How the Stars of 'Fixer Upper' Transformed a Town in Texas
One night a few years ago, Dustin Anderson was having dinner with his wife, and he spotted Chip and Joanna Gaines out with some friends. Anderson felt immediate tension. He owns a Waco, Tex., glass shop called Anderson Glass and had been doing some work with the Gaineses, who owned a construction company. But the Gaineses were past due on paying him -- 30, maybe close to 60 days over.
“There was an elephant in the room,” Anderson recalls. “We sat down for dinner, and then after a while, Chip walks over and slides into the booth, puts his arm around me, and says, ‘Hey, buddy. I know we’re behind. Things are rough, but bear with me. I have a solution.’ And he just kind of loved on me. When he got up and left, I told my wife, ‘That’s what I want.’ Just talk to me. Tell me. Keep me in the loop.”
The moment was pure. Chip: He’s a lovable, charming guy. But he’d also gotten used to conversations like that. Back then, around 2011, Chip and Joanna didn’t think they’d make payroll most weeks, as they flipped homes on a . (“It’s not like shiplap was always my top design choice,” says Joanna. “I was just trying to save money.”) Monday and Tuesday would be full of angst as they crunched numbers. Friday would be gut-wrenching when they had to ask employees or contractors to hold checks. “I think it would have been easier to quit if it was just me and Chip,” Joanna says now. But many of their employees had worked alongside them for years. “And we had these guys who were now family. We knew their wives; we knew their kids. We were like, ‘We can’t not do this for them.’ Even though they couldn’t cash their checks on some Fridays, they were the reason why we
