate and brother, Jordan Knight.
“My great-grandfather [was] a barn builder. My grandfather, he built the house that he lived in. My dad was a carpenter, and my mother, an old-house lover. And then it just kind of passed on to me,” Jonathan Knight explains. His appreciation for traditional craftsmanship grew while he was raised in a Victorian home in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.
Knight ultimately welcomed back the spotlight—first, reuniting with the band in 2008 and then making his HGTV debut with “Farmhouse Fixer.” He has also appeared on many of the network’s other shows, including “Rock the Block,” “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge,” “Farmhouse Fixer: Camp Revamp,” and his latest blockbuster series, the reboot of the classic ambush-style renovation TV program “Crashers.”
Whether singing or swinging a sledgehammer, Knight has come to realize a shared higher purpose in practicing both professions simultaneously.
“I love changing people’s lives,” he explains. “That is really why I love doing the New Kid shows and getting on stage. People are just so happy, and doing renovations is the same. The reactions of happiness [over] bringing this one house on the block that was totally an eyesore and now you’ve made it something that we can all be proud of—it’s such a great feeling.”
Cultivating that perspective over the years has helped Knight let down his walls to share glimpses of his personal home on social media, in song, and on occasion, with a handful of harmless fans.
“We still have people drive by,” he reveals. “It’s more HGTV fans nowadays. Last summer a car pulled up and it was 80-year-old ladies. They were like, ‘Oh honey, I love your show.’ How can you be mad at a carload of senior citizen ladies that are goo-goo gaga over your TV shows? It’s fun.”
In this edition of Celebrity Sanctuary, Knight opens up the two-story Colonial-style dwelling where he and Rodriguez have taken up residence. While the 2,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, three-bathroom “completely new build” was designed for their comfortable country lifestyle, the kitchen is what sets the stage for them to live out their better days together.
When I was 20 and lived in the city, I started looking at houses on Boston’s South Shore. There’s such a big difference between the North Shore and the South Shore. The South Shore was where everybody from Dorchester and Boston, when they became a little successful, they moved to the South Shore. It was fancy cars and everybody was like, “Look at me, look at me.”
Then I went up to the North Shore, and you could live next door to a millionaire [or] a billionaire and they’re driving a 10-year-old car that’s rusty and beat up. People up there were just more laid-back. They [had] that Yankee mentality, and it felt more like who I was, the down-to-earth nature. It felt more comfortable. I felt more at home there.
This is my fifth house in Essex. I keep leaving Essex, but I keep coming back. I’ve been there 35 years.
I own four houses on the street. The original home was my mother’s house, and then I bought it from her, moved it across the street, and built a brand-new house. My mom lives in one of the houses, my mother-in-law lives in another house, and then we have other family up there.
It’s 7 acres now. It was 10, but I severed off a little. It’s a dead-end street. It’s not secluded.
My neighbors were great. I’m so glad that they came to me first. Two of my neighbors were like, “We’re selling. Do you want to buy the house?” That took a long time to acquire it all, and then to have to redo four houses, that was a big project.
The new house we built a year ago was my first brand-new house. It’s a brand-new Colonial, but elevated.
I hate new houses, so building it, we really took the time with the architect and myself to put details into the house that felt old. I took the time to not have a cement foundation showing. I made sure it was all brick so it looks old. I had to have the old ceramic–glazed doorknobs, the molding and the flooring—everything we did, I tried to make it that classic farmhouse feel from the 1800s.
When people pull up, they’re like, “What year was this house built?” And I’m like, “Last year.”
We have three horses, three goats, two ducks, [our dog] Oliver, [and] 13 chickens, which my husband was not happy about because I was in Sacramento filming my TV show “Crashers,” and I found a breeder that breeds this particular type of chicken that I love—copper marans. They’re jet black, and they have gold necks. They’re so pretty and they lay eggs that are chocolate-colored, so that’s fun. I had them shipped home. They showed up, and he was like, “You’re not here and eight chickens just showed up.”
