Trading Spaces Goes Hollywood 4/13, or Please Dear God No More Celebrity Shows

Cafe Society
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Okay, I hardly watched Newsradio and I’ve never heard of Less Than Perfect, so although I’ve heard of Andy Dick I had no idea who Sara LaRue was.

That said, Andy Dick is truly named. He is a dick. He acted like a jerk the entire show, vamping up his “celebrity” status and hardly doing a lick of work. I think Ty and Gen were sick of him. Using the blower to blow all of Ty’s tools off the table? Getting his assistant to help Ty install the bench? Bringing in that hideous portrait of himself, a la Hildi painting her face on the wall? I was sick of it in the first five minutes and longed for the show to be over. TS is supposed to be about redoing the rooms, not a vehicle for some minor starlet to ham it up. I thought Sara got into the spirit of the show, something Paige rather pointedly discussed with Vern during the pre-reveal.

I can’t believe he got a Vern kitchen. I thought the terra cotta color was a bit overwhelming, but I loved the new floor, and how Sara and Paige arranged the quarter circle paintings on the wall. They got a lot of work done during the homework, although during the “speeded up” phase I didn’t see Sara and her husband installing the floors or the countertop. Just lonely Vern, looking sexy as usual.

Gen’s room. I didn’t remember seeing a lot of it put together, maybe because I was trying to tune out the Dick’s shenanigans. I know I did not like the rusting on the filing cabinets or the paint job on the door desk. It looked like both of them had been through a fire. I guess the bench looked okay, but I was thoroughly disgusted by the Dick’s nonsense. I actually cheered when Gen slapped a piece of painter’s tape over his mouth. I can see why his ex-girlfriend is an “ex.”

I have to go to work tomorrow, so I won’t be staying up to watch the 10pm show. Someone else want to recap it? Hopefully it won’t have any self-important twits mugging for the camera.

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I totally agree re Andy (aptly named) Dick. I was tired of him about 10 minutes into the show.

Vern’s kitchen looked great, although there was a little *too[/t] much terra-cotta color. And I thought Sara’s room looked fine. However, it would have taken me about 10 seconds to get rid of the cat poop drawings. Sheesh. And I don’t like the rust effect on the filing cabinets. Yuck.

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I agree about the tera-cotta being overdone, and the rusty filing cabinets. I think Sara over-reacted about the gray walls, I didn’t like them, but it would be easy to repaint and the rest of the room was nice. She probably would’ve loved the “brown” room from a couple of weeks ago.

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Rue.

Before this I merely didn’t like him based on his extreme lack of humor. The reason he played Matthew so well on News Radio seems to be that that is exactly how he really is. He was a total prick on this show. His ex-girlfriend, the artist, does those great little cat artworks and he comes up with a stick figure cat taking a dump?! What a fucking putz.

I didn’t notice Sarah not working on the speeded up part, and I do wonder how much is cut from that, so she really did seem to be into the spirit of the show. I thought her reaction to her room was completely out of line. Garbage can grey? It may not have been “earth tones” but I’ve seen plenty of earth exactly that color. Besides which, there was so much more to the room than that. Genevieve put together a really great room in spite being a man short and all Rue can do is gripe about the wall color? She didn’t even seem to look at anything else.

These people both ended up pissing me off a whole lot.

I thought both rooms ended up fantastic–though Vern could have toned down the terra cotta a bit.

Yeah, it was really cool. I especially liked it when Paige said something to the effect of, “that looks really awful,” when Vern was just starting on them. That was pretty funny of her.

I think Dick’s ex deserves a medal and some mental health care. She must have the patience of a saint, and a real self-loathing complex to spend any time with that guy.

All four people were really great. They completely redeemed celebrities from the debacle of the Dick-Rue episode.

It was two brothers who play brothers on Seventh Heaven and then Jessica Biel and Beverly Mitchell, the other cute one, who both play on that same show. The brothers shared a shit-hole apartment with a broken-up and dirty concrete floor. The other room was Beverly’s converted garage and she recruited Jessica to help her.

I think they were both good teams. The brothers were talking about how they weren’t going to do homework because they got into acting to avoid that sort of thing, but they did it without complaints. Hildi redid their room with a faux suede on the wall, grey, and new (or redone?) couches. It was very nice and they were very, very pleased. One brother stood there speechless and Paige kept trying to coax a response out of him. He finally said that he was planning to act really upset and storm out of room, but that it was so fantastic that he simply couldn’t. During the credits as they were exiting the room from their reveal, one of them remarked, “All right! Finally we’re gonna SCORE!” And they high-fived.

