Joanna Gaines Thought She and Chip Might 'Go Broke' Fixing Up Their Farmhouse: 'It Was a No for Me'

Fixer Upper fans have been idolizing Chip and Joanna Gaines’s iconic modern farmhouse for years — but it turns out Joanna wasn’t exactly enthralled when she first saw it.

The mom of five, 42, reveals that she originally thought their current family home in Waco was a terrible investment.

“We’d recently finished renovating a house that was intended to be a flip but that I’d come to love, that truly — finally — felt like home for our family, when one day Chip announced a new prospect,” Joanna explains in an essay titled “Slow Yes" that she penned for the summer issue of Magnolia Journal, out May 8. (Magnolia Journal is published by Meredith, PEOPLE’s parent company.)

“A client of ours would soon be selling her farmhouse just outside of town,” she continues. “Based on the details Chip had, it sounded like a long shot, and a few days later when we drove out there, I would have said it was a closed case.”

The Magnolia maven explains that the home sits on 40 acres of land — a daunting amount of property to tend to. It also only had two bedrooms when they first went to look at it, and they had a family of six.

And perhaps most importantly, she thought the cost of renovating it to fit their needs would be way out of their budget.

“It was a no for me right from the start,” Joanna writes. “There was no way we were leaving our comfortable finished family home to potentially go broke fixing up a farmhouse and all the uncertainties it came with.”

They told the farm owner that they would continue to think about it, “though in my mind, there wasn’t much left to discuss,” Joanna says. But the owner told them they could spend as much time on the property as they wanted in the meantime — and that’s when the family slowly started to fall in love.

“The kids would run wild while Chip and I sat beneath one of the oak trees that towered over the backyard. The more time we spent out there, I’d catch glimpses of how good it could be for us,” Joanna writes in the "Risk"-themed issue. “Something felt right about our family being there despite all the very good reasons we didn’t belong.”

Soon, they took the plunge and made an offer, had it accepted, and managed to maintain their tight budget while transforming the rustic old house into a Gaines-worthy haven. They leaned into the bones of the home, and let its history lead their renovations.

“Gradually, beneath all the uncertainties, a quiet confidence was growing in me the clearer it became that our family was meant to be a part of its story,” Joanna explains of the house. “Not all risks will make a big splash,” she adds. “Some will be forged in patience, steady and unhurried.”

The family has lived in the farmhouse ever since, making the property feel even more like home with a variety of additions, including new projects, new animals, and even a new family member, welcoming baby Crew in June 2018.

Much like the farmhouse, Joanna also admits in the essay that it wasn’t love at first sight with her now-husband, Chip, 45. In fact, she says, falling in love with her handyman hubby was a slow and steady process.

“It wasn’t love at first sight for Chip and me. For one thing, I was typically attracted to guys who were more on the quiet side,” she writes in the essay.

“Based on our first date, it was clear that Chip was anything but quiet,” she recalls, noting that he “was all over the place,” talking about all the companies he dreamed of starting, houses he planned on flipping and risks he was looking forward to taking. She admits she thought he might have been "just a bit crazy."

She wasn’t going to give him a second date, but then decided she was too intrigued by the way he saw the world not to give him another chance.

“All the ideas and dreams he held for himself were anything but ordinary, and he talked about the world around him through the lens of untapped potential,” she writes. “When Chip did eventually stop talking, if only to take a breath, I found myself wanting to fill the silence with plans and dreams of my own.”

Back then, Joanna says, she had half-baked dreams and ideas that she figured she would never accomplish because she didn’t see herself as a risk-taker. But in meeting Chip, she saw that she had untapped potential — and that together they could build something extraordinary.

RELATED VIDEO: Joanna Gaines on Getting Kids into Projects and How They're Following Her and Chip's Footsteps

And they did. The pair married in 2003 — two years after their first meeting — at the historic Earle-Harrison House in Waco, and have been inseparable ever since. Their many wild dreams have become a reality in the form of their Magnolia lifestyle empire, turning their town into a major tourist destination.

Their most recent ventures include plans to open a hotel in Waco and launch a TV channel. Magnolia Network was originally supposed to debut in October 2020, but has since been pushed back due to the coronavirus.

The summer issue of Magnolia Journal is on sale May 8.