‘The Mother Flip’: Kristy Etheredge & Rebecca Franchione Reveal What Makes Their Home Reno Show Unique

Kristy Etheredge and Rebecca Franchione are best friends, neighbors, and stars of The Mother Flip. A&E’s newest addition to its Home.Made.Nation lineup follows the two go-getters and their contractor, Roy Salinas, as they transform homes in Texas’ Hill Country into sought after properties to turn a profit. The stakes are high with all-in cash deals, tight deadlines, and unique challenges to overcome for each project they tackle. 

During the August 16 premiere, the flippers have their work cut out for them with an Austin residence. Even before the renovation phase, there was a house full of junk to work through, not to mention an overgrown backyard and kitchen and primary bath in need of some major TLC. 

Etheredge lives with her husband Wade and their two teenage children. She brings more than 25 years of marketing, sales, event design, and management to the table. Franchione is newly divorced after 25 years of marriage to college football coach Brad. The mom of three has been active in the nonprofit space. Together, they’ve found success as business partners. 

We sat down with Etheredge and Franchione to talk about what makes their show stand out. 

Ilana Panich Linsman/A&E

How did the show come together? 

Rebecca Franchione: In 2018, my son did a Microsoft Christmas commercial with his best friend, then a Microsoft Super Bowl commercial. I got introduced through mutual friends to Brent Montgomery. [Executive producer] Joe Weinstock was Brent Montgomery’s vice president at the time. The boys were maybe going to have their little show. COVID happened, so nothing came to fruition. Joe and I stayed in touch. I moved in July 2020 and met Kristy. She lived across the street. We started flipping houses. We were getting red light therapy at the spa one day, and I thought, “I should check in with Joe.” I told him, “By the way, my friend and I were flipping houses in Hill Country.” He wrote back, “That could be a show.” That was three years ago next week. 

Kristy Etheredge: We had never met each other. Just to meet and feel this energy… Hill Country is so unique. A lot of people aren’t aware how unique it is. 

What do you say each brings to the table? 

Franchione: I’m a huge gambler. I love to roll the dice. I can walk through a house, and I’m a huge visionary. I have all these wild and crazy ideas. Kristy always says I can have the best bait in life on the hook and throw it out there, and she has to reel me back into reality. I have these grand ideas. Kristy is more logistics, the budget, and the reality. I’m more of the big dreamer. We have a great balance together. Being across the street from your best friend and being in business together, and now having a show together, there is nothing like it. I think we balance each other out. She is very detail oriented. I’m more grand ideas. 

Etheredge: Energy-wise, we are very similar. I’m about strategy and operations. I am about the nitty-gritty. We push each other’s boundaries where it is this beautiful balance with design and function and operations and budget. It just works. When she designs, I also have a background in experiential marketing. So there are the beautiful touchpoints of the house, and Rebecca’s design hits on all those touchpoints. We just speak each other’s language. 

Rebecca, being newly divorced, what has it been like to enter this next chapter of career and life? 

Franchione: I don’t have any family in Texas. Most of my family is in Arkansas with my mom and stepdad living in Hawaii. I was married for 25 years to a college football coach and moved all across the country. My father-in-law was a football coach as well. That was my entire life. I volunteered and stayed home with the kids. Then reality hits where you’re not going to have the same life you are accustomed to your entire adult life. So for me, just having her here has been, I can’t even describe it. Divorce is like — you know, I’m happy I got divorced. It can be painful, but for me, I’m happy I got divorced. It was still a long process. It was so nice to have Kristy across the street. 

My son went off to college. I still had two kids at home. It was my daughter’s senior year. Here I was, and we are starting to flip houses. The bricks were starting to be laid before the show came to fruition. I always say buildings are just bricks, but it’s the people that make the difference. I feel like she and I started putting together these houses, and divorce came, and it became starting over. Ironically, my divorce was final the same day I signed my TV show contract. That was crazy. 

Etheredge: And when the septic goes out, she calls Kristy to run up the hill to help. 

Franchione: Or if my son gets his golf cart stuck in a ravine, Kristy and I are out there at midnight pushing my son out, who snuck out by the way, of the ravine. We also had a deer stuck in our fence. I had to call her at midnight. That was a whole adventure in itself, and we filmed it. 

What does the family think of this career choice? 

