Trading Spaces 12/6: They're losing it

I didn’t pay much attention to the first show (8:00 pm EST), but I had to see the one where Hildi put the feathers on the walls.

The homeowners were remarkably restrained.

But this, combined with the preview for the show where Hildi puts cardboard on the walls and makes furniture out of cardboard, makes me think they know they’re in trouble, and are out for shock value only.

Too bad.

BTW, if I walked in and found my neighbor had let a designer put feathers (or hay, or any other STUPID “alternative wall treatment” on MY walls, we would Have A Serious Discussion after the cameras were gone.

At least Paige is still cute.

Bah.

I wouldn’t blame my neighbors; I don’t know how much influence they really have.

But feathers? FEATHERS? Is she out of her feaking mind?
Oh, wait, it was Hildi. Never mind…

I’d seen the ads for this one, with Hildi smarmily blowing feathers
at the camera and talking about how we’ve seen what she can do with hay and records on the walls, and just wait till we see what she can do with (wait for it) feathers. I knew it was going to be awful. I was surprised they didn’t include Flower in her list of alternative (read: destructive) wall treatments.

And what about Barry’s Pepsi Can bedroom?!?
Red and Blue wavy colors? Good Lord that was ugly, too.
I liked the idea of the city silhouettes, but they were the same color as the background where he put them up. You couldn’t even see them.

I don’t get Tray Ceilings. Is it just a design feature or do they serve some actual purpose? No offense, but I think they’re dumb.
I guess because I only really see them on TS, and the designers feel the need to accentuate them with three or four different colors or silver stars or freaking feathers or something.

Hildi’s hideous, arrogant and an egomaniac - which I’m sure is exactly what she and the producers are going for. I have no problem hating her. How many different homes in America does she feel the need to put photographs or paintings of herself in? Does anybody really want to come home to a giant photo of Hildi’s legs or lower back or a painting of her giant smirk on their wall? I agree the turkey feathers couple took it well… much much much better than I would have. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time around turkeys, unless they’re on the dinner table, but did anyone else wonder if the feathers smelled? I have a down comforter myself, which doesn’t smell, but I don’t think turkeys are used for down are they?

Now Barry. I want to like Barry, I really do. He seems like a really sweet guy, but come on, that was just awful. It looked like a box of crayolas exploded all over that bedroom. I haven’t completely given up hope for Barry yet, but I’m getting close.

Where the hell is Vern?

Tray ceilings are meant to make a room seem larger. Whether they serve that purpose or not is anyone’s guess.

Can we talk about Paige (aka Mippy) for just a moment? The woman is obsessive about imposing her personal standards of cleanliness on everyone she meets. Remember Doug’s stupid posterboard drop ceiling when she admitted that she “routinely” removes her drop ceilings to dust inside of them and she couldn’t get behind Doug’s ceiling if it meant that the homeowners couldn’t clean up there? Now she’s getting all pissy with a homeowner during the key swap about his perceived lack of underwear to change into the next day, saying that if he didn’t have any (which we know he did, somewhere, they didn’t go to the other house with nothing but a cooler) she wasn’t going to go anywhere near him the next day. Uh, okay, Mippy, what-the-hell-ever. Like you’d know if someone wore underwear two days in a row unless they told you. (And why didn’t you pick on the other homeowners when they didn’t have any luggage either?) The mincing manifestations of Mippy’s mental meanderings are starting to grate on my nerves, they really are.

Now, as for the rooms…

Barry must be colorblind. Those blues clashed. The red was too orange to go with blues. There was nothing relaxing, romantic, exciting or enjoyable about that color combination. It was just ugly. The couple liked it. I still don’t know why. That room was bizarre and unpleasant. Just far too jarring and not fitting for a bedroom.

As for the other, flat out, Hildeous needs to be fired. She’s introduced offensive elements into a room (the wine labels for the kitchen of the anti-alcohol minister and his wife) and she’s introduced unsafe elements into a room (the hay wall, the broken glass-rod fireplace screen), she’s ruined drywall (with her flower-power disaster bathroom) and now she’s brought in a well known and not insignificant allergen. Woe unto anyone who enters that room/house who has allergies or asthma. (Also an issue in the hay room.) Does this idiot think about these issues before she implements them? Does she take five minutes to think that the reason why people don’t put things like feathers on their wall is because there are about a dozen good reasons why it shouldn’t be done and only one marginal reason why it should?

The saddest thing is that rest of the room was okay. Not amazing, still a little too much “concept room” and too little “real room that people will live in and use daily” but it was okay. Why couldn’t the walls have been painted that very pale sage that was used on the ceiling? Why must Hildeous constantly try to one-up herself? The homeowners were kind of hysterical, I don’t think that they were capable of comprehending what had happened to their home. All that laughter seemed to be a desperate reaction, as far as I could tell.

We haven’t seen Vern or Gen at all this season, we’ve barely seen Frank or Laurie. Interesting that the four designers who have the best track records (in terms of rooms liked and kept vs. rooms disliked and modified) are being back-burnered so that we can have Hildeous, Kia and Barry episodes instead. Blah and more Blah.

