Kortney and Dave Wilson, the stars of Masters of Flip, have made a career out of buying, renovating and then flipping homes, but it wasn’t always what they wanted to do. In fact, they had very different plans before they landed in the flipping business. For those of you who are fans of the show and its two stars, we have 9 things you probably didn’t know about the dynamic duo:
9. When Kortney Met Dave
When Kortney and Dave met, they were both actively pursuing careers in music. Kortney had moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue this dream and Dave had been living in London, England, doing the same thing. They met when in Nashville when he was there for a two-week writing vacation. They met through a mutual friend and they quickly fell in love. Instead of going back to London, Dave decided to stay with Kortney in Nashville.
Source: topcountry.ca
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8. Canucks!
Even though they met in Nashville, Tennesse, they are both from Ontario, Canada. Coming from opposite sides of the province, he hails from Ottawa and she was born in Windsor and raised in Sudbury and Ayr. They both left Canada at the age of 18 to pursue country music careers, which is how they both landed in Nashville.
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7. Television Actress
Kortney grew up doing musical theatre and had a brief stint on the soap opera One Life to Live playing herself. According to her, while she likes acting, it never fed her soul the way that music did. It did feed her bank account, however. “I went back and forth between New York and Nashville and that was fun but music was always where it was at for us, even though it didn’t pay the bills like TV did. Realistically it became too hard [to tour] and we wanted to be home with our kids and TV was another outlet for us,” she told the National Post.
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6. Recording Contracts
Both Kortney and Dave had independent recording contracts. In fact, she worked with Reba McEntire! Although she released two singles as Kortney Kayle on Lyric Street Records, she never released an album. When Kortney finally left her recording contract, Dave followed suit. It was around that point that they decided to get into the flipping business.
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5. Getting Into TV
The super cute couple got their own TV show on CMT called Meet the Wilsons in 2009. It was an eight part half hour series directed and edited by Bill Filipiak that followed the couple during their first flips. In 2011, CMT gave them a daytime talk show slot, Kortney & Dave: By Request, which they used to address audience members renovation issues.
Source: keoni-keur-asd1.squarespace.com
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4. Becoming Professional Flippers
When the economy crashed in 2008, Kortney and Dave were looking for new ways to make money while still being able to spend time with their three children and they went from singing, which wasn’t paying the bills, to renovating. Kortney became a real estate agent and took over decorating duties on-set while he has sixth sense for recognizing areas that are going to become popular.
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3. First Flip
For the first house they flipped, they used the $70,000 worth of equity in their house to buy a fixer upper in an affordable neighborhood in Nashville. Even though they didn’t have any contracting experience or handyman skills, they did a decent job fixing the new place up. Kortney did the painting and Dave replaced the windows. They had hoped to make $10,000 in one month on the project, but ended up making $25,000!
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2. Dave the Server
When they were first getting into the flipping business, Dave was serving and it wasn’t helping them make ends meet. They were also in out and out of publishing deals and still making music. “We did eventually get another record deal and we were on the road and that led to our own reality show on CMT where they followed our family. We got that by writing our own treatment and shopping it. That started our life on television,” Kortney told the National Post.
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1. Family
Kortney and Dave have two biological children, Jett and Sully, and an adopted daughter, Lennox. The mother of three always knew that she wanted to adopt a child and even told Dave on their first date! “When I met Dave, one of the very first things I said, no joke, was, ‘Someday I want to adopt a baby, and if this is a deal-breaker for you just let me know!’ He was, of course on a first date, saying, ‘Oh no, that sounds great!’” she told the This Mom Loves blog. While she was still nursing Sully, they got the process started and the rest is history!