by Clint Harp
When the story came out that fall, Kelly and I really began to feel a shift. Not because the article was widely read, but because our furniture design work had now been committed to print and of course to film, which made it somehow more real. Suddenly, the future of Harp Design Co. wasn’t just a dream we talked about while sitting around our kitchen table; other people were now in on the conversation. And with all the local chatter about the new HGTV pilot and forthcoming home renovation series set in Waco, how cool was it that Kelly and I could say we were part of it? It changed our own perspective on what we were doing with the business. It helped even us see it as established.
It hadn’t, however, altered our financial reality. Though I’d been cast as Jo’s go-to carpenter, that role did not come with a network contract or payment. It was true that we were getting more orders, but unfortunately, we still didn’t have quite enough. Every two weeks when it was time to pay Britt, it was a miracle that I actually did. On multiple occasions in those days, the power in our shop was turned off. That’s because I’d wait till the very last second before the bill was due to pay it, hoping we’d have the money by then. Often, we came up short. The next morning, I’d arrive at the shop to discover that the utility company had left us in the dark, and I’d quickly call and put the balance on my credit card, ensuring that the lights would be turned back on an hour or so later.
Usually on that same day, Kelly would send me a text from the grocery store: “Clint, the debit card was denied again. They’re putting our food in the store’s walk-in freezer. Will you please come by later and figure it out?” That evening, I’d show up at the grocery store with a different credit card, hoping this one would go through so I could bail our groceries out of jail. But no matter how deep the hole financially, we did do one thing right: we did not touch the mutual fund Kelly’s grandmother had left her.
Things got so scary at one point that I had to pull Britt aside for the one conversation I’d prayed I’d never have to have with him. “Britt, I hate to say this,” I said as we sat in the shop’s carport, eating our lunch, “but we may need to look for jobs. Don’t send out your résumé yet—just get it updated. I really don’t want to go get another job, but it’s bad, man. I will say this, though: there’s also a good chance we hang on. And maybe one day, we’ll have a Christmas party with a dozen or so other employees, and we’ll tell this story. We’ll talk about how it was just you and me in this shop, thinking this whole thing might not work, and how close we got to shutting off the lights for good.”
Six months later, as that watershed year drew to a close, I grilled some sausages on the grate we’d place over a burn barrel behind the shop. Over our lunch together, I handed him gift certificates for two to a movie and a restaurant (a gift card is arguably one of Britt’s love languages). I also gave him a battery-powered drill and driver set (not for personal use, of course . . . it was definitely for the shop. But still, it was a gift. Sort of. We put his name on it). It was the first Harp Design Co. holiday bonus ever to be given out. We’d made it through the year. With sheer determination, Britt and Kelly and I had somehow figured out a way to cobble together enough work to keep everything going. We weren’t out of the woods, but we also weren’t underwater. We’d survived. And what better way to celebrate than by purchasing a crack house?
* * *
Chip and Joanna filmed just about every day, but I only showed up on set when Jo called me in for a project. Of the first season’s twelve episodes, I built something in about five or six of them. I spent most of my time back at the shop with Britt, making tables and just trying to keep the lights on. One afternoon at the end of 2013, again over lunch in the carport and not long after I’d given Britt that “bonus,” I started dreaming out loud.
“What if Kelly and I bought this shop one day?” I said. “We’ve always wanted a storefront, and I bet we could turn this carport into one. I mean, I know it’s a neighborhood in transition, but it could be a diamond in the rough!”
Britt, who obviously has a risk-taking streak as well, was all in. Then I put another idea on the table.
“What about that place over there?” I said, pointing toward the former drug den next door (which thankfully, in the year following my move to the shop, had become vacant). “Maybe one day we can turn that into a rental or something.”
It was hard to picture. The two-story white farmhouse was a total eyesore. The front siding was adorned with a few bullet holes, and it had major heaps of trash scattered around its yard. It was a dump.
