Why the Gaines’ Colorado house is their most personal “Fixer Upper” project yet

Chip and Joanna Gaines have renovated scores of properties on television, but their new Colorado retreat raises the stakes from design challenge to family legacy. By turning a 1960s mountain house into a long-term gathering place for their children and future grandchildren, they are treating this project less like a client job and more like a generational bet on what home will mean to them decades from now.

That shift, from flipping for others to building something enduring for themselves, is what makes the Colorado house feel like their most intimate “Fixer Upper” yet. Every design decision is filtered through the lens of their own rituals, memories, and anxieties about distance, aging, and how to keep a far-flung family anchored to one another.

Leaving Waco, Texas, and the comfort of home base

For years, the rhythm of “Fixer Upper” has been inseparable from Waco, Texas, where Chip and Joanna Gaines built both their business and their on-screen identity. The couple of 22 years is based in Waco, Texas, and until now every renovation they tackled for television unfolded within driving distance of their own front door, which kept projects logistically simple and emotionally grounded in familiar streets and suppliers. Their new series, “Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House,” breaks that pattern, marking the first time they have renovated a home outside of Waco, Texas, for the cameras and for themselves, a shift that immediately raises the emotional temperature of the work they are doing on their own family’s future retreat, as detailed when As the couple confronts the distance.

That geographic leap is not just a change of scenery, it is a test of how their design philosophy travels when the support systems of Waco, Texas, are no longer a short drive away. For the first time, Chip and Joanna Gaines are renovating a home that is outside of their beloved Waco, Texas, and the new series captures them grappling with what it means to build a place that must function as both a television set and a deeply personal refuge in a state where they do not yet have the same network of trades, vendors, and long-time friends they rely on at home, a tension that is central to the way For the first out-of-state renovation is framed.

Why Colorado became the family’s second home

What might look like a dramatic relocation on screen is, in reality, the culmination of years of quiet family trips that turned Colorado into something more than a pretty backdrop. Joanna Gaines has explained that Colorado has come to be a special place for their family, a landscape woven into memories of ski trips and time on the slopes with their kids, and she outlined how those experiences gradually shifted the Rockies from vacation destination to the obvious choice for their first out-of-state project, a decision she unpacked when Joanna Gaines described why Colorado for their family made sense.

That emotional history is why Joanna talks about wanting the house to feel like something she has put together specifically for her family, not a generic mountain showpiece. In early walk-throughs, she and her daughter Ella move through the dated rooms imagining how they might one day host siblings, cousins, and friends, and Joanna Gaines makes clear that her goal is to create a dream family vacation home outside of Texas that reflects their rhythms and rituals, a vision captured as she and Ella tour the property and she says, “I want it to feel like something I’ve put together for my family,” a sentiment that anchors the way Joanna Gaines and Ella approach the design.

A $5.5 million bet on legacy, not resale

Financially, the Colorado house is unlike anything Chip and Joanna Gaines have taken on for television, and that scale underscores how personal the project is. Reporting shows that Chip and Joanna Gaines spent about 5.5 million dollars on the Colorado mountain home, a property in the community of Cascade that sits near Fountain Creek and sold in November 2024, a figure that would be eye-popping even for a high-end client but becomes even more striking when the buyers are planning to keep the house rather than flip it, a commitment detailed in coverage that notes how Getting into the Colorado market required that level of investment.

That price tag reframes the renovation stakes from “Will this sell?” to “Will this feel like home for decades?” and it changes the way they talk about design trade-offs. Instead of optimizing for broad buyer appeal, Joanna is thinking about how the house will age with their children and, eventually, grandchildren, and she has spoken about hoping the mountain house will be more than just a gathering place, imagining it as a spot where their kids, including Crew, can keep fly fishing and build their own traditions, a long view that helps explain why Joanna is comfortable tying up so much capital in a home that is meant to stay in the family.

