The Stunning Transformation Of Rehab Addict's Nicole Curtis

The vast majority of home renovation shows include some sort of duo — spouses, siblings, parent-and-child, or even just friends. Rarer are programs that feature only one star, as it takes a huge personality to both do the work and bring the entertainment value all on their own. Enter Nicole Curtis, one of HGTV's all-time most popular personalities. When "Rehab Addict" made its debut on DIY in 2010, it became a huge hit specifically because of Curtis, who broke the mold for women in home programming by focusing just as much on manual labor as realty and design. 

Heck, Curtis broke the mold for people of all genders, as it is extremely uncommon for one person to work on all parts of the puzzle on any home-focused program. "I own the construction company; I own the houses I remodel. I build the house and sell the house. I do that all the time," she once told Rug News. "Everything in our builds to this day is done by me; everything on our shows is done by me and touched by me. I sign off on all of it." But even more than that, viewers found Curtis' no-nonsense demeanor refreshing amidst a sea of overly produced home programming. That she was a single mother who was completely self-taught was also appealing to many. Here is a look at the stunning transformation of "Rehab Addict's" Nicole Curtis.

If Chip Gaines and Joanna Gaines are the king and queen of Waco, then Nicole Curtis is at least a princess of Detroit. Curtis was born and raised just outside of The Motor City, in the small town of Lake Orion, in 1976. Her family has long roots in the community, where Curtis' grandparents owned a garbage company called Bushman Disposal, and her father refurbished old furniture — both things that inspired Curtis to become someone who restores rather than renovates interiors.

Curtis was an overachiever who at one point ran the student council, but she ran away with her boyfriend just after high school graduation, at 17. She then moved around a bit, landing in Minnesota by the time "Rehab Addict" began in 2010. Curtis started including Detroit area homes in Season 4 and moved the show to Detroit entirely by Season 6. In that season, she purchased a house at auction from the Detroit Land Bank Authority.

"There's a lot of pride from people in the area who say they're from Detroit but only go downtown a few times a year to see a Red Wings game," Curtis told Model D Media in 2015. "When people came to one of our open houses in Detroit they always say, 'Oh, this isn't so bad.' I want to help break the stereotypes about Detroit." Curtis' 2021 show "Rehab Addict Rescue" was similarly filmed in Motown.

After leaving home at 17, Nicole Curtis' first stop was in Atlanta, Georgia. She moved there with her then-boyfriend Steve Cimini, with whom she later had a son. Curtis had no trouble getting to work, as she has long been industrious. She babysat and worked at a strawberry picking farm in her youth, then worked at a car dealership and as a telemarketer. So, when she arrived in Atlanta, Curtis had no problem with the idea of putting her nose to the grindstone.

After the move, Curtis jumped into the service industry, waiting tables everywhere from IHOP to an upscale Chinese restaurant. When she turned 18, Curtis landed on a job she really liked — at Hooters. "I remember the day I applied, I wore my favorite shredded MSU sweatshirt and cutoff jeans, and I had my hair in a braid. I was so excited, but Steve was not happy," she recalled in her memoir "Better Than New: Lessons I've Learned from Saving Old Homes (and How They Saved Me)."

At Hooters, Curtis was making much more money and even had time to start college. Cimini also got on board with the job after meeting Curtis' co-workers, with whom she built relationships. "The 'girls' at my Atlanta Hooters were like family," she wrote. "They were students like me, teachers supplementing their income and even moms — not wannabe strippers as most outsiders believed."

Nicole Curtis did not last long in Georgia, as her boyfriend Steve Cimino got a job in Florida not long after she started getting comfortable in Atlanta. Though she was sad to leave her Hooters family, Curtis transferred to a Tampa location to continue with the company. She also transferred schools, moving into a plush apartment around the corner from the University of South Florida. "For that moment, I felt like I had really made it, living in an upscale two-bedroom, two-bath luxury unit with all the amenities," she wrote in her memoir. "But it was full of families and older professionals, so there wasn't much chance to hang out with people my own age."

Another reason Curtis may not have been partying it up was a total lack of time. In addition to her Hooters gig, she started a cleaning business soon after her arrival in North Tampa. "I come from a family of meticulous housekeepers. My Gram grew up in an orphanage. At as young as seven years old, she cleaned morning, noon, and night," Curtis wrote. Gram passed the cleaning lessons onto Curtis, who paired them with her entrepreneurial spirit to create Nicole's Cleaning. Though she only charged $25 for a one-bedroom and $35 for a two-bedroom cleaning — a total steal by today's standards — the cleaning paired with lucrative tips at Hooters provided for a nice life for an 18-year-old. Shortly thereafter, Curtis purchased a BMW convertible.

