D.C.: Quebec Place

MPDP welcomes us in front of the U.S. Capitol Building; she's wearing jeans and a red, white, and blue flower-printed sleeveless t-shirt. Since I'm recapping this during a snowstorm, wearing three layers of clothes, I'm filled with envy. Yeah, I know it's not live or anything. My brain hasn't completely frozen yet. I am, however, braced for the inevitable government puns and clichs. MPDP announces with a salute that she'll be our Commander-in-Chief for the two days. What, we get off that lightly?

We see Gen, Vern, and Ty in a park. Gen, barefoot, is running up a stepped wall with Vern alongside her trying to push her off. Ty is on the other side, trudging slowly upward. He waves wearily. We see our first couple, Jamila and Jasan (pronounced Jah-sawn) in a park; she's getting ready to run, and he's got a timer. They want their living room redone. It's a very decent room, just bland: hardwood floors in great condition; pale yellow walls; comfortable-looking and relatively new beige upholstered sofa and chair with rolled arms; white woodwork and trim. And a huge, honking black hole of a television set that sucks a lot of light and life out of the room. ["I crave that TV. Who needs attractive décor when you have a giant TV?" -- Wing Chun] There's a striped area rug on the floor in neutral shades and a few colourful pillows, but otherwise not much going on in the room visually. The window has an off-white shade. Jamila and Jasan's house is older, with more generous woodwork and a radiator. Jasan says their style is "modern," "contemporary," and "classic." Jamila compares their style to that of a calla lily: very elegant, very sleek, and you don't need a lot of them to make a statement. Jasan says that if he compared their style to a car it'd be a Mercedes Benz 500. Calla lilies and Mercedeseseses? What are they doing on this show? Boy, I hope for their sake that they're getting Vern. Jamila laughs her head off at this, and I think she asks him, "What's that cost?" Jasan says they need window treatments. Jamila would like to see more colour brought in. Jasan says they have a room where they can sit down and talk, and they need a room where they can turn on the TV and watch the fight. Jamila pipes up, "Drink beer..." She laughs. Jasan says, "No...the fight coming on this weekend..." I think what they're after is probably a coffee table. There's not a lot in this room in the way of horizontal surfaces on which to put food or drink, other than the floor.

Jamila's sister Sabriya and Sabriya's husband, Grant (who were married recently) want their bedroom redone. We see them looking at photographs. Sabriya wants something sophisticated and contemporary. We see their bedroom, which is quite an interesting space, and thank God it's not another McMansionesque football stadium. There's a large main area, with a brick fireplace (non-working, from the look of it) painted white, to the one side of the bed. On one side of the fireplace is a large window; on the other, a built-in bookshelf painted to blend in with the wall. The walls are a sort of paper-bag brown; the wall-to-wall carpet, which has seen better days, is beige. The woodwork is painted in a slightly darker shade than the walls. They have a double bed with a dark wood frame in a traditional style with tiny posts at each corner. At the end of the bed is a chaise longue in a soft turquoise colour, and a chest of drawers. On the wall opposite the fireplace, there's a wide archway that leads to two smaller areas. In the first section is a chest of drawers, a hamper, that sort of thing. There's another window in that area. At the end of this area is another narrower arched opening that creates a shallow recessed area. There's a dark wood dressing table (with a mirror and bench) that fits nicely into this area. On either side of the recessed area is a closet door, and above each door, a row of cupboards. I love the layout and design of this room, except for the awkward placement of the fireplace. It's really interesting for a bedroom. I think if it were mine, I would see about either making that fireplace into a working one or getting rid of it. Grant would like a headboard, although he doesn't think he needs anything that fills the whole wall or anything like that. They hate the carpet and would be happy to see it gone. Grant says there are hardwood floors underneath and they wouldn't be opposed to having the wood floor showing with some area rugs on top. Sabriya says that a sexy room would be fine because they just got married and...she tries to figure out how to say the rest politely: "We will probably spend a lot of time in our...boudoir." She and Grant smile at each other and laugh. Grant: "Hopefully." If you haven't seen the show it might sound ooky reading this, but take my word for it, they're totally cute and adorable about it.

