Nicole Curtis Returns to HGTV’s ‘Rehab Addict’ After 3 Years Following a Major ‘Setback’ (Exclusive)

Nicole Curtis is back for a new season of Rehab Addict — and she’s made a long journey to get here.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the star shared that a difficult experience in her personal life became a turning point for her, and led her back to her HGTV roots and two wild new projects.

“I had a setback in my life that just rocked me to the core, and it was one of those moments where I thought, how do I get through this one?” Curtis says. She’s keeping the exact nature of the incident private for now, but says it led her to make a big decision about her priorities. “I prayed on it and it was just devastating for me. I had to make a decision right there and then like, ‘Okay, we’re going to let this affect us for a very long time, or we’re going to pick it up and go.’”

On a whim one evening in July 2022, Curtis, 48, decided she wanted to travel from her home in Detroit to the Greek island of Corfu that same night.

She immediately flew to Paris, where she planned to spend a one-day layover shopping — however, after she boarded the flight, she had a heart-stopping realization.

“I didn’t realize until I was up in the air paying for my WiFi that I left my wallet behind,” she says. “I didn’t have a credit card on me. I had $72 of change in dollar bills stashed in my bag. So I landed in Paris without a wallet. I thought, well, you know what? This is it. This is my test. I’m going to figure it out.”

Fortunately, a friend was able to transfer her some money via Western Union.

“It was so crazy that I was like, ‘This was a sign’ and I made it through,” she recalls of reframing a near-disaster travel day. She made the most of her layover in the meantime. “I put on my running shoes, I ran all the way around the Eiffel Tower and I biked around the [Champs-Élysées]. I did everything I wanted to do.

But the spur-of-the-moment bucket list choices didn’t stop there. “I was like, ‘Okay, what am I doing?’ I went out that night, I bought a house online ’cause I was like, ‘I’m going to knock off all my wish lists tonight. We’re doing it.’” The house was in Wyoming, an 1890s flip gone wrong that was in need of some major help. As a veteran HGTV star, the project was right in her wheelhouse, but the timing — and her personal circumstances — were a bit unusual.

Unfortunately, the chaotic trip only escalated from there. The next morning, she overslept and missed her connecting flight from Paris to Corfu the next morning. She was faced with two options, she recalls.

“I was either going to get stuck in Paris for the next week” or turn around and go back to the States and dive into her new project, she says. “All the flights were sold out and this kind woman on the Delta help line was like, ‘I can get you from JFK to Salt Lake City, then you can drive to Wyoming.’ I said, ‘That’s what I’m going to do.’ And that’s what I did.”

The same helpful friend FedExed Curtis her wallet when she got to Salt Lake City, and then she went straight to the home she’d just bought.

“This house needed me and I needed this house,” she recalls.

In the upcoming ninth season of Rehab Addict, which premieres on June 24, Curtis restores both that Wyoming home and a troubled Detroit property that had been invaded by squatters.

She calls the new episodes “an evolved version” of the show, heading in a new direction from where the original and her spinoffs, Rehab Addict Rescue and Rehab Addict: Lake House Rescue, left off.

“I’m no longer this little poor mommy in Minneapolis driving around with this pickup truck with two dogs and a kid,” she says. “But I’m still me, I’m still Nicole Curtis from Detroit, and I want you to save that building and we’re going to do it.”

“I think everyone will be so excited, because you see a lot of familiar faces,” she adds of the show’s big comeback. “All the guys on my crew that [viewers have] loved over the years, they’re back. We’ve all stayed friends and they’re here.”

Still, she says, “old school fans” will feel right at home.

“I think that this season has the feel of season one, season two. The houses are smaller,” she explains. “We’ve done a lot of big projects over the years, and my lake house… that was like a bougie series. I’m building my million-dollar lake house. I was still saving an old house, but it wasn’t ‘Nicole Curtis on the brink of bankruptcy’ if this one doesn’t sell, like the old school ones.”

Another difference will be the absence of her family from the series. Curtis has two sons: Ethan, whom she welcomed in 1997 with her ex Steven Cimini, and Harper, born in 2015, whom she shares with ex Shane Maguire.

Ethan appeared on the show when he was younger, but this time around he’s staying out of the limelight, she says.

“I learned my lesson,” she says. “I think there’s one gift we can give our children, and I give them privacy. They’re out in public with me a lot, and I shield them. My son, when we first started the TV show years ago, we didn’t have all the social media presence. He was in sixth grade, he thought it was cool, and his buddies thought it was cool to be on TV. And they still make fun of him because they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can see you as a young boy, you had braces’ and all this. But I won’t do that again. My boys are my most precious, precious things in the entire world to me.”

One person who does appear on season 9 is Curtis’ ex-boyfriend Ryan Sawtelle, who works as a carpenter on the Wyoming property.

“We were together a long time and I was very close to his family,” Curtis explains of why she invited him on the show. “So we never really stayed out of contact. Your lives are so enmeshed.”

“I didn’t know anyone in Wyoming, but I knew somebody near Wyoming, and so I gave him a call,” she adds of Sawtelle. “We just went out there together and checked out the house. It wasn’t anything else. There was definitely no reconciliation or ‘Maybe this was a mistake not being together.’ No, no, no, …. Us going separate paths was a hundred percent the best idea that we ever had.”

Curtis is staying mum on whether she’s currently seeing anyone romantically.

“I keep my private life private and because I think there’s been some very traumatic moments in my life that weren’t so private,” she says. “Another lesson learned. I tell people all the time, if you’re in my circle, then you know what’s going on in my life. Other than that, I stay pretty mute about everything.”

Curtis went through a years-long custody battle over Harper with Maguire and became a vocal advocate for the rights of breastfeeding mothers. Her decision to continue to breastfeed Harper at age 3 drew criticism from some and became a point of contention in her legal fight with Maguire. The former couple reached a custody agreement in October 2018.

“Our family went through a lot over the years, and so that’s definitely something that I have done my best to keep my family out of the public eye and focus on the houses,” she adds. “That’s always where we wanted that focus to be.”

It was Curtis’ sons who inspired her favorite part of filming the new season.

“I got to ride in a monster truck,” she reveals. “That might seem kind of silly, but I have boys, right? I’m a boy mom and so I’ve always loved monster trucks. I think they’re amazing. And I always said like, ‘Man, I want to go in a monster truck and I want to jump them. And lo and behold, in this little tiny town in Wyoming, they had a monster truck rally.”

That’s at least one bucket list item that went to plan for the star. To find out how her high-risk rescues fare, fans will have to tune into the new season.

Rehab Addict premieres on HGTV on June 24 at 9 p.m.