Courtesy of Jenny Marrs/Instagram
HGTV’s Dave and Jenny Marrs Are Renovating Their Arkansas Farmhouse: ‘It’s a Hot Mess’
HGTV viewers have seen Dave and Jenny Marrs transform dozens of homes on Fixer to Fabulous, but the pair just took on their most personal project yet — renovating their own 1903 Arkansas farmhouse! “It’s a hot mess,” Dave exclusively tells Closer with a laugh.
“It’s crazy,” Jenny admits of the undertaking. “We’re currently living [in it], we’ve renovated and moved many times, but we’ve never actually lived in the construction site while we’re doing it. And we’re regretting it, I think. We’re a mess.”
The home improvement stars currently live on the gorgeous property with their kids, Nathan, Ben, Sylvie, Charlotte and Luke. All jokes aside, they admit that living in a construction zone has definitely taken some getting used to.
“It’s going well,” the mom of five adds. “We’re shuffling everyone. We’re starting one space, and then we’ll move back and then [doing] another space. So, it’ll be a couple of months of shuffling.”
The ongoing renovations aren’t the only big changes being made around the family’s estate. Dave, Jenny and their children are dedicated to practicing sustainability in their home. The designer and the contractor star in the Sustainability Series, a six-part program sponsored by Daikin, to help encourage HGTV viewers to ensure a sustainable future.
“We feel like this is something that we can no longer kick the can down the hill,” Dave says of taking action and educating audiences on sustainable living. “We’ve got to address this now.”
Their own home renovation is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how to spruce up a space without having a negative impact on the environment.
“We’re not building something new,” Dave explains. “We are taking our 1903 farmhouse, and the last time, when we moved into that house, our twin boys were four years old. Well, now they’re 13, and they’re sharing the same room. So, we are reconfiguring our house without adding more to it to make it work for our family.”
He continues, “And that’s what we do every day with our show, is make spaces fit the family that is in them without having to add a bunch of new stuff,” adding, “And I think it all kind of ties back to what we’re trying to instill in our kids is like, ‘Hey, let’s look at problems from a different way.’”
As for how their little ones have gotten accustomed to sustainable living, Dave and Jenny insist that all it took was small changes to their daily routines.
“I think our kids, it’s part of just everyday life for us,” Jenny says. “Simple things like turn off the light when you leave the room, be mindful of your water usage. We close curtains during the day if we’re not home to try to keep the cool air inside.”
On top of their own home renovation project, Dave and Jenny are preparing for the premiere of a new season of Fixer to Fabulous.
“Next season, we have 16 projects that we are working on, or we’ve been working on all year,” Jenny reveals. “We’re still in the process of finishing up. We have two more reveals next week and seven more to go.”
