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By Claude AI
Jenny and Dave Marrs, the husband-and-wife hosts of HGTV’s FIXER TO FABULOUS, are done competing on ROCK THE BLOCK.
“Never again,” Jenny joked in an exclusive interview with TV Insider published July 1. Dave left himself a little wiggle room, teasing, “Maybe as judges.”
The couple went up against BARGAIN BLOCK’s Keith Bynum and Evan Thomas and UNSELLABLE HOUSES’ Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis during ROCK THE BLOCK’s third season in 2022. MARRIED TO REAL ESTATE’s Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson took home the win. Four years later, the Marrses remember the season as more grinding than glamorous.
“It’s a hard show to do,” Jenny told TV Insider. “It was fun. We had fun with our fellow contestants, but it’s also a really challenging show as a designer, especially because you’re putting your work out there to be judged. It’s a very vulnerable thing.”
That vulnerability, paired with the internet’s running commentary, is what really got to her. ROCK THE BLOCK airs its renovations for viewers to critique week by week, and Jenny said she has no appetite left for that kind of pile-on.
“When the show is airing, people are very, very critical and not encouraging, and I just have no room for that in my life,” she said. “I’m good. It’s very hard.”
Related: HGTV Star Reminded of God’s Abundance After ‘Traumatizing’ Loss
The criticism didn’t stop when the Marrses swapped competing for judging. During a Season 4 episode, the couple sat on the other side of the table, and fans let them have it over their scoring decisions.
“People are so angry about your judging, and you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m just trying to do my best. Sorry,’” Jenny said. “You can never make everyone happy, and people are very opinionated, and they love the show, and they get very excited, and I understand that, but it’s hard to be on the receiving end of that.”
Family logistics made the case even easier. The Marrses hauled all five of their kids to South Carolina for the Season 3 shoot, and the days stretched long: Dave left for the job site by five or six each morning, Jenny got the kids moving and staged houses largely on her own, and the couple barely overlapped before homework and dinner.
“It was just too much,” Jenny said. “It was not sustainable.”
Even so, Dave said the Marrses hold real respect for the designers who return to ROCK THE BLOCK season after season, calling it “a lot of respect for the people that do it year in and year out.”
None of this candor should surprise longtime Movieguide® readers. We’ve tracked the Marrses’ openness about faith and family for years, from their decision to adopt their daughter, Sylvie, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a journey Jenny has said again and again was guided by God’s timing, to Dave’s description of FIXER TO FABULOUS itself as a kind of ministry, one he trusts God to end whenever He’s ready to close that door.
That same conviction seems to be steering this decision. Jenny and Dave aren’t retreating from HGTV; they’re currently filming Season 8 of FIXER TO FABULOUS. They’ve simply learned, and said plainly, which opportunities are worth the toll on their family and which aren’t, a discernment plenty of Christian parents chasing career or ministry doors of their own might recognize.
The couple’s latest project keeps them in more familiar territory: a partnership with Aleve for its Project DIY campaign, centered on a real family’s back-porch renovation. “With any kind of fixing up and any work, there comes pain, and a lot of work,” Dave told TV Insider of the campaign. This time, at least, nobody’s handing out a score.
Read Next: Try Not to Cry as You Read About This HGTV Couple’s Sweet Milestone
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