The House of ‘Fixer Upper: The Castle’ Was Chip Gaines’s Dream Project

A castle in the middle of Texas? Yep, believe it or not, the place where Fixer Upper: The Castle is filmed is the same place where Chip and Joanna Gaines filmed their original Fixer Upper series: Waco, Texas.

A synopsis of the new show, which premieres on Discovery Plus and Magnolia Network on Friday, Oct. 14, touts that the castle is Chip and Joanna’s “biggest fixer-upper yet.”

“As they breathe new life into the historic landmark, they must also tackle its challenging infrastructure while preserving its original beauty,” the synopsis adds.

As Joanna explained in the Winter 2019 issue of Magnolia Journal, the property — known as the Cottonland Castle and located near downtown Waco — has long been a dream project for Chip, her husband.

“Completed in 1913, it looks 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,” she wrote in her Journal note. “It’s the kind of place that prompts people passing by to stop and stare, exchanging thoughts about all the stories it could tell.”

According to the Waco Tribune-Herald, the castle stands at 3300 Austin Ave. in Waco and was listed at $425,000 before Chip and Joanna bought it in 2019, though the price they paid for it has not been disclosed. It’s a three-story structure with 6,700 square feet, the newspaper adds.

A Civil War veteran named Alfred Abeel was the one who constructed the castle, per Waco History. The house was “modeled after a small German castle along the Rhine River,” the site adds. Its exterior was clad in white sandstone and limestone, while the interior was decked out Caen stone from France, Carrara marble from Italy, and Honduran mahogany paneling.

The castle “found its way into [Chip’s] heart,” Joanna wrote in her Magnolia Journal note — though, as she admitted, all she saw was “an incredibly daunting project.”

But it took years — and multiple ownership changes — for Chip’s dream to come true. “For nearly two decades, Chip watched and waited, persistently putting in offers whenever the castle was relisted — each one passed over for someone else, while very few improvements appeared to be made,” Joanna revealed.

Finally, in 2019, Chip and Joanna managed to buy Cottonland Castle. “No doubt about it, this is a fixer-upper unlike any other we’ve ever tackled,” Joanna wrote. “Even though we haven’t the slightest idea of what it will become, what Chip did know all along, deep in his bones, and what I have learned to see too, is this: If you look past the cracks in the masonry, past the rotted floorboards, past the wilderness taking over the backyard, there is a lot of beauty to be found in this old castle.”