Magnolia: The Castle

If you’ve paid any attention to Magnolia in the past year, chances are you’ve heard a little something about this century-old castle in the heart of Waco. Yes, it is odd—to drive down a beautiful residential street or a congested artery of town and right smack in the middle see a castle. Chip and Jo have owned it since 2019 and I’ve heard lots of stories about this place in those years of it being ours. You can get into all the nitty gritty how they took an abandoned landmark and restored it to its formal glory on Fixer Upper: The Castle, which you can watch here.

After working on assets for the castle for months, one day I realized I had grown attached to this thing. I couldn’t pinpoint the day for you—maybe it was the first time I saw the crest on the dining room fireplace, still covered in dust. Or maybe it was in the weeks leading up to the reveal when I (along with many others) volunteered to come clean, and I climbed the snazzy ladder to dust the shelves. Or maybe it was when I dressed up as a medieval villager and passed out candy to wide-eyed trick-or-treaters who had never stepped past the front gate.

Or maybe it was even more subtle than that. Maybe the mystery and wonder of this castle resonated with me when I was ten minutes away from it, at my desk, putting its story to paper. From the 100+ years of its existence and every family who called it home, to Chip’s 20-year dream of bringing it back to life, to the day it gleamed with a new beauty for all of its hometown to see—all of it created a tapestry of sorts. And somewhere along the way, I realized it was a really great story after all.

Getting to work on projects like that for that length of time is special, and I don’t take it for granted. For every social caption, landing page, blog post, tour booklet, and Halloween event, I’m glad to have played even the smallest role in this castle’s legacy.