Alison Victoria doesn’t leave every piece of an ugly house behind after a renovation. The HGTV designer has built a collection of unusual keepsakes from the homes featured on “Ugliest House in America,” turning renovation leftovers into personal souvenirs.
“I have one ugly from every ugly house we’ve ever done,” Victoria said during the show’s season 8 finale, which aired Aug. 24. She explained that certain objects catch her attention while she tours a property.
Victoria Explains Why She Wants to Keep Items
“I always wanna keep something. There’s something where I walk through the house and I tour it, and something just sticks out.”
The collection includes some truly unusual finds. In the finale, Victoria revealed that she had kept a mosaic monkey head with its tongue sticking out, which had been removed from the kitchen entryway of the winning home, a 1926 Miami property nicknamed “The Mosaic Museum of Westeros.”
Speaking to PEOPLE in October, Victoria explained that the habit grew from her desire to hold on to memories of each project. She approaches the objects much like souvenirs she collects while traveling.
“Whenever I travel, I always get something and I bring it back and I put it on one of my open shelves and it’s a trinket or a tchotchke or a memory and it makes me smile,” she said.
Her collection dates back to the first season of “Ugliest House in America.” One of the earliest properties that inspired her was a home in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, known as “The House of No Secrets” because of the hidden cameras placed throughout the space.
Victoria remembered discovering glitter embedded in the drywall during the renovation.
“I remember that this drywall had glitter in it because, I mean, look, it was a brothel,” she said. “It was all crazy in there.”
Rather than leave the unusual material behind, she took a piece home and framed it. She also salvaged a swan-shaped faucet from an extravagant bathroom, later incorporating it into another design project.
Not every item remains on a shelf, either. Victoria told the outlet that she sometimes finds practical uses for the objects she saves.
“One of the episodes in Minnesota,” she said of the season 5 winner in St. Cloud, “I took this weird bottle opener that was in their kitchen that was not human teeth, but they made it look like teeth. So that’s how I open my Coca-Cola. I mean, it’s funny.”
Victoria also works on the winning homes featured in “Ugliest House in America,” which follows comedian Retta as she tours properties competing for a $150,000 renovation. The designer’s work extends to the show’s spooky spinoff, “Scariest House in America.”
Despite the frightening settings, Victoria said the experience is more fun than serious.
“That show is just laughter and fun,” she said. “I’m serious about the design, but we’re just having the best time of our lives.”
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Alison Victoria Reveals the Strange Souvenirs She Keeps From HGTV’s Ugliest Houses