So going after classic, long-lasting looks just made sense to me. My knack for finding antiques and interesting pieces at markets and garage sales certainly didn’t die when I closed the shop down. I kept it up in the interest of staging our flip homes and open houses, and I kept many of the most interesting pieces I found for us.
I started to get more creative in how to display my finds too. Building upon the idea that three-dimensional objects add character when they are hung on walls—an idea that started with the fencing window treatment I used in Drake’s first nursery—I started hanging baskets on the walls, and then baskets with plates in them. I hung antique gates up to add texture, along with interesting pieces of wood, branches, and other things you might not normally expect to see on a wall.
I started making trips to Canton, Texas, which holds a famous open-air flea market every month called First Monday Trade Days. There I found lots of old, authentic pieces from all over. I frequented the twice-a-year trade days in Round Top, Texas too. And as I did so, I realized my design aesthetic was evolving.
I stopped looking at all the scratches and the scrapes on the old pieces of furniture as flaws. I loved that they told the story of a family that had once eaten at that dining room table—or whatever the story might be. So instead of thinking about how I could refurbish these pieces, I focused on how I could highlight their imperfections. Like houses, the pieces with the best bones were the most fun to bring back to life and the most profitable when I got done.
Some of my early decorating jobs featured all sorts of brand-new pieces of furniture and décor. But I quickly learned that it was the old pieces, the quirky pieces, and the classic pieces that people talked about.
The quirky piece of cabinetry with all sorts of little nooks in it that came from an old hardware store, with notches on the side and little pencil markings where someone used to keep various size bolts organized—I put that piece in my home, and no matter who happens to see it, they’ll wind up touching it or saying something or asking questions about it. There’s a life to these old things, and I started to buy more and more of them just to rotate them in the house and play around with how they fit in different settings.
In fact, I was buying so much that I decided to try something new. The one thing I missed most when I started working from home was the interaction with all of my shop clientele, so I thought, Why not open up a shop right here at home? Instead of having a store that kept me busy sixty hours a week, I gathered inventory as I went along and decided to open up my house for a Magnolia trunk show three times a year. I filled four rooms of our home with all sorts of finds and displayed them with the same attention to detail I’d paid to the interior design of my shop. Then I invited all my old clients—and all our new neighbors—to come by.
Those trunk shows were more successful than I ever could have imagined. Not only did I sell a lot of product and make some good money, but the neighbors and their friends all had a chance to see what I’d done to the interior of our Castle Heights home. Suddenly all of these folks with really nice homes started asking us to remodel their homes. In about a year’s time, with four babies and no advertising or marketing budget whatsoever, we made the jump from renovating eight-hundred-square-foot student-rental houses on Third Street to remodeling some of the finest homes in Waco.
By this time our own home in Castle Heights had been featured in some regional magazines. All that attention meant I started putting pressure on myself to always have my home look clean and put together. But with my older children now toddling around, I found it became harder and harder to maintain both a showroom of a home and a practical space for my family.
One afternoon about four years into this new routine of working from home and making a name for Magnolia Homes, I collapsed onto the couch in a state of complete exhaustion. I only had an hour at most before at least one of the kids woke up from his or her nap. I stared at their toys strewn all over the floor and under the end table, and it stressed me out that I had to pick all that up yet again.
And that’s when I first realized that something wasn’t right.
I thought about how often I found myself frustrated when the kids would play in the formal living and dining areas. There I was on my couch, in my “beautiful” house, knowing that our business was growing like crazy and I had everything in the world to be thankful for—yet feeling like a total failure.
I looked around and saw a lot of “perfection,” and I thought, But where do my kids sit? Why don’t the kids have a play space of their own anywhere in this house?
Suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks. In my nonstop efforts to make the house look good and to raise our baby of a business, I had failed to create a space where my children could thrive and be kids. I had neglected to create a home that my most important babies could love too.
ELEVEN
HOMELESS
JoJo, you awake?”
Of course I wasn’t awake. It was midnight. Chip had awakened me from a sound sleep. “What is it?”
“A neighbor called. There’s a homeless guy on their front porch, and they aren’t sure what to do. I’ll be right back.”
Even though I was only half-awake and he had caught me completely off guard, there was no way I was leaving this to chance, so as he left the room, I called after him: “Do not bring him home with you!”
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but off I went. And that night, on a neighbor’s front porch, I was introduced to Cedric, a guy who had made a lot of bad choices in his life but who had come to the end of his rope.
I knew Jo wasn’t about to have Cedric come sleep on our couch with four babies asleep inside. And I could tell our neighbors needed him to leave as well. So I came up with the only plan I could think of. At one o’clock in the morning, we went to the store and I bought a few blankets and towels, and I took him to a flip house we were about to put on the market. The next day when I went back to check on him, Cedric was still there.
We needed to get that house into final shape for an open house, so Chip offered to put Cedric up in a hotel for a few days in exchange for his doing some work for us. Cedric said yes. He was so grateful for the shelter we had given him that he got out there and worked his tail off for us. It’s as if all it took was one chance for him to discover his own work ethic. He started attending a Bible study after that and received services from the Mercy House, a halfway house of sorts that helps people with problems get back on their feet. Come to find out, Cedric had just gotten out of jail, and here he was turning his life around thanks in part to our tiny little bit of help. It was awesome to witness.
As difficult as it was sometimes to put up with Chip’s out-of-the-blue surprises, the size of that man’s heart brought tears to my eyes. Whether it was a homeless man in the middle of the night, the troubled kids who went to school on Third Street, or neighborhood kids by the shop on Bosque Boulevard, Chip somehow managed to notice them and touch their lives. He became a mentor and father figure to so many people.
Sometimes his kindness and generosity scared me to death, of course—especially when he would stop to pick up a hitchhiker or help someone whose car had broken down on the side of the highway. And I really did push him to do less of that after we had children. But that’s just Chip. He can’t seem to help it. He’s always looking out for someone who looks like they need a break or a helping hand.