This past August, Mrs Lebeef and myself shot an episode of Trading Spaces with our friends down the street. After four looooong months of hearing from friends and family every week, “When is your show going to air, when is your show going to air?”, we finally have an air date
New Years Eve Eve, December 30th at 10 pm eastern, the Doper effort to take over cable begins.
Mwahahahahaha!
I was going to do an “Ask the guy who…” kind of thing, but they made us promise not to talk about the Reveal. I can answer other stuff, but not that.
Kew-El! Ya got guts, yanceylebeef! Mama Zappa watch Trading Spaces all the time, and we would never participate on the show. We don’t have the energy or the skills required, and we do
NOT
want to risk Hildi touching our house.
Can you talk about the reveal after the show airs?
How do the items made by your TS carpenter(s) look in real life? I know they use MDF to save money, and it usually looks OK on TV, but IRL it might not look so good compared to furniture made with “real” wood.
the crews were very good. A nice mix of regulars from the production company and local techs, like cameras and sound guys. I liked the fact that they were using local crews for the shoot.
Yep, we can discuss it after the 30th. It funny you should mention Hide. During the interview process my wife was fairly adamant that she would not like Hilde.
Something about grass on the walls.
Leslie Seagrette and Doug something or other were our two designers. ( Can you tell I never watched the show?)
Right after we got finished shooting, I would have said no, but with a few months perspective I probably would again. If for no other reason than to watch full blown diva meltdowns from that Doug guy. He’s a bit. Um…I think Pterry described it best, “as self centered as a spinning top.”
Can we ask if you liked the results? I have so many questions that you probably can’t answer.
Did they ruin anything?
Often when they do close-ups the quality of the painting and workmanship doesn’t look so good. (Probably due to time constraints). Were you happy?
What questions did they ask you beforehand?
Could you give any input to what you liked/didn’t like or what colors you hated?
Did you have to fix everything they did? That’s what it always looks like to us - they do slam-bang half-assed jobs, with their artificial two-day deadline, and leave the homeowners with work that looks like crap that needs to be fixed or replaced.
How was Paige Davis? She looks like she’d be a bit hard to take in person.
She got canned a few years ago, unless she’s recently returned… Now that it’s on at 10 instead of 9 we don’t watch it as much… conflicts with other stuff. I’m sure I would have liked her better than Hildy or Doug.
Yeah, there are a lot of things i can’t talk about until after the show airs, but I’ll answer what I can!
We worked with Doug on our friends house. Luckily Leslie was working on our place.
The crews didn’t ruin anything. After they were gone, except for the new living room, you wouldn’t have known they were here.
We were pretty happy with our room. The paint thing you talk about is exactly right. Due to the time constraints, the work can be a little rushed.
They asked us if there was anything we really didn’t want to happen to the house. We asked them not to paint the oak floor, and our neighbor Michelle ask them not to paint the bricks in the fireplace.
All in all it was an experience to savor, and as a short course in stress psychology it was invaluable.
Did they abide by those wishes? Just wondering as I know Doug’s been an utter ass about that in the past, even when the neighbors tell him that the homeowners don’t want “X” done or that they hate, hate, HATE “Y”
What I know of Doug tells me that Michelle’s fireplace was painted acid green and has since been sand-blasted back to bare brick. :rolleyes:
Thank your lucky stars you didn’t get Frank (horrible crap he calls “folk art” and will someone finally tell him his calligraphy looks like a four year old did it?) or Hilde (let’s put plastic flowers on the walls, or let’s put straw on the walls, or “I bought this in PARIS, you know, PARIS France. I live in PARIS you know, PARIS France…”) or Laurie who never lifts a finger and does jackshit other than rub her palms across fabric and gush, “isn’t this wonderful fabric?! And it was only $5000 a yard!”)
Doug used to be OK, but boy has he ever turned into the flaming Diva of late…little snit fits, and his lame attempts at humor…I miss Vern, the only truly talented designer who always, and I mean always, came up with really beautiful designs - I guess he didn’t create enough “ohmygodwasthatcrap” buzz at the water coolers the next day, and thus didn’t increase ratings.
Still, I am interested in hearing what you say after the episode appears! I have heard that lots of the work is rather shoddy, and that they pretty much scoot out and leave it up to the homeowner to fix the tacky electrical and plumbing problems.
