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The Virginia-Pilot
06.7.02

Ready for a risk?  Trade "Spaces"

by Larry Bonko

ATTENTION, homeowners. Do you have a room that needs a makeover?

Would you like a crew that includes a chic interior designer and a skilled carpenter with a magic touch to redo that room for free?

Did I hear a yes?

Contact ``Trading Spaces'' at tlc.discovery.com Go to ``get on the show'' to find an application.

Or call the producer at (215) 928-2307. The Learning Channel asks that you make available a room at least 14 by 14 feet and that it come with furniture.

``Trading Spaces'' is TLC's highest-rated show, peaking with better than a 3.0 Nielsen number in prime time Saturday at 8 p.m. TLC's ``Trading Spaces Memorial Day Stunt,'' a marathon that ran from noon until 3 a.m., bagged 4.8 million viewers and a 3.5 household rating -- both records for TLC.

The show also runs at 11 a.m. Saturdays, and is seen Mondays through Fridays at 4 p.m.

This weekend, the Saturday shows take place in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Boston and Springfield, Mass.

Inspired by a series on the BBC called ``Changing Rooms,'' the TLC hour is about redecorating a room or rooms in a neighbor's house while that neighbor changes a room or rooms top to bottom in your house. It signed on in September 2000.

(If you have Cox digital, you can catch ``Changing Rooms'' starting June 17 at 10 a.m. on BBC America.)

Paige Davis, the host of ``Trading Spaces,'' begins the show with a cautionary word. ``You will have absolutely no say about what happens in your house. And you can do whatever you want to your neighbor's house.'' TLC sends along one of several designers -- it could be Vern Yip, Laurie Hickson Smith, Genevieve Gorder or Frank Bielec -- to conceive a blueprint that will change the rooms drastically. Carpenters Ty Pennington and Amy Wynn Pastor accompany the designers.

They work elbow to elbow with the neighbors in sponge-painting the walls, upholstering furniture, hanging drapes and covering the walls in fabric light and dark.

Hey, look. They're sawing the legs off your coffee table. That's bad. They're building you a canopy bed. That's good.

TLC gives neighbors and designers 48 hours and a budget of $1,000 to get the job done.

``There's a lot of thinking on your feet,'' said Bielec, the bearded, roundish designer who's the most fun to watch as he goes about turning drab kitchens, dining rooms, attics and basement playrooms into rooms like none others on the street where you live.

He's big on exposed brick.

And things pink. ``Don't we all love and adore the vibrant color pink?''

Not even the most optimistic of programmers at TLC imagined that ``Trading Spaces'' would become the hit that it is today. Watching married couples paint the wall of a neighbor's den chocolate brown or decorating with a giant papier-mache lily doesn't sound much like entertainment.

But entertainment it is, with the ``Trading Spaces'' prime-time ratings in the same neighborhood with cable's highest rated programs like ``Raw Zone'' wrestling and ``SpongeBob SquarePants.''

It's TLC's show of the big buzz.

TLC executive vice president and general manager Jana Bennett said of ``Trading Spaces,'' ``We were looking to make an instructional show that was less predictable.''

Gorder calls it a game of risks.

You bet it's a risk when you say to a designer with unconventional tastes, ``Come right in and do what you want with my bedroom.''

You open yourself to things gothic -- to bizarre chandeliers and walls the shade of pale purple and dark eggplant.

In a recent makeover, Gorder decorated one wall with live moss.

The designers, most with a contemporary bent, persuade the eager neighbors to dye carpets, glue all kinds of things to the walls, import lots of candles and spray-paint old furniture to make it look new while hiding TV sets and home computers behind cabinets.

``And if you don't like it, that's tough luck-ski,'' Bielec said.

TLC will not pay to have the room or rooms changed back to what they were before the TLC crew showed up. TLC estimates that 99 percent of the people who agree to the makeovers are pleased with what's been done to their spaces. That's obvious in the show's closing moments.

TLC brings in the neighbors with eyes closed for their first look at the makeovers. They are escorted by Davis who gives the order to look and behold: ``Open your eyes NOW.''

The reaction of the neighbors is generally one big exclamation point.

``It's awesome! I love it.''

``The colors are incredible!''

``Oh, my God! It's wild.''

``This is so cool! Amazing.''

Jennifer Johnson is in that 1 percent of the homeowners who wish they never heard of ``Trading Spaces.'' When she opened her eyes, she saw the wall of her den covered with moss -- Gorder's idea.

``After three days, we tossed it out the window,'' she said. ``The moss looked bad, but not as bad as what we did to our neighbors' room. We made it all black.''

``Trading Spaces'' can be a path to paradise or panic, Davis said.

Moss on a bedroom wall? Panic.

New shows resume on Aug. 31 with Davis and her gang calling on sorority and fraternity houses. A visit to the home of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in April hints of more celebrities to come.

TLC has taped shows from Atlanta to Boston, from Knoxville to Providence, R.I. Shows produced in Richmond and Washington, D.C., will premiere in September.

There are no plans to visit Hampton Roads in 2002, but who knows about the future? A TLC spokesman said the network hears from hundreds of viewers every week asking -- make that begging -- for the ``Trading Spaces'' designers and carpenters to come and work their magic.



Transcript appears courtesy of The Virginia-Pilot, copyright 2002© All Rights Reserved