Chase and Sarah Morrill spent nine months rescuing a crumbling 19th-century estate in Monmouth, Maine, and turning it into a nine-bedroom bed & breakfast, with Magnolia Network cameras rolling for every leak, splinter and setback.
“It was the perfect name for the show because we’re a hundred percent in,” Chase, star of the Magnolia Network hit MAINE CABIN MASTERS, told TV Insider. “Sarah has to be onboard. I have to be onboard. The kids have to be on board, and the Cabin Masters have to be on board.”
MAINE CABIN MASTERS: ALL INN premieres July 19 at 9 p.m. ET on HGTV and moves to Magnolia Network on July 27. The six-hour spinoff follows the Morrills as they resurrect a piece of the old Woolworth Estate, now open to guests as the Waters Run Bed & Breakfast.
Sarah, co-owner of the Kennebec Cabin Company, said Chase had driven past the property since childhood, and buying it felt less like ambition than answering a door already cracked open.
“The building is incredible. The historical character of the building is what we fell in love most about it,” she told TV Insider. “It fits perfectly with what we’re trying to do, which is celebrate this part of Maine and welcome them and show them a sort of off the beaten path part of Maine that we call home.”
The scope was punishing. Twelve bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, 12 heat pumps, three new outbuildings and interior walls made of concrete-based plaster that fought back like rock.
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“It wouldn’t be a MAINE CABIN MASTERS project without rot,” Chase said. There was plenty of that, too.
The financial squeeze ran alongside the physical one. “It was nine months of watching the bank account dwindle,” Chase told TV Insider. “We kind of estimated what it would take to get it back up. I think we underestimated just how bad some areas were.”
What kept the couple steady, married more than 20 years with four children in the mix, sounds less like a construction strategy and more like a family creed.
“Family involvement. Showing the kids not to be afraid of hard work and getting your hands dirty and the reward and fulfillment of finishing a project like that,” Chase said. “I think grit and determination and hard work and a positive attitude goes a long way.”
Sarah added that leaving the jobsite by 3:45 p.m. for a soccer game, a ski meet, or a tennis match was non-negotiable, even when deadlines howled. That ordering, kids first and the passion project second, is a quiet counterpoint to the workaholism that so often creeps into home-renovation television.
Movieguide® readers may recognize the Magnolia Network sensibility. Dude Dad creator Taylor Calmus, whose Magnolia series SUPER DAD earned Movieguide® Award recognition, told Movieguide® in a previous interview that the show “isn’t about building cool structures. It’s about building memories. It’s about creating things that help bring dads together with their kids.” The Morrills appear to be working from the same blueprint, just with more chimneys.
There is no altar call in the promo reel and no verse card in the parlor. But the ethic on display, a steady marriage, involved parenting, and the choice to honor what previous generations built rather than tear it down for something shinier, is the kind of thing Christian families notice and appreciate.
The inn opened its doors a week ago Friday. “It was pretty unreal,” Sarah said. “There were several times throughout the day where I thought, ‘It’s actually happening.'”
Business is starting slow, which the Morrills welcome. Their first guests, Sarah said, were diehard MAINE CABIN MASTERS fans, kind and forgiving of a couple of leaky shower drains. Grace, it turns out, checks in with the luggage.
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