Reboot of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Helps Family of 5 Get 'Forever Home' After Tragedy

Reboot of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition Helps Family of 5 Get 'Forever Home' After Tragedy

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition fans may want to grab an extra box of tissues, because the new season is a certified tearjerker.

Last year, HGTV announced they would produce 10 new episodes of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which originally ran on ABC from 2003 to 2012.

Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson will be taking the place of Ty Pennington, who, in the show’s first iteration, spearheaded the whole-house renovations for deserving families across America and popularized the show’s reveal catchphrase: “Move that bus!”

Often these families have faced hardships such as the death of a family member, illness, loss of a job, or the loss of their home. HGTV is putting the emphasis on spotlighting local heroes and those who serve their communities.

In the season premiere we meet Jessica Mosley, a single mother living in Rosedale, California with her five children.

Mosley, 37, is a social worker for a local foster care and adoption agency. She has two biological children, Jordyn, 12, and Makynzie, 15 and in 2017, she adopted siblings Miguel, 12, Cheyenne, 16 and Annie, 13, after working on their case.

RELATED: Single Mom Who Grew Up in Foster Care Adopts 6 Boys: ‘They Give Me Purpose’

It was Jordyn and Makynzie who pushed for the adoption, according to Mosley. The crew met at a foster care campout, and instantly bonded.

“Miguel came into my tent and said, ‘Jordyn said that you’re going to adopt me and I’m going to be her brother,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, did she now?’” she tells PEOPLE. “It just fueled from there … never did I imagine that I would sign up to be a single parent of five kids, especially five teenagers.”

2018 was an incredibly difficult time for the family: in a matter of weeks, Mosley lost her father, Jeffrey Chapin, in a motorcycle accident, and the home she shared with her children.

Chapin had purchased the home with a veteran’s loan for Mosley, and since the transaction was in his name, the Mosleys had to vacate the property, she says.

They moved into a cramped three bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom home owned by Mosley’s mother, Pamela Sue Chapin. The siblings, along with Mosley and her mother, shared beds and one shower.

“It was absolute chaos,” she tells PEOPLE.

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About a year ago, Mosley’s friend, Elaine, nominated the Mosleys to appear on the show. Mosley heard from an interested producer a few days later, and things took off from there: weeks of interviews, questionnaires and shopping trips.

“Until they knocked on our door and showed up with the bus, I did not believe it was happening,” she says.

The show was filmed during the summer, when temperatures reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Jesse was dressed very well for our interview and had a guy following him around with an umbrella,” she says. “I was like, ‘Hey, what’s up with the umbrella? You know, I’m the star. How come I don’t get an umbrella?’ We joked around a lot, he was really sweet, he’s a hoot.”

Discovery, Inc
Discovery, Inc

Designers Darren Keefe, Breegan Jane and Carrie Locklyn created private spaces in the house for each family member with details highlighting their personalities.

The children each have their own bedrooms and living room on the second floor, complete with glass conference table for “sibling meetings.”

As the only boy in the house, Miguel got his own room and a shelf showcasing some of his grandpa’s belongings, like a collection of baseball caps. And Cheyenne, who’s interested in makeup, got her own vanity table.

“It felt like walking into a really fancy resort for the first time, they beyond met our needs,” Mosley says.

Other features were designed with “family time” in mind: there’s the double island in the kitchen, and hanging daybeds in the backyard (for mom and grandma!) made with antique Spanish armoire doors Breegan found in a local antique store.

RELATED: HGTV Is Looking for U.S. Town In Need of a Complete Makeover for New Show — Could it Be Yours?

But the family’s favorite part of the house?

“The saltwater pool in the backyard … all of my kids are fish, they swim all summer,” Mosley says.

Beyond the house, Mosley hopes sharing her family’s story challenges harmful assumptions about foster care and adoption.

“The show built a forever home for my kids, my adopted kids see there’s hope,” she says. “Maybe seeing my story will encourage people on the fence to take in foster kids, to adopt, to give back a little more and to inspire them to overcome things if they, too, lost a parent. I think that that’s more life changing to me than anything else.”

“All In The Mosley Family” airs Sunday, Feb. 16, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HGTV.