::scampering in::
Okay, tonight we have two, count 'em, TWO, same-sex couples! And a drag queen!! AND Amy Wynn in the CUTEST tank top ever. Mmmmm… Amy Wynnnnnn. And we’re in Boston, which always makes me homesick, in a nice section of town (six blocks from the Garment District). And we have an absolutely gorgeous house (yup, HOUSE- this time the HOs share apartments in one home), which immediately terrifies me, because…
We also have Doug. And Christie. And lots and lots of room for error, because 1) Doug has never worked with his particular wall treatment product, and 2) Christie has never tried out her particular wall treatment technique. Oh, gods.
Doug gets the living room of the male HOs, whose only sacred item is a setee that belonged to the great-grandmum of one of the HOs. He’s allowed to re-upholster it, but NO PAINT ALLOWED. The HOs want a half-wall at the base of the staircase gone (can’t blame them).
Christie (does she PAY someone to do that to her hair??) gets the living room of the female HOs. Apparently one of the female HOs has a “thing” about yellows/golds (thank god Laurie’s not around), and both HOs have a definite aversion to toille. They would like some color, please.
Doug’s main idea is a Venetian wall treatment (yes, again). After painting the trim, cabinets, wainscotting, etc, chocolate brown, he breaks out a mustard yellow glazing product, much to the horror of the female HOs. Paige tries her best to mediate, insisting that the HOs should not listen to Doug, that it won’t look anything like what it looks like now, but the HOs are terrifed. Once they begin the “aging” technique, the HOs shut the hell up and agree that it looks nice. We are also treated to the standard “I’m going to paint and re-upholster the Sacred Item…” “No you aren’t” argument, juxstaposed with the male HOs on the roof of the building talking about how they hope the female HOs will be good defenders for them.
Christie has no clue what she’s doing. She puts on a base coat (a reasonable color, IMO), then covers it with a coat of Elmer’s glue mixed with water in order to prep for a glaze treatment. Unfortunately it goes extremely badly (what it looks like to me, at least, is that she didn’t put enough water in the mix), and she leaves the HOs to figure the process out as homework. When she returns in the morning, they’ve divided the walls into stripes, thinking (correctly) that breaking up the piss-poor treatment would be better than having it all over the walls. Plus there are stripes in the fabrics, so hey- it works! Paige actually says the wall treatment “looks like crap.” Christie is disturbed by the HOs’ show of initiative, thinking of the “overall vision of the room, and what it will look like completed.” Shut the hell up, Christie. We are treated to a drag queen telegram, stating “Roses are red, violets are blue, if you put toille in this room, we’ll hurt you.” ::snicker:: Of course Christie takes this as a challenge, and goes out with one of the male HOs to the fabric store where they purchase some toille, some feather boas, and some squishy backing material to make a nice little throw.
Amy Wynn is relegated to a nearby school parking lot, where she is forced to use a generator. She gets to build a coffee table for Christie and fix the stairs for Doug once he’s removed the half wall.
Both Doug and Christie use the HOs’ existing furniture- not even a slipcover in sight. Doug re-uses the curtains, Christie provides new ones. This creates slight discord with one of the female HOs, who has a tearful moment with Paige in which she worries that they’re not “changing enough.” Whatever.
Reveal. Doug is under budget (barely) but Paige wants to know what the hell he spent all his money on. They agree it was the stairs. Paige loves the walls- says they feel like marble. Doug’s name for the room: You’re in trouble. Paige asks if it’s a play on the color of the walls. Mmm. Shut the hell up, Paige. Anyway- One male HO clearly loves the room- gushes about the walls and especially about the missing half-wall. Paige encourages him to touch the wall- he thinks it’s fabulous. Paige shares WAY too much information when she points out that one of the female HOs licked the wall. The other HO is a little more restrained, but appears to like it as well. Paige tries to get them to go upstairs, but they don’t want to. 
Reveal. Christie is WAY under budget (like over $100). Tries to tell us that she likes the room. Paige avoids calling her on the piss-poor wall treatment (BAD Paige). One female HO loves it. Loves, loves, loves. Other one (the one causing all the problems throughout the ep) was… meh. She didn’t hate it, but she wasn’t in the “absolutely love” camp. They liked the joke of the toille.
I really have to say that I don’t like episodes where the rooms are already really nice… it simply doesn’t make for good TV. The house was gorgeous, the furniture was beautiful… they didn’t need TS. They certainly didn’t need Christie in there fucking up their walls… I can’t even begin to think of how they’re going to get that stuff off the plaster. Up close Doug’s wall treatment was nice, although I wasn’t crazy about the color, and I felt that combined with the brown it really closed the place in- I would have at least replaced the curtains. But I loved what Amy Wynn did with the stairs. I hated Christie’s wall treatment- even if it had worked, it would have been too dark for that room, especially with those heavy, heavy drapes. I liked the base color she used- if she’d left that, it would have been fine. I did thoroughly enjoy how freaked out Christie was by the drag queen- she couldn’t back away fast enough. ::snicker::
That’s it for me for now… I’m sure I’ll think of more later.
-BK