I know that the producers are on record as wanting more “controversy” to heighten the “game show” aspect of the show. I don’t believe that the homeowners want that. As much as I once wanted to be on the show, I don’t now, because of the risk of a Kia, Hilde or Barry travesty in my home.

And I don’t think that the viewers really want to see crap like this. As much as we can talk forever about Doug’s “Prison of Love” and Crying Pam and Crazy Jessy and “Did Gen really think that moss belonged on that wall?” I think that we’re just as able and happy to talk about Frank’s Mexican Serape kitchen or Vern’s Fleur de Lis kitchen or Gen’s Cuban cigar box bedroom, all of which were stylish, fun, had elements that the working couple changed or modified or nixed to the better of the overall result, and all of which were loved by the homeowners.

Now we get more Hildeous next week, and a room covered with cardboard, held on with contact adhesive. (Meaning that it’d be a massive PITA for the homeowners to get rid of. Nice. Couldn’t just use hot glue there, couldya, psychowench?)

It’s no longer exciting to watch. It’s painful and sad. One of the fun things about shows like TS is that viewers could watch and get ideas of things to do in their own homes. Hildeous doesn’t offer ideas that people are replicating in their houses. (If they have any taste and/or common sense, that is.) And personally, I don’t want to waste an hour of my life watching something stupid, ugly and sad coming together with a “payoff” of homeowners freaking out at the end, after they’ve put in two days of honest hard work, hoping for and expecting something good in their homes.

I was switching between this and a Six Feet Under repeat (we just got digital cable), so I missed the preview for next week. Gluing cardboard to the wall? Typical.
On TS - Family she glued newspaper to the walls in a family room with mod podge ( that stuff that’s like watery glue). It was kinda of cute, but she did it all over the room. It was just too much.

Which one was Vern’s Fleur de Lis kitchen? The one in New York that was all green and white? I looooove Vern.

As for Crying Pam and Crazy Jackass Jessie, though, both of their rooms weren’t totally ruined by shit GLUED to the walls, and most people thought the rooms were okay; it was the HOs who were nuts. Yeah, Doug was a bit of an ass about the fireplace when he knew beforehand he couldn’t touch it. IMO, I liked Crying Pam’s room. I thought it was nice. I hated that pink brick.
I also liked Jackass Jessie’s room. She was a lazy, spoiled brat who would have hated whatever Laurie did.

In the infamous Flower Power bathroom, IIRC, the HOs spent thousands repairing the room. They had to completely re-do the drywall - tear it out and replace it.
Since this was only glue sticks, I think it will scrape off, but it was all over the room. It will be a lot of work.
If it were my room, I’d be pissed. My husband has asthma. No way could he sleep in that room. The female HO mentioned cats. I have cats, too. They’d LOVE feathers on the wall. :stuck_out_tongue:

The hot-as-a-bonfire hubby had a backpack on. Not that I was trying to get a look at his ass or anything. :wink: I’m sure as former models they’re used to traveling with minimal supplies.

I agree Paige went a bit OTT with that exchange. I wondered if it was a combination of “I’m not changing my clothes despite the fact that I’m going to be sweating like a pig all day, THEN I’m going to add the inevitable bouquet of stale alcohol to the mix” more than just the underwear thing. But I agree with you otherwise.

To be fair, she and Paige DID check to see if the HOs had allergies … that’s the first time I’ve ever seen her have any concern whatsoever for the potential disaster she’s about to unleash.

I loved the addition of the air freshener in Barry’s room that looked just like the Pepsi logo. Suuuubtle. :rolleyes:

I commented to Mr. Kitty about 15 minutes into the episode that this was rapidly turning into a teenager’s wet dream. Paige and Hildi having a pillow fight, Barry tackling and rolling around with Amy Wynn (GET OFF HER! SHE’S MINE, I TELL YOU! MINEEEEE!!). How quite bizarre.

There is no way in hell I would ever let that bitca into my house, so I have absolutely no investment in this at all. But I would pay serious money to see someone just beat the ever-living crap out of her. Just once. But get it on tape so I can watch it over, and over, and over.

Barry - Room looked Great! (if you were designing for a 12 year old boy’s room) A little too garish for anyone who’s gone through puberty. Fix: good color paint on walls should do it.

Hildeous - Feathers.and.candles. WTF? She is out of her freakin’ mind. “Gee, let’s see what happens when we have open flames near walls covered with highly flammable material!!” Fix: Scrape that crap off the walls and use Doug’s Venetian Plaster[sup]tm[/sup] to cover the gouges.

Agree completely. This show is just about over for me. It used to be “can’t miss”, now I watch the previews and most of the time just skip it.

I guess they are a victim of their own sucess. You can now see rooms being done well on about a thousand other shows, so TS feels the need to go over-the-top damn near every week.