Edward redid Beverly’s room and it was typical Edward. Very nice and, I don’t know art so I’ll say a mix of art deco and modern. He made a screen to hide a basketball arcade game that she had that looked very art deco-ish to me.

This is how nice they were: Hildi and her team spraypainted one of the guy’s mountain bikes and mounted it on the wall, and when the guy’s saw it they sounded like they really liked it.

You’ll enjoy the episode when you get to see it, ivy, and I’m glad to hear that you’re not dead in a ditch!

I am jealous after the Andy Dick episode, however, since Genevieve got to touch Paige’s butt. Jivha H. Vishnu! Can that woman be more beautiful?!

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I half-expected them to have Ty build a genuine shark-jumping ramp on one of these episodes. Hell, next week, they’re re-doing Ted McGinley’s boudoir.

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It seems we all agree–a little bit of Dick goes a long way.*

*As long as it’s Andy Dick.

(We really need a barfing smilie, putz just doesn’t make it for a jerk as big as Andy (or perhaps as little as Andy–maybe that’s his problem!))

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I only caught the reveal of the Andy Dick episode (NOTHING gets in the way of SIX FEET UNDER in my household!) but I absolutely loved the Vern kitchen! I wish he would come to my house and re-do my kitchen.

Read in the current issue of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY this morning that Mr. Dick’s duplex is now up for sale, Vern-ized kitchen and all. Asking price: $1.3 million!!! Anybody interested?

On the other hand, what was Gen thinking with that hideous office??? That was really an ugly mess!!!

Watched the second show, but fell asleep before the reveal so I checked out the photos on the TLC website. Both rooms look rather fine. I liked the idea of the faux suede on the walls of the boys’ apartment, but stapling it up there made me kind of nervous. This is, after all, a rental! I was a bit timid about Edward’s choice of colors for the garage/playroom, but it seemed to have come out just fine! Good on them!

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I am with all of you regarding Andy Dick. My SO kept commenting about how he wanted to punch him out so bad. He did not deserve that gorgeous kitchen, at all! It was a lot of terracotta, but from the way they were talking about the rest of the house, it sounded like it would have fit perfectly. I really liked the colour on the lower parts of the walls, and am considering that for my new kitchen, when I move in June (although I don’t have a place yet).

I can totally sympathize with Sara’s disappointment with her office. I used to watch her on Popular and I really like her. She was so into the whole thing. I’m wondering if the reason she wasn’t around for the counter install was because she and her partner were up all night working on the floor, so Vern (and the producers?) sent them to rest a bit before they continued working. Yes, her office was garbage can grey. And yes, it would be easy enough to fix, but I think the point was that she was expecting something better, especially from Gen. I was! It might have been better if she had used the rust colour as the main colour, and the grey as the accent colour.
I did LOVE the rusted cabinets though, and the door desktop, but I don’t know if I liked them together. I don’t think it really fit the rest of the room. If the whole room had been done more “industrial” and less “Spanish” (I didn’t get Spanish out of it at all), then the desk might have worked better.

As for the 7th Heaven episode, I was surprised at how into it all of the participants were. They worked hard, and were a lot of fun.
Hildi and Edward are two of my least favourite designers, so I wasn’t expecting a great deal from them.
Edward’s design of Bev’s room was…okay, I guess. I did not like the grey. And I am so not a green or pink or “chartreuse” person, so i very much disliked the entire colour scheme. It worked, I suppose, but it was so…so Edward.
Hildi’s design of the boys’ room was such a huge improvement over what they had, but I think nearly anything would have been an improvement. What I totally didn’t get was the television cabinet. She said she wanted to take away the focus of the television from the room. Uhhmm…with a tv that big, and 2 guys, yah, that’s supposed to be the focus of the room. I bet those doors didn’t last one week on there. With staying open all the time, they would have totally been in the way. It didn’t seem like they folded right back, or that they slid into the cabinet, which would have been a lot more useful, I’m thinking.

All in all, expectations met by Vern, disappointed by Gen, met by Edward (not very high anyway), and somewhat impressed by Hildi.

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Which one … Gen or Paige?

With Sarah Rue on board, that was certainly one of the more babe-alicious episodes.

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In the 4/11/03 Entertainment Weekly they did a whole article on this episode “TLC’s ‘Trading Spaces’ goes Hollywood”.

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Actually, by all accounts I’ve read he’s extraordinarily well-endowed. Some guys have all the luck, huh?

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I thought the 10pm episode was fun (Jessica Biel… mmm), but I agree that Andy Dick should have been beaten to death with a power tool.

