The last season of “Upper fixator», a special edition « Le Château » centered on Chip and Joanna Gaines renovating a century-old castle in their hometown of Waco, Texas just wrapped up their six-episode series on Magnolia Network, Discovery + and HBO Max. But the Gaineses have already moved on to their next on-screen makeover, which is especially important to them, as the end product will be an integral part of their Magnolia empire: Hotel 1928, a downtown Waco boutique that will meet catering to the throngs of people who make a pilgrimage to their shopping, dining and outdoor recreation area, The Silos.
“We are currently filming the refurbishment of the hotel and the irony is that the architect who did the work on the castle at the time, Roy Lane, was the same architect of this hotel when it was built,” said Joanna Gaines. during a cover interview for Varietyinaugural issue of Lifestyle Leaders. “It’s fun to see these ties and design items that were in the castle that are in the current building. It’s really special that way.
The Gaineses say the hotel, a partnership between them and boutique hotel developer AJ Capital, will be finished by next October – so expect to see the currently untitled renovation show kick off after that. And, of course, you also have the option of staying at Hotel 1928.
“It was the biggest project of my life – the castle is now the second – with four floors of restaurants and bedrooms and an entire ballroom,” Joanna said. “But those two projects, the castle and the hotel, were really driven by the history of this one, the design being more driven by that, what do I want to do with it? It’s definitely something thing i had to let the story drive this design so it was a fun learning process for me where i feel like i can show up and just be a student and be schooled for a second.
For the castle, Chip and Joanna thought about what exactly they were going to do with it, having bought and renovated it “for the sole purpose of selling it to a family – to an end user who was going to use it” rather than list it on VRBO or Airbnb.
“The problem is, it’s hard to really govern that,” Chip said. “Once I sell you something, it’s yours and you can do what you want with it…In my insecurity, I’m like, ‘What if the family owns it and rents it out for the weekend? ‘ They can do whatever they want, I don’t want to feel like I’m looking over someone’s shoulder If I can let that go and not really worry about what’s going to happen next , so I’ll drop it and there’s no hard feelings. But if I constantly have to guess what you do with what I just did, then I didn’t drop it. So the thing I keep going to debate internally… what if it was supposed to be for us? And I don’t mean for us personally, because I don’t think we’ll physically live there. But I don’t know if there isn’t someone in five years, in 10 years, my family – my parents live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, they’re getting older, maybe they want to move to town so they can be closer to the little ones- children. How do I know? Right now it’s not true – but it could be true tomorrow.
He added: “I would hate to drop this thing, make a small profit or cut our losses no matter what financially, only to regret it in a year. I think we’re just very slow to play that.
Luckily, Joanna is right with him on this one: “Let’s just enjoy it for a second before we decide.”
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