‘My Big Fat Fabulous Life’ Star Whitney Way Thore Opens Up About Her Homes—and Renovation Plans
On “My Big Fat Fabulous Life,” TLC star Whitney Way Thore’s personal life is on full display—and this season more than ever, so are her homes.
The house Thore lives in now and the family home she grew up in are located minutes apart in Greensboro, NC—and both are at the center of some Season 12 drama.
In the wake of the 2022 death of Whitney’s mom, Barbara “Babs” Thore, her father, Glenn Thore, moved into Whitney’s house and announced plans to sell the family property he still owns. The possibility of losing that sentimental space made an emotional Whitney and her brother, Hunter Thore, devise a plan to renovate a run-down room there to persuade their dad to reconsider.
Curious to find out if their plan worked, we caught up with Whitney to mark the show’s Sept. 24 season finale. She shares all the behind-the-scenes details of the completed makeover and plans for more renovations on both properties—including a room dedicated to the family pets that any animal lover will agree is the cat’s meow.
This season we watch you renovate a room in your father’s house. What was the style of your family home when you were growing up?
I have two childhood homes. The one you see on TV is the one we moved into when I was in high school, but they’re both pretty similar. They’re both two-story brick houses.
I would say the decor is very traditional. It’s ornate, like a lot of big, gold, thick frames, moulding, and curtains with tassels.
The thing that made both my childhood homes so special is that my mother decorated for every single holiday. She even changed out the soap in the bathrooms for the Fourth of July. When it came to Christmas, we had five different trees: One real one and four other ones; they all had themes. She was so thoughtful and it brought so much magic into our home up until adulthood. I remember the first time she said she wasn’t getting the Halloween [decorations] out—we all had to go to therapy, it was gut-wrenching!
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Are there any decor items that belonged to your mom that you saved for yourself?
There’s a Halloween wreath: It’s a wire circle and is from the ’60s or ’70s, so it’s falling apart, but it was my favorite Halloween decoration. The wire circle is a moon and there’s a witch flying through it, and there’s all these little crescent moons hanging off of it.
She has so much cool rattan furniture that she’s had since the ’70s, and so I took a lot of that and repurposed it for my screened-in porch that I renovated in my home. I’ve got a table, a bar cart, this big standing flamingo thing.
My mother loved owls, so we had a lot of owl things in the house. I have a container where you put your spoons and all that kind of stuff. It’s hand-painted from 1977, and whoever did it wrote her name on it, Babs, and so that’s on my kitchen counter and everywhere you turn around there’s a little reminder of my mom.
When was the last time any updates were made to your father’s home?
We moved in 2000, and there’s been no updates or renovations.
In the particular room that you see in the show that I’m renovating, that carpet has been through a pig, a couple of ferrets, seven cats, three dogs—it is really the holder of the memories from all of our animals.
When we moved in, even though my brother and I were teenagers, we called it the playroom and it was the kids’ family room downstairs. At some point, my grandfather moved in that room before he died and I ended up having to move into that room as an adult. Then my brother took over that room as a storage room. It’s the room that birthed all of my dance videos that I did with my dance partner Todd [Beasley] when we were young, so it is such a special room that has held space for so many different people and so many different things.
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What motivated you to finally renovate?
Since my mom passed, my dad has been thinking about selling the house. There’s no mortgage on it so there’s, to me, no real motivation to sell it. My brother and I were affected very emotionally when he told us this. I don’t think we had even thought about it being sold. I was trying to think of a way to transform something in the house so he could see the potential and value in us keeping it because it still really feels to me like my mom is there, and I couldn’t imagine it belonging to someone else at this point in my life.
Your dad initially resisted the renovation. Has he since come around?
I will wake up to a text randomly where he says, “I can’t believe what you did, I love it so much!” It was a huge success. He absolutely loves it, and even though he lives with me, I track him on his phone and every other day I find him over there. He’s just kicking back relaxing in his new space, working on his computer, or doing whatever he needs to do, and that makes me really happy. And there’s been no word about selling the house since.
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What was your vision for the renovation?
It’s a primary bedroom downstairs. It’s got a closet, a wet bar, and a bathroom attached.
In terms of design, I wanted it to be a little bit more masculine, but I really wanted to incorporate pieces of my mom. For example, I picked a wallpaper for the ceiling. It’s a Japanese pagoda pattern. My dad lived in Japan and my mother, her favorite chair, which I now have in my house, was upholstered in this pattern.
I put pictures and little artifacts from my parents’ history in there. My mother used to collect sticks, so I took her best sticks, bundled them, and put them above the headboard. I wanted the space to be where somebody could sleep and stay, but there’s also a couch [and] a desk.
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Were you hands-on during the renovation?
I’m just the brains and the wallet. I had some professionals, but also I had some of my guy friends come in. Todd, for example, he was the one who hung the sticks. I love to figure out how I want everything to be and I get all the materials, and then I like to zoom out and watch it happen. That’s the way I work best.
