Laurie and Hildi with Amy Wynn in Pennsylvania, Laurie redoing two girls’ bedroom, and Hilde redoing a dining room.
I thought Laurie made a very stark, plain child’s room fun and whimsical. Unlike Frank, who drew squiggles and then did a horrendous monkey desk, the zinnias over the green paint were very pretty. I would have liked to see the ceiling painted green as well, especially since they were painting the zinnias up on the ceiling. Laurie did use some yellow, but it was only as an accent color. It was a very pretty girl’s room, and I thought it was a big improvement. I only have one thing to say about the parents…they seem to have little control over their daughters. Redoing the kids’ room so they wouldn’t camp out in Mommy and Daddy’s room? Mommy whining, “But we had a deal!” when the girl said she wasn’t going to sleep in it? Who has the control in this relationship? If they were my daughters, they would not be sleeping in sleeping bags on my bedroom floor. They WOULD sleep in their rooms, no matter what.
Hildi…what can I say? Both pairs of HO’s had their reservations, and I laughed when Hildi asked her woman HO, “Are you worried about your room?” and she said, “Well, no, because you’re here.”
Black in a dining room? With a light fixture with 55 lights, that would surely make that room incredibly hot? And badly made curtains that looked like bedsheets? And boiling eggs to stick in a vase as flower holders that would start to rot in about a week? Bright yellow furniture? It was a disaster, and the only thing I liked were those metal flower things. Before she painted them chrome. And who the hell needs nine chairs? There’s only room for six around that table (which was smaller than the original table) and I would think for entertaining you would need an even number of chairs. Hildi once again had no concern for the HO’s, as she made comments like, “Well, it’s a good thing I’ll be long gone,” and playing dumb when even Paige expressed her concerns. I think TLC and Banyan hadn’t had a train wreck in a while, so they unleashed Hilde from her chain.
Once again, Hildie shows absolutely no concern for the functionality of a room. Black. Black walls, black ceiling, bright yellow furniture. Soon-to-be-rotting eggs. Unbelievable. I felt so back for the HOs who did such a nice job in the girl’s room and had to come home to that.
I could never sign up do to this show because you have about 1:4 chance of getting Hildi or Kia, and then you could end up spending more then $1000 to redo whatever disaster they might come up with. How many coats of paint will it take to cover black? And while I’m rambling on, let me note that the beige carpet looked awful next to the black and yellow. The carpet needed to be white, not that that would have saved the room.
The other room was a little dark for me, so I’m glad the green didn’t go on the ceiling. But it was nice.
I liked the light fixture in the dining room, but nothing else. I kind of liked the kids bedroom, but I agree about the girls sleeping in the parent’s bedroom. Just who is in charge in that house?
Guin, the homeowner’s stated pretty categorically that they were going to repaint the dining room immediately (although the husband liked it).
Vern for me. He’s the best (and cute). Maybe Frank if I wanted something fun. None of the women or Doug, though.
I liked the black on the dining room. The light fixture I could live without, maybe if the bulbs had been in some sort of pattern, maybe a ring of bulbs around the edge of the oval instead of in a block in the middle. I don’t know how much heat those bulbs will generate but they are on dimmers so that should help. The yellow furniture was just unbearable. Maybe if it had been a pale yellow, but that bright yellow was awful. I also liked the table a lot better before Hildi sawed the corners off it. I liked the painted screens, or I should say I liked the screens painted (better than unpainted but still not all that much). The black room needed some silver/chrome to break it up. I really hope the eggs were a joke and not meant as a permanent design element. Loved Paige’s “this is a really unappetizing yellow” riff, except she backed off it. Very disappointing.
