HGTV fans, rejoice: Season five of Fixer to Fabulous premiered last night, marking the start of Jenny and Dave Marrs’s latest home renovation journey. Though the couple has been busy with their own home renovation project—and we’re going to go behind the scenes of that here and there on the show this season—they kicked off this current installment by redesigning a former student’s first home. While completing some of his own yard work, Dave reveals at the beginning of the episode that he and Jenny used to teach their client, Sophia Lacy, in Sunday school when she was in just second grade. Lacy went from babysitting the Marrs kids (there’s an adorable photo of her holding baby Charlotte) to becoming a close friend of the couple’s, and now, they have the pleasure of working with her as a client and giving her an English cottage-style dream home inspired by her time studying abroad in England.
After being the Marrs’s Sunday School pupil, Lacy grew up and went to college, where she studied abroad in England, and, after graduating, eventually settled in Des Moines, Iowa. Now, the Bentonville native is moving back to her hometown, where she bought her very first house—a beige, single-story home that’s lacking in personality. The Marrses had just about three months—and $230,000—to completely renovate Lacy’s home before she officially moved back to the Southern town.
While the home doesn’t have the cozy English-cottage-style architecture Lacy favors, when she discovered that the house number is the same as the one for the home she grew up in, she took it as a sign to purchase the home. Being the sentimental people they are, the Marrses adored this fact and promised Lacy they’d switch up basically everything in the dated home and transform it into one she could be proud to live in.
However, the reno didn’t start off drama-free—this is reality TV, after all. The crawl space beneath the house was filled with about eight inches of water, causing sagging floors throughout the property and costing a pretty penny to repair. Plus, the sunroom had not been installed legally, which meant that Dave had to completely remove the structure and put it all back together to keep that desirable feature (and the square footage it adds to the home).
Jenny and Dave did not let those bumps in the renovation road stop them from making this project extra special for Lacy though! They still made sure to create a custom kitchen island countertop perfect for entertaining, add built-in bookshelves for a cozy bedroom, and bring gas lanterns to the outside space.
Unsurprisingly, the episode ends with Sophia falling in love with her new, cottage-style home. While the Marrses constantly create breathtaking spaces, we’re sure the added advantage of knowing their client since she was a child made the project even more meaningful. This sweet premiere definitely has us looking forward to the rest of the season.
Assistant Editor
Meghan is the assistant editor at House Beautiful where she writes about interior design, pop culture, and furniture.