Did you enjoy the renovation process?
Loved it. I’m a perfectionist, so when I start from zero, I can feel very overwhelmed.
I love to decorate, and I think that I’m good at it. I think I just need to trust myself and through this process, I realized that I really can when it all came together. I picked out my paint and my wallpaper without even looking at them side by side. I just pictured them in my brain, and it was perfect. Everybody has different tastes, but this is a home for me and my family to enjoy and I have a sense of what we like. I just need to trust my gut and lean into my intuition.
I wasn’t happy at first. I thought some things were a little messy. But I was proud of myself because it was a lesson in assertiveness. I basically had to say, “No, I don’t think this is correct.”
As a woman in a world that’s dominated by men, I can feel timid to say, “This isn’t right” or “That’s not good enough.” Since it was for my dad, I was like, “I am going to make sure that it’s perfect,” and it ended up improving almost to my liking. That’s important, especially as a single woman who lives in my house and has been living alone for a long time.
Are there any more renovations planned for your father’s house?
My mother’s crafts closet. It’s all cleaned out now, and I want to make that the litter box room. My brother has three cats, and when he’s in town, they use the litter box a lot. I have [one] in my home [with] a little cat cutout on the door at the bottom so they can walk in. I’d put new flooring, I’d do some shelving to keep all their food to be a cat-specific room.
How do you describe the style of your own home?
I lean more toward modern. When it comes to my home, I get visually overwhelmed, but I also can’t stand how cold really minimalist homes are either. I think I’m pretty much right in the middle.
My kitchen is white, quartz countertops, repainted, new appliances, and I love that, but the rest of the house has a bit of color.
In one of my living rooms, I have blue grasscloth and a beautiful rug from Target that matched perfectly. I actually went back to Target and bought doubles of all the rugs in case I need a new one and they don’t make it because the whole color scheme is based on this rug.
I love animals so I have a lot of animal stuff incorporated. In my foyer, I have this beautiful wallpaper that has toucans on it.
In my mudroom, which when the house was built in the ’60s, that was an outdoor patio and then they made it a mudroom—I call that the cat room because it’s got the litter boxes and all the cat stuff and I have jungle wallpaper in there for the kitties.
I totally renovated the garage. It’s a dance studio, so no cars in there anymore. It’s got a full wall of mirrors, hardwoods, and I painted it all black: The walls, the shelving, cabinets, everything. I have some neon lighting in there and that’s where I film videos for my workout app, No BS Active.
I used to have a crumbling deck, which I got rid of and turned into a screened-in porch with stamped concrete. I did that with my cats in mind because they’re not outdoor cats but I was like, “If they could go outside on this porch they would be so happy.”
I also did the yard. I pulled up all the trees, got a new fence.
My closet used to be two closets and I knocked a wall out and [created] a nice little private space. I redid my bathroom, redid my dad’s bathroom. When I look at the pictures of what this house was, I feel so proud of myself.
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What renovations are on the list for your house?
I want a pool! A small one, like a wading pool.
I hate to say it, but the fence that I just put in, they did not do a good job and it’s starting to bow and it’s not even a year old, so I’m going to redo the fence.
I want to remodel my dad’s bathroom. I did it a little, but I need to redo all the tile. I got us all upgraded toilets—fancy, tankless bidet toilets—but he needs a face-lift in his bathroom.
Is this your forever home?
I love the area that I’m in. I love the work that I put into the house; it feels so personal to me. I love my garage studio, and this house is definitely enough space for me.
I do get frustrated, like I wish this house were new because I’m the type where I’m sitting on the toilet looking at the wall and you can see paint drips because this house has been painted over and over for like 40 years. I get kind of zoned in on those little things and it drives me crazy.
The only reason that I could seriously think about moving is because crazy people know where I live, and they tend to show up at the house and I don’t like that. Other than that this house is home to me.
What advice is worth passing along about taking on a home renovation?
It is so important to not compare ourselves to things online. Everything does not have to look perfect. The internet is not real, television is not real.
It doesn’t matter if you’re living in a little apartment that’s old and outdated, there is still potential for you to make it your own and for you to transform it in so many different ways.
I see people online commenting, “If I could only have a house like that” or “If I had this much money,” and I just really want to discourage that line of thinking. Some people even think, “I don’t want to invest into it because I don’t even really want to be here” or “I’m going to move at some point,” and I would say, obviously, “Make smart decisions, but you’re never going to regret investing into your personal space.” It affects your emotional state so much.
When you go to sleep and wake up in a home that you love, that feels like you, that feels comforting, that’s clean, that gives you joy—to me that is so important. When my house is not in order, I am not in order. So I would encourage people to invest no matter where you are, whether you’re in a trailer, an apartment, whatever. Invest in your space, and don’t compare yourself to things that you see online. I’m not going to base my whole life in this house on if I can sell it or not. I want to like it while I’m here.
The Season 12 finale of “My Big Fat Fabulous Life” airs on Sept. 24 at 9 p.m. on TLC.