Designing a house that has to earn its memories

Emotionally, Joanna Gaines is clear-eyed about the fact that a house, even one in a beloved place, does not feel like home on day one. In a personal reflection on the project, she writes that it will envelop them once they have gathered there a handful of times and made their marks on the floors, and she imagines the space only truly belonging to them once they have claimed their favorite spots and layered in the imperfections that come from real life, a perspective she shares in a journal entry that notes, “It’ll envelop us once we’ve gathered here a handful of times, made our marks on the floors. Once we’ve claimed our fav…” and that sense of earned comfort is central to how Nov reflections frame the mountain house.

That philosophy shows up in the design brief for the renovation itself, which calls for incorporating the build’s original mid-century features with European-inspired touches rather than erasing the home’s history. Joanna has talked about preserving the 1960s bones while layering in European details that feel collected over time, a strategy that lets the house tell a story that predates their ownership but still feels tailored to their family, and she teases that blend in the series trailer, where the renovation is described as combining the original mid-century character with European elements, a plan laid out when the project was first previewed and the renovation was described as mixing mid-century features with European influences.

Feeling “disconnected” in the Rockies

For all the romance of a mountain retreat, the early days of the project are marked by a surprising sense of distance that Chip and Joanna Gaines do not try to hide. As they walk the land and the empty rooms, Joanna admits, “It’s, like, the first time it’s hit me that this is so disconnected,” a candid reaction captured as she and Chip survey the property and confront how far they are from their usual routines, a moment that underscores how vulnerable it feels to invest so much in a place that is not yet woven into their daily lives and is documented when survey footage shows Joanna and Chip processing that disconnection.

That emotional gap becomes a recurring theme in previews of “Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House,” where Chip Gaines and Joanna Gaines are described as taking on their toughest task yet, not because the house is in worse shape than past projects but because the distance from Waco, Texas, leaves them feeling unmoored. The new series captures them wrestling with the idea that they are building a life in a place that is not yet home, and the sense that they feel disconnected amid the new project is framed as part of what makes this renovation different from their earlier work on Fixer Upper in Waco, a dynamic highlighted when coverage notes that Chip Gaines and Joanna Gaines feel disconnected amid the Colorado Mountain project.

Turning a 1960s build into an alpine family hub

On a practical level, the Colorado house is a classic “Fixer Upper” challenge: a dated 1960s structure that needs to be reimagined as a modern, livable space without losing its character. Their journey to turn a 1960s build into the alpine abode of their dreams is the spine of the new limited HGTV series, which follows them as they confront everything from aging infrastructure to wildlife that has grown used to investigating unoccupied homes in the area, a reminder that this is not just a cosmetic makeover but a full-scale transformation of how the property functions in a rugged environment, a process chronicled as Their journey from 1960s build to alpine home unfolds on HGTV.

Inside, the design brief is as much about function as aesthetics, because this house has to flex for a large, growing family that will use it in different seasons and life stages. Joanna has said she wants it to feel like a true family vacation home outside of Texas, with spaces that can handle muddy boots after a day on the slopes, quiet corners for reading, and big communal rooms for holiday gatherings, and the series shows her and Chip ripping out dated elements, including a stair rail Chip famously tears out with his bare hands, to make way for a layout that can handle that kind of multigenerational traffic, a level of physical and emotional investment that is front and center when Colorado is described as having become a special place for their family.

When the house fights back

Even with all their experience, the Colorado project reminds Chip and Joanna that every renovation has at least one feature that refuses to cooperate. In Episode 2 of “Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House,” a tricky fireplace becomes the element that taunts Joanna, as she laments that there is always that one thing you cannot quite get to look the way you imagined, a moment that captures both her perfectionism and the reality that even a deeply personal project has to contend with stubborn architecture, a tension that plays out as Chip and Joanna Battle a Tricky Fireplace in an early Episode of Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House.

Those speed bumps matter because they reveal how much of themselves the couple is pouring into the house. When Joanna fights back tears upon seeing the home Chip bought without her, and later when she is visibly frustrated by features that refuse to align with her vision, the stakes feel higher than in a typical client project, where compromises can be rationalized as “good enough” for resale. Here, every unresolved detail is something she and her family will live with on every future trip, which is why the series lingers on those moments of tension and why the Colorado Mountain House feels less like a set and more like a long-term test of how Chip and Joanna want to live.