The Magnolia Story(29)

I was out driving around with a buddy of mine who’d been helping me look for a good location, and he’d actually found a couple of spots around town, but we had never found a spot that jumped out at me.

We happened to turn down Bosque as we were driving, and he asked me, “What’s the deal with the shop? Have you sold it yet?”

I told him we’d hit a few snags and hadn’t been able to close a deal. And right as we were driving past it, he said, “Well, have you ever thought about using that for your office?”

It was like a giant lightbulb went on over my head. I swung the truck back around and pulled into the parking lot. I looked at that building with a whole new set of eyes. It had the parking lot in the front, but there was also an area in the back that was plenty big enough for a storage unit that could hold the lumber and materials we kept on hand or anything else we might need to store. It had an office in the back that was ready to go. And why couldn’t we turn the front part, where the retail shop had been, into more office space too? The mortgage we were paying on that little building was less than the rent I’d be paying by a pretty good margin.

“Dude, you’re a genius!” I said.

The very next day we jumped in and started renovating that store into the Magnolia Homes headquarters, adding the office and storage space that would make it home for our construction company.

Funny that we needed an outsider to bring that to our attention. We had always seen the building as our shop. But now it was “our” headquarters, and we were getting to hold on to that precious building. We could even keep our Magnolia sign.

It felt right. The whole thing felt right. Being at home as a full-time mom meant giving up the shop, but it didn’t mean giving up on everything else.

Chip and I started working more closely together than ever. My design ideas were the backbone of Magnolia Homes, and I’d wind up coming in and out of that construction office as often as Chip had been in and out of the back office when it was my store. In the coming months, I’d actually figure out a way to stay in touch with all of my clientele and my wholesalers and to continue Magnolia as a home-furnishings brand without having a physical shop too.

I felt good about having made the decision to walk away and lock that door. It’s funny, though, looking back on it now, because one very simple concept in life never occurred to me as I was walking away:

Even locked doors can be unlocked in time.

I simply never could have imagined just how much God had in store for us, and I certainly couldn’t have dreamed just how many keys to other doors God had already placed in our hands.





EIGHT



DOWN TO OUR ROOTS

For the next four years, Chip and I were dedicated to one thing: raising our beautiful babies.

In addition to Drake and Ella Rose, who was born in October of 2006, our family would come to include two more children, Duke and Emmie, who were born in 2008 and 2010, respectively. But when talking about our “babies,” we also mean our business. The reach of Magnolia Homes quickly expanded beyond our little neighborhood on Third Street and into other areas all over Waco.

We had the opportunity to do all sorts of remodeling and renovation projects in a wide variety of homes, including some beautiful old homes in a historic part of town called Castle Heights. We did work there for some of the people who had frequented my now-closed shop—the wives of doctors and lawyers. And then, when they saw what we were capable of doing, those folks spread the word to neighbors and friends who had money to invest in more extensive remodeling projects.

This wasn’t just changing throw pillows and paint colors. We put Chip’s growing expertise to work and added the capability and muscle the Boys brought to the table to start tearing down walls, installing French doors, and creating new entryways—all catered to our clients’ tastes through the filter of my own evolving design aesthetic.

Driving through the Castle Heights neighborhood, I was immediately drawn to it. I think almost anyone would be. It was full of beautiful, stately old homes with well-kept lawns, mostly tucked back off the main roads where there wasn’t much traffic, so kids could play and ride bikes in the streets. And it wasn’t a snobby sort of place either. Neighbors seemed to know each other, and their kids played together regularly. It seemed out of reach for us, and yet once we started working in those homes, I quickly started to dream about living in that neighborhood.

“Someday,” I said to Chip.

And, well, you already know how my “somedays” worked out when I spoke them out loud to Chip. But I’ll share a little more about that in a bit.

Looking back on those years, the thing that strikes me is that it all seemed to happen so fast. Maybe it was just a lack of sleep from having four kids in quick succession, but those years just seem to blur together for me.

I suppose a lot of young couples feel that way once kids come into the picture. Time does fly, just as those other moms had told me.

Every time I turned around, it seemed as though Drake had suddenly grown another inch or Ella Rose had started walking, or Duke and Emmie were sleeping through the night. These huge milestones came one on top of the other, and I felt truly blessed to be able to work from home so I never missed one—not to mention getting to work alongside my husband as we grew our business together.

The magic that Chip and I had discovered early on—that we seem to grow stronger the more time we spend together—never seemed to wear off. We were well past the honeymoon stage in our marriage, and yet we seemed to fall even more in love with each other now that we had children. We both fell more in love with our work, too, with every new project we tackled as a team.