Our Very Own “Fixer Upper” Inspired by Joanna Gaines

This post goes out to all the Joanna Gaines fans patiently waiting for the return of Fixer Upper on the Magnolia Network! (If you haven’t heard, now you know. You’re welcome!) We did a thing y’all! We are now the proud occupants of our very own “fixer upper”.

Shortly after my son was born, my husband and I discussed moving back to my hometown to be closer to my family. We have always talked about buying some land and building a house out in the country. But we hadn’t really considered moving back home until becoming parents. I inherited my family’s farmhouse and land years ago, but the house was in pretty rough shape! If you haven’t yet, be sure to go look at the before images!

So picture this with me if you can. It was early 2016, and season 3 of Fixer Upper had just ended. Watching Chip and Joanna transform so many houses, some of which seemed beyond repair, into beautiful homes was so inspiring. I fell in love with their style and with the idea of taking on a renovation of our own.

I knew our farmhouse would need a ton of work, but the thought of raising my babies where I grew up was so enticing! And the thought of rebuilding our 200+ year old farmhouse was a dream come true for me! At this point I had been saying for years my lottery dream would be to renovate the farmhouse. I never imagined that it would actually happen, much less that we would get to call it home!

We spent the rest of 2016 planning, daydreaming, sketching and re-sketching floorplans, and scrolling through Pinterest for inspiration. I may or may not have been obsessively watching all the reruns of Chip and Jo I could find.

It was extremely important to me to honor the history of the farmhouse, as well as all the generations that lived here before us. We wanted to retain the look, the feel, and the character of the old house while making it more functional and livable for our family

In December of 2016, we took our sketches to an architect who drew up official plans for the construction. By this time, it was in the middle of season 4 of Fixer Upper. It took around 3 months for the plans to be finalized. We got to see the finished blueprints just in time for Episode 16 of season 4 to air.

The Matsumoto farmhouse is definitely the most dramatic transformation of season 4!

Joanna Gaines, on the Magnolia Blog

Y’all, I about lost it! This “little shack on the prairie” as they called it on the show was the Texas version of my granny and papa’s house, totally renovated and brought back to life. What Chip and Joanna did with this renovation gave me so much hope for our little farmhouse in the woods. I can’t wait to share more of the details with you soon, but for now I’ll leave you with this before and after that takes my breath away… I can hardly believe we get to live here!

Thanks so much for following along…

Love, Brittany