The Magnolia Story(21)

But the fact that we established that crazy pattern of doing things in our own unique way so early on in our marriage was important. It prepared us for everything that would come later on. And Chip’s decision to move us into that little white eight-hundred-square-foot house worked out exactly the way he said it would. It helped us to get ahead and start making some sustainable income.

One of the real pluses to that second house was it had a big side yard that we could subdivide, so we could build a whole second house to rent or to sell right next to the one we were living in. I bought that house, lot included, for $30,000, and we probably put $25,000 into it. So we were all-in for $55,000 on that little house, and it turned out beautiful—it really did. And we were able to build a brand-new house next door for about $130,000.

And of course this was all debt. We didn’t own anything outright. And getting the money to do all this hadn’t been easy. The banks hadn’t wanted to mess around with these little houses at first. They were either small potatoes, or the banks felt I needed to build a reputation first. The few they actually agreed to caused us to go scrambling every month just to make the payments and pay our own bills.

When it came to remodeling, we never took out any walls or did any major construction at that point. Everything was just cosmetic. But we tried to do things creatively and nice. We updated the kitchen with new appliances. We used the existing cabinets and learned to repaint them. We put in new countertops and a new backsplash when we could. We restored the hardwood floors, and I mean lots of them. Chip literally became an expert in setting tile and wood floor restoration. We took out the bathtub and replaced it with a nice, wide shower with multiple showerheads and some body jets. Honestly, it felt luxurious, like the kind of shower you’d find in a really upscale house or a spa somewhere. Then came the paint, and we were done. And by that point, as I’ve mentioned, I would be in love with the place.

But it wasn’t just the work we put in that made me love that tiny white house. It wasn’t even the easy vacuuming, though that was a plus. What made that house special was the incredible memories we made there.

We threw Chip’s thirtieth birthday party in that house’s little backyard. I strung Christmas lights in the trees, and Chip built a firepit that was unbelievable. We didn’t have much in the way of backyard furniture, so I put hay bales all around the perimeter for people to sit on. There was a little old weathered shed in the back, and I lit that up too.

It looked like something you’d see in a magazine. It was one of the best parties I’ve ever had in my life. It was funny because we were basically poor. We didn’t know how we were going to pay our bills at the end of the month, and we were living in this tiny house, and I invited all of these college buddies to my party who’d gone and started making real money. They came in from Dallas and Austin and parked their Beemers and their Range Rovers up on the lawn of this $30,000 property we owned.

But we were proud of that house. We didn’t think anything of it. We were excited to have all of our friends from college there to see what we’d been up to and to celebrate Chip’s thirtieth birthday together.

I was thirty years old and still living by the seat of my pants. I probably should have had my life together a little bit more by then. But the thing was, my friends all had these stressed-out lives, and they came to our place and it felt like we were just living this laid-back, beautiful, no-stress life. We made being poor look fun. All these corporate friends of ours were thinking, Well, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to stay in Waco.

It wasn’t just my friends that made that party special, though. My grandma was still alive, and she came to that party too. She was just the sweetest lady in the world. She had single-handedly raised my dad and his brother. And though she had a very tough life, you would have never known it by her attitude. Between my mom and my grandma, I was definitely genetically built for positive optimism. That day with her is one of my fondest memories, because she and I hung out on one of those bales of hay for what felt like hours. It wasn’t but a couple years after that she went to be with Jesus.

We made all kinds of big memories in that tiny house, and we were just getting started. The fact that we had some profits starting to roll in from my little shop on Bosque only added to the sense of security we were building.

It’s hard to describe the feeling that comes with starting your own business. It really is so much work in the beginning that you lose yourself in it. You lose your sense of time, and you can’t believe how quickly the days go by because there’s no time to focus on much of anything else. But then you open the doors, and it’s like you’ve given birth to this new thing that didn’t exist before. Then when it starts to flourish, well, that’s just icing on the cake. To get to see it live and breathe and to know that this thing you created out of thin air can put a smile on other people’s faces is such a blessing.

There were some women who would come into that store and drop fifteen hundred dollars in a single visit. It was unbelievable. But I think one of the favorite customers I had in that first year of Magnolia was a woman who didn’t ever buy a thing. She would just show up now and then and poke around, and she told me one time, “I just come here because I want to be in here. This place inspires me.”

That was just about the greatest compliment I could ever imagine. She affirmed for me that I had accomplished exactly what I’d set out to do, and that made me even more passionate about creating an experience for my customers. I worked every day to come up with new touches that would make the experience memorable. I never got too comfortable with one particular look or design. I wanted to constantly challenge myself and make it better. If people were going to go out of their way to come into my store, I wanted to make sure it was worthwhile, whether they bought something or not.