The Truth About HGTV's Jasmine Roth

For fans of HGTV, it must seem like Jasmine Roth is everywhere. From a radical remake of the legendary Brady Bunch house to saving do-it-yourselfers from themselves on "Help! I Wrecked My House" to making cookie-cutter tract homes memorable on "Hidden Potential," Jasmine Roth has become the face of HGTV for many viewers, inspiring them to reconsider their own living spaces and their hidden potential for greatness.

But make no mistake: Roth is not just about making things pretty. As her profile on HGTV's website reveals, building and construction are in her blood, and she literally grew up with a hammer in her hand. A close look at her work shows she cares about way more than just decorating — like any hands-on person, she values practicality and function. And, while many of the swoon-worthy spaces she creates are aspirational, she also understands the importance of making great spaces affordable. Here's how Jasmine Roth built her surprising career.

Few little girls dream of becoming carpenters. But Jasmine Roth learned to love woodwork and building early, thanks to her dad, a skilled carpenter himself. It didn't hurt either that she grew up in a rural area with few other nearby outlets for entertainment. "When you live in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself building stuff because there's nothing else to do," Roth told HGTV. "I grew up building treehouses, really cool playhouses, beautiful sheds, making furniture and that kind of stuff with my dad in the garage."

While her childhood experience ignited her passion for design and building, she initially didn't think of it as a career path. Instead, she went to Northeastern University in Boston and earned a degree in entrepreneurship and new-business management, according to The Orange County Register. (It was also at Northeastern where she met her husband, Brett Roth, according to her blog.) Little did she know that her professional journey would eventually bring her back into the world of hammers, plywood, and power tools.

Judging from Jasmine Roth's LinkedIn profile, it seems that remodeling and new-home construction were the last things on her mind when she started her post-college professional life. Instead, she followed a conventional white-collar route, starting in real estate before moving on to staffing, recruiting, and sales before settling into a career in human resources near her current home in Huntington Beach, California.

Some might look at all of this office work and see it as a series of false starts before Roth's real career began, but reading between the lines, it seems that this work turned out to be useful preparation for her current professional trajectory. A knowledge of real estate markets was no doubt useful for finding her own home and helping others get the most out of theirs. Major remodeling projects are a team effort, and her staffing and HR chops no doubt helped her recruit the best team members and lead them effectively through time-sensitive projects. And her business-school background certainly helped her navigate the thorniest issue with big construction projects: budgeting.

Like many first-time homebuilders, Jasmine Roth and her husband, Brett Roth, seriously underestimated the amount of time and work it would take to build their home. As she told HGTV, when she and Brett purchased a lot by the beach in Huntington Beach, California, they were still in comfortable office jobs and planned to dedicate their weekends to building their future home (as well as a separate investment property next door). But they soon discovered their weekends were going by way too fast with little headway being made on either property. Something had to change.

Jasmine decided to take radical action. She decided to go all in and quit her job in human resources to dedicate herself to working on the house full-time. This decision reignited her passion for building and design, and she threw herself into it head first. "I gave my notice and two weeks later I was in a hard hat on the construction site," Jasmine told HGTV, "and I never left. I loved it."

If you're a serious hobbyist, you probably know the feeling of having so much fun working on a project that you're actually a bit sad to finish it. When Jasmine Roth finished building her airy and stylish beach home — which she calls "my first baby" on her blog — she had a solution to this dilemma: to keep building dream houses, but for other people.

Deciding to turn homebuilding from a personal passion to a career, she founded Built Custom Homes, a company specializing in custom residential construction. The company's work closely reflects Roth's personal style, taking "a unique approach to beach living and functional options for custom home design," according to the website. The company's portfolio shows a range of projects, from a mountain retreat in Utah to a "budget remodel" of a two-bedroom condo — but most of the projects seem to be elegantly casual new homes with a distinctly beachy vibe.

An old proverb says a picture tells a thousand words. And, as Jasmine Roth discovered, the right pictures can launch a career in television. As she told House Beautiful, she documented every step of a "fun build" in Park City, Utah, on Instagram to promote her business. "The videos were raw, real, and showed the progress as it was happening. In retrospect, I'd accidentally put myself on a TV timeline without even realizing it," she said. Having caught the video bug, she also posted her progress on a beach house in Huntington Beach, California — and this project caught the eye of a production company working with HGTV on a series about building homes on the beach. "That first call was surreal. I'd never considered being on TV and knew nothing about it," she told House Beautiful.

That deal fell through, but the producers encouraged her to keep filming her work so they could create a promotional reel for HGTV. Seizing the opportunity, Roth decided to up her game, hiring professional videographers at her own expense to shadow and film her and her crew instead of just filming clips on her phone. This move paid off — and led to her signing on with HGTV for "Hidden Potential," her first show with the network.

