Amy Allen applied to be on TLC’s “Home Made Simple” show on a whim.

A few months later, her family was featured on the show, which aims to provide participants with simple and easy solutions for “everyday domestic challenges” according to TLC’s website.

It all started simply enough. Allen’s neighbor was applying for the show and suggested she do the same.

“I applied and within an hour the casting director e-mailed me back and said, ‘We’re pretty interested in doing an on-camera interview with you,’” Allen said. “We have six children and I think that was pretty interesting. They hadn’t had that before.”

Allen’s children — four girls and two boys — range in age from 2 years old to 13.

“Chaotic and fun would be a good way to describe us,” Allen said of her family of eight.

She applied in May and the casting director told Allen he would be in the Puget Sound region later in the month. They came out, she explained, and she took them through her home.

“They had me go into each room and tell them how they could help me, what I was hoping for,” she said. “He said, ‘You know, we’ve already interviewed 60 families and you’re one of our absolute favorites and I don’t want to leave any room out.”

Allen was told they would find out in about a month if things would move forward from there. About a month later, she got a call saying they had made “the first pitch” and about a week later received another call and was told the powers that be loved her family for the show.

From there, Allen said, she got a call in July from the producer who asked questions and then set up a schedule for the crew to come out and tape the show.

The producers chose to re-do the rooms of her two oldest children, Kate, 12, and Julia, 11.

Leading up to the arrival of the show’s crew, Allen would get e-mails asking about dimensions of walls and other details for her home, but they never revealed what they had in mind ahead of time.

“It’s all about the suspense,” Allen said. “So, they wouldn’t tell us exactly what they were doing.”

During the first day of filming in mid-August, they shot the Allens doing family activities together, including mom making lunch for the kids and playing on the trampoline, among other things.

Allen said they arranged for their younger children to spend time with other family members while her daughters got some special attention during filming.

During one day, Allen got to work with a “cooking maven” and another day her girls worked on projects with the “decorating maven.”

“The premise of the show is that you can actually do these projects,” Allen said. “It was a very interesting experience into TV. It was crazy. It was 7:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night most days.”

They found things around the Allen’s home to re-purpose and in addition to re-doing the girls rooms the crew also did a project in the laundry room to help make that space better organized.

Allen can’t reveal too many details ahead of the airing of the show, which may be on TLC in October, but she said her daughters “loved it.”

“They were so excited,” she said. “What I told the producers in the beginning is being the oldest of six, especially with little ones, they end up having to be really patient. For them to have something that was just fun and happy and completely for them, it was just so fantastic.”

Kate and Julia, she said, are good friends “but they’re very different from each other,” so the design of the rooms was an “odd couple” theme.

“They were really able to blend those two styles,” Allen said. “Plus it’s really organized now. There’s great storage and there’s room for them to do their homework.