Americans are addicted to this whole makeover thing — trying to transform something we find unpleasant into something appealing practically overnight.
I’m not talking about turning Iraq into a democracy here. I’m referring, specifically, to the proliferation of home-decorating/ renovation shows, a phenomenon I have only recently become aware of.
So, one weekend, I watched every single shelter show that flickered across my television screen in a single 24-hour period — on HGTV, TLC, the Discovery Channel and A&E.
Why did I do this? To quote Bill Clinton: Because I could (I finally got cable). Because several friends with fabulous apartments watch this stuff all the time, and I wanted some of what they had. Because I’ve lived in my apartment for 18 months without taking a single decorative action, including buying a couch. If you come to my house you have to stand. I was beginning to think I was missing the interior-design gene that everyone else seemed to possess; perhaps this would be my total-immersion cure. And, because I honestly thought it sounded like a good idea: I’m perverse that way.
I pulled a chair up to my television at 10 a.m. Friday and there I stayed until Saturday at 10 a.m. (Actually, from 3 to 6 a.m. there was nothing on at all, so I slept somewhat fitfully during those hours, with visions of chandeliers made out of coffee cans (from the show “Rally Round the House”) dancing in my head.
After the 24th hour, I could barely remember the point of some of them, even upon inspecting the log I kept, which looks something like this:
10:05 a.m.: “The Designer Guys.” Handsome, nattily dressed hosts (twins?) arrive at the home of a young couple who has functional problems with their “multifunctional room.” Ultrasuede drapes with grommets are discussed — new problems rather than a solution?
10:15 a.m. or so: “Country Style.” Patchwork quilts. Host dressed like Holly Hobby.
11:20 a.m.: “This Small Space.” Man has glued his collection of vintage Christmas-tree toppers to his entryway wall. Shots of his collection of flamenco and bullfighter dolls. Sputnik lighting fixture. He brags that some of his decor came out of the garbage.
11:23 a.m.: “Rally Round the House.” “Out front, Norma is cutting the sheep shapes out of plywood,” says the announcer. Shot of plywood sheep with hauntingly human faces. Women are painting Amish hex signs on round wooden disks. Red barn facade is being erected (apparently in someone’s suburban back yard). Bales of hay.
I’m not really the hard-core domestic type, which may explain why I was not initially engaged. Nor was I quite credulous of the notion that people will let perfect strangers into their homes to perform acts, on television, that are normally considered private. But I persisted and learned otherwise.
People will let you do anything to them if you put it on TV.
I watched an absurdly sloppy married couple, who seemed to be pathologically attached to a staggering accumulation of plastic sippy cups and Tupperware and newspapers, as they were bullied into cleaning out their overstuffed kitchen cabinets, filing their bills and doing some recycling (“Mission: Organization; 1 p.m.). Theirs was an experience that I can assure you packs limited voyeuristic punch.
I watched shows that struck me as mean pranks rather than well-intentioned makeover missions.
On “Surprise by Design” (at noon and again at 1 p.m.), for instance, a husband left for work in the morning and came home to find that a glib design team, along with his wife and family friends, had painted a big tree on the wall of the great room of his Atlanta home, glued fake leaves to his entertainment center and dragged a tree nailed to a stand inside to simulate an “enchanted forest.” On “While You Were Out” (4 p.m.), a frail-looking grandmother returned from a trip to find that her back yard had been transformed by her granddaughter and a slightly less glib design team into an “Art Deco” fantasy — meaning sand and a boardwalk and wide pastel stripes painted on her house, which could now pass for a cheap Miami hotel. This, in spite of the fact that she had clearly expressed her dislike for “the Art Deco colors.”
Like I said: mean.
And then I watched some more. Because now I was strangely hooked — albeit more for anthropological than decor-ological reasons.
1:30 p.m.: “Divine Design.” Perky blond designer and hunky guy in overalls are chatting, rather flirtily, in a bathroom with the toilet between them. She flirts with a carpenter named Paul, who has a pencil behind his ear, muscles and a tool belt and is lying on his back working on something. She flirts with Chico, the electrician, who has long glossy black hair.
