Better Than New Read online

  Better Than new

  Lessons I’ve Learned from Saving Old Homes

  (and how they saved me)

  Nicole Curtis

  New York

  In memory of my Gram

  And to my babies—nothing matters more than you

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Mistakes Are Knowledge Waiting to Happen

  tampa house

  Chapter 2

  You Can’t Always Choose What You Keep, but You Can Choose What You Let Go

  minnehaha house

  Chapter 3

  The Thing with Having a Big Mouth Is That You Have to Back It Up

  dollar house

  Chapter 4

  Own the Process or the Process Will Own You

  case avenue house

  Chapter 5

  Sometimes You Have to Skip the Lemonade and Deal with the Lemons

  summit mansion

  Chapter 6

  Passion Allows the Phoenix to Rise from the Ashes

  campbell street project

  Chapter 7

  Live Your Normal, Because There Is No “Normal”

  grand boulevard house and akron house

  Chapter 8

  Make Your Home, Friends, and Family Your Sanctuary

  indian lake road house and ransom gillis mansion

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  Hi. I’m Nicole Curtis, and I’m addicted to rehab

  (well, home rehab).

  Rehab Addict is the name of my HGTV show, but it could just as easily be the title of my life. Ever since I can remember, I’ve fixed things. I was brought up in a family where that’s just how it was. And every moment seemed to yield a lesson to learn. I heard “money doesn’t grow on trees,” “never judge a book by its cover,” or my Gramps’s favorite, “Do you work for Edison?” more often than I can count. These are lessons I carry with me to this day.

  Throughout my childhood, I couldn’t wait to have a home of my own, and at eighteen, I bought my first house. It seems like I’ve always been rehabbing a house. But as much as I put into my houses, as much as I believe they save neighborhoods and change people’s lives, make no mistake—I get something in return. The houses teach me valuable lessons. More than once, a dilapidated house that I’ve restored has actually helped save me, and given me a path to restoring the structure of my life. I’m here as proof: You can do a lot worse than listen to the lessons an old house can teach you.

  Always the tomboy, only on holidays did I look picture-perfect.

  As I’ve built my real estate and renovation career, I’ve come to associate particular lessons with a given house. The glorious Minnehaha mansion in southwest Minneapolis taught me that sometimes in order to move ahead, you have to be willing to let something go. That lesson keeps on ringing true. It has made me tackle houses that others wouldn’t touch, and that’s led to a lot of success, both on and off my TV show. Whenever I think about the Dollar house in the Central neighborhood in Minneapolis, I remember that I need to be able to back up my words with action. For someone who is not afraid to speak her mind, that lesson is a good reality check. And even my first house, a feeble structure in Tampa, drove home the universally useful point that every mistake is knowledge waiting to happen.

  I’ve renovated so many old houses that after a while, the lessons piled up and started to seem like a guidebook to a well-lived life. I realized that every new one was another page in the road map out of troubled times—not just for me, but for anyone. I write about these lessons in my social media posts and talk to friends and family about them, and now I’m collecting them in a book to pass on what I’ve learned.

  With my grandparents in 1979.

  * * *

  I know it all started with my upbringing. I was born and raised in a small town called Lake Orion, right outside Detroit, Michigan. My parents taught me to work hard, be smart, and hang tough. My incredible grandparents, too, were part of my education. Children of the Depression, they knew what it was to have nothing and made sure each of us kids knew what it meant to work for a living. In fact, returning to my hometown to rehab their Indian Lake Road house brought me back to one of the most important lessons I learned from them: to live life on your own terms. My life might not seem “normal” to some, but what I’ve come to learn is that there is no “normal.” I think that’s been the most valuable lesson. You will never succeed in life judging yourself by someone else’s standards.

  “You’re such a nice young man,” I would hear so often.

  I’ve been described as having a strong personality, which I take to mean I’m a woman who speaks her mind and stands her ground. Other people may have an issue with that, but I get into trouble anytime I lose touch with that woman. The houses I renovate—and their lessons—inevitably bring that part of me back, front and center.

  I’ve always loved taking on challenges—what other people call “problems” and “roadblocks.” It’s a big part of what makes my business profitable and has led to my reputation as a savvy entrepreneur. Sure, on any given day you may lose more than you win. I’ll be the first to admit that adversity isn’t always fun. You have to be ready to fall and get right back up. But that’s always easier if you’re doing something you believe in, and when you know you can take away lessons from the experience. For instance, I didn’t particularly want to rebuild a severely fire-damaged house on Campbell Street in Detroit, but doing so taught me that determination can be a tool, one that can transform a pile of ashes into a special home. That type of lesson is key to improving as a professional and as a person. I know it’s how I get better at everything in life.

  My teens.

