Free House

This Texas home is up for grabs in HGTV's latest smart-home sweepstakes

If you're willing to click twice a day, you could be cooking in this kitchen.

Jennifer Boomer/Getty Images

Texas is where it's at for the latest HGTV "Smart Home," an annual sweepstakes in which the grand prize is a newly built, fully furnished home, along with a 2020 Mercedes Benz GLE and $100,000 from LendingTree.

The 2019 Smart Home is in Roanoke, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth, in a development called Fairway Ranch, a sustainable community with walking trails, greenbelts, a community pool, and parks.

To get a shot at winning, go to HGTV's website and submit an entry, which you can do twice a day. The sweepstakes begins at 9 am April 24.

For perspective, the 2018 sweepstakes drew 95 million total entries.

The Roanoke house is a 3,400-square-foot, single-level Southern contemporary with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms that blends top tech with Texas style.

Features include a media room, 3-D movie theater, home office, playroom, master suite, and butler's pantry. An outdoor patio boasts a grilling and gaming area, movie screen, and covered spaces for dining and relaxing.

The house was designed by Tiffany Brooks, HGTV's go-to interior designer; she won the network's competition show HGTV Design Star in 2013. The HTGV website includes a video of Brooks explaining her process.

"I can't just put cowboy boots and hats up on the wall," she says. "I need to be not so cliche." Cliche is a noun. She clearly meant to say "cliched" with a D, which is the adjective form of cliche.

There's also a video announcing the location that relies on more cliches in its description of Roanoke. They call it a "Dallas-Fort Worth suburb," and show a panorama of images all focusing on Dallas, including the Dallas skyline and noted Dallas icons such as the Traveling Man sculpture in Deep Ellum.

HGTV launched the Smart Home sweepstakes in 2008 as an offshoot of its similar, long-running "Dream Home" giveaway. Prior Smart Home locations have included Scottsdale, Nashville, and Austin, which was the location of the 2015 Smart Home. Many of the winners end up selling the house rather than moving into it.

Eligible viewers can enter to win on HGTV.com. The giveaway period runs through June 10. You can also sign up for daily email reminders.

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GOB Sale

All Austin-area Big Lots stores hold going out of business sales

Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Big Lots

Discount retail chain Big Lots is hosting a massive "GOB" — going out of business — sale, in anticipation of a possible company-wide closure.

The Columbus, Ohio-based chain has not come out and said it is going out of business — but instead that is holding the going-out-of-business sales to protect the value of the company.

"We all have worked extremely hard and have taken every step to complete a going concern sale," Big Lots President and CEO Bruce Thorn said in a statement. "While we remain hopeful that we can close an alternative going concern transaction, in order to protect the value of the Big Lots estate, we have made the difficult decision to begin the GOB process."

The sell-off comes after a stalled sale of Big Lots to Nexus Capital Management, which was in motion after Big Lots initiated bankruptcy proceedings under Chapter 11 in September.

At that time, they executed a first round of closings — a total of 344 stores that included just one in the Austin area. More rounds of closures followed in the coming months.

On December 19, Big Lots determined that the sale would not be moving forward.

According to Fast Company, Big Lots did not explain why it was unable to complete a sale to Nexus, other than reports that an appraisal of Big Lots' inventory came in below expectations, which would make it unviable for Nexus Capital Management buy the company.

While they continue to look for alternatives, the plan now is to do the GOB sale in anticipation of a company shutdown.

Fans will miss Big Lots for their good-quality furniture, household goods, seasonal items, and gourmet foodstuffs, as well as basics like cleaning products and cereal.

There are currently four stores still operating in the Austin area:

Cedar Park: 850 N Bell Blvd., Ste. 104
Round Rock: 1201 S. Interstate 35, Ste. 200, Round Rock
Spicewood Springs: 8666 Spicewood Springs Rd.
Southeast Austin: 801 E. William Cannon Dr., Ste. 135b

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