Even though she opted to forgo entering college as a full-time student, Nicole Curtis was doing well for herself as an 18-year-old cleaner and waiter in Tampa. She was making so much at Hooters, specifically, that she and her boyfriend were able to use her wages and his commission to save up enough money for a down payment on a home. The one catch was that the pair did not have enough established credit to qualify for a loan, by 1995 standards at least. It was as if fate was on their side when they stumbled upon an infomercial for real estate expert Carleton Sheets' training tapes.

Though Curtis has said she could not make it through Sheets' "No Down Payment 12 Cassette Audio Home-Study Course," she learned about land contracts — and that proved to be the key to her home ownership mission. "We pored over the real estate section of the Tampa Bay Times looking for land contract deals. Eventually, we found one that sounded perfect, for a house on the Gandy Peninsula," Curtis wrote in her memoir.

The home was a three-bedroom, one-bathroom midcentury, and it needed a lot of work — which is how Curtis and Steve Cimini purchased it for $58,000, with only $3,000 down. While Curtis was such a novice that she did not even have the 900-square foot home inspected or appraised. While she made many mistakes thereafter, the home was the origin of her rehabbing career.

Fans of the original run of "Rehab Addict" know that Nicole Curtis is not just a businessperson and home reno maven, but also a devoted mother. Her son, Ethan, was a staple on the show since it started when he was 12 and his presence very much reflected their real-life dynamic. "When he was little I had to work 24-7. He had to be on a job site morning, noon and night," Curtis told People in 2021. "Since the beginning, he was always by my side on every house build. It finally came to a point where I promised him he would no longer have to live in drywall dust."

Curtis has expressed regrets about having Ethan on the show, however, felt she had little choice at the time as a single mother who had to both care for her kid and make a living. For what it is worth, her son does not seem to mind and has even praised Curtis on screen. "She's worked to the bone to get what she has," an adult Ethan told a homeowner on "Rehab Addict Rescue" in 2021 (via People).

Ethan was born in December 1997, when Curtis was only 21. By then, Curtis and her then-boyfriend Steve Cimini (Ethan's dad) had moved back to Michigan so Curtis could study elementary education at a college there. Ethan derailed her plans to get a degree, but Curtis' move back to cleaning helped her realize a love for interior design.

Nicole Curtis became a licensed real estate agent after moving to Minneapolis, where she moved because of a guy she was dating at the time. Around 2008, she started buying homes in Minnesota while still working as a realtor, using her skills in design and home restoration to help homes reach their full potential. She was also making money selling random finds on Craigslist, and just generally hustling the way she had always done. Then, in 2010, a single phone call changed Curtis' life.

Magnetic Productions first reached out to Curtis to ask her to audition for an episode of the DIY Network show "Sweat Equity." Producers thought Curtis had the "it" factor and wanted her to appear as a realtor on the series, but Curtis had the forethought to pitch her own show at the audition. This was the origin of "Rehab Addict," which began on the DIY Network in October 2010 and later aired on HGTV. A huge appeal for the network — and for viewers — was the idea of Curtis restoring old homes and doing the majority of the work herself, from the realty to the plumbing to the salvage picking. "I do the show my way—I didn't want to be some cookie-cutter TV personality," Curtis said in a 2020 interview with Women's Running. "Rehab Addict" ended in 2018 and had a one-season spin-off "Rehab Addict: Detroit" in 2015. Curtis returned to HGTV with "Rehab Addict Rescue" in 2021 and "Rehab Addict Lake House Rescue" the following year.

Having learned from her experience putting her first son on television, Nicole Curtis had reservations about her second son being featured on television. "It wasn't anything strategic, it was just one of those moments where I was like this isn't anyone else's time and space. This is mine," Curtis told People. "Having my newborn child's face plastered all over social media on a Facebook post where someone could cut and paste it and make it a meme, that wasn't for me."

In an effort to keep this piece of her life as private as possible, Curtis went through great lengths to keep her pregnancy a secret. Though Curtis filmed "Rehab Addict" while she was expecting, you would never know it from what appeared on TV screens. She filmed most scenes from the shoulders up, and even used a large mirror to hide her belly in one episode — much like they do on fictional television when an actor is pregnant, but a character is not.