The kids’ room? Meh. Didn’t much care one way or the other.
i liked the girl’s room. i thought the shelves that amy wynn did were rather nice. it is a nice, fem, room. i would have liked to see the ceiling painted as well.
so… they figured out that hildi’s evil twin skippy was doing rooms and they made hildi do this one.
i’m okay with black walls, i’m not okay with bright yellow furniture. as much as i dislike red… perhaps it would have been a better choice for the chairs and table. or a jewel shade of blue or green, even a nice gray would have helped.
i’m thinking that if someone hands you that many eggs, you have to make devil-eggs out of them (hee, hee, hee).
a couple of things about the light fixture: the dimmer switches seemed to be on the end of the fixture. while it was being installed, amy wynn stood on her ladder and adjusted the light level. rather inconvienient, wouldn’t you say?
second: the light fixtures were screwed to the plywood fron the back. amy wynn and the ho were shown making up the wiring connections. later, as they were mounting the fixture, yopu could see all of the neatly done wire nut connections on the back of the plywood box they bolted to the ciling.
the national electric code does not allow wire nut connections to be made unless they are in a metallic or non-metallic conduit box specifically listed for the purpose.
there is nowhere in the N.E.C that allows wire connections to be made inside an inaccessable wooden container.
the heat generated by 55 of those fixtures attached to plywood is bad enough, but a poorly made wire connection shorting out inside that plywood box will be like touching a match to the house.
That was the first Trading Spaces I’ve ever seen. Amy Wynn is pretty cute. The black room was horrendous. The kids room was good, but it could have used more natural sunlight.
I only saw the last 15 minutes…
Those children struck me as odd.
I would have hated that room as a kid, but then, it wasn’t unattractive, it was just not me. If you like big flowers, that’s your room.
As for the dining room, I hate yellow. (I hate green even more, and orange slightly less, which is one of the reasons I can never be on the show - telling a designer that 3 primary colors shall not be in my room would probably not go over well.) But I liked the concept of the dining room (had the chairs and table been a different color, I would have loved it.)
But even I could tell that it wasn’t the homeowners from just the 3 minutes prior to the reveal, and if they had children too (did they?) it was completely wrong. She simply can’t seem to fathom that there are people attached to the house and that the room actually must be functional for those people.
I believe Hildi’s main motiviation is to please her clients. The homeowners are not her clients-Banyan production company is.
Banyan wants “television” and that means seeing confrontations , accidents and hopefully sobbing by female homeowners on the reveal. Hildi (and to a lesser degree Doug) aim for drama and this pleases their client Banyan. Unhappy homeowners & disasters generate press & publicity for this show.
I used to be surprised when this show’s designers claimed that they would select Hildi to do their room if they had to chose someone from the show. These same designers are probably well aware what HS would do if she was working for them.
Regarding this weeks episode, morbid sloppily painted walls, cheap curtains and yolk yellow chairs on a beige carpet is nothing short of ugly.
I actually liked Hildi’s room this week - with the exception of that godawful 70s disco light fixture. From the completely, bland, boring, beige, blah piece of crap that room was before to something vibrant and dynamic, it was a great transformation.
Normally, I find Hildi’s designs impractical. She leaves out key pieces of furniture or does treatments that can’t be cleaned. But in this case, all the elements were there, and while the colours would be probably be a bit much to live with day in and day out, we’re talking about a dining room that the homeowners admit they never use, not the family room they spend half their time in. For a few hours of dinner a few times a year, that room is fabulously chic.
Were it my home, I’d be pleased with what I had and extend the transformation. Stark black dishware and serving platters, brushed chrome flatware, a chrome light fixutre to replace the crappy one.
I think the key is to have neighbors who are specific in the pre-taping interview. I’ve been visiting the TSBB and someone posted an email from a member of the production staff. She said that if the neighbors are specific, then they’ll usually get what they ask for–it’s supposed to be about how they want to redecorate, not what the designers want. I imagine that most people aren’t very specific, saying instead something vague like “we want to see color” or “clean lines”, etc. So if your neighbors had an idea of what they wanted and said, “No green, yellow, or orange,” then I suspect that you’ll have much better odds than if they just offered something vague. E.g., the Taupe Dope. Laurie didn’t know that that woman hated brown until she showed up with the paint. If her neighbors had said “no brown!”, then I bet the color would have been something else.
BTW, I don’t think green & yellow are primary colors.
Re: Hildi’s room, I didn’t see the home owners putting up much of a fight. Either they didn’t or they didn’t put it on the show. They just made a few sniping remarks and that doesn’t qualify as standing up for something, IMO.
