Rachael Gives First Look Inside Her Rebuilt Home—One Year After Devastating Fire

For our Season 16 premiere, Rachael invites you inside her newly rebuilt home in the Adirondacks to see how far it's come just over a year after her devastating house fire. "This is our house. It is really exciting to have a house rebuilt in a little over a year," Rach says. 

On August 9, 2020, Rachael's upstate New York home burned down. "Basically, our house burped onto the roof and burned over several days. When it was cleared away, what was left was just the hole in the ground—the basement foundation. Everything else was cleared away," she recalls. "John and I lost most of our adult lives; everything we had for over 50 years—our life—went away." 

And now? "This is where we're at. I felt that you'd want to see where we're at," Rach says. 

Rachael Ray Show

Sitting in her newly rebuilt dining room with her husband, John, Rachael talks about the small changes they chose to make—while recreating as much as they could from the original building. 

"We are back to a fresh shell that is very much the same. It's as close to the original as we could [get]," she says. "A lot of this is just rebuilt things that look like a facsimile of what was here." 

Rachael Ray Show

In addition to the kitchen and open dining room, you can see the entryway, the exterior of the house, the front door and more details in the full video above. 

Rachael Ray Show

So, what changes were made this time around? "We took out the skylights in the bottom guest room because no one liked them. It woke them up too early," Rach laughs.  

In addition, a much bigger change was made when rebuilding the roof. "Now we have a tin roof instead of a wooden roof," John says.  

Rachael Ray Show

Inside, though, you'll see the aged wood that made the house feel so cozy is back. "The reason the house looks old even when it's new, or new again, is because all of this is fallen wood," Rachael explains. "It's reclaimed fallen barns and beam work which gave the house the warmth it had." 

Rachael Ray Show

"I just need to be grateful for the fact that we rebuilt this again, quickly. And everybody in life in the last couple of years has had to move on and pivot and rethink and reorganize their lives—and that's what we're trying to do," Rach says.  

"I am super grateful that we had the firefighters that saved our lives. And we ultimately became very grateful to have everyone share our lives with us through this tough time, because we were all going through the same tough time together." 🧡