For Season 4 of Battle on the Beach, Build It Forward host and designer Taniya Nayak mentored designers Samantha and Sean Kilgore from Richmond, Michigan. The duo has been together for a decade and are proud parents to a five-month-old son Leighton. The Kilgores owe all of their renovation experience to the 19th-century farmhouse they spent three years transforming into their own home. “So we’re not really flippers,” Sean noted, “but we have a lot of knowledge. I actually graduated with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and Sam, I mean — she’s a designer.” (“I have a degree in graphic design,” Sam laughed.) These underdogs counterbalanced their lack of experience with a lot of heart — and eagerness to soak up Taniya’s professional know-how.

The fourth season of Battle on the Beach was officially a champions’-league matchup. Each of the competition's three mentors had notched a win, there were more scores to settle than ever before — and the latest winner would truly rule the beach. Reigning champ and Rock the Block host Ty Pennington was back from his Season 3 win to mentor Chyenne Overturf-Smith and Kristin Smith, married home-flippers from Dallas. Windy City Rehab’s Alison Victoria returned hoping to repeat her Season 2 victory by guiding Norfolk, Virginia-based friends and business partners Teresa Robinson and Brandon Parker to a W.

The battleground? Oak Island, North Carolina, a barrier island about 35 miles south of Wilmington. The budget? An all-time competition high of $100,000, to be spent over the course of six weeks of head-to-head renovation challenges. The homes? Three four-bedroom, two-bath properties in need of serious TLC, each with its own advantages and challenges.

With just two minutes to review exterior photos and floor plans, Team Taniya and their competition had to think fast and go with their guts. After winning the right to choose first, they selected this 1,366-square-foot ranch with a starting value of $788,750. A bank of shoreside windows beckoned Team Taniya to the home, and upon interior inspection, the windows were just as good as they looked. But the home’s only other initial selling point was its exposed ceiling.

Everyone agreed that moving the kitchen from a cramped corner to an adjoining wall would be a night-and-day improvement, but Taniya reminded her renovators of the stakes and truncated timeline: “You have one week relocating an entire kitchen into another spot; it’s a big risk,” she noted. “It doesn’t matter how great of a design it is. It's nothing if we don’t finish.” Could the couple who spent three years on their own kitchen cook up a winning renovation in just seven days?

Sam and Sean emphasized their new kitchen’s spectacular coastal view by crowning their island and backsplash with Fantasy Brown quartzite that echoes the organic ebb and flow on the horizon — a commitment that rang in at $3,500. They took a design risk in using a much darker marble slab for the countertops along the kitchen’s perimeter, then introducing yet another finish with pale subway tile ($300) above the range. Those were big moves, but they were setting the tone for the whole house; given the first week’s overall spend came in at $31,025, their thesis statement needed all the exclamation points they could give it.