“You know, Clint,” Britt continued, “I was talking to a guy who builds houses in this area, and he mentioned that the couple who owns that place might want to sell it. Apparently, they’re asking fifteen thousand for it.”
That’s when my interest perked up. I didn’t have that kind of money. But wait—just fifteen thousand? That got me thinking. “Let’s go walk around it, Britt.” Seconds later, I tugged on the front door of the abandoned building. It was locked tight. “Come back here, Clint!” Britt called out. He’d discovered that the back window was open.
Being a bit OCD and germ-phobic, I thought I might never again touch Britt when I found him crawling through the kitchen window and into what turned out to be the kitchen sink. He scrambled to his feet and then let me in through the back door. The place was beyond a disaster. And it smelled as horrible as it looked. Scattered on the floor were beer bottles and trash and papers and clothes and anything else you can imagine. Furniture was strewn around the place, with couch cushions slashed and mattresses leaning up against the walls. Every room, every closet, every bathroom—all of it was filled with more garbage than was humanly possible. And for some reason, it seemed perfect.
I told Kelly about it. She was hesitant. As you know, my wife is usually the one pulling me into a house, going, “Hey, let’s get this place and fix it up!” and I’m the one who’s usually like, “Uhhhh . . . I don’t know.” I can’t blame her for being reluctant. The place was a hellhole, and our funds were nonexistent. “But it’s right next to the shop,” I said as I presented my case. “We could clean it up and turn it into something great.” In my view, it was the ultimate reclamation project.
“Where would we get the fifteen thousand?” Kelly pressed, and we filed the idea away as a future possibility and got on with our lives. But Britt and I would occasionally let ourselves in through the back door when we just wanted to dream a little. Bill, the husband of the woman who owned the place, even stopped by our shop one day and talked about wanting to sell it. He was a loud-talking guy with colorful stories and salty language, and he was as persistent as he was persuasive. The $15,000 price still made me salivate, but Kelly and I weren’t willing to touch our last-resort mutual fund for it.
One morning about a week before Christmas, Joanna and the Fixer Upper crew showed up at my shop to shoot a design scene with me. Since I had no agreement locked in with the network, I wanted to make sure that every experience they had working with me was a good one. As the film team rolled up, so did Bill. He came rumbling down the back alley in his old truck just as the crew pulled into the front of the shop to set up in the lot where we usually parked. It was like they were on a collision course toward each other. I tried to turn Bill around, but I was too late. He turned the corner into the lot and got out.
“Hey, Clint, how’s it going?” he yelled, as boisterously as always.
“Yeah, you know, it’s going okay, but it’s not a good time right now,” I said. “I’ve got a bunch of stuff going on, and some people coming to the shop, soooo . . .”
“Sure, no problem,” he said. “I totally understand.” But he of course kept right on talking. “I’ll tell you what,” he continued, “here’s what I came to offer you. If you buy my house by Christmas, I’ll sell it to you for ten thousand.”
Not what I expected. “Bill, wow,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to be sure the crew wasn’t calling for me. “Um, yes. I will take that deal. I mean, I think I will. I ne
ed to talk to my wife and figure out the money. But okay.”
I raced back into the shop and filmed with Jo, but I have no memory of what we did that day. I just recall a clock ticking in my head the whole time. As soon as we got done, I called Kelly and told her about the offer.
“I don’t know, Clint,” she said. “I’m not sure I want to use our mutual fund for that.”
“Let me talk to Joe Nesbitt at the bank,” I suggested. “I’m sure he’ll laugh me out of the room, but you never know.” That idea really made Kelly feel better, as she was pretty sure no banker would lend us the money for another house.
I sped to the bank. And there was Joe, sitting behind his desk as if he’d been waiting for me.
“Clint, do it,” he said after I’d told him about the unbeatable offer. “I’ll get you the funds and we’ll get this deal done. I’ll call the title company and get it set up. You just go tell the guy you want the house. Go find a Realtor you can pay yourself, and make sure you get the right paperwork signed and whatnot. You got this, buddy!”