1:50 p.m. or so: Perky blond woman is dressed in bathrobe, now, telling audience she is going to test out the shower; she earlier appeared in full cop outfit to guard bathroom from male cast members. So saucy! I think she is a little bit too “sophisticated” for me, but I really like what she does with this bathroom.
I watched quite a few programs that seemed to be scraping the bottom of the house-show barrel, including a couple that exploited the drama of looking for a new home (like “House Hunters,” in which a prospective buyer, while looking out the window at the trees and grass, asked an agent, “Is that the back yard?). And some that dared act as though they were doing their victims a favor by being depressingly cheap (on “Decorating Cents,” at noon, for instance, fishnet, starfishes and a boat paddle were attached to one family’s bathroom wall).
The most disturbing of these, however, was “If Walls Could Talk” (4:30 p.m.), in which the personal effects of people who cannot defend themselves (i.e., dead people) are plundered by the new owners of their homes for audience entertainment. (One man whose house was in the spotlight confessed he used a dead optometrist’s steam machine — a coffinlike weight-loss device of days of yore — for storing his Christmas decorations.)
I also saw some shows that I loved, such as “Clean Sweep,” in which a team of designers and “organizers” try to help people overcome their pack-rat neuroses without murdering them. (“What is this?” a British man asked one of the occupants of the house being swept clean, holding a sad-looking stuffed turkey that you might put on your bed to celebrate Thanksgiving. “It’s a cute turkey,” she told him. “Says who?” he asked.)
The more I watched, the more I began to notice a sameness to these shows, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
5:09 p.m.: “Building Character.” “Next, a military mess hall becomes a stylish home!”
6 p.m.: “Curb Appeal.” A couple with a 1920s storybook-style home tells landscaper with a goatee that they want to feel like they live in Europe. He suggests hanging a curtain from the stucco arch over their driveway. They say no. He suggests a gate made of driftwood. They say no.
6:44 p.m.: “Trading Spaces: Family.” A woman weeps as she tells the audience that no one deserves a beautiful new room as much as her friend and neighbor Jennifer — meaning the woman whose living room she is decorating and who is, in turn, decorating her living room, on a budget of $1,000. (Why would anyone agree to this?)
6:55 p.m.: “Trading Spaces: Family.” “After” shots. Weeping woman gets to see what her friend and neighbor Jennifer has done to her living room (dark brown walls and citron green couch). Tense silence. Tells the host the room “is not functional” for her family. Possible end of friendship with Jennifer.
Then, at around midnight, it hit me — the thing that all these programs had in common was that none of them had taught me a single thing about redecorating my place.
I did learn one very important thing to pass along, however: If they come knocking, you might want to think twice about letting anyone from TV-land into your apartment.
I certainly understand the allure of waking up one ordinary, anonymous morning in your nondescript home to find a team of savvy interior designers and hunky handymen standing in your doorway, champing at the bit to redecorate your living room and put you on TV.
But inviting these people into your home — especially if they work for one of the shows in which extreme frugality or a race against time, or, God forbid, surprises are an important factor — could mean ending up with a den that looks like an Irish pub (“While You Were Out,” 7 p.m.) or a yard containing a fountain made from a garbage can and two handmade metal palm trees (“While You Were Out,” 4 p.m.).
Or an outdoor office, where you are apparently expected to work on your novel even if it’s raining, with a doormat as your desk blotter (“Outer Spaces,” 4 p.m.).
The hosts will go home, to Hollywood or whatever glamorous place they came from, and you will be left alone with your ranch house near the airport, with a screamingly loud safety-orange kitchen (“Debbie Travis’ Face Lift,” 7 p.m.) whose floor is covered in black textured rubber that will surely be impossible to mop.