  As I began to write this book, I realized I wanted to include more than just “lessons.” A lot goes on behind the scenes of my show, and over the course of any long and involved historic home renovation. Sometimes I find myself in totally unexpected and surprising situations. I’ve swung a hammer next to LeBron James; Lenny Kravitz told me I was a badass; and Sia said she loved my show, not knowing that her song “Breathe Me” got me through more than one difficult moment. I’m always caught off guard by the fact that this little idea I had—to save houses that no one cared about—is celebrated by so many people worldwide. More often, I enjoy heart-tugging moments that seem to come out of the blue. I’ve been surprised on my set by fans who just showed up and brought me to tears with their inspiring stories. When someone says, “You’ve changed my life,” I’m humbled, and I realize that all the “bad” I experience has purpose even if it takes me years to understand it. So much happens that the camera doesn’t catch, and I wanted to share all that as well. There is simply a lot more to what I do than fixing up old houses.

  A great friend once told me, “Nicole, if you understand business and people, you can do anything you want.” I look at everything in life like I’m building a house. Whether it’s helping others or working on my own personal issues, if you don’t start with a solid foundation, it will all fall apart.

  That’s why, regardless of the difficulties and how successful I might be at overcoming them, I’m always looking to learn. I’ve gotten a graduate education from the joys and challenges in life. No degree out there will give you the skill sets required to go through life without making some mistakes. Believe me, I would have done anything to be handed a guidebook on the easy way to raise a teenager, manage businesses, age gracefully, and even prepare for the unexpected—things that have occurred in my life that I never could have imagined. But instead, you learn as you go. And if you take the lessons to heart, it helps y
ou down the road.

  My son Ethan through the years.

  When I started writing this book, a friend asked me a simple question: “What do you want readers to get out of it?” I paused for a long time before I replied, because there were a lot of answers to that question. I told him, “I want anyone who turns past the first page to understand that they can do it, whatever ‘it’ is.” I’ve witnessed friends fight cancer, even when it was terminal, pushing back against overwhelming odds, never quitting, and the truth is, would anyone ever blame someone for wanting to give up that fight? But we find strength where we didn’t know we had it, and this can make such a difference in our attitude and in our quality of life. Drawing inspiration from others has empowered me, and I hope that my words will do the same for you.

  There’s something else as well. As much as I want this book to teach readers, so that they can avoid making some of the same mistakes I’ve already made, I also want it to motivate my readers to tackle whatever constitutes their “old houses.” The experiences I’ve had renovating old houses have helped me navigate being a woman in a traditionally male profession, given me the courage to build several businesses all by myself, and driven me to get back up and succeed after I lost everything and had to rebuild from scratch. So here are the best lessons I can give you, and hopefully you’ll walk away with this one idea after you turn the last page: Passion and perseverance are the keys to success in whatever you choose to take on. I’m not the smartest person, I’m not the strongest person, and for years I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, as my Gram would say, but if I can get through all the unexpected things (some good, some bad) that have popped up in my life—burned-out houses, rescue dogs, rollercoaster finances, tough business negotiations, and ugly people—you, my friend, can get through anything.

  Chapter 1

  Mistakes Are Knowledge Waiting to Happen

  tampa house

  My parents didn’t exactly jump for joy when I decided to dive headfirst into adulthood by moving south with my boyfriend right after my high school graduation. They would have much preferred I go away to college. What parent wouldn’t? I look back and think, Oh my gosh, I would have locked my daughter in the basement! They were worried, but they also knew me. Even at that age, I was headstrong. Once I decided to do something, I was going to do it. I was never the happy-go-lucky child. I was a bit of an overachiever bookworm, to say the least. Ever the leader, as student council president (later impeached—don’t ask), I chose to spend spring break painting the ugly girls’ bathroom of our high school with my friend Cara Cowser. And I was obsessed with finding the keys to success in life as soon as humanly possible. My parents’ generation was taught that you stayed in a good job, raised your kids, retired, and collected your pension. The closer I got to graduating high school, the more I knew I had to follow a different path. Telling me no just meant I would be all the more determined. And I wasn’t far from turning eighteen. The challenge you face with raising your children to always question everything is that sooner or later that “everything” includes your opinion as a parent.

  Cara and me in our student council uniforms (left). I looked like I could’ve been on the Swiss Miss cocoa box in my IHOP days (right).

  So my boyfriend, Steve, and I moved south. Our first stop was Atlanta, and we soon realized why it is called “Hotlanta.” Within five minutes, I regretted that decision—it rained every day, with hot temps and humidity.

  I had so much growing up to do, and unfortunately, I chose to spend what should have been the best time of my life becoming what most people dread: one half of a very difficult relationship. I had been catapulted into adulthood, by my own doing, and I had real bills—rent, gas, heat, food, and electricity—to pay. I didn’t want to prove my parents right that I wasn’t ready for this, so I just stuck it out. Job options were slim, so I got a job waitressing. And because I was still seventeen, and still a minor, I couldn’t work where alcohol was served, so there I was looking like I fell off the Swiss Miss cocoa box at the IHOP in Woodstock, Georgia. I worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., and on a good night I made fifty to sixty dollars in tips. Still, while my friends were living it up at college, I was working at the IHOP. Needless to say, as soon as I turned eighteen, I looked for a new job.

