Joanna Gaines New House 61 Inventive Thoughts To Expertly Change Your Home

toward the end of 2005 chip came across an opportunity to buy a nice lot just up the road from where we lived he knew how cramped we were in that little white house and even though he felt as though any money we made should be reinvested in the business and rolled into the next project he asked me one day if maybe we should invest in building a house of our own yes i said i really love the idea chip was pretty certain he could get the financing together for the house if we bought the land but the parcel of land was five thousand dollars and he wasn't sure how we were going to get it before somebody else snatched it up that's when i surprised him ever since the jail incident i had been saving a little money here and there for my sales of the shop i just set it away where neither of us would touch it until there was something important to use it on just for us the amount of money i'd saved was exactly five thousand dollars just what we needed to buy that land so we went for it and together we designed a comfortable 1600 square foot home from the ground up i love designing this home from the beginning stages i learned that unlike the older homes we had renovated a new home doesn't come with oak floors thick trim and built-in character and i learned pretty quickly that adding character was expensive if i wanted our place to be special and unique i had to get creative on the exterior for instance we wanted rock but only could afford enough for the front of the house so we added larger trees in the landscape to hide the side elevation and draw attention to the front door speaking of that front door chip had to get creative himself buying things for clients was one thing but buying stuff for our house was a different story we had this charming arch door crafted out of solid mesquite wood that ship had bought from a guy whose shop was going out of business the best thing about this door was it had a little peep door at the top that you could open so you could see who was on the other side it felt very hansel and gretel this amazing door brought the perfect balance to this heavy rock exterior and it made it feel like a quaint rustic cottage on the inside we couldn't afford the oak wood floors i left so we opted for stained concrete i didn't want the room to look too cold so we ended up scoring the concrete in a large diagonal pattern that made the floors look like a million bucks we had some exterior rock left over so i decided to mount the remaining pieces as a chair rail under our bar top which chip had constructed from reclaimed wood eventually it all came together and we thought it was beautiful it was so rewarding to stay on budget but have a house that was unique in its own special way in 2006 we moved in and the layout worked so well that we decided our own house would make the perfect model for a new set of student rental homes we figured we could fit eight of those houses along the frontage parcels that chip had retained after selling part of the 11 acres to that big out-of-town development company but building those houses would mean getting a bigger line of credit and expanding chip's rag tag home building and house flipping business into more of a bona fide company this house building business quickly became more than chip's company it became our company a true fusion of what he was doing and what i was doing we decided to call it magnolia homes it was right around that time when i found out i was pregnant with our second child this time it was going to be a girl we decided to name her ella rose sales at my shop were better in my second year than they'd been in the first i was building reputation and had a steady client base and i felt like i was starting to actually know what i was talking about in terms of design i love that shop and i love being there every day yet once i was pregnant with ella i heard a voice remember the voice on our first date the one that told me that chip was the man i would marry this was the same voice but this time it was saying joe it's time to stay home with your babies i didn't really want to hear that in fact i argued with a voiced just as i had argued about what it had said about chip no i can't i said i'm finally getting this it's working and it was working better than i ever expected that shot meant something to a lot of people and i'm not just talking about me and my clientele it seemed that wherever we went and whatever we did chip would always find some kids to mentor along the way one late night we were at the shop unboxing some candles that had just come in and chip noticed two young boys walking through our parking lot they were all of 10 years old hey boys he said it's late what are you guys doing out here on the streets this time of night they said they lived in the neighborhood behind the shop and they always walked around at night so chip said hey you want to make a little bit of money of course the boy said yes he invited them to come help us with inventory and gave them work sweeping and doing some other chores for a few bucks an hour we always seemed to find ourselves at the shop doing something late at night so those boys started dropping by regularly hey chip and jojo they'd say got any work for us being able to mentor those kids just added to the value of being at that shop i love that it was such a good feeling to see those kids fired up about doing some work rather than wandering around after dark where trouble was sure to find them what i'm trying to say is that i truly loved everything about that shop but the voice just kept on telling me joe it's time i wrestled with it for weeks until i finally felt it in my heart i thought about the words of all those women who were in my shop every day telling me to cherish the time with my child soon i would have two children whose time deserved cherishing as much as i didn't want it to be true i could no longer deny that the voice was right i'm the type of person who can wrestle with something for a long time but when i finally make up my mind i'm all in this was one of those times i was lying in bed with ship one night and i spoke it out loud i didn't pose it as a question it wasn't something i needed advice on i was resolved chip were shutting the shop down chip was curious as to why i'd come to this decision of course and i told him confidently god told me to do it how could he argue with that in march of 2006 we sold off everything the inventory the displays even the cash register and it was hard that shop was my dream a dream that had landed on my yellow steno pad after i came home from my eye-opening internship in new york city it was the first dream of mine that i'd seen come to fruition and in many ways it was like our first baby ship and i had remodeled that old shop with our bare hands we'd laughed about how many nails had been driven into those old floorboards there were thousands of them and thought about the guy who had put in so much time and effort all those years ago just to make sure those floors were as solid as could be we were proud of everything we'd done to accentuate the work of those who came before us and to turn that quirky little building into a shop that exceeded the dreams i'd drawn out on paper a few years earlier but the shop