For most people, construction and the trades are invariably linked to Y chromosomes: Say the words "contractor" or "builder," and the first image that comes to mind is a burly dude, probably with a beard and in dire need of a shower. This makes Jasmine Roth a rare exception. She's not only as handy with a sledgehammer as the guys on her team, but she also wants other women and young girls to know that the construction trades offer great career opportunities for them, too. This is why she proudly rocks the hashtag #womenwhobuild in her social media posts. "The hope is to just bring other women who build together so people can see it's not a woman who builds, but women, plural, and kind of create a community around that," she told The Orange County Register.

But her biggest impact comes from leading by example: By simply being a successful and visible woman in construction, she's inspiring girls to consider careers in building and the trades. "A lot of people who watch the show are middle school girls. I have people messaging me saying: 'My daughter is totally hooked. Thank you for showing her something totally different that a woman can do for a career.' And I think that's so cool," she told The Orange County Register.

While Jasmine Roth is proud to be a woman in a traditionally male field, she does not shy away from her feminine side. In October 2019, she proudly posted an Instagram shot of herself and her husband, Brett, with an early pregnancy ultrasound to share the upcoming arrival of their first child. "So excited (also nervous, ecstatic, terrified, overjoyed, and all the feelings) that we are expecting our first baby on 4.27.20," she wrote in the post. (Hazel Lynn Roth arrived a few days ahead of schedule, on April 21, according to HGTV.)

Being pregnant didn't slow Jasmine Roth down, however. If anything, it inspired her. It's common for moms-to-be to go into nest-building mode, and Roth channeled all her professional expertise into creating a dream space for her little one. In a detailed blog post, she shares everything from her planning and design strategy for the nursery (a pro tip she reveals — think about what you're going to do with the walls and where you want everything to go before you put in any furniture). She also envisioned the room as not just a baby zone, but also as an area for friends and family to socialize while getting to know the baby. "To make the nursery welcoming for people to sit and visit, Brett and I decided we wanted to have a couch round out the sweet sitting area for the nursery," she wrote.

While Jasmine Roth is known for her construction skills and her eye for casual but charming interiors, her design choices are, at their core, driven by practical considerations. She told The Orange County Register that her famed "California casual beach style" is not "shells and rope and anchors" but an aesthetic driven by the needs of active, comfortable family life. "It's a stroller in the entryway, it's bikes in the garage, it's coming home from work and having somewhere to set down your bag, kick your feet up and eat a meal with your family. So it's really just the day-to-day life," she explained.

In short, Roth's design sensibilities are motivated by a desire to ensure spaces are both comfortable and practical for the people using them — and this means coming up with creative and visually pleasing ways to keep everyone's things out of the way but with easy access when needed. Her daughter's nursery, for example, contains not just an attractive and spacious chest of drawers, but also an eye-catching wall of repurposed vintage crates that serves as both a decorative contrast to the nursery's mid-century modern décor as well as a storage area for toys and family keepsakes, according to her blog.

Jasmine Roth's first homebuilding project — the home she called the "11^th Street Retreat" — had a special place in her heart. Not only did it launch her career in homebuilding and design and serve as a convenient showcase for her original sense of style, but it was also a comfortable and happy place to live for her and her husband, Brett Roth. After all, what could be more satisfying than living in an airy, attractive home just steps from the beach, knowing that you planned, built, and decorated every bit of it yourself?

But, with the birth of their daughter, Hazel, the Roths realized they needed more space, and so they moved into a larger home close by, according to People. But they couldn't bring themselves to give up the 11^th Street Retreat, not just yet. Instead, they decided to hold on to it as an investment property, leveraging its reputation to rent it out as an Airbnb property. "We've never done anything like this," Jasmine told House Beautiful. "So now being able to share it with people is exciting and a little nerve-wracking." The possibility of spending a night or two in the Roths' custom-furnished house must have been tantalizing for HGTV fans. But staying there wasn't cheap — People reports that when the house was available, it rented out for $634 a night.

Jasmine and Brett Roth eventually sold the 11^th Street Retreat — but it wasn't an easy decision. "@brettrothofficial and I have been approached by quite a few people this past year, inquiring if we'd be willing to sell. We were both like, 'no thanks!' ... not only because we have such an emotional attachment to this house, but also because I just put SO MUCH WORK into getting the house perfect to be a rental after we moved out," she wrote in her blog.

Jasmine's emotional attachment to the house was profound. "We spent [three] years building this house. It's the house that we moved into when we got married, where we celebrated our wins, and cried when things didn't go as planned," she wrote in her blog. She realized, though, that she needed to step back from the situation and view her family's needs more objectively. "I tell clients all the time don't get emotionally attached to a house. And here I did it myself," she told House Beautiful.