I wish they’d go back to the way it used to be. We used to learn a little about the HO’s, what their tastes are, and whether or not they’d like the room the way it ends up. Now it’s just all about whatever kind of hideousness the designers can unleash on the rooms.

Hildi - just yuck. Watching the previews I thought the feathers were only going on one wall, which wouldn’t be awful. Just a really tactile, soft effect that’s unexpected. But Nooooooooo! This is Hildi “I have 60,000 feathers and I wanna use them all!” we’re talking about. Ugh. Overkill. And was it just me or were those curtains, bedspreads and pillows PINK? Didn’t the HO’s say they specifically didn’t want pink? WTF?

Barry- I am instantly turned off by Barry because he reminds me of one of my roommates from senior year in college. We didn’t get along. He seems simpering, whiny and all-around distasteful. And then there’s his designs. Garish colors, wild patterns and clashing fabrics. Ugly with a capital UGH. The skylines had me excited until we couldn’t see them against the same colored backgrounds. The “wall” he had built served no purpose and only broke the room up further without making it function better.

Sad, sad, sad. I’m gonna keep watching and just pray for the return of some actual designers. Sigh.

The saddest thing about this? The homeowners expected to hate the room. They as much as said so in the interview before the show. They knew that Hildi was in their house and, thus, knew that chances were the room would turn out hideous. Which it did. That’s why they didn’t lose it on camera.

What I can’t understand is why Perky Paige didn’t say anything. And why’d she read that cloyingly stupid love card??! What the hell was that all about?

I despise Hildi and her fugly high heels. When she was on the treadmill with her fucking stupid high heels, I SO wanted her to break an ankle. And I’m not a violent person.

[sarcasm]Oh, and has Hildi been to India? Huh? Has she? I’m not sure I heard her say that on the show.[/sarcasm]

Tell me, was that picture of her?

There is no way I’d let Hildi put a picture of her ass on my wall. Even if it wasn’t and she was just joking (which I can’t see because this woman has NO sense of humor) I’d still have to take down that picture. The thought that it might be Hildi’s ass is enough.

I lost my interest in this show, the second I got BBC America and its wonderfull Changing Room…

All they go for these days, as mentioned before, is shockvalue. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t bill it as a decorating show…I used to get neat nifty ideas from TS, but no more…

Let’s just face it…the 15minute fame of TS is over, time for TLC do deal with it

I have to wonder how many HO’s, upon finding out that Hildi will be in their house, try to get out of doing the show? I know I’d have a panic attack if knew she was gonna be the designer doing my room.

Ah, so it wasn’t just me! After watching this episode the other night, I had a sinking feeling that it was over for me and TS. Of course, I’ll probably check it again sometime if I run across it, but if this is what the show’s become, then I guess we have drifted apart.:frowning:

Maybe she can combine her egotism and her penchant for bizarre materials.

Hildi: “Okay, worker bees, here’s what’s going on the walls!”

–opens can–

Worker: “Uh, red? Wait, what’s that smell? What kind of paint is that?”

Hildi: “It’s not paint. It’s blood! It’s my blood!”

Worker: “What?”

Hildi: “Instead of my face, we’re gonna fill the room with my DNA!”

Ya know, while I’m not the biggest Hildi booster on the planet (and the feathers on the walls were ridiculous), let’s not go overboard. She has painted exactly one picture of herself in a TS home (in the women’s soccer team ep) and has used herself (and her HOs) as models maybe two or three times. The self-portrait was horrifying but it’s not like Hildi is some fat troll who doesn’t look good showing her lower back as part of an art project. Nobody complains when Frank inserts a self-portrait into a room. If Doug or Vern or most of the other designers were doing my room I wouldn’t mind at all if they worked themselves into the room somewhere and my suspicion is most of you wouldn’t mind having a little depiction of your faves in your room either. So go ahead and attack Hildi for the scope of the self-portrait but the self-portrait itself is not by definition a bad design concept.

[sub]I thought the feathers looked pretty.[/sub]

High-tails it out of the thread.

OK let’s think about this for a second. How Hildi has incorporated herself into the rooms…

the dot portrait wall

the framed xeroxes of various parts (including the flip of her hair)

this “leg” picture

Isn’t there more? Wasn’t there one where she was traced or outlined or something?

Yes. I think it was the episode involving the losers from 7th Heaven.

I think the best (worst?) part of this episode was when Paige asked Hildi if she would put feathers on the walls of her own house and her answer was that everything in her house is white and that she uses unconventional wallcoverings to inspire people. What she fails to realize is that they’re inspired to throw things at their television.

What they should do is let some of Hildi’s victims redo a room in her house. I suggest they hot glue dried dog shit and cow patties all over the walls.

Watching the previews, I thought that the Hildibeest’s room would be the loser of the show. That was before I saw Barry’s room.

Damn, that room was fugly. The only good element was the cityscapes and he screwed those up by putting them on the same color background.

Otto, if Hildi didn’t come across as such an egotist, I don’t think I would mind the self-portraits so much. It is just such an obvious reflection of her very off-putting conceit that I can’t stand it.