Kristina Crestin and Jonathan Knight were named to Northshore magazine’s list of top 25 influencers this year. Visit the full list to learn more about the dynamic people shaping our region.
When Kristina Crestin was a kid, her papa earned the title of “coolest grandfather on earth” when he scored tickets for her very first concert: The New Kids on the Block at Foxborough Stadium.
These days, Crestin hangs out with Jonathan Knight of New Kids on the Block fame all the time. But instead of singing and dancing under bright stage lights, he’s wielding his renovation chops with her on HGTV, wearing dirty construction clothes and taking houses down to the studs with a crowbar.
That’s why when Crestin saw the New Kids perform again decades later, things were a bit different.
“I was not prepared for Jon in sequins,” she says, drawing gales of laughter from Knight.
“For me it’s just so normal,” he says. “I always love when people who don’t know that side of me come and see me in that element.”
Since 2021, Knight and Crestin, founder of Essex-based Kristina Crestin Design, have become staples of HGTV. Their first project, “Farmhouse Fixer,” just aired its third season this year, and Knight says they’re in talks for season four.
Other HGTV shows have followed for the duo, including “Rock the Block,” “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge,” and “100 Day Hotel Challenge,” as well as the new spinoff, “Farmhouse Fixer: Camp Revamp,” which followed Knight and his family as he renovated rundown cabins on a 12-acre lakefront campground.
Knight and Crestin had known each other for years before making the leap to television together.
“Kristina had just graduated design school and was working for Siemasko + Verbridge on the North Shore,” Knight remembers of their first meeting. “They were doing my house, and Kristina showed up one day, and I just fell in love.”
When Knight landed his HGTV show and the question of a designer came up, he didn’t have to think about it for very long.
“Kristina was the first person who came to mind,” he says.
The two have a fun, funny dynamic on television and in real life, from their riffing banter to their shared love of home renovation, to their complementary eye for design. In fact, Knight says when they worked on the design for his lake house, they were surprised to discover that they’d chosen the same wallpaper for the bathroom.
While “Camp Revamp” was airing on HGTV this summer, Knight was busy with his “other” career: pop star. He wrapped the New Kids’ 40-plus-city “Magic Summer” tour in late August, and the band released “Still Kids,” their first record in more than a decade, earlier this year.
While making the leap from tour buses and glittering stages to farmhouse reno projects might give some people a feeling of whiplash, Knight moves effortlessly between the two worlds.
“I’m so lucky to be able to have two careers that I’m absolutely so passionate about,” he says.
His first career began in the 1980s and early ’90s, when Boston-born New Kids were a teen idol juggernaut, with Beatles levels of screaming fans, iconic hits like “Please Don’t Go Girl,” and a gig at the Super Bowl halftime show. But when the band broke up in 1994, Knight needed to start over. So he turned to something he’d always known and loved. He grew up in a “neighborhood of old houses” in Dorchester with his carpenter father and architecture buff mother.
“New Kids broke up and I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, so I started flipping houses with a partner, and that’s where my career started,” he says. “I think it was just in my blood.”
He’s injected that love into Crestin’s blood, too. “I hardly had worked on an old house before I started this whole journey with Jon,” Crestin admits. “The old-house thing was very daunting to me.”
Now, though, she’s not only found her groove but has fallen head over heels, too.
“It’s become a little bit of a sickness that Jon has instilled in me,” she jokes. “There’s always something you uncover, and there’s always something new and unique that you don’t get in new construction.”
So what, exactly, makes a great “Farmhouse Fixer”?
For Knight and Crestin, it’s a home with unique quirks, an interesting story, and passionate homeowners. “If their love of the house shines through, then it shines through to me,” Knight says. “The houses kind of talk to us.” He points to the Saltonstall Farm, a season three home in Stratham, NH, where three generations of the same family have lived.
“They’re heavily invested in this property, and for us to come along and put our stamp on [three] generations’ worth of work and caring for that house, that was quite an honor,” Knight says. For every home they’ve worked on, though, revealing the revamp to the homeowners is always incredibly special. “When homeowners come in and I see the joy on their face, it makes all the hours of work that we put into it so worth it,” he says.
It’s a feeling that’s the same whether Knight is singing on stage or swinging a hammer on a construction site. “It’s two different creative outlets, but it’s the same result,” he says. “It’s to make people happy, and when people are happy, it makes me happy.”