Curtis confirmed her new bundle of joy in November 2015 via Facebook, and she has become less secretive as the years have worn on. She has not really had a choice, as a nasty custody battle has played out publicly. Harper's dad, businessman Shane Maguire, was granted paternity rights and joint custody in December 2015, but Curtis attempted to alter the agreement. They then spent years fighting each other in court before calling a ceasefire in October 2018.

As previously noted, Nicole Curtis released a memoir entitled "Better Than New: Lessons I've Learned from Saving Old Homes (and How They Saved Me)." With this book, released in October 2016, Curtis became both a New York Times and a USA Today bestselling author.

Curtis' book was marketed as part memoir and part self-help, and it took the unique strategy of tying every chapter to a home she had taken on as a project. Useful tips about home renovation and real estate were interspersed with life lessons and a fair amount of previously unknown information about the relatively private Curtis. "I think people want to know the rest of the story," she said to People upon the book's release. What's more, she hoped her story could inspire other women to believe in themselves. As she said in the Cape Cod Times, "I'm 40, and I'm just starting to hit my stride. Life is not easy for anyone. If they say it's easy, they're lying."

"For the first time, Curtis pulls back the curtain of her life to reveal troubled relationships, how she rose from Hooters waitress to TV star and the lessons she's learned from the many old houses she's restored along the way. ... If you ever wondered why Curtis kept her second pregnancy a secret or what things were really like behind the scenes ... her book is your chance to find out her side of the story," wrote The Detroit News when they ranked the book one of their top home books of 2016.

"Rehab Addict" ran for eight straight seasons, beginning in 2010. By 2018, Nicole Curtis — who was working both in front of the camera and as a producer — was exhausted and ready for a break from television. "I finally just reached a point where it was too crazy for me," the star told Hour Detroit in April 2021, when she was promoting her return to TV after years away. "The reason I started all these businesses and started the show was to have this good life. And it just kind of dawned on me that I'm running around like crazy and I'm not happy right now. So, I just called a halt to all of it, just to go back to a private, quiet life."

A lot happened in her time away from the entertainment business. In addition to the global pandemic that changed just about everything, Curtis had a lot of family matters to deal with. She had a toddler at home, and had begun caring for her beloved grandfather, after the 2016 death of her equally beloved grandmother. Then there was the messy custody battle, plus a restraining order that Curtis' mother attempted to file against her (which was denied by a judge).

Three years after leaving the scene, Curtis came back to TV for a shorter stint with "Rehab Addict Rescue," an eight-episode series that aired on HGTV and streamed on Discovery+. This was followed by a "Lake House" spinoff the following year, which was even shorter.

According to Nicole Curtis, the best part of her time away from television screens was the ability to spend more time with her children — especially her younger son. "I could just be at home, being a mom. When I had a chance for that to happen, I took it, because I didn't have that the first time around," the star said to People magazine while promoting her return to TV in 2021. Even though family was the biggest motivator for a break, Curtis clearly did not (or could not) entirely turn off that workaholic light switch in her brain. During her time away from HGTV, Curtis decided to start her own production company in anticipation of her eventual return to the small screen.

Curtis was a consulting producer on "Rehab Addict" up until Season 5, when she was given the title of co-executive producer. Not only did the TV personality feel that controlling her own production could offer more work/life balance, but she also felt she was doing all of the work anyway. "I directed my show. I bought the properties. I designed the properties. I hired the crews and I worked with them. And I did all this and still having to share that space with another production company — it really got to be where, 'Why do I want to do this anymore?'," she explained to Fox News. In December 2024, Curtis posted on Instagram that she had multiple shows in the "editing room," but gave no further details.

In addition to all of her other jobs, Nicole Curtis is also a designer with multiple successful partnerships. She has a popular home decor line, Nicole Curtis Decor, which began with classic rugs that were both stylish and functional (and washable!), in a partnership with Nourison. Her décor offerings have expanded to include both more modern styles as well as pillows, throws, and drum poufs. The line is also now sold in many big-name stores, including Target and Kohl's, as well on Amazon and Wayfair.

One of Curtis' biggest partnerships is with Walmart, where she has been hawking bathroom vanities for years. Her second line of vanities is set to be released sometime in early 2025, according to the star. Curtis also sells clothing, despite not being known for her fashions. She keeps things simple in this area, highlighting her no fuss style through a small selection of flannel shirts offered in partnership with Santa Barbara company Purnell. Her website has a few NC Design "Rehab Addict" shirts, as well. In addition to all of these ventures, Curtis also owns a bunch of Airbnbs — most of which are homes featured on "Rehab Addict" over the years. It is unclear when Curtis sleeps, but she must be doing it on a pile of cold hard cash.