What You Don't Know About No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk

In March 2021, HGTV introduced its viewers to Jennifer Todryk, star of new home beautification series No Demo Reno. On the series, Todryk helps dissatisfied homeowners completely revamp their existing abodes without having to undertake expensive demolition and rebuilding projects. Instead, noted the HGTV website, "she combines clever design solutions and cost-saving ideas to create stunning home transformations," with the goal of leaving each home's floorplan unaltered.

As HGTV's announcement for the show pointed out, Todryk may have been an unfamiliar face to television aficionados, but that certainly wasn't the case when it came to social media. Online, the release declared, the self-described "Rambling Redhead" is a wildly popular social media influencer whose Instagram page has amassed more than 700,000 followers — and counting.

While Todryk may be a newcomer to HGTV, she managed to build that huge online following due to her savvy design sense, fun personality, and vivacious enthusiasm. For those who only know her from television, there's a lot to be discovered about this multi-talented designer, blogger, and all-around social media maven. Read on to find out what you don't know about No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk.

A great way to get to know No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk is through her website, Life as a Rambling Redhead. In an info page, she tells readers that her life can "get a little loud and chaotic" thanks to "the three child beasts ... and Mike is loud too," referencing hubby Mike Todryk and their three young kids. Her ultimate goal, she explains, is to bring her readers "nothing but happiness, inspiration, good home decor and only the comfiest clothing recommendations," along with "most importantly a good laugh."

Writing for MamaMia, Todryk jokingly lamented how much motherhood altered her once-freewheeling lifestyle. Whatever little time she had for herself, she wrote, was now devoted to "horrible things such as dishes, laundry, or showering." After listing the 17 different activities she no longer had time for, Todryk admitted it wasn't all terrible. "I heard my son make three hilarious, new phrases and witnessed my daughter attempt to walk for the first time," she wrote. "These are things that to my 22-year-old self would have ... seemed pretty uneventful, but now they are the moments I live for."

No Demo Remo's Jennifer Todryk took a slightly different route to HGTV stardom than some of her network contemporaries. While Windy City Rehab's Alison Victoria had a thriving design business before being tapped for her own HGTV show, and Tiffany Brooks of $50K Three Ways was a past winner of HGTV Design Star, Todryk came to HGTV from her massive social media following. 

As HGTV's press release for No Demo Reno pointed out, Todryk's 700,000-plus Instagram followers "love her hilarious and extremely relatable take on motherhood as well as her savvy advice on home design, fashion and beauty." In addition, Todryk has built up a solid following on her Life as a Rambling Redhead website.

Asked by DFWChild why she thinks she "resonates" with her legions of fans, Todryk chalked it up to being "weird." As she explained, most people in social media who focus on "home decor or fashion, or whatever" will tend to "stay in [their] lane." Todryk, however, tends to take a more eclectic approach, which wasn't by design. "I originally wanted to do a home decorating blog," she said, "but I didn't have any home decorating to talk about."

Before No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk took the world of social media by storm, she established herself as a blogger on her website Life As a Rambling Redhead. Becoming a blogger, she said in an interview with DFWChild, was merely a way to express herself creatively at a time when she desperately needed to. "The blog started because I was just kind of in a funk," she said, admitting she had hit "a low point" after having her second child. "I had no identity," she added. 

As she told NBCDFW, she began writing in the evenings, "for fun, just kind of a release of energy. And I realized I was talking about explosive poopy diapers on my hands, under my nails and on my face. And in the moment, you want to shrivel up and die, but when you reread it, I thought it was kind of funny."

That proved to be just what she needed to help lift her spirits — what she didn't realize at the time, however, was that her blogging was also placing her on a new career path she hadn't even envisioned.

As Life As a Rambling Redhead gained traction, a 2015 blog post inspired by one of her kids acting exceptionally bratty put No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk on the map. That post — titled "Top 6 Wines That Pair Best With Your Child's Crappy Behavior" — came about when her husband was out of town and she was discussing her awful day with him on a phone call. "And my husband was like, 'you should write about wine pairings for the kind of day you had.' And I was like, 'I should do it with my kid's crappy behavior.' From that, I sat down that night and busted it out and published it," she told NBCDFW.

As she recalled in an interview with DFWChild, the post went viral in her "fifth week of blogging. I just got really lucky. I remember when I went viral — I restarted my computer because I thought there was a glitch in my AdSense counter."

The rapid growth in popularity she experienced after that post, she added, "definitely has given me a sense that I'm supposed to be here, like God wants me to do this."

No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk's viral blog post on her Life As a Rambling Redhead website steered her from the world of online blogging to bonafide publishing. That viral post and the ensuing publicity led to an overture from a publisher to adapt the blog post into a full-fledged book. And that's precisely what she did, resulting in the 2017 publication of W(h)ine: 50 Perfect Wines to Pair with Your Child's Rotten Behavior.

Following the book's publication, Todryk took to Instagram to share her excitement after seeing her book on the shelves of the same Barnes & Noble bookstore that she frequented as a teenager. "It's still weird and hasn't really sunk in," she wrote in her post.

According to Todryk, she didn't have "an agenda" when she started her blog, and she was such a social media neophyte that she "didn't know what going viral meant." Writing a book wasn't even something that was on her radar — until it was. "I started this journey as an outlet and wanted a purpose outside of my child-rearing responsibilities," she wrote, admitting she had no idea "that book deals fell into people's laps."

