Chip Gaines - The Magnolia Story

Copyright 2016 by Chip & Joanna Gaines

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. W Publishing and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016945748

ISBN 9780718079185

ISBN 978-0-7180-8153-9 (eBook)

16 17 18 19 20 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

We would like to dedicate this book to our childrenDrake, Ella Rose, Emmie Kay, and Dukeand to the children of Restoration Gateway. Our commitment to you will never fade.

CONTENTS

I have always been one to play it safe. If it were up to me, the less risk involved the better. But this isnt how the story goesbecause I am married to the one, the only, Chip Carter Gaines.

One day back in early 2012, my husband decided to go window-shopping online. Thats always a risky thing to do, but when Chips the man behind the mouse it can be downright dangerous. I never know what objector animalmight 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.

Wed been living in a house that we were getting ready to flip and wed 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 Gaines epiphany.

I really thought to myself, How cool would it be to move our family onto a houseboat? We can put it on one of the lakes down here, and the kids and I can fish for breakfast from the balcony. Wow! Jos 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 didnt say a word. He had it shipped to Waco on a monster tractor-trailer and couldnt wait to show off his 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 weeknight, I received a phone call from an out-of-state number I didnt recognize. I picked it up.

Hi, Im 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 our most recent flip house that Id designed, the one we were living in at the time. A few weeks earlier a friend of mine, Molly, had submitted those photos to a popular blog called DesignMom.com, and Id 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 loved 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 to show on TV? I asked.

Well, we just love how organic it isthat you and your husband work together. Not only do you sell homes, but you also flip and renovate them. We think its unique that youre a husband-and-wife team. She went on and on, and I finally said, Well, let me talk to Chip and Ill get back with you.

I got with Chip, and he immediately said, Thats a scam. Dont call them back.

I was just skeptical. Back in high school I had some buddies who were always trying to get into modeling. They would go to these agents and casting calls and then wind up paying some guy $1,000 to take their headshots, and nothing would ever come of it. So, yeah, I thought it was something like that.

Jo really thought we should give them a shot, but I was just like, Jo, Im telling you, theres no way this is legit. Were gonna meet these people, and theyll get us all excited thinking theyre gonna make us famous or something, and then say, Oh, by the way, you need to pay us twenty grand.

I somehow convinced Chip to let me call Katie back. We didnt 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 reelbasically 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 dont 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 all dry and I couldnt think straight, and Jo was a little dull. They just followed Jo around and tried to make something out of nothing. It was pretty obvious this could not make good television. We were just awful. We really were.

The crew had me stand in my kitchen and try to make pancakes with the kids hanging off of 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 didnt feel natural, and it definitely wasnt 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 doesnt happen here, theres no way you guys are getting a show. This just isnt working.

We figured we were pretty much done at that point, and it didnt really bother us at all. The two of us had never imagined wed be on TV. Wed 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 wasnt 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, Jo! Chip replied.

That better not be for me, I said. It was the ugliest, rundown-looking, two-story shack of a boat Id ever seen. What the heck are we going to do with a houseboat?

Thats 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 wasnt a joke and Chip wasnt even close to kidding. I wasnt mishearing him. He was dead serious about making that boat our home for the next six months.