Flip or Flop’s Tarek and Christina El Moussa’s ‘Rustic-Glam’ House Took 2 Years to Renovate!

Credit: Joe Schmelzer

As the stars of HGTV’s Flip or Flop, Tarek and Christina El Moussa are pros at making houses move-in-ready in no time, but the process of renovating their own home was anything but quick.

“We thought it would take about six months to finish our house, and it actually took two years,” says Tarek, 35.  “We actually kind of remodeled our home twice. The first remodel was about 25 percent in, and it was a totally different look — it was more browns, beige, more of a rustic look.”

But then Christina, 33, decided she wanted to take the design in another direction.

“As it started I was like, ‘I just love gray, black and white, and I really want to move forward with that look,’” she says. “So we just ended up clearing everything out and starting fresh.”

And that wasn’t an only bump in the road. Other construction issues led to the HGTV stars and their two kids, son Brayden, 1, and daughter Taylor, 6, having to temporarily move to a hotel for three months.

“Then we lived with my parents for another month, and then we still moved back into a construction zone for a few months,” says Christina.

But now they have “the house we’ve been dreaming of our entire lives together,” says Tarek. “It was a very stressful process, but somehow we pulled it off.”

Their seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom Yorba Linda, California dream home (which is now five bedrooms and a spacious gym) includes lots of personal touches and custom pieces.

“For flips, we want to make it appeal to the masses because we’re trying to appeal to every different type of buyer, but for our own house, we were a little more creative, a little more personal,” says Christina. “I personally love the rustic glam look, so it has a lot of wood elements, rock and outdoor-looking pieces, but also chandeliers, mirrored furniture and shaggy white rugs, so it has masculine and girly elements.”

And while they are not planning on reselling their house, they still chose features that would make it a good flip if they ever do decide to sell.

“We tried to choose some elements that are timeless as far as the dark cabinets and marble,” says Christina. “We picked stuff that we thought that we wouldn’t get sick of, and that eventually if we ever sold, that other buyers would also like.”

This article originally appeared on People.com.