Dave & Jenny Marrs Spill Surprising Details About Filming Their HGTV Show: ‘Mass Chaos’

Though Dave and Jenny Marrs have starred on “Fixer to Fabulous” since 2018, the popular HGTV couple says filming renovations and their life at home is still “mass chaos.”

In early February 2025, when the Marrs spoke to the men’s club at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Bella Vista, Arkansas — not far from their family’s farmhouse in nearby Bentonville — the Weekly Vista reported some of the little-known, behind-the-scenes details the duo shared with the audience of about 170.

Dave & Jenny Marrs Reveal ‘Fixer to Fabulous’ Filming Tricks

With HGTV now airing the sixth season of “Fixer to Fabulous,” the Marrs know the hurdles they’ll have to jump through to make each season a success, including sped-up renovation timelines and filming tricks. Noting that it typically takes a year to renovate a house, Jenny told the St. Bernard crowd that they usually have less than two months to complete each home transformation seen on their show.

“It’s pretty crazy,” she said. “It’s mass chaos. It’s nonstop during filming season.”

And much of what their producers film winds up getting edited out, Dave admitted, telling the group that for every 43-minute episode that airs, 120 hours of film gets scrapped. Jenny also revealed that for filming days at homes they’re renovating, she often packs multiple outfits for shooting scenes so it looks like they’re being filmed on different days.

“When you’re filming it’s a long day,” Dave told the crowd, per the Weekly Vista, “because you’re having to smile and be present the entire time.”

Dave & Jenny Marrs Turned HGTV Down 3 Times Before Filming Pilot for Show

The Marrs never expected to become HGTV stars when they moved to Bentonville in 2004. In fact, they told the St. Bernard crowd that they turned down a producer’s requests to film a pilot with their family three times, worried that it would be too time consuming as they raised their young children.

The couple has five kids, including daughter Sophie, whom they adopted from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa. Sharing that journey, and their fundraising efforts to help families in her home country thrive, was what finally convinced the Marrs to give HGTV a shot, knowing that it wasn’t likely their pilot would turn into a full-fledged TV show.

According to the Vista Weekly, Dave told the audience that HGTV typically films 70 to 80 pilots a year and only 10 to 12 go on to film a full first season. Their pilot was originally called “Almost Home,” per House Beautiful, and several months after it aired in November 2017, HGTV ordered a full season and a new name.

The journey hasn’t always been smooth, as they’ve dealt with online hate and legal speed bumps over the years, but overall, the Marrs are thrilled about what they’ve been able to accomplish. With close to 100 episodes completed, a stat that Dave told the audience is “unheard of in TV,” the Marrs are amazed at how their life has unfolded and grateful they get to share stories that matter to them.

“We didn’t think we’d be doing it this long,” Dave told the St. Bernard audience. “We feel like it’s a ministry. We feel like when we’re not supposed to do the show anymore, God will say ‘I’m closing this door and opening another one.'”

“Fixer to Fabulous” airs Tuesday nights on HGTV at 8 p.m. Eastern time.