was more to me than just an accomplishment or even the fulfillment of a dream it was something chip and i had dreamed and accomplished together from scratch it wasn't his business that i added to or my business that he added to it was ours at some point every day no matter what he had going on at the various job sites chip had been there with me sitting in that little back office at the desk right next to the pack and play doing his thing while i was doing mine i will remember till the day i died the moment i stood on the front steps and locked the shop door for the last time as tears rolled down my face even as i stood on the steps trying to say goodbye i kept asking god are you sure this is the right move if it is why does it seem so painful and hard that's when i heard that gentle whisper joanna if you trust me with your dreams i'll take them further than you could have ever imagined it's no easy thing to trust in god and to walk away from a career to give it all up not knowing if you can ever get it back or even come close but i did i heeded his voice and somehow i found peace about it we put the shop in the market and hoped to find a buyer for that property as soon as possible obviously we wanted to respect it the way maybelle had respected it when she sold it to us we still love maybelle who had become like a grandmother to us we used to visit her in the nursing home where she lived and be your guest when they had pancake suppers but we just couldn't afford to hold on to that building out of principle the way she had we both would have loved someone have saved that old building we'd worked so hard to fix up but there just wasn't another chip and joanna out there who were looking for a property like that one we couldn't keep paying a mortgage on a shop that wasn't open so we told ourselves it is what it is we need to move on we'll just see what happens if someone came along and made us a decent offer we would just have to cross that bridge when we came to it we considered offers from some other developers and business owners and kept trying to make a deal but for some reason those deals kept falling through what's really interesting to me is just as joe closed on the shop magnolia homes was really starting to rock and roll at the very same moment we were trying to sell that building we were also looking for some office space for the company we also needed a place where we could hire a secretary to do the books but we were also looking for a spot where we had a little outdoor space where we could store our supplies and our materials and possibly have a staging area you know for the boys to gather what they needed before they went to any particular job that day i was out driving around with a buddy of mine who had helped me look for a location and he'd actually found a couple of really cool spots around town but we never found the spot that really jumped out at me we happened to turn down bosque as we were driving and he asked what's the deal with the shop have you sold it yet i told him we had hit a few snags and hadn't been able to close on a deal yet and right as we were driving past it he said well have you ever thought about using that as your office it was like this giant light bulb went off over my head i swung the truck around and pulled into the parking lot i looked at the building with a whole new set of eyes it had this parking lot in the front but there was also this area in the back that was plenty big enough for storage unit that could hold all the lumber and the materials we kept on hand anything else we might need to store it had an office inside that was ready to go and why couldn't we turn the front part where the retail shop had been into more office space too the mortgage we were paying on that little building was less than the rent i'd be paying anywhere else by a good margin dude you're a genius i said the very next day we jumped in and started renovating that store into the magnolia homes headquarters adding the office and storage space that would make it home for our construction company funny that we needed an outsider to bring that to our attention we had always seen that building as our shop but now it was our headquarters and we were going to get to hold on to that precious building we could even keep our magnolia sign it felt right the whole thing felt right being at home as a full-time mom meant giving up the shot but it didn't mean giving up on everything else chip and i started working more closely together than ever my design ideas were the backbone of magnolia homes and i'd wind up coming in and out of that construction office as often as chip had been in and out of that back office when it was my store in the coming months i'd actually figured out a way to stay in touch with all my clientele and my wholesalers and to continue magnolia as a home furnishings brand without having a physical shop too i felt good about having made the decision to walk away and lock the door it's funny though looking back on it now because one very simple concept in life never occurred to me as i was walking away even locked doors can be unlocked in time i simply never could have imagined just how much god had in store for us and i certainly couldn't have dreamed just how many keys to other doors got at r so originally in the space there were really thin columns and then just some white railing and i really wanted to beef the columns up make them more substantial a little more formal so we removed the railing altogether to really open up the space and then trimmed out the existing columns this originally was a set of french doors that led out to the sun room now we've created this double-sided fireplace put some really pretty quartzite here and then did a really pretty trim around it to make it have a clean but pretty elegant look over here with the stairs you know they have the dated railing so we removed the existing railing we just came back with a really clean simple railing but i just think the blend of the white the natural really pretty wood mixed with the gray trim you know it ties in now to the updates of the house the nice thing about the master bedroom is it didn't need a ton of updating but for this room it was really a cosmetic change that we did but again we're talking about the blend of rustic and traditional two people two different styles but one room we installed new hardwood floors in here as you see we have this really pretty delicate chandelier i think the chandelier just adds a really sweet special touch to this room it really makes it feel warm cozy inviting now the husband really wanted a sliding barn door i didn't beat it up too much i left it pretty clean and simple pretty stained i mean this is something that you can build the rustic door and the chandelier and the headboard really balance each other out here in the bathroom i think is where you're really going to see the biggest blend of both of them you've got the marble backsplash but the wood tile you've got the marble countertops over here with the wood frame so it's really a blend of him and her i really think this house was one of my favorites because it was blending two very different styles into one space and it worked

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Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021