At the same time, I should also warn you that it might be difficult to turn some of these people away. It seemed like design teams of half the shows I watched had a perky blond with a Meg Ryan haircut, one pretty but nondescript brunet, one handsome carpenter with soulful eyes, one high-strung bald guy with sunglasses on his head and one sardonic Brit.
They may remind you of the popular clique from your high school days. Which is to say, just because they let you hang out with them, that doesn’t mean they’re going to be nice to you (one particularly snarly “Trading Spaces” designer destroyed a mirrored table when a participant suggested it didn’t look so hot).
They might flirt with your boyfriend (“I just spent the weekend with your husband,” Debbie Travis told a woman who arrived home to find her kitchen redesigned).
They might be hanging around with you just because they know you’ll let them have a party at your house. And you might not like the way it looks after they do.
Sadly, you will still probably want to hang out with them, no matter what I tell you.
I know this because as much as I seem to loathe these design-show gurus, I also sort of wanted to be like them — glamorous, handy with a hot-glue gun — and I missed them when they were gone.
When I awoke the next day (I grabbed a nap from 3 to 6 a.m., during programming down time), I could sort of imagine how Dorothy felt after she returned to Kansas from Oz: Everyone, it seemed, was wearing plaid shirts and jeans and standing in dirt.
Saturday at 6 a.m. is apparently when all the handymen are up — not necessarily in their workshops, but at least watching shows featuring professional handymen, like “New Yankee Workshop” (furniture-making and woodworking), “Fix it Up!” (do it yourself), “Before & After” (major home remodeling), “New Spaces” (remodeling), “Hometime” (home repair), “Ground Breakers” (landscaping) and “Landscape Solutions” (landscape solutions).
All the men on these shows reminded me of Wilford Brimley even when they didn’t look like Wilford Brimley, and the few women had the same sort of Brimleyesque warmth and intelligence (also, they didn’t flirt or show cleavage).
It was not the snazziest crowd, but they seemed to be genuinely trying to teach me something, with their fancy saws, blueprints and backhoes. Unfortunately, I had no idea what they were talking about most of the time, and I rarely made it to the finished product (the log cabin renovation, the pine hutch, the new workshop) without my eyes glazing over.
So, actually, I guess that means I didn’t learn anything from the earnest crowd or from the glamorous crowd.
In fact, I found that I wasn’t really all that interested in learning anything.
After all, I’m an American. I want the transformation, but without all the nasty application and perseverance necessary to carry it off.
I do have loads of optimism, however, so I plan to just stay parked in front of my television, day after day, vicariously experiencing change in other people’s homes and hoping that someday I’ll wake up to a camera crew ringing my doorbell, waiting to capture the thrilled expression on my face when I realize that it’s finally time for a makeover of my very own.
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Watch words
Number of home-improvement/decorating/repair shows aired on network and cable TV the week of Nov. 1: 149
Longest-running American home-improvement show: PBS’ “This Old House,” created by Russell Morash, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
First TV network dedicated to home decor/design/ improvement: HGTV made its debut Dec. 30, 1994, with 6.5 million homes in 44 markets.
Newest home show: Generation Renovation,” which premiered Wednesday on HGTV, features real homeowners and their own renovation projects in their “unique old homes.”
Don’t-even-go there show: “Decorating Cents,” in which they provide room they provide room makeovers for $500. If you’re going to humiliate me, you’d better spend some dough.
Best TV designer: Candice Olson of Divine Design.” She’s the one who showed up in a cop suit and in a towel to test out a new bathroom (see main story) . . . so I got the feeling she’s attuned to what her audience wants. But when it comes to her designs, she doesn’t try to be kooky; she really improves the space.
Best hunk in home improvement show: Eric Stromer, carpenter of “Clean Sweep” fame.
Show that offers the best and most-useful ideas: I’d pick the Clean Sweepers” hands down as the team that I’d invite into my home, especially if I were a much bigger slob. They made the most dramatic transformations of any show I watched — changes you know these unrepentant piglets would never make on their own — and, from what I can tell, they have not had to kill anyone in the process yet.
— Emily Nunn
