We watched Trading Spaces last night – yeah, what an exciting life we lead. They were a couple of good episodes, and new too (that always helps in a TV show). In the first one Doug was Doug and had an over-the-top redesign of a small bedroom as “the Safari room” — going for the feel of an tropical hut. Zebra striped walls, palm trees, bamboo ceiling grid and headboard, and a scavenged wood table. When his team objected, Doug gave a vintage Doug response: why bother complaining when you are only going to lose the argument. At the reveal, the wife said she didn’t know whether to kiss Doug, or hit him. Apparently, she made up her mind as they redid the room themselves pronto, removing all trace of Doug, and if you’re quick you can go buy the stuff on ebay. Frank, however, wasn’t Frank as he didn’t do country and he didn’t write anything on the walls. It was actually a pretty good job, with a very cool ceiling painted to look like a kid’s imagination of the night sky. He even put up a new ceiling fan (replacing a bare bulb), and when Ty broke it with his drill, I was worried for Frank’s blood pressure. Apparently Ty went a bought another with his own money to replace it.
The second episode had two great designs, one with the new designer Edward, and the other with old standby and fan favorite Vern. Edward turned a nightmarish floral master bedroom into a really great looking master bedroom, and putting beading up at the wall ceiling joint is now clearly an Edward custom. (I’d go on, but the redesign cannot adequately be described in words, by me at any rate. Not that it was indescribably good, just that I lack the proper vocabulary.) Not to be outdone, Vern redid a completely blah room into a fantastic boy’s bedroom with the theme of planes, trains, and automobiles. He went with blue on blue colors, suspended a working railroad track and a motorcycle swing from the ceiling, added a working stoplight to the wall, stenciled and hung toy airplanes from the ceiling, and built a race car bed complete with matching bedding, and a storage bin in the shape of the hood of the car with working headlights and matching racing stripes. The room wasn’t just outstanding for a kid — grown men would kill for a bedroom like that (not that they would get it if they were married, though).
