Alison Victoria feels at home with HGVT’s ‘Sin City Rehab’

Alison Victoria is most associated with Chicago, where she was born, raised and hosted five seasons of “Windy City Rehab.”

But she’s bringing some serious Las Vegas bona fides to the new spinoff/continuation series “Sin City Rehab” (9 p.m. Wednesdays, HGTV).

The interior designer and renovation expert formerly known as Alison Victoria Gramenos left Chicago for Las Vegas in 1999, when her mother and stepfather built a home in the valley. She’s maintained a presence here ever since and calls Las Vegas her happy place.

“When someone has a happy place,” Victoria says, “you bet your a— they wanna be there all the time.”

Last October, she once again departed Chicago and the 6,700-square-foot Prohibition-era warehouse she converted during “Windy City Rehab: Alison’s Dream Home” to move to that happy place.

“I left Chicago pretty abruptly,” Victoria acknowledges. “All my clothes are there. My furniture. I just left, and I never went back.”

Full-circle moment

With “Sin City Rehab,” she’s reconnecting with friends and colleagues while pitching herself to potential clients like the people behind the Four Seasons Private Residences Las Vegas in MacDonald Highlands.

It’s a full-circle moment for Victoria, who looks back fondly at her first Las Vegas job as a hostess at Piero Selvaggio’s late, great Valentino at The Venetian.

From there, she graduated from UNLV, designed more than 50 houses from the ground up for Christopher Homes and founded Alison Victoria Interiors at the ripe old age of 22. She also led the $160 million expansion at the Silverton that started opening in 2008 and served as the resort’s creative director and director of marketing.

By 2011, she was ambushing shoppers at area home improvement stores and asking if she could go home with them to remodel their kitchens. That was for her first series, “Kitchen Crashers,” which lasted nine seasons. She’s since become one of the faces of HGTV, having starred in “Rock the Block,” “Ugliest House in America” and “Battle on the Beach.”

“Windy City” rehab laid the groundwork for her move as Season 4, which aired in 2023, showed the transformation of her Henderson home into what she calls “Villa Victoria.” With a mix of design influences from the Mediterranean and Cabo San Lucas, its front doors were salvaged from a Spanish church, she found one of the mantels in Paris, and the bar came from a Chicago speakeasy.

‘What Vegas really is’

“It’s a place I’ve just always come to relax and recharge and have a little moment of reprieve,” Victoria says. “And now, it’s my real life. Now it’s every day. I’m home, and I’m so happy. I can’t even explain it. I love this valley more than anywhere I’ve ever lived.”

The main difference between “Windy City Rehab” and “Sin City Rehab” are the homes she’s renovating. In Chicago, Victoria worked on houses that were built before Las Vegas existed. At least one dated to the Civil War.

So far, she’s been able to make the most of Las Vegas’ comparatively limited history.

“I’m going to be able to show millions of people what Vegas really is off the Strip,” Victoria says. “How many amazing pockets and neighborhoods and history that we have, from the Scotch 80s to the Las Vegas Country Club to Section 10.

“Yes, we have our tract homes from the ’90s, but just because they all look the same on the outside doesn’t mean they all have to look the same on the inside.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.