Key swap. Jamila and Sabriya are both wearing heels and denim capris. Sabriya's are tight enough that I'm a little worried for her reproductive health. I'm hoping they're stretch denim. This is what I'm thinking about as MPDP blathers on. At the end of the swap, there's a shot of MPDP mugging at the camera, but it's a weird angle so she looks cross-eyed or something.

Grant and Sabriya find Gen fussing with pillows in the living room. Gen's wearing a black shirt and skirt, a big red and white belt, and red heels. She looks cute. She hugs each of them and asks what they want to do. They want to bring colour into the room; apparently the whole house is the same pale yellow. Gen assures them that they will not be doing anything to the floors. Sabriya is hugely relieved. Gen says they're going to replace the fugly ceiling light, which is one of those fixtures that looks like a translucent white glass breast glued to the ceiling, with a gold nipple and a gold collar around it. Yeah, you know the ones I mean. Gen mentions the couches and asks what's going on there; Grant says they just started redecorating. You can tell Gen's probably going to get rid of the furniture, because it's not her style, even though it's fairly new and is obviously the HOs' style. She says she's seen a lot of dark wood throughout the house, and a little bit of an Asian flair, citing flower arrangements and pillows. I kind of suspect Gen is seeing "Asian flair" where the HOs are going for "simple elegance." Gen says they're going to embellish that, but she's not going to tell them exactly what her plan is because she's waiting for it to be delivered. Hmm. Gen tells them to unload the room.

Jamila and Jasan find Vern by the fireplace, with two cans of paint -- bright red and a mushroom/taupe colour -- already open. He gives them the choice of painting the walls red and the fireplace the mushroom colour, or vice versa. Jamila says she prefers the red on the fireplace. We get a shot of the ceiling fan, and Jamila says she wants to see it out of there. Vern says it's going. Jasan mentions the carpet. They agree it's gotta go. Vern says it's "DOA carpet" if he's ever seen it, although God knows we've seen much skankier on this show. The carpet's going; Vern says there are beautiful hardwood floors underneath. They unload the room.

Back at the other house, a delivery guy rings the doorbell and Gen answers, squealing, "Yes! Yes! This is my soup." Oh, um, dear. She pays him, mentioning that she's giving him a big tip. The guy wants to keep the receipt, and Gen at first says he can, then thinks about that, probably wondering whether she's going to count this in her budget or not, and then decides he can keep it.

Vern and his team are trying to remove the ceiling fan, but when Grant and his father-in-law installed it, they either made the hole in the ceiling too big, or couldn't get the fan seated properly, and filled in the gap with joint compound. Now, of course, the collar of the fan is stuck to the ceiling and they're going to have to break it out. Jamila explains that when it was installed, it was an all-night project that involved a lot of plastering, cursing, and arguing. Vern laughs. Vern thinks it's going to take them a day to take it down.

Gen's got her team and MPDP sitting on the floor as she unpacks her food. She opens a container of Tom Kha Gai, a coconut-based Thai soup, and says she was eating this soup the other day and Sabriya's sister's room appeared at the bottom of her bowl. Were there psychedelic mushrooms in that soup? Where does she eat, at Timothy Leary's Thai Garden? MPDP mentions that it's Gen's favourite soup as Gen starts spooning some into the bowl, indicating that the coconut represents the white in the colour scheme, and the cilantro represents the green that they're bringing in, which will match some of the pillows they already have. She spoons out some chicken, which is the same colour as the broth, and she's poking around for some mushrooms but can't find any. She pours the whole soup into the bowl and realizes she got ripped off fungus-wise.

During the commercials, we are subjected to MPDP, Hildi, and Gen riding around London, England, promoting the November 30 episode of the show, which was filmed there with the carpenter from Changing Rooms, Handy Andy. They're putting on quasi-British accents and using British slang which is interspersed with words explaining to American audiences what the heck it is they're on about. Boy, this should be an interesting episode. Of all the designers to send over there...they're sending Hildi? This has "international incident" written all over it.

