2 April 2005

That old house

The wife spent the last two days working on renovating the living room of a couple we know, and now I have to suffer through her suffering ("I'm soooo sore!"). Our friends, Liz & Matt, applied to have the room redone by the kind people of HGTV's Designer Finals. Top design students face their final test—a real-life makeover with a minimal budget, a handful of helpers and advice from a mentor. The minimal budget was $3000, gratis, and the handful of design helpers cancelled at the last minute forcing Matt to call in the 'rents who, inconceivably, drove all night from FL to assist. Chaos ensues.

I received various SMS updates throughout Thursday and Friday. The almost-immediately-over-budget renovation was alternately grueling (again, "I'm sooooo sore!") and tedious. The producer, a bitch with a capital C, would humorlessly berate the volunteers for starting a task without the cameras being present. Stop task, undo what you've done, and re-start. very. slowly. as. the. camera. captures. each. step. Great! Now get back to work. All of the helper monkeys were allied in defiance against their evil ruler.

Thursday night, the wife didn't get home until 11:30--yikes--then start again at 8:30 the next morning! L & M were restricted from the locale until ... The Reveal! That finally happened at around 6 Friday night; at which point the wife and friends bid L & M fare-thee-well to go a-drinkin'. They didn't feel like hanging around for the several hours that were blocked out to film ooohs and ahhhs during the walk-through.

Although I haven't seen the final product, early reports were positive. Except, well, apparently the rest of the house got Completely Trashed during the rushed worked and with the camera crew traipsing all around. We haven't yet heard from the happy couple, so I'm not sure that the planned open house is going to happen this Sunday.

[ posted by sstrader on 2 April 2005 at 2:20:44 PM in Culture & Society ]