Home shows tune into Greensburg

? Is it the “greening” of Greensburg or the “screening” of Greensburg?

One month after the first TV series starting running about efforts to rebuild this tornado-ravaged town, a second is wrapping up production.

Tentatively titled “Families of Greensburg,” it’s a six-part series scheduled to premiere Aug. 23 on TLC. Each episode follows a different family as it prepares to move into a new home with help from two experts from another TLC show, “Trading Spaces.”

“I’m nervous to watch it on TV, but it was a fun experience,” said Haley Kern, whose family is one of those that will be featured.

The way things are going, Greensburg residents may need their own agents.

In June, the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green started airing the 13-part “Greensburg,” which follows the town’s attempts to rebuild along ecologically sound lines. CBS’s “Morning Show” has twice broadcast live from the Kiowa County town.

Assistant City Administrator Kim Alderfer said ABC’s “Extreme Makeover” also looked into filming in Greensburg, but couldn’t find a home that fit its specifications.

In that show, renovation experts transform an existing home. But after the May 4, 2007, tornado that hit this town, Alderfer said, “There weren’t a lot of houses that were still standing.”

“Families of Greensburg” focuses more on cosmetic touches albeit expensive ones for new homes that families displaced by the tornado are just now moving into, said Dustin Smith, a publicist for TLC.

“They work to help these families transform these brand new houses into homes,” he said.

The show’s hosts are designer Doug Wilson and carpenter Faber Dewar, who are both featured on “Trading Spaces.”

Under their direction, participating families take turns working on each other’s homes. The family’s reactions to changes in their homes are filmed during “reveals” that are the climax of each episode.

Kern and her family have lived in Pratt since the tornado obliterated their home. They spent that night in a neighbor’s basement. Kern’s husband, Peter, is a woodshop teacher and assistant football coach at Greensburg High School. Their daughter, McKenna, is 3.

The Kerns bought one of the town’s few remaining standing homes, which had been heavily damaged, and remodeled it themselves.

After initial interviews with the TV crew for Discovery, which is affiliated with TLC, they got a call from the show’s producers saying they had been chosen.

Wilson and his crew added Corian countertops to the kitchen, laid wooden flooring through the connected kitchen and living room and textured some walls. Outside, they built a “Moroccan-inspired pergola” on the family’s patio.