“Fixer Upper: The Hotel” Is More Magnolia-fication of Waco, Texas—Minus the Shiplap

Welcome to Home Watching, a column about the wild and wooly world of renovation television from a self-proclaimed expert in the genre.

Waco, Texas, best known as the town where the Branch Davidians staged a 51-day siege against the FBI, and home to Baylor University, has an increasingly different reputation these days, thanks to Chip and Joanna Gaines. The couple behind Magnolia Network, who ascended the home renovation TV throne during their time at HGTV, live in Waco and have slowly but surely spread their influence throughout the town, whether it’s in the houses they’ve renovated for their TV show or the Silos, a temple to their lifestyle brand, that includes shops, food trucks, an old church, and a sense of community, albeit slightly forced and whitewashed, just like the shiplap that Joanna favors in her interiors. Unlike the Branch Davidians, the Gaineses are not cult leaders, but they are savvy businesspeople, who have transformed parts of Waco after their image, turning the town into a vessel for their entrepreneurial and aesthetic vision.

Fixer Upper, the hit HGTV series that catapulted the Gaineses into the spotlight, ended its run in 2018. The couple launched Magnolia in 2022, and the following year unveiled their largest project to date: the renovation of the Cottonland Castle, a giant pile modeled after a German castle on the Rhine, formerly owned by a cotton broker and left to dereliction for years, until the Gaineses swooped in and infused their specific, upscale farmhouse look into its walls. Naturally, the endeavor was filmed for TV, and the resulting show, Fixer Upper: The Castle, aired on Magnolia. One might think that taking on a project as large as the castle would be enough for a couple with so much to do already—running the Silos, overseeing a print magazine, pumping out new products for their diffusion line at Target—but that’d be underestimating their glittering ambition. Enter the recently aired Fixer Upper: The Hotel, the latest series documenting their foray into commercial spaces that, unfortunately, leaves much to be desired.

To be clear: Fixer Upper isn’t for everybody, and the Gaineses’ entire shtick (golden retriever husband and long-suffering wife who runs the entire show) is by now the formula for husband-and-wife renovation television. I’m an HGTV diehard with little discernment; simply put, I will try anything once. But Fixer Upper: The Hotel drags, even though the result is perhaps the truest expression of the Gaines brand yet, because every decision, from the mint-green paint on the restaurant walls to the terrazzo harlequin floors and bespoke scented candles (floral with a base note of sandalwood, per Joanna’s strict specifications) is to their expected aesthetic.

When the Gaineses purchased the downtown Waco property in 2018, it had been sitting empty for years. Fascinatingly, the 1928 building was originally an ersatz headquarters for the Freemason-affiliated Karem Shriners, and survived a devastating ’50s hurricane that wrecked most of the city. Now, we’ll watch it transform into a 33-room boutique hotel within walking distance of the Silos—convenient! The space itself is enormous—50,000 square feet, as Chip will say repeatedly over the course of six episodes—with interesting little pockets of Moorish Revival architectural flourishes, from horseshoe arches in the crown molding to the shape of the windows and the mural on the lobby ceiling that adds a touch of earned and actual charm.

Perhaps because Chip and Joanna have no experience in the hospitality industry, Hotel 1928 was built in partnership with AJ Capital Partners, an investment firm that specializes in what they call "purpose-built branded platforms"—boutique hotels, and mixed-use residential/retail buildings that are meant to either "rejuvenate" the neighborhoods around them or create new ones entirely from scratch. Money is never discussed outright in the series, but nothing about the hotel feels cheap. All told, the resultant space is perfectly lovely—a tasteful if quiet boutique hotel that could be in any city.

Any building of this size will naturally present design challenges, but the hotel is especially tricky. Because it’s a historic building, there are aspects of it that cannot be changed. Most people would be thrilled to work within these confines. Chances are, if you’re buying a historic home, you aren’t going to take it down to the studs, rip up the floors and fill it with a McMansion’s gray LVP floors and decorator white walls. But for Joanna Gaines, who is a bit of a control freak, it proves to be a bit of a challenge. According to requirements set by the National Commission of Historic Properties in Texas, the majority of the guest rooms on the third floor have to be carpeted instead of concrete, throwing a wrench in Joanna’s plans for the design. When faced with an enormous space initially eyeballed to accommodate a family or families, and told it must remain open, with no interior walls, Joanna panics slightly, as her vision of a luxury suite is compromised. She solves this issue by using tall bookshelves as room dividers; for $3,449 a night, you’re essentially staying in a big open room that sleeps 12. 

Honestly, even though the show is largely uninteresting, the design of the space shows how Joanna’s taste has matured. Keeping in with the building’s Roaring Twenties roots, the colors throughout are dark, moody, and expensive. There’s nary a scrap of shiplap in sight and the overall vibe feels much more sophisticated than the duo’s past residential projects. There’s wallpaper, dark woods, leather banquette seating, and a nod to Art Deco throughout. Though the brass fixtures in the bathrooms are, I’m sorry, ugly, the green tile Joanna picks for the walls looks to be handmade. Joanna also wanders through her enormous warehouse of vintage furniture to select pieces for the hotel, and while her taste certainly isn’t for everyone, she does have a point of view that’s so clearly defined that I am forced to respect it.

Of particular interest is the library, formerly the coal chute for the building, and by far the most remarkable transformation. Two curved staircases lead up to a mezzanine and the library itself is painted black, from floor to ceiling. As any dedicated viewer of Joanna Gaines’s empire knows, the woman is passionate about decorating with books. To solve the problem of filling every shelf in the building, Chip literally buys an entire bookstore that was originally owned by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Larry McMurtry, in Archer City, about 200 miles north of Waco. Thus, the library and every decorative hotel shelf are filled with books from McMurtry’s personal collection; to really drive this point home, a desk on the mezzanine holds a typewriter and a plaque that mentions McMurtry, as if to inspire guests to write their own Lonesome Dove or, at minimum, post a picture of it on Instagram.

Much like the Silos, the Castle, and the variety of properties scattered amongst Waco, after its renovation, Hotel 1928 is a place meant to encourage community, or, as Chip suggests in the final episode, a space for everyone in Waco to enjoy. (What that specifically means is never clearly defined.) This sense of community is what the Gaineses strive for in all of their projects—it’s clear in their slow, continued Magnolia-fication of Waco, which is a process that doesn’t show any signs of stopping. Sure, the Gaineses’ boutique hotel shows some noticeable changes in their tastes, but overall, it suffers from the weight of expectations. Throughout the series, as various parts of the project come together, people on the couple’s teams, from a contractor to the venture capitalist funding the entire endeavor, repeatedly remark upon how the space feels like home. This insistence is selling the actual hotel short: Does a home have a two-story library stocked with books from a renowned writer’s collection or someone to meticulously fold your crumpled pajamas and place them at the foot of your bed? Nothing about a hotel should feel like a home in the first place, because that’s the entire point of a hotel—it’s a respite from the mess of living, just for a few nights.

Top photo courtesy Magnolia Network

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