When Ty Pennington teased in his post that he worked as a catalog model, he wasn't joking. According to Wide Open Country, the TV tradesman got discovered in his last semester of college at the Art Institute of Atlanta and worked per Notable Biographies as a print model for brands like J.Crew, and Macy's, and even did TV ads for Diet Coke and Levi's.

While he likes to joke about his early career, as a now seasoned TV star, Pennington knows that modeling opened up doors to him in the entertainment industry, and gave him a cultural experience in his younger years that he might not have experienced otherwise. On his website he explains, "my modeling career gave me the travel bug and opened up a ton of new worlds and possibilities in my life. All of a sudden I was traveling everywhere and seeing everything including things like art, furniture, and architecture in a completely different way. Because of this, I lend a lot of my inspiration for design to the places I've visited and/or lived in."