Joanna Gaines Fixer Upper Houses 56 Home Decorating Ideas And Design Inspiration

one day back in early 2012 my husband decided to go window shopping online that's always a risky thing to do but when chip's the man behind the mouse it can be downright dangerous i never know what object or animal might show up at my front door on the back of some random delivery truck on this particular day chip happened to spot a used houseboat for sale we'd been living in a house that we were getting ready to flip and we just started renovating our farmhouse outside of waco texas which meant we were on the hunt for a temporary place to live so chip clicked through the pictures of that floating two-story shanty with its microscopic kitchen and had a full-blown chip gains epiphany you know i really thought to myself how cool is this gonna be move the entire family onto this houseboat we'll put it down here on one of these lakes i'll get the kids to fish from breakfast off of the balcony joe is gonna love this so he bought it sight unseen we just barely had our heads above water at that point and he went and threw tens of thousands of dollars down on that thing and then he didn't say a word he had it shipped to waco on a monster tractor trailer and couldn't wait to show off a surprise when it finally arrived after all our years of marriage he was still clueless about how i might react i had no idea any of this was going on of course but right around that same time on some random week night i received a phone call from an out-of-state number i didn't recognize i picked it up hi i'm katie neff and i work for a television production company the woman on the line said i saw some of your designs online and i was wondering this katie had apparently seen photos of her most recent flip house that i designed the one we were living in at the time a few weeks earlier a friend of mine molly had submitted these photos to a popular blog called designmom.com and i'd been excited that a blog with thousands of followers wanted to feature it it was the first time my work had ever really been featured on a design blog other than my own i had a loyal local following back then but no national following to speak of i love what you did katie continued so i looked you up and read your blog too i see that you and your husband work together and i was just wondering would you ever want to be on a tv show i sat there and thought did i just hear that right what about us would you want a show on tv i asked well we just love how organic it is that you and your husband work together not only do you sell homes but you also flip and renovate them we think it's unique and you're a husband and wife team she went on and on and i finally said well let me talk to chip and i'll get back with you i got with chip and he immediately said that's a scam jojo don't call them back yeah i'll admit i was skeptical you know back in high school i had these buddies who were always trying to get into modeling seems like they'd end up with an agent some sort of a casting call they'd wind up paying some guy thousands of dollars to get these head shots and nothing would ever come of it so yeah i thought it was something like that joe really thought she was going to give this a shot so i was like joe i'm telling you there's no way this is legit we're going to meet these people they're going to get us all excited thinking we're going to be famous or something like that then they're gonna say oh and by the way uh you owe us twenty thousand dollars i somehow convinced ship to let me call katie back we didn't have a lot of money just lying around so i knew there was no way anyone could trick us out of thousands of dollars of course i knew nothing about that houseboat yet sure enough within a couple of weeks katie sent an entire camera crew to waco to spend five days filming us for what they called a sizzle reel basically an extended commercial they would put together to try to sell a television series based on the two of us and our little business they never asked us for any money at all they were legit which made us wonder why in the world would anyone care to watch us on tv we don't even watch tv these people have to be nuts after the crew spent a couple of days with us they started thinking they might be nuts too chip and i were horrible we were scared of the cameras which is hilarious because chip is the most talkative guy i know but like clockwork the moment that red light turned on he froze my mouth was dry i couldn't even think straight joe was her normal slightly dull self they just followed joe around and tried to make something out of nothing it was pretty obvious this could not make good television we were awful it just we were awful the crew had me stand in my kitchen and try to make pancakes with the kids hanging off my legs while chip was basically sucking his thumb over in the corner and the whole time i was trying to convince the kids not to look into the camera so it would look more natural it certainly didn't feel natural and it definitely wasn't any fun on the fourth day just before the camera crew was scheduled to go home their top guy pulled us aside and said look if something doesn't happen here there's no way you guys are getting a show this just isn't working we figured we were pretty much done at that point and it didn't really bother us at all the two of us had never imagined we'd be on tv we talked to friends about the kinds of things they watched on reality tv and from what we could tell none of it seemed like us anyway then something happened the very next morning the houseboat arrived with cameras rolling chip put a blindfold on me and drove me to an empty lot by the lake with all cameras on me chip released the blindfold and said ta-da i wasn't sure what i was looking at a shipwreck maybe on the back of a semi what is that i said i got this for you joe chip replied that better not be for me i said it was the ugliest run down looking two-story shack of a boat i'd ever seen what the heck are we gonna do with this houseboat that's our new home chip said beaming with pride at his purchase what you are crazy we are not living on a houseboat it quickly dawned on me that this wasn't a joke and chip wasn't even close to kidding i wasn't mishearing him he was dead serious about making that boat our home for the next six months i just about lost it how can we live on the water chip three of our kids don't even know how to swim did you think this through then he fessed up and told me how much money he'd spent on it as it all sank in i realized i'd never been so mad at him ever and that's saying something