Old to new. Small town feel. Updated renovations. Fixer Upper is an addictive classic American home renovation television show on the Home and Garden TV channel.

Each Fixer Upper show focuses on a client who picks one of three houses to “fix-up” and makes it into their dream home.  Husband and wife Chip and Joanna Gaines are the quirky real-life home renovation team who started the show in 2013.  Chip, the contractor and real estate agent, handles the demolition and renovation part of the job, while Joanna is in charge of the interior design.

Over five seasons, the show has fixed up a lot of homes in Waco, Texas and built a loyal following of viewers. The show focuses on the challenge of renovation with clients that have different, often conflicting, goals and visions for what they want in their dream homes and what they want it to look like.

Fixer Upper has many good aspects.  Chip can be very goofy at times, and he does funny things to distract Joanna from getting her job done, which makes the show entertaining to watch. The producers did a very good job at showing the whole process of picking a home, deciding on the interior design work, renovating the home, and moving into the house. Fixer Upper does not do a good job of showing what is in the area around each of the homes. There can be many determining factors of which home the client will pick. Some of these situations include a rental home next door, a school across the street, too close to a major road, etc.

Many people like this television series because all ages could watch.  The show did a good job at filming Chip and Joanna’s work life and family life and their inclusion of their five children on the show gave even young viewer an entry point into the show.  It was a double bonus that the children were often shown helping their parents out. This lead to a feeling of closeness with the Gaines.  People were devastated when the Gaines announced that they stopped filming Fixer Upper in 2018.  It felt like the viewer was being abandoned by family.

It was fun watching what it takes to run your own family business by watching Fixer Upper.  If you like home renovation shows, you should watch Fixer Upper and get a laugh out of renovating a home with a fun family in Waco, Texas. Even though the Fixer Upper series is coming to an end, HGTV is rerunning episodes to let others see it for the first time and for people who were addicted to the show to re-watch their favorite episodes.