No one can forget Hildebeast and the straw wall. But there are some that are fading in my memory. Does anyone remember the names of these shows/designers?
There was a deep-voiced woman who didn’t actually design but got mid-western housewives to craft the hell out of one room. Also the black woman (on Trading Spaces or While You Were Out ) who turned a poor, unsuspecting woman’s bedroom into a grave.
I can’t think of any current design shows that are that spectacularly bad.
I didn’t watch THAT much Trading Spaces, but even I saw the straw wall episode. And the grave. I’m pretty sure that was Trading Spaces as well. I seem to remember Astroturf being the lawn over the grave.
I remember the woman with short blondish hair that had a thing for heavy vibrant colors and she had a horror of white or light beige neutral paint [or so it seemed] I think she was Canadian. And then there was the guy that looked and acted gay but I think it was claimed he was straight. He was on at about the same vintage. [This would have been early to mid 90s]
I think you’re thinking about Frank, who was as fruity as a bowl of Trix despite being long married.
The graveyard bedroom was by Kia.
I remember one of them on Trading Spaces thought a couch set was the wrong color, so she painted it. Specifically she spray-painted the couch fabric. She then left them outside, in Seattle, to dry. It rained.
Sometimes it seemed like the producers had to rush the designers out of town after their work was ‘revealed’.
I know if I were the flower-shower people, they’d have to have held me back from Hildi. That was just horribly wrong, and I really hope the show paid to have all that drywall replaced and sealed.
There was also some horrible woman with a show on PBS or something where she painted everything. Including a fake throw rug on someone’s beautiful hardwood floor.
No, neither of mine were on Trading Spaces, they had their own no shit hour long shows. My google-fu sucks tonight, I can not seem to come up with the right word combination to get the shoes I want.
These both had shows on he Learning Channel, if memory serves she was on around 11 am, and he had his show shortly after hers. He was thin, dark haired like the guy who currently has that show based on colors, and he was about the same age back in the 90s. She was about the same age as Martha Stewart, had short nicely kept blond hair, and she liked doing that deal with making a collage out of the fabric and paint swatches with a rough sketch of the room in question.
I hated Trading Spaces … I would go medieval on most people invading my space, I have rather odd taste in home decorating and don’t like most other peoples ideas. And I would never let someone come in and redecorate my house … especially after I saw those 2 assholes in Flip My House [or whatever it was called] where they took a freaking chainsaw to a pristine California Craftsman intricate pieced wooden wall so they could install an entertainment system :eek: Do not fuck with shit that is in pristine condition like that. That wall can never be replaced, as far as I am concerned, I would have horsewhipped them if I had let them in to redecorate. I wouldn’t even consider buying that house any more because of shit like that. If I want to buy a pristine craftsman, I want it to still be a pristine craftsman.
Edited to add:
And you know the bitch about that entertainment system they installed?That thick tube based huge screen TV was technologically replaced by flatscreen in about 2 years, so they fucked up the house for no real reason.
Was the woman Candice Olson?
And was the man Christopher Lowell? He recently claimed that he felt he HAD to camp it up because no one would listen to a straight male interior designer.
I still remember an episode of Trading Spaces where (IIRC) Hilde covered an entire kitchen, 100%, in wine labels. The friends suggested it might be a bad idea since the homeowners were teetotalers, but she went ahead with it anyways. It was kind of neat looking and the homeowners agreed, but they also said that they were going to rip them all down right away.
IIRC there was also a bedroom that they covered a wall in down feathers but the homeowners had to tear down because of allergy problems. I think they said they were finding them around the house for years.
The deep voiced woman may have been named Joan. She was the host and not the designer. Her show was a hundred dollar make over-- or maybe $500. Every day a different craft person would re-decorate with craft projects. “Joan” would try to help but everything she touched went wrong.
There may have also been a section where she re-arraigned furniture. There definitely was a craft-it-yourself segment.
I remember one of the designers on Trading Spaces putting up a light and saying that she used to be afraid to do electrical work but isn’t anymore since she learned that if you do something wrong the breaker will pop as soon as you turn it on. That, was some seriously bad advice. I mean, it’s true that for certain incorrect wiring jobs the breaker will pop when you turn it on, but there are other incorrect things you can do that won’t pop the breaker but will create a very dangerous situation that might not show up until someone touches the fixture or even years down the road when someone else is doing work and gets a shock.
Don’t get me wrong, changing a light fixture or outlet isn’t hard. But have someone experienced teach you how to do it properly the first few times. Don’t just have at it under the assumption the the breaker will pop if everything isn’t exactly right…it won’t.
I watched two shows on TLC, many years ago, but neither of them seems to be listed on the Wikipedia list of shows produced by TLC (nor Discovery).
But yeah, there was this one blond lady who never ever ever made something anyone liked, and in cases where it was clear that the owners would hate the design, she’d just get angry and make the design even more weird. And then she and the carpenter just hated each other, with her demanding that he build something that would take more like two weeks to make, when he had like 2 days. They had some epic battles, with it looking like he was going to wack her with one of his power tools at any moment.
While it made for interesting TV, I was happy when they got rid of her (probably due to having to pay to re-do every single room she ever designed).
It would be fun to look up some old episodes though. I can’t remember any of the specific wonkiness.
Actually it looks like I’m thinking of While You Were Out. I just don’t/didn’t remember the existence of quizzes and prizes?
But yeah, I was thinking of Chayse Dacoda and Andrew Dan-Jumbo.
I know exactly who you’re talking about - Joan Steffend on Decorating Cents (Don’t be too impressed - I had to look her up on the HGTV site.) I thought most of her “crafts” were pretty hokey, but I still watched every episode.
Trading Spaces sounds like it got it’s idea from UK’s Changing Rooms and I really wanted to post a video of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen reducing a woman to tears after she saw what he had done to her living room but can’t find anything online.
The back story about the Trading Spaces fireplace fiasco, where it was specifically stated in the contract that the fireplace was not to be touched…and they covered it up.
The US show was based on Changing Rooms, which used to air regularly on BBC America, but hasn’t in years.
Wasn’t it Doug who took a freshly refinished hardwood floor and painted it white? And wasn’t he the one who painted a brick fireplace purple, or am I blaming him for a travesty that wasn’t his?
I hated Doug.
BTW, I couldn’t remember the “straw wall” situation, so I did a web search and found this article about it.