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I was thinking of Paige, though Gen is pretty darn beautiful, too. I’ll have to disagree with you on Sarah Rue, though. I just don’t see it.

Of course, Jessica Biel and Beverely Mitchell and Paige and Hildi and Amy Wynn… js leaps up to take cold shower

Harli, I have to disagree with your assessment of the room Genevieve did for Rue, with the exception that I agree that it didn’t look “Spanish” to me. I do have to agree with you on the grey question, though. It seems a really high risk color because of it’s potential to come out looking like Drunk Tank Chic.

When Edward, or was it Paige?, asked the guys about how they knew about chartreuse I yelled out, “because they love to fish.” That’s what I get for having written copy for fishing lures…

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I like celebrity shows, especially when the people are all young. Better than the standard bland older woman with the personality-free husband that they normally have.

And I love Andy Dick. So there.

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Vern’s room: Too dark. I would’ve went for either a cream color on the walls/dark cabinets, or the dark bottoms on wall and cabinets/cream color on top half of wall and cabinets. As usual everything was well done and looked great. The darkness was my only complaint.

Gen’s room: Meh - The usual. Poorly thought out color scheme and projects sort of thrown together haphazardly. I thought the door-desk turned out ok until I saw they were putting plexiglass over JUST the insets. Wha? Put a larger sheet over the whole thing so you can actually write on it or something. Yeesh. I think the benches/sofas turned out ok, but they really didn’t show them long enough to see.

Hildi: vast improvement. I didn’t really get the juxtoposition of all the brown and grey but I liked the whole “textures” theme and thought adding the little breakfast bar was a great idea. The “blow-up” pictures turned out way cooler than I expected and gave the room a really sleek, modern look. I think for the TV cabinet doors the raffia should’ve been put in insets instead of wrapped around so the doors didn’t close (duh! lol!) But it’s true, they probably won’t ever close them anyway.

Edward: The only thing I didn’t love about this one was the color scheme, but I could see he sorta did it to match her “Teen Choice” award surfboard. (Which looked great mounted over the sweet bar area.) Really interesting and clever design, and I liked the way he did the silver dry-brushing to resemble stainless steel. I also didn’t understand why he slipcovered the couches in that sorta lackluster fabric. They looked to me like they were grey to start out with, but they also said the room was “grape” before, and I didn’t see anything purple in it. Either it’s my TV or the lighting I guess.

I’d really like to see more Edward and WAAAAAAY less (or no) Kia. I hope Edward is signed on for next year as well.

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They did, IIRC Rue tapped on it during the reveal.

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There was a third episode but only one celeb. It was a country singer and some members of her family. They all worked hard and got some great rooms out of weird spaces.
When Genevieve is on the show and Amy is the carpenter, it drive me crazy with the way they touch each other all the time.

In the one with the 7th Heaven kids Jessica Biel and the other girl and the designer all posed for some sexy photos to hang in the boys room. But why not Paige as well?!?

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Andy Dick was just pathetic, he was trying to be witty and drool, but he missed by a mile. It explains his career nosedive though. His room came out great, though.

Sara and her husband worked so hard, and got such a crappy room in return, it hardly seems fair. Gen really bombed the room. Nothing matched, a couple of the elements were horrible, and in the end, it looked more like a “before” then “after”. It is rare that Gen really screws one up, but this time she did.

The 7th Heaven teams were decent, and the rooms ok. But the two guys were, umm, not the sharpest tools in the shed if you know what I mean. . .

The saturday show was alot better. No more celebrity shows-- please.

:mad:

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**I don’t remember the character Matthew being a prick. He was kind of naive and just a little annoying, but nothing like Andy Dick was on this episode of Trading Spaces. I liked him on NewsRadio, but he bugged the crap outta me on this.
That said, I liked the kitchen he got. The terra-cotta was a little overwhelming in that small room, but it was pretty, especially with the wrought-iron fixtures. I would have liked it better if it had been a few shades lighter. It was just sooo dark.
I loved the flooring.
I hated the cabinets doors on the big TV cabinet in the second episode. You know those guys will never close that thing. With the doors open it looked like they blocked the front door and access to the other part of the apartment (the bedrooms?). It would have been better to finish off the inside of the cabinet and just leave the doors off.

It always bugs me when they move the TV across the room. Where is the cable outlet? We couldn’t move our TV to the other end of the room. We could move it around a corner, but not across the room without trailing a length of cable, which would then have to be tucked under the carpeting.

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Oh, yeah. Good point.