There once was a house in Casa Linda with a pool filled with goldfish swimming in muddy water. And then Paige Poupart moved in.
Step one was resolving the backyard situation. However, she is still haunted by nightmares about the experience.
Step two was “girl power everything.”
The front door? It’s pink now. So is the entry way. Poupart doesn’t even like pink. But she has two daughters, and it’s her “divorce house” — no need to ask permission to make any changes.
Since then, Poupart has been renovating the home room by room. She has garnered thanks from neighbors for her work fixing up the house, and she recently caught national attention as a co-host of HGTV’s Renovation Impossible. On the show, the trio of Poupart, Russell Holmes and Steve Mabry help Dallas-area homeowners accomplish huge renovation projects on tight budgets.
Poupart spends her time wearing multiple hats: as a mom, fiancé (she’s engaged to Russell Birk, owner of Maya’s Modern Mediterranean), real estate broker, designer, house flipper and TV personality.
You filmed a pilot episode for HGTV with your dad several years ago. How is he involved in your work?
My dad is kind of the fixer. He is a master craftsman. He’s been a general contractor since, probably, he could walk. He’s only ever done that. That’s his job. But he’s not a general contractor like a point and shoot guy. He’s the guy that actually gets dirty, shows people how to do it. Someone’s always doing something wrong, literally, and he says, “No, no, no, stop. I gotta fix it.” And he shows them how it’s supposed to be done. So he comes in on my projects and does the majority of the general contracting, although I do work with other the general contractors too.
Did you think you would end up with the career that you have?
Not at all. I have my bachelor of fine art degree in portrait painting. I went to school to be a portrait painter and graduated, and I’m good at it. I’m very, very good at it. Not that it didn’t pay the bills, but at the end of the day, I was always still doing a project — a house project, construction project, design project — and it was more fun. So we just kind of went that direction. And I think what you focus on grows, and I just accidentally focused on that too much because I loved it.
How did you become interested in interior design?
I worked for my dad vacuuming floors in high school. I’d go to the job sites, and he’d pay me whatever predetermined amount. I didn’t work by the hour. I didn’t believe in working by the hour. It was always by the job. At some point, I spoke up, because I’m pretty opinionated, on how the homeowner was doing part of the design aspect of one of their houses. And I said, “This should be like this.” I was like 16. “If I were doing this, I would put this over here, put this over here; it’ll look better. And this window should be over here,” whatever it was. And then the homeowner called my dad that night and said, “Hey, can we hire Paige to consult on this with us? We want more of her opinions.” And then it just kind of avalanched out of that, where we work together on a lot of projects. Or I would go get a design job, someone wanted my expertise, and I needed someone like my dad to make it happen and put all the pieces together.
Was it weird being filmed?
No. You imagine a reality TV show to be like the Kardashians, right, where they just follow them around? It’s really structured. That’s why they call it structured reality TV. I show up. I know what I’m gonna do that day. I have all my tools in my car. This is the project. They’re gonna tell me when they’re ready to shoot. They turn the camera on, and I’m gonna talk about what I’m making so somebody knows, and then they’re gonna just watch while I do it for a while, and then they’re gonna leave and then come back later when it’s done.
What were some of your favorite projects you did during the show?
The atrium in the Diamonds’ house was a project that I fought for. I wanted to do it. I knew from day one that it was probably gonna be cost prohibitive to close it in, and I loved it. How many times do you have a garden in the middle of the house? I like the quirky, weird stuff about houses. That’s why I don’t build new houses. I like to take an old house and work with what we have. I want all the bones. The atrium was fun. I had an idea in my head of what that was gonna look like. It turned out really really good, all the faux plants and the hanging things. I kind of approach design from a perspective of, Would I want this in my own house? And that’s how I did it with that.
Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
Instagram, Pinterest, going in other people’s houses, traveling. I’ve been lucky to have a client that has me on a project in Mexico, in Playa del Carmen. Anytime you leave the country, there’s a whole new world of cultural aesthetic that, A, I had to work with because it was hard to get furniture down there. And, B, was just a nice, different point of reference.
Is there one part of your job that you like best?
I don’t think there’s one favorite over the other. I really love flipping houses. I love walking into grandma’s house that hasn’t changed and keeping the bones and keeping the integrity of the house but bringing it up to speed for a modern family. That’s really important to me.
What do you look for in a house to flip?
I look for the bones to be really cool, the bones of the house meaning there’s gotta be something interesting about it. I always look for pier-and-beam houses because moving plumbing underneath the house is way easier than having to jack up a slab foundation. Always. I stay in East Dallas. But then everything else is flexible. The yard should be pretty cool. It either has to have good curb appeal, or it has to have a badass backyard. One or the other.
Do you have any design tips to share?
From a house resale perspective, put furniture in your houses. If you’re gonna sell a house, have it be furnished. Pay for staging. Try not to make it look like a hotel. I try to make my houses, when we go to list them, look strategically organic. I leave a hat right on the chair next to a throw blanket, right? This is not a hotel. Somebody lives here. Always do the windows. Always do the skylight. I always bring color in the stuff that’s easily changeable. We don’t do accent walls.
Interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
