While classic TV is the Tab soda that quenches my thirst, I have to admit that I’ve never been the biggest Brady Bunch fan. I like it fine, but I am an Old Millennial who relied on Nick at Nite to deliver all my retro TV goods. The Brady Bunch didn’t hit the Nick at Nite lineup until the mid-to-late ’90s, which is around when I started getting into new sitcoms. Oh, trust and believe, I still watched Brady Bunch on the reg, and I have seen both of the absolutely perfect ’90s Brady movies a million times each. But while I appreciate The Brady Bunch as a 35-year-old and I love the intricacy and preposterousness of the franchise’s many post-cancellation revivals (y’all have got to track down The Bradys!), it’s not my jam like The Mary Tyler Moore Show or The Bob Newhart Show. I still laugh at old Cheers episodes like they’re brand new and I can say with certainty that I’ve never legit LOL’d at a Brady joke.

So all that revealed, why oh why am I tearing up at every single episode of HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation?! I’ve never laughed at a Brady joke and I’ve certainly never shed a tear over a Brady lesson. And while the homeowners on Property Brothers have meltdowns semi-regularly, I always keep a cool head while watching HGTV’s lineup. So I ask again: why does the combination of a sitcom I like just fine and the home reno format that rarely rises above background noise make me as emotional as a slighted Jan Brady?!

The show’s premise is extremely up my alley: when the Brady house—the real house that was used for exterior shots on the ’70s sitcom—was put up for sale for the first time since the show went off the air, HGTV swooped in and bought the property out from under Lance Bass. HGTV’s mission: to make the inside of the Brady house, which was never actually featured on The Brady Bunch, match the soundstage set that millions and millions of people grew up watching on TV. To pull it off, HGTV assembled and Avengers-style lineup of home reno heroes from the shows Property Brothers, Good Bones, Restored by the Fords, Hidden Potential, and Flea Market Flip. Together with the six all-grown-up Brady kids, six months of massive renovations and cross-country vintage shopping took place, resulting in the show I’m currently watching live as it airs every single week with my husband, both of us holding back tears (or just letting them flow)!

Why?!

I think the key to solving this mystery lies within the moments that made me so emotional. In Episode 1, it was watching Maureen McCormick (Marcia) help the Property Brothers make a major decision about the staircase. Of course on A Very Brady Renovation, a “major decision” is whether or not the staircase should lose a stair or the angle in order to fit into the house. It’s the kind of attention to detail that really makes the show work, and McCormick’s enthusiasm when Jonathan and Drew say they’re going to build a mock staircase at the original’s angle was fantastic.

But then when McCormick walks up the makeshift stairs, Drew proclaims “walking back in time”—and then the show works its magic. In reality, McCormick is just checking to see if this particular angle feels super Brady-y. But the reno show’s actually not dealing with reality. It’s really dealing with memory, nostalgia—it’s dealing with human emotion, and just standing at that particular angle unlocks memories for McCormick. She’s standing at an angle she hasn’t stood at for decades, and this project has given that to her. The way the episode cuts back and forth between McCormick at 16 and 63, it effectively sells how important this seemingly trivial detail is. And I teared up.

I didn’t know I was going to cry again going into Episode 2, as the pattern had not been established. I should’ve, though, because this episode involves the recreation of Mike Brady’s den. Barry Williams (Greg) volunteered to help bring that room to life, helping with demolition and the construction of his architect dad’s drafting table. When Williams sees the finished room for the first time, it’s as emotional as you’d expect—and then Hidden Potential host Jasmine Roth asks what Williams thinks Reed would think. I could feel the emotions coming.

Reed passed away in 1992 at the age of 59 from complications with colon cancer and HIV. Reed, quite possibly TV’s most famous father, was a gay man and a gay man whose life was lost during the AIDS crisis. That’s the context surrounding that question and, as a gay man, the reminder of what we—what the world—lost when AIDS claimed almost an entire generation, was nearly too much for me. Williams, whose reverence for Reed and the project are evident in his reddish eyes and huge smile, replies, “I can feel him right now in this room, and he’s liking it a lot.” Reed’s oldest TV son, a man now older than Reed ever was, giving this back to his TV dad… that’s when I cried.

After two in a row, I thought that I could get out of Episode 3 without being overcome… and I thought wrong. This emotional moment came during the creation of a room that was barely even seen: Alice’s room. Eve Plumb (Jan) wanted to do right by the late Ann B. Davis. Yep, another room makeover honoring a deceased cast member. I braced myself for emotional impact, lotta good that did me!

The tears actually came before the reveal, when Plumb and her friend Kate Flannery (yeah, Meredith from The Office!) went through all of her old Brady Bunch mementos. They found old scripts for The Brady Brood, old cast hats, and a pristine tin lunchbox of her TV parents getting hitched. And then they found a little pillow that Davis cross-stitched for Plumb back in the ’70s, a pillow that Plumb knew belonged in Alice’s new/old room.

You got me again, A Very Brady Renovation!

What all of these moments have in common, though, is family. A Very Brady Renovation started out with the truly crazy idea of tearing down every single wall in an old house and filling it with floor-to-ceiling kitsch for nostalgia’s sake, but these moments prove it’s become something much more, much deeper. This show isn’t about the house, not at its heart. It’s about how houses, how physical objects, bring us closer and keep us close to the people. And just like how a house conjures up memories, so do TV shows. By peppering every episode with footage from the original series, A Very Brady Renovation connects viewers to their memories of watching the show and, more importantly, who they were watching it with. Yeah, this crazy idea for an HGTV show is a gift to fans of The Brady Bunch, but for the actual Bradys, it’s a gift to Reed, Davis, and Florence Henderson (oh lord, Mike and Carol’s bedroom is coming up and I am not ready!).

The angle of a staircase brings back feelings of unity, building a table honors a memory, placing a teeny pillow on a bed as a gesture of love—these moments, more than any contentious episode of Love It or List It, make me realize that there’s love in the details. And this new Brady house is filled with love.

Where to watch A Very Brady Renovation