HGTV’s “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge” aired its grand finale recently, unveiling a house its design teams had renovated to mimic a life-size Barbie dollhouse to a T. But now that the cameras have stopped rolling, fans might be wondering: Whatever happened to that house?

According to the property’s online listing, the five-bedroom, five-bath, 4,456-square-foot property is currently for sale for $2,049,995. In fact, it’s been quietly sitting on the market for over a month.

How could this iconic, eye-catching property have been hiding in plain sight for so long? Perhaps because the home is now not quite as pink, purple, and Barbie-fied as viewers might remember from what they saw on TV.

From the curb, Barbie lovers may still recognize a few of its signature exterior features such as the black-and-white striped awnings and the bright pink flower beds. But the flamingo water features, fuchsia flower boxes, and giant handle on the roof are long gone, and the hot pink fountain has been painted a conservative black.

What happened to the Barbie Dreamhouse? For answers, I spoke to the home’s listing agent, Sabrina Roberts of Coldwell Banker Realty, who was originally hired to find the perfect property to renovate for the show.

Roberts was also on set, and on air, for much of the series. In sum, no one is as intimately familiar with the Barbie Dreamhouse backstory as she is, and she’s also graciously agreed to share all the details with me in an exclusive interview.

“I’m such a Barbie girl,” says Roberts. “I had a Barbie Dreamhouse when I was young.”

What happened to the Barbie Dreamhouse initially

So she was thrilled when, in late 2022, an old friend referred Roberts to the HGTV production company as the ideal agent to help them find the ideal home to be converted into the Barbie Dreamhouse.

“If they wanted a blond, pink, sparkly agent, they picked with right one,” Roberts says with a laugh.

For over three months, she scoured the Los Angeles market, searching for a property with a specific list of must-haves, including a large lot, a two-story house with at least four bedrooms and 3,500 square feet, a swimming pool, and a spiral staircase.

“We looked at hundreds of homes online at Realtor.com and visited 40 to 50,” she says of the grueling process. “I had three kids, who were 11, 5, and 4 months at the time. But my husband was very supportive. When are you ever going to have another opportunity like this?”

Once they found the right house in Canyon Country, CA, HGTV closed on the property on Jan. 3, paying $1,750,000.

From there, filming began on Feb. 14 and concluded on April 15. Roberts was on hand for the shooting of the first episode and the last, when she was absolutely gobsmacked by how much the house had changed.

“I went through to see all the upgrades. I was blown away,” she says. “The closet, oh, my god. You press a button, and it gives you shoes!”

In the show’s final episode, Barbie fans were on hand to vote for the room they liked best. Roberts adored the closet, but her second favorite space, the backyard designed by Mika and Brian Kleinschmidt of “100 Day Dream Home,” ended up winning. Roberts is fine with that and had even taken a dip in the pool herself.

“I actually went down the slide,” she said. “It was really fast!”

What happened to the Barbie Dreamhouse after the show was done

Once filming on the “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge” wrapped, it didn’t take long for execs to order the removal of the most ostentatious Barbie features. They removed the handle on the roof, the pink faux turf, and the big letter B near the pool.

Inside, they purged most of the “toyetic” touches like the purple plastic dog elevator and repainted most of the pink features—like the spiral staircase and waterslide outside—a more stately gray.

All of this is understandable—many of these features were just for the show and not something a regular homebuyer would want.

“The investors thought it would have higher resale value being a modern, beautiful, newly renovated home,” says Roberts. “They obviously weren’t going for the serious Barbie fans.”

Roberts even tried to buy a couple of the props that didn’t make the cut for the newly remodeled home, like the giant pink brush in the bathroom, but she was told most of the props were going back to Mattel.

Yet despite this transformation, certain subtler Barbie mementos remain.

“All the built-ins stayed,” says Roberts. They include the shelving in the Barbie closet (although it’s now white) and the beautiful wooden ledge built across the fireplace in the family room.

While the fabulous ’50s kitchen was stripped of its pastels and replaced with neutrals, those glorious retro Big Chill appliances—refrigerator, oven, dishwasher, stove, even the hood—are still in place.

“They’re really, really, really expensive,” says Roberts.

And yes, those pop-up appliance lifts on the island are still in place, too.

In the living room, the major features that the designers installed remain, like the two-story fireplace and the updated circular staircase. The fluorescent color scheme was changed to neutral grays, whites, and blacks.

“Ken’s den is basically the same, because it’s so very cool,” says Roberts. “It makes for the best movie theater/playroom ever. The disco floor is gone, but it still has the black drapes and the custom-built couch and custom wallpaper.”

Possibly the room that is closest to staying the same is the office, at the front of the house. While the Barbie wallpaper and the aquarium desk have been removed, the arched shelving, the drop-down TV, and the black-and-white striped wallpaper on the ceiling, reminiscent of the original Barbie swimsuit, have been preserved for posterity.

“The office is one of the first rooms when you walk in,” says Roberts, “and that black-and-white wallpaper on the ceiling lends itself to the awnings you can see when you look out the window. It’s a really nice touch.”

And since this is a five-bedroom house and we saw only the Barbie bedroom decorated, there are a lot of rooms that missed out on being Barbie-fied. Nonetheless, every square inch of the home has been renovated.

“The investors painted and put hardwood floors throughout,” said Roberts. “Even down to the laundry room—new sinks, new toilets, new flooring, and paint throughout. Also new tile and mirrors.”

To be sure, this house is bound to appeal to a wider swath of homebuyers the way it is now. Nonetheless, Roberts admits, “It was hard to see it de-Barbified.”

In fact, if she’d been tempted to make an offer on this property herself, she might have kept it as is.

“If I could live in glitter and sparkles, pink, Chanel, and Swarovski crystals, I would—every single day,” says Roberts. “But I still love this house. And whoever ends up buying it will always be able to say, ‘This was Barbie’s Dreamhouse and it was remodeled by top HGTV designers.’”

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