Chip and Joanna from Fixer Upper felt too attached to the Cottonland Castle after their extensive renovation work and therefore, have not sold the castle yet.
Chip and Joanna Gaines are the designer and renovation duo behind the HGTV show, Fixer Upper.
Now, Chip and Joanna have started a new project with their show, Fixer Upper: The Castle, whereby they renovated Cottonland Castle.
However, even though the couple originally planned on selling the house, once the renovations were complete, Chip felt like this would not necessarily be the best decision.
Who are Chip and Joanna Gaines?
Chip and Joanna Gaines are most well known for their show, Fixer Upper, where the couple takes on the duty of renovating fixer-upper homes and gives families the homes that they have always dreamed of having.
Although Fixer Upper has been airing on HGTV since 2013, Chip and Joanna Gaines have known each other since their university days at Baylor University and have since renovated and upgraded more than 100 homes as a team.
Aside from their work on the Fixer Upper show, this real-life couple have four kids together and they run a real estate company, construction company, design firm, and a residential subdivision as part of their company.
Most of these business ventures are run out of Waco, Texas, where they have resided for over ten years.
Fixer Upper: Did Chip and Joanna sell the castle?
One of the couple’s newest ventures includes the renovation of the Cottonland Castle. This castle is also located in Waco, Texas and it has been on Chip’s bucket list of places to renovate for some time.
This castle forms the focal point of the couple’s newest Magnolia Network limited series called Fixer Upper: The Castle, which premiered on 14 October 2022 on the Magnolia Network and can be streamed on HBO Max, Discovery Plus, and the Magnolia mobile application.
Some of the platforms on which you can watch Fixer Upper: The Castle with a standard subscription includes Discovery Plus, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, DIRECTV, Sling TV, Vudu and Philo.
Although the castle has had a complicated past and the property has changed hands a couple of times over the years, Chip and Joanna decided to approach this project where they planned to blend elements of the past and the present in order to restore the castle to its fullest potential during their limited series anyway, despite the fact that it was one of the most difficult projects that they had ever encountered in their careers.
However, by the time that the restorations on the castle were pretty much complete and the Fixer Upper: The Castle series had neared its end, it became evident that even though Joanna and Chip had originally bought and renovated the castle with the intention of selling it in the end, Chip was afraid that they would grow to regret the decision to sell the castle.
As a result, they have not sold the castle yet and since Chip and Joanna are still uncertain about what the right decision is, they may not be selling the castle at all in the future.
Why is the history of Cottonland Castle so complicated?
At the beginning of the Fixer Upper: The Castle series, Chip mentions that he has been watching the castle change hands for two decades and has always wanted to get his own hands on it.
This is by no means an exaggeration, Cottonland Castle has had several different owners over the years, including cotton broker Ripley Hanrick, Irene Pipkin, and then later, her daughter and Waco’s first female pharmacist, Pauline, the Austin Avenue Methodist Church, and many more.
In most cases, the castle changed hands when the renovations turned out to be too much of a financial burden on the owners at the time, until it was purchased by Chip and Joanna in 2019.
Why was renovating this castle such a big challenge for Chip and Joanna?
Chip and Joanna knew going into this project that they would have to face many obstacles in renovating such an integral part of Waco’s history.
The sheer age and size of the castle also meant that every move that Joanna and Chip made had to be perfectly planned out ahead of time.
Even though Chip and Joanna did have a plan laid out in advance, the project still took them three full years to complete. The couple also reportedly had to make many adjustments to their planned budget during these three years.
Will the Gaineses rent the castle instead of selling it?
Although Chip has shown some reservation about just selling the castle after the renovations have been completed, both he and Joanna have been clear that they will not turn the castle into an Airbnb-location or a vacation rental out of respect for the community and the castle’s history.