While No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk has earned her cred as an Instagram influencer, that's not her only social media outlet. Not only does she have close to 100,000 followers on Facebook, Todryk also has a YouTube channel boasting over 28,000 subscribers. There, she posts videos on topics like home decor advice, a demonstration of how to pack healthy school lunches, and one in which her 3-year-old daughter applies makeup on her. 

No Demo Reno had been occupying most of whatever spare time Todryk had been able to carve out for herself, to the detriment of her YouTube output. She referenced that in a January 2020 video, the first one she'd posted on the channel in more than a year. "I have not been here for a hot minute," she told viewers in the intro to a demonstration on styling a fireplace mantel. "I think the last time I uploaded a video, I was announcing the name of my baby. Now that baby is 14 months old!'"

In fact, it took another year-plus before another video was posted — which just happened to be a sneak peek at No Demo Reno. 

According to Yahoo! Finance, No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk and husband Mike are also the owners of Armor Coffee Co., located in Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. This is not your garden-variety coffee shop, however. In addition to craft coffee, Armor Coffee serves wine and beer and also hosts a boardroom-style meeting space that can be rented by clients on an hourly basis; rates are reasonable, with an hour costing just $20.

In 2019, she issued a post on Facebook declaring, "WE BOUGHT A COFFEE SHOP! Holy Crapola!" Admitting she and her husband were "still in shock," she joked that they had both been "running around like [chickens] with our heads chopped off."

When the Todryks took over the former Village Coffee in 2019, the inaugural post on the Armor Coffee Instagram page (which replaced the former Village Coffee page) announced that the place was now under new ownership. "We aim for this coffee shop to be the best and most unique coffee experience in DFW as well as help support other local businesses and entrepreneurs!" declared the post.

In a 2015 blog post, No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk revealed to readers that she and husband Mike had completely forgotten their wedding anniversary. "Who does that?" she lamented. 

This led her to take a detour down Memory Lane to recall the circumstances of their wedding, which took place in the Mexican resort town of Cancun. Recalling the wedding as "amazing," she described their nuptials as "a [week-long] party in Mexico that included margaritas (duh), dirty monkeys (banana alcoholic smoothies), and extremely average all-inclusive Mexican food." The "best part" of the whole experience, she declared, was that "it only took one hour to plan my wedding upon arriving in Mexico."

Todryk also shared a TMI nugget regarding one of her wedding photos, in which bride and groom are captured mid-air while jumping on a trampoline. "If I were to model for this photo now, there would be a very large chance that I would have a yellow spot on the front of my dress, due to urine escaping my urethra," she divulged. "Children have done my bladder in," she admitted, describing trampoline jumping as "high risk" for accidentally wetting herself.

While the opportunity to host HGTV's No Demo Reno has taken Jenn Todryk's public profile to a whole new level, she's admitted that the busy production schedule of her own TV series has tended to eat up a lot of time she'd otherwise be devoting to her children. "The mom guilt's always there, but I can't say just one thing because it just depends on what I'm doing that day. When we're filming, it's the guilt that I'm not there," she told DFWChild. 

However, she also confessed that mom guilt is something she pretty much experiences on a non-stop loop; whenever she's engaged in one activity, she explained, she feels guilty that she's not doing something else that needs to be done. "Whenever I'm here, it's the guilt that I'm working, not crafting," she said of shooting No Demo Reno. "When I'm crafting, it's the guilt that I'm crafting and not cleaning. I feel like mom guilt's always there. It just shows its face differently. I definitely hold anxiety with that kind of stuff."

Mom guilt isn't the only side effect that No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk has experienced from motherhood. Another, as she explained in a since-removed satirical interview with the Sammiches & Psych Meds website, was an inability to take a decent selfie without one of her kids wrecking it. "People like people who take selfies. I just want to be able to take pictures of my new haircut, my excessive cleavage, and how my face looks when I am stuck in traffic, but I can't," Todryk deadpanned. "Every time I extend out my arm to take a selfie, a child presents itself in the frame. I'm just beyond agitated."

At the time she gave the interview, Todryk was far from the social media phenom she'd eventually become. "I only have 703 Instagram followers, which is really embarrassing," she joked. According to Todryk, the reason why she hadn't been able to build a larger Instagram following was because people "want to see my OOTD (outfit of the day) or my new eye shadow shade," not her "adorable babies" photobombing her selfies.

In an interview with DFWChild, No Demo Reno's Jennifer Todryk discussed her decision to homeschool her oldest child, son Von. Her motivation, she explained, was simply because Von was "super intelligent." Her son's smarts, however, were something that she didn't pick up on at first, given he was her firstborn and she was "just in my own little bubble."

She felt it would be "weird for him to go to kindergarten," since he's been able to read before he turned 3. As a result, she decided it was best for him to split his time between homeschooling and traditional schooling — two days a week at home and three in school. In a 2018 Facebook post, she revealed that particular blend of school and homeschooling was called University Model schooling, a system that "combines the best attributes of traditional schooling with the best attributes of homeschooling." According to Todryk, she "had no idea that this kind of school even existed." We didn't either — too cool!