I think I’m more of a homebody now than I ever was, but I’m also away from home more now than I ever was, so it’s really weird. I told my husband, “thank God for Ring cameras,” because I’m on my Ring camera constantly just checking in like, “The goats are out” or “There goes my mother walking out of the barn” or “Harley’s walking the dog.” It’s good and it’s bad. It keeps me connected, but it also makes me more homesick.
My kitchen is my sanctuary. Outside is also my sanctuary, but our kitchen is really my favorite spot. It’s the first place when I come in the door. The garage dumps you right into the kitchen, so every time I come home, it’s just that feeling like, “I’m home.”
We wake up, that is the first time [and place] we sit down, have breakfast and coffee, and start talking about our day. Then I’ll go out to the yard and the gardens, and then at lunchtime, we’re back together. Dinnertime is the best. We have so many family and friends come over for dinner. Being in that space cooking together and just being together, that is the room in our house. Everybody’s there, if it’s holidays, if it’s a Sunday brunch.
We don’t cook, which is so funny, because in the renovation, there was this particular stove that I love—it’s a Wolf. It’s gorgeous. I did this big custom hood above it, a big copper hood, and everybody was like, “Why are you putting so much into this kitchen if you don’t even cook?” I wanted it to have that old English countryside feel. We did go a little crazy in the kitchen, but it was well worth it.
The best renovations for me are my own personal renovations, because if there’s a budget, I can say, “I’m gonna spend a little extra on this” or “We don’t need this,” so the renovation part was so much fun.
It’s funny, Harley, he’s more the indoor guy and I’m more the outdoor guy on the lawnmower or in the gardens.
He likes more simplistic, modern, and I like lots of stuff. I like my house to feel well-traveled. I like things that I can say, “That came from our trip here” or “That was a chair I found in an antique store up in Vermont.”
When my dad was a kid, he won a trophy for curling. … That’s up on one of our shelves.
I have a lot of old pictures. My grandfather owned a steel fencing company in Canada, so there’s a picture of all the employees and him from, like, 1940, and that’s up there. I have a couple pictures of my great-grandfather, who was a barn builder. He was probably 25 years old, and he’s standing up on top of [a] barn with all these other people and women in these long dresses, and they’re all on a construction site. It’s really cool.
We have all built-in cupboards and the fridge is covered. We did living-finish brass pulls, so they’re all going to tarnish. We did no upper cabinets.
I love green. It’s my favorite color. I’ve done three green kitchens in my past houses, so naturally, when this came by, it had to be green. It’s a gray-green, muted, with the brass handles, [and] just really classic detail in the drawers.
We did armoires in the kitchen where we could have extra storage, where it wouldn’t just be all cabinets. We have antique lighting. It looks like it was put together over the years.
I wanted an island that looked like a big table, so we had the legs turned. It has drawers in front. I wanted it to look like a different piece of furniture. We did a really nice stain on that, and we got this big slab of Danby marble from Vermont.
I actually got to go in the quarry. They were like, “Come on up. You can go in the quarry and see how everything’s made.” That was super scary because they put a tag on you so if something happens they know, “No. 6? Oh, that was Jon.” That was an experience that also makes the kitchen even more special—that we were a part of going underground and looking at marble slabs. It was so cool.
It’s still a work in progress since I’m not home [much]. I started filming in March, and I was home maybe three weeks since March. It’s been crazy. My garden, it’s all horrible.
Doing the colors and the moldings and all that was so easy. Now, it’s embarrassing, but most of our furniture is from our house in L.A. [and] our apartment in New York. It’s all kind of just there.
I’m trying to find that balance where I can be home a little bit more but still continue to work. I keep saying this winter I’m going to have some downtime and that’ll be the time to get in there, pick wallpaper, and pick furniture—all the fun stuff.
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