If you've ever dreamed of HGTV stardom, you may be thinking you need to live and breathe
real estate.
After all, those design stars must have been rehabbing houses since childhood.
Turns out the stars of HGTV have done every type of work, and most of them didn't even
start with real estate.
From underwear models to a Hooters waitress, these stars prove that it's never too late
to change paths.
Chip and Joanna Gaines
Ahh, Chip and Joanna Gaines — the reality couple that helps us believe in love again.
Judging from their on screen fun and playfulness, it's easy to imagine them happy together whether
they were rich or poor — and they've done both.
They weren't always moguls running a hit show, magazine, shop, and bakery.
Before the HGTV fame they found with their reality design show Fixer Upper, Chip and
Joanna were actually broke.
Joanna told People, "I remember when we first got married, the only money we had was what
was in Chip's pocket.
He always had a wad of cash, but we were broke.
If I needed to go grocery shopping it's whatever was in his pocket.
That's how we paid the bills."
Chip began flipping houses when the couple got married, but that business didn't pay
the bills in the beginning.
Chip Gaines revealed that during their first two years of marriage, Joanna's father kept
asking him when he was going to get a "real job."
In the end, he stuck with it, and look how that worked out.
Nicole Curtis
Another HGTV rags to riches story comes by way of Nicole Curtis.
Curtis calls the shots in her show Rehab Addict, but she wasn't always the confident boss lady
she is today.
In college she couldn't decide on a career path.
She actually attended school in three different states: Georgia, Florida, and Michigan.
She also changed her major from pre-law to education.
Rehabbing houses was never the plan.
After college, Curtis paid the bills by waitressing at restaurants like IHOP and Hooters.
She also started cleaning houses before and after her restaurant shifts after she became
a single mom to her son Ethan.
The only reason that Curtis started rehabbing houses was sheer necessity.
As she told Arizona Central, "I got interested in rehabbing because I was poor.
Nothing motivates you to learn how to do something like not having the money to pay to have it
done."
Once Curtis started getting into restoring old houses, she earned her real estate license
just around the time that the network was looking for a blonde host for their new show.
As she remembered in a chat with Minnesota Monthly, "Coincidentally, there was this really
horrific Glamour Shots photo of me on my website, and when a production assistant at Magnetic
Productions was scanning for blonde real-estate agents for the show, they saw it."
And the rest was small screen history!
Jonathan and Drew Scott
After watching just one episode of Property Brothers, it's clear that Jonathan and Drew
Scott are HGTV gold.
Two handsome and funny brothers battle it out amid gorgeous homes and incredible transformations.
And it seems like they were always destined for HGTV greatness.
The two have a history in both real estate and performing so they were made for this.
Both Scott brothers had their hearts set on acting since they were young.
They both had roles on the Canadian series Breaker High; and Jonathan even had a small
role on The X-Files.
They even tried their hands at underwear modeling and worked as professional clowns in a former
lifetime.
Their real estate career began when they were only teenagers after watching a late night
infomercial.
Jonathan told Forbes, "Drew and I were coming out of high school and we didn't want to be
starving actors so we saw this infomercial on how to make millions of dollars with no
money down by Carlton Sheets.
At 18 with $250 down we bought a $200,000 home right across from the University and
after a little work sold it a year later for a $50,000 profit and that's when the light
bulb went on."
With that combination of acting and real estate experience, it was only a matter of time until
a network snatched them up.
And now they're the hottest twins on TV today, thanks in no small part to their excellent
impersonation skills.
"Hey, yo, Adrian!
Yo, Adrian, I love you!"
"Adrian!"
Genevieve Gorder
From Design Star to the award-winning series HGTV White House Christmas, Genevieve Gorder
has secured her place as HGTV royalty.
So, it might be surprising to learn that HGTV was actually the third network she worked
for.
Originally from Minneapolis, Gorder moved out to Oregon to attend Lewis & Clark College
after high school.
After falling in love with her graphic design class, she scored an internship with MTV in
NYC.
She then transferred to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and graduated with her bachelors
in fine arts.
That MTV internship turned into a full-time job, and Gorder ended up starring in the series
Sex in the '90s.
Years later, Gorder was cast as one of the star designers on TLC's Trading Spaces.
But she found her forever home, it seems, on HGTV.
Carter Oosterhouse
There's a reason why HGTV star Carter Oosterhouse looks more like a model than carpenter — he
was one!
Oosterhouse was the youngest of four kids raised in Michigan.
As a kid he loved all sports, and actually received a full ride scholarship to Central
Michigan University for rugby.
There, he studied nutrition and communication before moving to Los Angeles to pursue his
modeling and acting career.
But building and real estate was always in his blood.
He told HGTV, "The town that I grew up in, which is Traverse City, Michigan, is a big
tourist town.
So a lot of people are always remodeling and building.
For me it was just a summertime job, just to make some money."
It wasn't long before he discovered his carpentry talent — and it seems to run in the family.
Both of Oosterhouse's brothers are carpenters, and his sister is an interior designer.
Tarek and Christina El Moussa
The sad news of Tarek and Christina El Moussa's split hasn't slowed these two down.
They're continuing to work on their hit show Flip or Flop — which they had never planned
to do in the first place.
"Who's flip and who's flop?"
"I'm flip."
"Are you wearing a shmedium?
A belly shirt?
"She's flop 'cause she loses all the money."
The El Moussas were Orange County real estate agents before their HGTV fame.
When the housing bubble burst, the couple needed to find a new way to make money.
They moved out of their $6,000-per-month mortgage home and found a roommate to share a $700-per-month
apartment.
They sold their cars and actually split Subway sandwiches for dinner.
They began buying rundown properties and fixing them up themselves.
They started flipping houses and reached out to HGTV on a long-shot, and, Tarek told Country
Living, "A year-and-a-half later, HGTV picked us up for a pilot.
Midway through season one, the show was almost cancelled because someone high up at HGTV
thought it would fail.
It didn't."
These stars only go to show that sometimes opportunity knocks on the door, but when it
doesn't, maybe it's time to bring out the sledgehammer and clear your own path.
"I have something I have to tell you about your future!"
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