come on at least come look at it i know this can work he pleaded as soon as we walked a little closer we could see the holes holes in the boat we pulled ourselves up on the flatbed and went inside to find the interior covered in mold someone had taken the ac unit out on top and left a gaping hole in the roof so for years it had rained straight into the boat we tried turning the engine over and of course it didn't start that's when chip got angry i think i got scammed he said chip did you even look at this thing before you bought it well no he said it was a great deal and there were all kinds of pictures it looked like it was in great shape oh wait a minute i bet the guy just put up pictures of this thing from when he bought it like in 1980 or something that sorry sucker sorry sucker chip by this point i'm trying to decide if we could scrap it for parts my husband had made plenty of impulsive purchases that's just what he does he'd gone and purchased the house we were currently in without showing that to me either but at least it was a house with a roof on a foundation i'd gone along with it as i always do and over time i'd come to love that quirky shoe box of a house we had worked hard to make it our home in fact that house is where i'd had my epiphany about truly owning the space you're in a moment i'll share with you later and where i designed the kids rooms that landed on the blog and caused the producer to call i was already pretty upset that we were going to have to leave the house behind in a few months but to think that we might have to move into this thing was just too much you need to return it i said it's paid for chip said it's done i bought it as is excuse me semi-driver i yelled at the man in the front seat i need you to hook that thing back up and take it back where it came from chip made it clear to me that once he made a deal fair or not that thing was ours now by that point the cameras had totally disappeared to both of us we just completely forgot they were there chip's arms were flailing around as he circled the boat tallying up the problems he could find my arms were flailing as i yelled at him for buying that dumb thing without talking to me first when i finally calmed down i saw how disappointed he was and how bad he felt i decided to take a deep breath and try to think this thing through maybe it's not that bad i said i think i was trying to cheer myself up as much as i was trying to consult ship if we fix up the interior and just get it to the point where we can get it onto the water at least maybe then we can turn around sell it and get our money back over the course of the next hour or so i really started to come around i took another walk through the boat and started to picture how we can make it livable maybe even kind of cool after all we'd conquered worse we tore a few things apart right then and there and i grabbed some paper and sketched out a new layout for the tiny kitchen i talked to him about potentially finishing an accent wall with shiplap a kind of rough textured pine paneling that fans of our show now know all too well shiplap chiplaft that seems a little ironic to use on a ship doesn't it ha ha i replied i was still not in the mood for his jokes but this is how chip backs me off the ledge with his humor then i asked him to help me lift something on the deck and he said aye aye matey and his best pirate voice and slowly but surely i came around i can't believe i'm saying this but by the end of that afternoon i was actually a little bit excited about taking on such a big challenge chip was still deflated that he'd allowed himself to get duped but he put his arm around me as we started walking back to the truck i put my head on his shoulder and the cameras captured the whole thing just an average roller coaster afternoon in the lives of chip and joanna gaines the head cameraman came jogging over to us before we drove away chip rolled down his window and he said sarcastically how's that for reality tv we were both feeling embarrassed that this is how we had spent our last day of trying to get this stinking television show well the guy said breaking into a great big smile if i do my job you two just landed yourself a reality television show what we were floored we couldn't believe it how was that a show but lo and behold he was right that rotten houseboat turned out to be a blessing in disguise over the course of the next five months the production company's head of development patrick jager championed our show tirelessly until hgtv decided we were just what they wanted apparently one of the big selling points was the authenticity we'd shown during that humbling afternoon we couldn't have scripted it even if we tried there was something about chip's impulsiveness his riskiness combined with my reaction to his riskiness and the way we worked it out as a couple that landed us the show a few months later the cameras were back and fixer-upper was born our quiet little lives turned completely upside down as our life's work became a hit tv show after years of toiling away semi-anonymously here in waco trying to make ends meet while designing our clients dream homes and doing our best to raise our four kids right our world changed in a way that was much different than either of us could have ever imagined now that we've had some time to reflect on it it's as if our whole lives had been preparing us for this experience we didn't know it at the time but it's as if the seeds had been planted long ago have you ever looked at the bud of a magnolia flower it's a tight little pod that stays closed up for a long time on the end of its branch until one day out of nowhere it finally burst open into this gigantic gorgeous fragrant flower that's ten times bigger than the bud itself it's impossible to imagine that such a big beautiful thing could pop out of that tiny little bud but it does and that's sort of what getting discovered and sharing our lives on fixer-upper feels like to us we never could have imagined being on tv together touching the lives of so many people especially back when we were two broke newlyweds sleeping on the floor of our 800 square foot house while we renovated it or when i first opened and then i had to close my little magnolia shop on bosque boulevard i have to wonder though if it was just a happy coincidence that we decided to name that shot magnolia or was it something more because it's staggering to think just how much it has blossomed

Channel: Home

Views: 197,259

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Id: p-62vNvrso0

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021