The bumper back into the show is Gen and Ty sitting on the front stoop. Ty's looking through plans, oblivious to Gen, who's sitting to him and waggling her tongue all over the place and smiling. Back on the show, Gen reveals a paint colour, saying it's the wall colour. It's a brilliant yellowy-green called Lemongrass. Actually, it's an accent colour; she didn't know which can she was opening. She opens the wall colour, which is a brownish-white mushroom colour. It's weird; in these shots, the walls of this room don't look yellow at all, but beige. It must have been the lighting in the earlier shots that made it look so yellowy.

Vern busts out the ceiling fan. I bet Jamila's and Sabriya's father is watching this and cursing all over again.

Grant and Sabriya are painting the walls. Grant thinks Jasan will like this colour. I don't see why not; it seems barely distinguishable from what they had. Sabriya's worried about the other colour, but not this one. Grant thinks it will all work out. Sabriya: "If you say so, honey." She says this without sarcasm. You can tell the ink on their marriage license is barely dry.

Jasan paints the chimney breast red. ["Lotta decorative breasts in this episode." -- Wing Chun] Vern's in the dressing area painting the recessed wall red. He calls his team over. He explains he's painting this area red to help balance the red fireplace at the opposite end. Jamila's cool with that. Vern shows them the hardware they're going to use to replace the existing hardware on the closet and cabinet doors. The new hardware is very modern, sleek, simple chrome bars.

Gen discusses her carpentry plans with Ty. She says there's a big chunky couch in there now, and she wants something sleeker and more contemporary. Sigh. So we'll be getting rid of the comfortable one and replacing it with something funky-looking that, if the HOs are lucky, isn't utterly and back-breakingly uncomfortable. I. Don't. Understand. What this room needs is a good strong colour on the walls, a great area rug, a good coffee table, and a storage unit to hide or at least subdue that beast of a television. ["Stay away from my TV, woman!" -- Wing Chun] And a couple of attractive pieces on the walls. And another comfortable side chair, or some big floor pillows. Some interesting accessories. Most of which can be done -- and quite well -- for under $1000. Gen says these "people are way too cool for their furniture." She makes it sound like they currently have a collection of Victorian settees and courting sofas. It's really just not that bad. We see a shot of Gen's sketch for the couch, which includes a little cartoon of Ty that's really cute, though it looks nothing like him. It's hard to make out what she's written to it, but I think it says, "My brainy friend -- got something for ya' to build." Or maybe it says "Very baby weird..." or "Fry baby bird..." I honestly can't tell, and I think I've already spent too much time peering at it. Anyway, Gen wants Ty to build a bench-style sofa with a thick wood framework. It's very rectilinear, and she describes it as having an "Asian twist." She wants to try to balance out the hugeness of the TV. Hello, Trading Spaces? There's a reason you never go into anyone's house and find that their primary sofa is a bench, or a mattress, or a double-wide ottoman, or whatever the heck else they've built on this show. If you gave most people the choice between the oldest, fugliest, most broken-in upholstered couch and some trendy, brand-new modified park bench with a bolster, they'd pick the fugly old couch. You know, if they were planning on using it and not just looking at it. I understand why, when the HOs have no furniture or the springs are sticking out of it or it's covered with dog vomit, they want to replace it. But there's just no call for spending a big chunk of a $1000 budget to replace perfectly serviceable and decent upholstered furniture -- even if it's a tad boring -- with something less functional and less comfortable. Bah.

Vern shows his team some bevelled mirror tiles that they'll be installing in the recessed area to add some light to that part of the room. Jamila squeals with delight. She thinks it will be awesome. Vern says it will make the room a little more glamorous. Jamila says, "That's Sabriya!"

Ty is redrawing Gen's couch, and asking her about a matching ottoman. She wants one to function as both a coffee table and additional seating, and she thinks it will be more versatile than a whole chunky chair. Ty says he'll try to mimic the feel of the couch. He wants to make it a little smaller than Gen wants; she wants it to be 3' x 4' and he wants to make it 2' x 4' which he says will be easier on him and cheaper for her. She likes that.