The Truth About Chip And Joanna Gaines' Castle

Chip and Joanna Gaines are masters of home renovation. All we have to do is watch their beloved HGTV show, "Fixer Upper," for proof. While they may be able to turn around a home like no one else, the Gaines don't always agree on which projects they should tackle.

Take the Cottonland Castle, for example, a historic home in Waco, Texas that was completed in 1913 and looks, according to Joanna, "As if, once upon a time, somebody in Europe packed up a fairy-tale fortress and shipped it off to begin a new life in the American West."

Likewise, as she wrote on the Magnolia blog, "It's the kind of place that prompts people passing by to stop and stare, exchanging thoughts about all the stories it could tell." 

The Cottonland Castle is certainly gorgeous, but its terrible condition put Joanna Gaines off at first. Chip Gaines fell in love with the home, but Joanna viewed it as "an incredibly daunting project," adding that "the place looked haunted." Nevertheless, Chip was hooked. For nearly 20 years, he put in offers on the house each time it was listed.

The couple finally managed to secure the property in 2019, with Joanna admitting that "making it ours finally felt right to me." According to the property listing on Realtor, the home went off the market in February 2019 and had last been listed for $425,000. The 6,700 square-foot property sits on 0.81 acres and has three beds and two and a half baths.

Suffice it to say, restoring the castle was going to cost the Gaines a pretty penny, not just because of its state of disrepair but because of the fact that it was listed as a historic property. As Brian Davis, a real estate investor, told Realtor, "Unique, historic buildings like this one are notoriously unpredictable and expensive to renovate as well. The Gaineses will have some additional legal hoops to jump through, given its historic landmark status."

The website reported that a previous contractor estimated it would take $600,000 to $1 million to restore the home. Still, if anyone is up to the challenge, it's Chip and Joanna Gaines. "Right now, there's no knowing exactly how this harebrained adventure will turn out, but the dream — Chip's dream from so many years ago, the dream of what this wonderful old home could become — that dream is still very much alive," wrote Joanna. 

After pursuing the project for two decades and finally getting their hands on it, it would be understandable if Chip and Joanna Gaines decided that their stunningly restored castle should be the family's forever home after all. It took three years total to complete, with Joanna telling Entertainment Tonight: "We bought it, we planned a year of design, research, figuring out where we needed to get the materials, and then once we finally pushed go it was almost a year of construction." 

The project dragged on significantly longer than either of them was expecting, with Chip admitting, "This thing took on a life of its own. It took longer, it took more money." However, the intention was always to list it for the right price and (hopefully) make a profit on the sale. And, in June 2023, the couple put Cottonland Castle up on Zillow for a cool $2.9 million. 

The photos demonstrate, as if any proof were needed, just how much work the "Fixer Upper" stars put into lovingly restoring the castle. And naturally, their own company, Magnolia Realty, is handling the sale.