Etheredge: My husband is super supportive. My kids are younger. Harper is 13, and Winston is 15. They just see me as a regular mom. They go into our houses and are like, “Wow!” They love to see the before and after of it. Rebecca’s kids will come out and work and help. We would like to make it a family affair. This is how we make money. This is a male-dominated industry. A lot of times, women are looked down upon. Some of the bids, they didn’t know we had Roy in our back pocket. It would always be double what you would normally pay. They are often surprised when we push them. They are not often prepared for the pushback. 

Franchione: Or the knowledge we have. I applaud Roy. He said, “I want you girls to build these houses up from scratch. Go through the permitting and foundation from the ground up.” It gave us so much more knowledge in the building process. 

Kristy Etheredge and Rebecca Franchione with contractor Roy Salinas (Ilana Panich Linsman/A&E)

How did your partnership with Roy come about? 

Franchione: I started two food programs at my kids’ former school district. One was to feed athletes. They were attending Title I schools. You have to stay at school until the game, so they are starving. I’d sack lunches for $2. We’d help kids every week who couldn’t afford it. Roy’s grandson and my oldest son played football together. His other grandson and my youngest son were best friends. I organized a parent-teacher softball game. I met him at field day again during the last day of school. We saw each other at football games. When we launched the food program, his company donated $1,500 to get it started. It went from there. When he would make the drive over from Austin, I told him he had to get a house over here because he would come over this way constantly. Kristy said she had this house in the neighborhood that was like a cat hotel with 18 cats.

Etheredge: We brokered the deal on a napkin. 

Franchione: I brokered a deal that if we got him the house for under $400,000, then I wanted him to excavate my backyard for free for a soccer field for my daughter. And he did because we got the house for him at that price point. 

What are some of the challenges you face with these projects? 

Franchione: I love that A&E challenged us to make every house unique. A lot of these shows are where everything is cookie-cutter. There are 10 houses, and every house is unique. We went on using our experiences in life with the houses… You get to see the different parts of Hill Country. I always say Hill Country is the heartbeat of Texas. You have good music, lakes, rivers, and great people. You have these two cities anchoring it with the north side being Austin and south side being San Antonio and everywhere in between with Hill Country. 

Etheredge: Hill Country presents challenges big time because it’s not traditional. You have sloped land, limestone, and all kinds of wild animals. It’s just crazy, but we love that. It really pushes us. Sometimes we make a plan to dig down and can’t get through the rock.  Not only that, it’s everything we do. The way we soar is sustainable flipping. We reuse and recycle. We try to save materials and use them on other projects. We’re all about supporting the community. We go to Habitat for Humanity all the time where traditional flippers use the same strategy whether it’s the same floor or fans. What they are missing out on is that there are better deals than the big box stores. You just have to seek them out. It’s not more time consuming either and saves a lot of money on your bottom line. 

Franchione: Both river houses we did that. One we built a picnic table out of a pile of rocks. I had this vision for an outdoor shower that would be a fortune, but we were able to pull rocks from the property and found a log along the river. We used piping through the log, and it just cost us a bag of concrete to build the shower. We did outdoor fireplaces out of rocks. We built a pavilion using a house we demoed. We love using the outdoor spaces. That is trending right now, bringing outdoors in and using real plants other than fake plants, bringing natural light in. I just think Hill Country represents what we are seeing in design now. 

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What did you take from this experience filming? 

Etheredge: I’ve never done this in my entire life. I’ve done two commercials. I’m from the smallest country town. I’ve shown pigs and was a cheerleader and all these things. I was in 4-H. It was really cool. I feel we are blessed because A&E followed our process, which is different from other flippers. They allowed us to be ourselves. We have such a strong connection, I forgot the cameras. I feel grateful for the opportunity. 

Franchione: I felt it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I hope it goes on for multiple seasons. It was amazing. It was hot as balls when we started filming. It was 100 degrees. We were in a house where the HVAC got stolen. Then, we filmed through the winter where it was cold. Kristy and I are not just talking heads. When we do these home renovations, we are digging and knocking down walls. We’re not just showing up and telling people what to do. We are getting down and dirty and doing the work. We are also about saving money. If we can remove the cabinets ourselves and save $1,000, we’re going to do it. We’re going to figure it out. 

Etheredge: It’s pure joy saving money. A lot of people think flipping requires a lot of money. We also want to show there are other ways to do that. 

The Mother Flip, Series Premiere, Saturday, August 16, 12/1c, A&E