That was on a Monday. On Tuesday, we lined up a Realtor to help us close on this house, which we planned to renovate ourselves and turn into a rental in order to help clean up the area around our shop. And on Thursday, we closed on the deal. But it was what happened on Wednesday that was the real game-changer.
Kelly was in the parking lot at Target, wrapping up one of her usual runs with the kids to pick up a few items for a new design project she was getting ready to start.
“Hey, Kelly!” called out Joanna.
“Oh, hey!” Kelly said. “How are you? And how’s filming?”
“It’s great,” Joanna told her. “It’s a ton of work, but going really well. I’m just happy to have a free moment to get some shopping done. How are you guys?”
“It’s insane right now, with Clint trying to build as much furniture as he can with Britt,” she said. “But it’s good. This week has really been nuts. You know that ugly house right next to Clint’s shop?”
Joanna nodded. “It’s pretty awful.”
“Well, we’re buying it.”
Joanna’s eyes widened. “Kelly,” she said, “we have to do that house for the show!”
“Wait, what?”
“Seriously, Kelly, let’s do it for the show! We need more houses. It’ll be great!”
“Oh wow, yeah, I really don’t know,” said Kelly. “I mean, I would love for you to be a part of redoing our house, but we were planning to do all the work ourselves, especially since we’re on a very limited budget. But let me talk to Clint.”
“Let me talk to Clint,” Joanna exclaimed, laughing. “We’re doing this!”
At home, just as Kelly was telling me about her parking lot meeting with Joanna, the phone rang.
“Hey, Jo!” I answered.
“Clint, you’re doing it,” she said. “Come on. This will be amazing. It’ll practically cement you as the carpenter on the show, and the whole episode will be about you and your wife and your family and your business. Come on!”
How could I argue? She made a lot of good points. We were in.
* * *
Christmas came and went, and we began counting down to when we could rip into the new project. Chip and Jo were traveling on business, and the house couldn’t be touched until they returned on January 14. Kelly and I used those first two weeks of 2014 to map out a plan. Joe at the bank had helped us land a $100,000 construction loan. That may sound like a lot of money, and it is, but every square inch of that hovel, from the rooftop to the floorboards, would have to be ripped apart, cleaned up, and made new again. It was no small task, and it came with no small price tag, so we needed to use our loan wisely. It was decided that for the show, the producers would focus only on those areas that would appear on TV: the front entry, the living room and dining area, the kitchen, and the exterior, which left us with the whole rest of the house to fix up on our own. Bottom line: We’d be far more involved in our own project than the typical Fixer Upper homeowner.
The day arrived, the cameras showed up, and the demo crew got after it. When I tell you that house was a mess, that is the biggest understatement I’ve made yet. All told, two and a half full-size dumpsters were used to haul off just the trash from inside the house. And that didn’t include the nasty cabinets, toilets, sinks, and everything else that would have to be removed. Sick.
Every inch of drywall was removed. All the shiplap was pulled down from the walls, particularly since I wanted to be sure every rat’s nest and God knows what else was eradicated. Every inch of copper electrical wire—the ones that hadn’t already been torn out and sold for drugs—was pulled out and thrown away. All the porn in the attic, tossed. The pipes, most of the floor, the ceiling—you name it—gone. I wanted nothing left, because I didn’t want to harbor any part of the sadness that had once lived in that house. Every window and every door would be replaced. New water and electrical lines were run. Duct work for new air conditioning was installed. Even the roof was stripped.
As eager as Kelly and I were to see the progress and ultimate final outcome, we had to step away so we would be surprised by what Chip and Joanna delivered. Back at the shop, I got busy on the projects I needed to have built in time for the big reveal. It didn’t help that I got the flu in the middle of it all, which knocked me out for a week—seven days I didn’t have to spare. I bounced back and hit my work schedule hard. I constructed an island for the kitchen, a vent-a-hood (my second, following the one I’d made for the pilot), and a front door for the house. “Can you go over to the house and do some measurements for me?” I’d ask Britt, who of course agreed.