I thought Hildi’s room was okay, but not for my taste. I can see how someone would like it. It seems like a dining room should be made to complement the food. Her room seemed as though it would overshadow the food and make it too bland and unpalatable.
I found Laurie’s room to be outstanding, even if she still had to bring in yellow as a major accent color. Although Vern isn’t nearly as evil as Laurie is, they both suffer similar faults in that their rooms often seem to be somewhat formulaic (sp?). As Paige noted in the 8:00 pm episode, that kitchen Vern did wasn’t a “Vern room”. It seems like they need to mix it up a little bit more. I don’t mean become “experimental”, but rather use design elements and styles outside of their comfort zones. Just because there are only five notes (or seven?) that a musician can play, that doesn’t mean that he can only write country-western music.
I actually liked the black room until the awful yellow showed up. I thought the chrome painted screen looked surprisingly good, and even the light fixture didn’t look as craptacular as I thought it was going to.
The table and chairs though – blech! That table looked so cheap and pathetic. It looked all misshapen and unevenly cut. The chairs were hideous to begin with and that paint didn’t help a bit. I also thought red or chrome would’ve been the way to go colorwise. That yellow – ::shudder::
Laurie’s room was also a blast from the past, but it was far far less offensive. I liked the headboards (although it looked like one was upholstered crooked - come on! That’s just sloppy!) and the bedding was extra nice for a change. The “beaded” light fixture was a bit of a joke. Won’t all those glued-on beads just fall off when the light’s on long enough to heat up?
The kids were brats though. I hope they don’t like it and have to sleep there anyway, haha.
Oh yeah, that reminds me about the headboards. I thought Laurie said the pink stripes were supposed to be vertical, but weren’t they mounted with the pink stripes horizontal? That was something I didn’t like about the girls’ room, and about a lot of the TS bedrooms, which is this practice of mounting a headboard to the wall. You’re pretty much locking the HO into one furniture arrangement with that unless they want to do a fairly large job of removing the headboard and the mounts, repairing the holes in the wall from the mounts, and remounting it in the new location.
Well, Hildi’s room was, of course, incredibly ugly. Though I have to say that the episode would have been much less interesting if she had done a nice room. What dancefan said about Hildi trying to please the production company rather than the homeowners sounds like a logical explanation. I liked Laurie’s room, although I think the green may have been a bit too bright for my taste. IMO, Vern is the best designer - it’s simply incredible what he can do with a thousand dollar budget.
Art teacher hat on-- red, yellow, blue are primaries. Green, orange, purple are secondary colors. I won’t go into tertiary colors since nobody even asked about the first two groups.
Hildi’s room was awful. I have to admit I gave her the benefit of the doubt until she revealed that nasty chrome-ish yellow. It just didn’t work-- wrong shade, clumped mainly around the table, swimming in all that black. Her attempts to balance the yellow, namely the flower sprays, was pathetic and ineffectual. The upholstery was neat, wish she’d have used more of it somehow. The curtains were cheap looking as someone has already mentioned. They can talk about statements, retro chic or whatever, but if it’s a clumsy use of color, with poor design (balance), then it’s crap. She should have tweaked her plan when she saw it wasn’t working.
Laurie’s room was nice. I thought the colors lacked a certain subtlety, mainly the yellow and green. Toned down just a smidge they’d have lent a bit more warmth and a sense of quirkyness to the room it needed. The beds were great-- the headboards and linens were a dream.
I wonder if Hildi and Doug really design for the controversy? Hildi I can see maybe, she’s from a planet I don’t think we’ve discovered yet. Doug is just a good bit more daring than a lot of people would care to be in their homes. His designs are usually sound, but more what you’d find in Architectural Digest’s avant garde section than in Better Homes and Gardens.
Oh, you can preserve eggs by drying them. It’s not something you want to do in your house, since they can spontaneously explode. Psansky eggs are sometimes done that way. I have no freakin’ idea why Hildi had them boil those eggs, it wouldn’t help preserve them any longer than leaving them raw.