  After a quick stint at an upscale Chinese restaurant, I took a friend’s suggestion and applied at Hooters. I remember that the day I applied, I wore my favorite shredded MSU sweatshirt and cutoff jeans, and I had my hair in a braid. I was so excited, but Steve was not happy. I assured him it was fine. The “girls” at my Atlanta Hooters were like family. Steve warmed up to the idea after meeting them. They were students like me, teachers supplementing their income, and even moms—not wannabe strippers as most outsiders believed. I made great money there and just loved having older “sisters.” As soon as I started getting comfortable in Atlanta, Steve was offered a job in Tampa. I contemplated staying behind on my own, but there I was on a Super Bowl Sunday packing up to go with him.

  Steve and me (notice the infamous MSU sweatshirt) with Girlie, one of my first rescue dogs.

  We settled in North Tampa. I was excited to focus on school, as we were right around the corner from the University of South Florida. We found a nice apartment—fifteen-hundred-dollars-a-month nice. Looking back, I think, Holy cow, that’s as much as I would have paid each month had I bought a house. But this was long before my real estate days. For that moment, I felt like I had really made it, living in an upscale two-bedroom, two-bath luxury unit with all the amenities: dishwasher, granite countertops, plush carpeting, high-end tile, and a washer and dryer. The complex had a pool, a Jacuzzi, tropical landscaping—the works. But it was full of families and older professionals, so there wasn’t much chance to hang out with people my own age. I spent any free time I had soaking up sun around the pool.

  I would continue to get my Hooters education, as I referred to it. I’m sure a lot has changed in the past twenty years, but back in my Hooters days it was rare for a waitress or bartender position to become available. When I got to Tampa, there wasn’t an opening, so I took a position at the Brandon store.

  I’ve held on to my Hooters name tag for all these years; it reminds me how far I’ve come.

  Soon after, a life-changing thing happened while I was getting my Florida driver’s license. The clerk at the DMV, who just looked worn out, was having trouble with her reading glasses and kept adjusting them on her nose and then rubbing her eyes. I don’t know what her problem was, but it turned out to be my good luck. She misread my date of birth, so instead of 1976, she put it down as 1971. Suddenly, with the stroke of a nearsighted clerk’s pen, I was twenty-three. It was just one of those small mistakes in life that turned out to have big consequences.

  With a valid ID, I could go out without Steve. Up to that point, if we wanted to go to a bar or a club, Steve had to slip the door guy or bartender a twenty to get me in. In other words, if I wanted to go out, I had to go out with Steve. Now I could go anywhere I wanted with just my girlfriends. It was yet another crack in the relationship. Maybe it just sped up the inevitable, but I remember this being monumental at the time.

  Hooters, like the rest of Tampa, was money on parade. I had been raised in a completely different world. My family had always budgeted tightly and scrimped and saved. We were far from poor, but now I got to see how millionaires and multimillionaires lived. I thought, There’s real money to be made in this world. This is the side of the fence I want to be on. It wasn’t that I was fixated on money. I just did not want to struggle like my parents had. They had been hurt badly by the downsizing of the automotive industry. I wanted to avoid putting myself in a position like that.

  For all of that, though, something else dawned on me, something that left me a little conflicted. I was raised to value a college education above all else. Where I came from, that was the ticket to a better life. But it hit me that if I went down the traditional road a
nd paid to get a college diploma, what was going to change? I would probably go into debt for it. Then I was going to graduate and go to work for one of these guys at my tables? Making less money than I was making at Hooters? The reality of the situation just kind of drove me nuts. Looking back, I know now that there was a tough business­woman in my head telling me, “Go your own direction.”

  In fact, that’s how the entrepreneur in me looked at waitressing—like I had bought into my own private franchise within that Hooters. My section was my business. It was up to me how much I sold and how much I made. If I moved a lot of beer and chicken wings, the tab would come to a hundred dollars and I’d get twenty. The more tables I turned, the more money I made. I became a crazy waitressing machine. So much so, in fact, that Steve would find me waiting tables in my sleep. While other girls would hang out and socialize on a slow day, you would find me camped out by the front door waiting for people to come in and leading them to my tables.

  Me and Jaime—friends to this day.

  I’ve always been someone who enjoys work. I babysat as soon as I could, and snagged my first real job—when I was twelve—working along with my best friend, Jaime, for a little over two dollars an hour plus all the strawberries we could eat, directing people who came to pick berries on a farm. (No wonder neither of us will go near a strawberry to this day.) My next job was at the car dealership where my aunt was the office manager. I remember sitting there dividing my hourly wage by sixty, calculating my earnings down to the minute. It was frustrating knowing that no matter how much energy I put in at the job, working for an hourly wage I could only make so much. Another friend brought me to work with her, where we did telemarketing for a carpet cleaning company. All I had to do was book appointments and I could earn bonuses. I loved it. I’m a pretty fast talker, and soon the rest of the employees gave me the look because I was outbooking everyone so much that the company changed the quotas. It was an early lesson in keeping your head down and your mouth shut, and to never discuss money.