Nashville’s Renovating Duo
After getting discovered by Magnolia Network founders Chip and Joanna Gaines, married couple Brooke and Brice Gilliam launched their own home renovation show, Making Modern with Brooke and Brice, on the network in 2021. Together they expertly juggle running their build-and-design company and holding down separate full-time jobs. Here they share how they manage it all.
You both have day jobs in addition to your company, Deep South Modern. How do you make it all work?
Brooke: I’m a pharmaceutical rep, and Brice is an orthodontist. It’s a daily challenge, but it’s fun to see what we can accomplish. At the end of the day, we come together to decompress and go over our days, and we always feel we’ve done quite a lot.
Brice, you do the designing while Brooke does the building. Does this swap of typical gender roles confuse people?
Brice: All the time. It’s funny because everyone has their stereotypes. Everybody we meet talks to me about construction and to her about design.
Brooke: People, not just women, have been told for so long what they should and shouldn’t do. If you’re passionate about something, it shouldn’t matter what your gender is—just pursue it.
How did your Nashville home build come about?
Brice: We chose to build our home a little north of the city in its Inner Loop. We wanted to take advantage of our lot’s unobstructed views of the city; we can also see the river.
Brooke: We didn’t have a great experience with our general contractor, though, so about halfway through, we took over building the house. I had just been laid off and was being paid a severance, which gave me time to go to the build site every day and watch as the tradesmen worked. They let me jump in and enjoyed teaching me; my grandfather also worked as a carpenter, so I learned a lot from him as well. Overall, it was a fun experience that turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
Did an architect design your house?
Brice: I actually designed it myself on graph paper.
Brooke: An architect friend also helped us with it. We sent him Brice’s drawings, and he let us know what worked and what didn’t. We created our house plans based on that process.
How did you give your home’s exterior its modern look?
Brice: Our house is mostly composed of stucco and concrete, but we added some wood on the outside to soften its look a little.
Brooke: We also wanted to blend in the very traditional brick on one side of our home with the very modern look on the other.
How would you describe your home’s interior?
Brice: I’m a minimalist: Everything should be in its place, and I don’t want anything on the countertops. Brooke is the opposite. She wants everything to be cozy and comfortable. Most of our home is very neutral and blends our two styles well—we add pops of color with pillows and other decor. I love all the natural light and the plants in our house too.
How did you go from constructing your house to renovating and designing for others?
Brice: Our neighbors watched and cheered us on as we built our home, and once it was finished, they started asking us to work on their projects. Before we knew it, people we didn’t know were reaching out to us. From there, our work blossomed into a full-time business.
Do you do everything yourselves for your clients?
Brooke: I always bring in licensed and insured electricians and plumbers. You can burn a house down or flood it if you don’t do that work correctly. Brice and I like to focus on the custom work for our clients.
What’s the best way to decorate a home?
Brice: It’s important to curate it over time with personal things that mean something to you. You don’t want to just purchase generic pieces from a big-box store. For instance, when you go on vacation, you could pick up a handmade bowl to put your keys in or a unique planter. These items can serve as both personal memories and unique decor. It’s also important to use living plants because they are organic and literally filled with life—nature can be so inspiring and restorative.
What advice do you have for new DIYers?
Brooke: Some projects you can do yourself, and others are best left to the professionals. For example, putting up a kitchen backsplash is a DIY project a beginner can do. Also, if you don’t have tools, you can rent them. That’s what we did at first.
Is it tough meshing your professional and personal lives?
Brice: It’s not very difficult with our build-and-design company. But if she tried to work in my orthodontics office with me, it probably wouldn’t work. [Laughs] I guess whenever she’s the boss, it’s OK.
Brooke: Yeah, I’m the boss because I’m now a licensed general contractor. At his office, he’s the boss as the doctor, so it probably wouldn’t go as well if I worked there.
Do you think you’ll ever quit your day jobs?
Brooke: I don’t know if we will. We enjoy our professional jobs, and we love our company and our show.
Brice: We often joke that we have three or four full-time jobs.
Brooke: It can be hard for us to shut down and slow down because there are always so many things happening at the same time. But we’re learning to make lists and delegate to manage our time better. We rarely have downtime, so our goal is to set aside more hours for us to have time off together.
For more info, visit brookeandbrice.com