On the night before the mid-March reveal, I worked with Britt and Jacob—a local college kid and restless adventurer who’d randomly stopped by the shop a few weeks earlier to see if he could volunteer—late into the night, planing down wood and cutting out tongues-and-grooves so we could clamp it all up and have it dry in time to make TV magic. We were there till four in the morning.
I finally lay my head down around 4:45 a.m.—and lifted it right back up at 6:30 a.m. so I could sand the front door before the 8:00 a.m. reveal. I showed up at 7:00 a.m. with my eyes still half-shut, and at around 7:45, I filmed a scene with Chip taking the door from the shop so it could be installed at the house. I then quickly changed my clothes, and fifteen minutes later I was standing in the street with Kelly behind a giant movable billboard with a picture of our house in its original state staring right back at us. On the other side of that billboard was John Alexander, my old friend and the former director at Habitat, who seemed to always show up when I most needed him. He was feverishly hanging the just-delivered front door, making sure it would look good enough for television once that billboard parted.
At last the billboard was pulled aside. I will always remember the look in Kelly’s eyes. She was as stunned as she was relieved at the gorgeous two-story that stood before us. As we embraced, everything we’d hoped and imagined for this house clicked into place.
Next, Chip and Joanna gave us the TV tour of the house, and as we walked and talked and oohed and ahhed at how perfect it all was, I thought of my granddad Martin. I couldn’t help but tear up. A few months earlier, his health had begun to deteriorate, and his mind was fading. Seeing our new home with the wooden pieces I’d contributed to it would’ve made him so proud. In the span of just eight weeks, a house that looked like it should’ve been condemned and torn down was standing pristine and rejuvenated. From the chaos, a treasure had been created. Somehow, as my mom liked to say, it had all dovetailed together. Standing there with Chip and Jo, we were just so thankful for the work they’d done and for the way they’d invited us into this journey with them.
When the filming was almost complete, we all took a seat on the couches while the crew reset for one last scene. Chip and Jo and Kelly all eventually got up to look at something and stretch their legs, and I was left just sitting there with Rog, a camera guy. The next thing I heard was Rog yelling
, “Clint’s falling asleep! Let’s get this show wrapped up before we lose him for good!” I popped back up, everyone else filed back in, and we shot our final scene and called it a day.
In April, exactly four weeks after filming that reveal, Kelly and I moved into our new house with our kids and all our belongings in tow. In that month’s time, she and I had taken turns away from work and caring for our children to stay up overnight painting and caulking and tiling and doing whatever was needed to finish the rest of the house. Kelly’s mom, Debbie, moved to Waco from Kerrville and worked on the house with her during the evenings and also helped with the business and the kids. We couldn’t have done it without her. During the day, Britt and Jacob did whatever was needed to get it done. It was the most exhausting time of our lives up to then. What we didn’t know was that just around the corner, as the Fixer Upper phenomenon heated up, things were about to get even crazier.
CHAPTER 14
* * *
Final Touches
When attaching a tabletop to its base, I like to use z-shaped clips that allow for seasonal movement. As the table absorbs humidity or loses moisture, depending on the surrounding atmosphere, the clips let the top move on its base ever so slightly, making the finished piece less likely to bow or crack. Now that there’s a fully assembled table in front of you, it’s time to go over it one last time. Just as you wipe your kid’s face and flatten down that rogue hair in the back before he or she walks into school, you take one more swipe with a piece of sandpaper or one more decisive cut with the blade of a chisel before sending that table off to be finished. Apply a coat of stain only to find out you didn’t remove all the glue, and you’ll have to sand everything down and start over—cumbersome and time-consuming, to say the least. So I walk around the table with a sander and a chisel and make all my last-minute touch-ups. I might dull the corners a bit for a more worn look, or I’ll make all the edges nice and crisp for a modern look. I take my time and look at the piece from all angles, because this is my last chance to apply the subtle refinements that will have a big impact on the look of the finished table.