Glen Ridge family to be featured on home-makeover show

GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Siblings Zoe and Alex LeRoy are no longer sharing a room at their home in Glen Ridge.

Their family will be featured on the Sept. 25 episode of NBC’s “George to the Rescue,” a home-renovation series that features families facing challenges. Eight-year-old Zoe, a student at Ridgewood Avenue School, has been going through cancer treatment and watched the show while she wasn’t feeling well, so her parents decided to write to the producers and apply to be in an episode. They were chosen, and host George Oliphant and his team turned the family’s attic into a bedroom for Zoe and redid the room that she and her older brother, Alex, 10, were sharing.

“It was a makeshift space,” Iva LeRoy, Zoe and Alex’s mother, said of the attic in a phone interview with The Glen Ridge Paper on Sept. 18. “She had a place to hang out and take her friends when they came over, but she didn’t sleep there.”

Oliphant worked with Montclair-based designer Campbell Minister, contractor Michael McCue and Michael DeRosa from American Roofing to turn the attic into a real bedroom. Additionally, the windows in both bedrooms were replaced, and a new roof was installed on the house.

“It was this old paneling, and there weren’t real sheetrock walls,” Oliphant said in a phone interview with The Glen Ridge Paper on Sept. 20. “We put in walls and insulation, and we vaulted the ceiling to steal as much space as we could to maximize it. It felt like being in a basement but in the attic, more like something that would be where a nephew visiting for a long weekend would stay.”

Attic storage remains and is separate from Zoe’s bedroom. To decide what both bedrooms would look like, Minister got to know Zoe and Alex to find out what they would like. Alex is a huge soccer fan, so his room is decked out in Manchester United colors and a signed Paul Pogba jersey from the team. Still, both rooms can be changed without much effort as the children get older.

“It’s malleable, so if down the line he’s not as into it, it can change,” Oliphant said. “I try to take that into account based on how much my own rooms have changed and what I see with my kids. What happens if he doesn’t want that anymore? If he changes the art, it still works.”

The whole renovation, plus some landscaping and the addition of a jungle gym in the backyard, took a little over two weeks. It was a surprise to Ben LeRoy, Zoe and Alex’s father.

“They try to keep it as genuine as possible,” he said in a phone interview with The Glen Ridge Paper on Sept. 18. “There’s no doing a take 40 times.”

Also a surprise was the reveal. The family stayed out of the house for the time the renovation was happening, so they didn’t have any idea what it would look like. The final unveiling is Oliphant’s favorite part.

“I’m never really nervous that they won’t like it, because I wouldn’t do something that I’m not proud of,” he said. “But I always want to make sure they like it. Everyone is different; some people react over the top and with some people it’s all in their eyes. I like to exceed their expectations.”

Zoe and Alex both fell under the “in their eyes” category, according to Oliphant.

“When she went up there, you could see the grin from cheekbone to cheekbone,” he said. “There was a little sparkle in her eye that said she loved it.”

Both kids warmed up to their new spaces and are sleeping better without having to share, according to Iva LeRoy. Zoe is also feeling much better and has to have MRI scans every three months now, which is less often than before.

“Even now I can’t believe it,” Iva LeRoy said. “It’s more than we could have done. It’s been a rough year for us, and this was definitely a highlight.”

Though the family was familiar with the show, they enjoyed the experience of being on it even more.

“If anything, they were even nicer,” Ben LeRoy said. “George did another rescue in Glen Ridge a few years ago and he went over to see them. He cares; it’s not just a show for him.”

The feeling was mutual.

“They’re just good people,” Oliphant said about the LeRoy family. “Kids and cancer should never be in the same sentence. So I try to help when I can.”

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