As sad as Jasmine Roth was to give up her beloved 11^th Street Retreat, she was determined to make her next home just as special and memorable. "We are building our dream house," Roth told HGTV. "We've been working on it for three years already just designing it. We finally broke ground and it's exciting and bittersweet because we love our house right now but we've kind of outgrown it."

She's been teasing details of her new home, which she and her husband have dubbed the Roth Homestead. An Instagram shot of the house, posted shortly before the Roths moved into the home in July 2020, reveals a rustic, but modern, two-story house, and a blog post reveals its interior design features lots of natural materials — wooden cutting boards and bamboo trays, chenille and jute floor mats, a coffee table made from a cross section of what appears to be knotty pine. Like her former home, it's heavy on decorative touches but still has a casual, welcoming vibe. And, like her former home, it allowed Roth to stretch her skill set. "This is the biggest project I've ever taken on and can't wait to share it with all of you," she wrote on Instagram shortly before moving in.

Designing and building two homes for herself has given Jasmine Roth an important insight: The special touches that transform a house into a home are personal and vary with each family's tastes, lifestyles, and interests. And this means you should feel free to arrange your home any way you want. "This is your house, you should do it your way. You should make it so it works for you and your family," she told The Orange County Register. This can mean, she added, thinking outside the box when it comes to the spaces in your home — just because a room was originally intended to be a living room doesn't mean it has to be used or decorated that way.

As a case in point, HGTV noted that Roth built her first house with a feature she loved, but knew wouldn't work for everybody: a custom "dog cave" for her three beloved dogs, built under the home's staircase. It wasn't just an unfinished space with a dog bed tossed in, either, but a finished little room in its own right. "One of my friends spent the night in there one time," Roth told HGTV. And she doesn't just indulge dog owners either: The Orange County Register noted that some of her special projects for clients include a custom cat playground and a hidden trap door under a welcome mat opening into a storage space for dirty shoes.

As an HGTV star and a custom homebuilder, Jasmine Roth gets lots of questions about the ins and outs of building or renovating a home. Now she's written a book — "House Story" — to answer all of those questions for would-be homebuilders. "This has been years in the making and it answers all the questions I get asked every single day on social media, on email, and even when people walk up to me at Target and ask for advice," she told People. "How fun will it be when I can just point them toward the book aisle and keep on shopping. Ha!"

"House Story," like Roth's social media presence, is filled with beautiful photos of interiors she's designed, but its main focus is on the serious, practical details of the construction process. "So you know how on my show, I'm presented with a challenge and 20 seconds later I have the answer?" Roth told People. "Well, in real life, it takes a lot of planning, measuring, lists, and budgeting to get to that answer. This book is set up to help people make it through that process on their own, so they don't get stuck." Roth's book also focuses on the dull, but critical, topic of budgeting. "I want to break down the stigma about openly discussing the budget," Roth said. "I want my readers to feel confident and empowered to understand and manage a construction budget."

Jasmine Roth seems to lead a pretty glamorous life — when she's not hanging in her spacious home by the beach or building luxury homes (the homes constructed by her company, Built Custom Homes, can be in the $2 million range, according to its online portfolio), she and her husband enjoy traveling and snowboarding, according to HGTV. But, while most of her company's clients have the cash for a luxury custom build, Roth understands that many people don't — and her designs often feature creative uses of reclaimed materials and smart renovation techniques to create attractive spaces that won't break the homeowners' budget.

In Season 1 of "Help! I Wrecked My House," for example, she employed a number of smart tricks to create a welcoming and unique backyard for a family of four. As she explains in her blog about the episode, she wanted to hang a giant chalkboard for the family's two girls, but the only one she could find cost an eye-popping $350. Instead, she made one herself, using a $20 sheet of plywood and chalkboard paint. She repurposed gravel from an unattractive border around the swimming pool to frame a new fire pit (itself made from repurposed bricks donated by the owner's mother). And, as she notes in her blog, reclaimed and vintage materials are not only more economical, but they add character and contrast to spaces filled with brand-new materials.

Jasmine Roth won't rule out expanding beyond her career building single-family homes. As much as she loves the challenge and the fun of it, she's aware that owning a traditional home is out of reach for many people — especially in pricey Southern California, where she lives and works. (According to Zillow, the average home price in Roth's hometown of Huntington Beach, California, is $1,066,676. Ouch!) "There are a lot of people here who have come to terms with the fact that they will never own a home because it's so expensive. A lot of my friends and family are in that boat," Roth told HGTV.

A number of these friends and family have tasked Roth with a new kind of homebuilding challenge: to build a community living space (a complex in which multiple households share common areas such as a living room and kitchen). "They do it in other cities, but I've never seen it done [here]," she told HGTV. "My friends and family — no pressure — have tasked me with building this [community living space] for them, and I love it. I think it'd be something different and great for our area to let people have that pride of homeownership but under a million dollars," she said, adding that the concept is "my dream." We have no doubt that Roth can get it done one day!