Austin: Wyoming Valley Drive

MPDP -- wearing jeans and a tie-dyed peasant t-shirt -- greets us from Austin, Texas, in front of an Austin mural. She says that murals are common all over the city, and that she hopes that one of their designers does a mural: "It's a great use of large space, and all it takes it some paint and a little imagination." And some talent. Don't forget that part.

Ty, Hildi, and Laurie are frolicking at a sign vendor's lot. Hildi's leaning on a large martini-glass sign. MPDP says that Austin is a melting pot of culture and creativity, much like Trading Spaces. I nearly choke on what I'm eating. Frink slaps me on the back. MPDP continues, saying, "In our pot, we put four homeowners, two designers, one carpenter, and a thousand dollars. We let it stew for forty-eight hours and hope the recipe turns out." She doesn't mention the secret ingredients they occasionally throw in: a pinch of crack, a handful of magic mushrooms....

We see Brian and Diane in their kitchen feeding their three daughters, all of whom are probably under eight, maybe even under six. (I'm not good at guessing children's ages, though, so if one of them is obviously twelve or something, you don't need to email me about it.) They want their bland kitchen brightened up. It's got oak cabinetry, some kind of mottled wallpaper, wood (or wood-look) blinds on the windows, and a work island. There's a pot rack over the island. The countertops and backsplash have sort of a cool-toned sage-y laminate and tile, which clashes horribly with the lichen-coloured valances, although I think the valance fabric might go with the splotches in the wallpaper. And they're those poofy valances, which, I'm sorry, look to me more like full diapers than anything else. There's an eating area in front of two windows with a black kitchen table and orangey-toned wooden chairs in it. There's also a narrow bench seat underneath the window. Brian (who's got those chiselled, all-American good looks) says they want to redo the kitchen because it's just the way it was when they bought it, and for the most part it's not what they wanted. He says they're not crazy about some of the colours and they want to lighten up the room. Diane says that because there are so many cabinets, and because she finds them so dark, along with the dark blinds, the room is just too dark for a space they use so much. Frink keeps telling them to open the blinds. We get a close-up of the bench, and I can see now that the wallpaper pattern is a sort of leafy floral pattern. Diane would like the bench extended out so that it can seat more people. Apparently, it's too shallow even for their children's butts. She adds that she spends most of her time in the kitchen and is excited to see what the designers will do with it.

We see Laura and Steve sitting on two natural fibre chairs in their dining room. Steve is playing the guitar. MPDP says they're hoping for international flavour in their dining room. The walls are a sandy colour, and they have a small rectangular dining table with a dark wood top and very thin black metal cabriole-style legs. The chairs are made of thin black metal as well; the backs are circular medallions, with tubes of metal arranged in a spiral pattern. They have white chair cushions, which are too stark in relation to everything else in the room. There are dark red drapes in a slippery-looking fabric, with swagged valances. On one wall, there's a picture mounted on a backing with some of the colours of the room in quadrants. It seems like the inspiration for the colour scheme. On either side of the picture, there is a black candle sconce. Below the picture are the two chairs -- rattan, maybe? Bamboo? I don't know. Some reed or grass or other. Between the two windows is a large rectangular mirror with a black frame, possibly carved wood. There's some kind of chandelier, but we don't get a good look at it. Laura says that they eat all their meals in the kitchen, but that they'd like to make the dining room more inviting. She says she's not opposed to other types of wall covering. The best thing would be a room where people would come in and say "wow." Suddenly she remembers where she is and adds, "In a good way."

Key swap. Whatever.

Brian and Diane find Laurie pretending to measure the wall. She's wearing a split-sleeved cream and brown top in a wild print. It's a pretty distracting top. She asks for their ideas, but not before informing us (in her trademark trill) that there's going to be "draaah-mah!" Diane says she would love to give them a place to display their dishes, and to add some colour. The room isn't exactly suffering from either a lack of colour, nor is the colour scheme bad. This is an okay room that needs different furniture and a stylist's eye to accessorize and pull the room together. Brian agrees: "Lighten the room, put some colour in here." Every HO says, when asked for their opinion, "Add some colour." This room's already got colour! There's nothing wrong with it. Not that it matters what the HOs say, because it's too late for it to matter anyway. Laurie says they're going for an "old-world Spanish theme." That certainly sounds like something Laura and Steve will like. She says they're bringing in rich "adobe, terra cotta colours" and covering one wall with a woven leather treatment. They're going to build them a new table, a buffet for the wall, and add a new light fixture. They unload the room.

Laura and Steve enter their neighbours' kitchen to find Hildi standing on the countertop (in her high heeled shoes, of course). I cringe, partly because that's my own reaction, and partly because I know my husband's going to freak. I've mentioned before that he has real issues with shoes indoors, particularly on furniture and eating surfaces. Come on, people prepare food on that surface! I don't know what her objections are to (a) appropriate footwear; (b) ladders; (c) dropcloths. I mean, have a shred of respect for someone else's home. Sorry, I forgot myself. For someone who affects such a worldly manner, Hildi has the habits of someone raised by wolves. Anyway, she's standing on the countertop, reaching above the cabinets and sticking something up on the wall in the very corner. She announces that she has wine labels they are going to put up all over the kitchen: "Because we cannot spend the whole two days taking down this wallpaper." First of all, who said you have to spend two days? Wallpaper's been taken down on this show before, and the shows got done. No, it's not as much fun as putting stickers on the wall. It's a lot of work. But the results are worth it. There's also not that much wallpaper, either, compared to a lot of rooms on this show. Geez, don't even take it down then! Prime and paint over it if you must. No, as usual, Hildi would rather just stick stuff on the walls. Staples, glue, nails -- who cares what the damage is or how unprofessional it looks? Just slap it up there. She says they're going to give the kitchen a new look, and asks them what they had in mind. Laura says that Diane loves old world/French country: "Just think of maybe Tuscany in the spring." They want to make it nice for her, since she spends a lot of time there. Hildi says they are going to make it nice, but that she doesn't know how old world/Tuscany it's going to look. She says they're going to give the cabinets a new look, and change the hardware. She says they're going to stick wine labels all over the wallpaper instead of taking it down: "So I'm saving you!" No, you're saving yourself. Your team gets to come over again in two days and help their neighbours remove all the stupid stickers and the wallpaper. She adds that they're going to take down the poofy window treatments (hallelujah) and do something interesting to the blinds. She tells them to unload the kitchen while she keeps putting labels on the wall: "We've got 6,000 of them to cover these walls!" She clambers back up onto the countertop. I doubt these HOs are going to like having all these stickers on their walls, but on the off chance that they do, I wonder if the adhesive on them is up to the steam and moisture and heat they'd be subjected to in a kitchen? Oh, well, that's not Hildi's problem.

Hildi asks Steve, once he's finished removing the cabinet hardware, to lightly sand the cabinets. They have to prime and paint them. Laura asks if all the wall surface is going to be covered with stickers. Hildi says that anywhere you see wallpaper, there are going to be stickers. So, yes.

Laurie admits that what she's calling "leather" is actually more like pleather, given the Trading Spaces budget. Then she admits that it's actually a sueded cotton. She says there's sort of a cowhide texture to it. And that it's saddle brown. With the olive and the salmon? Am I going to need Maalox for this episode? Laurie says that it will be loosely woven on the walls. She seems to be struggling to describe it. I think she should just show them a drawing, although I'm not having that much trouble picturing what she's planning.

Laura says she really loves the colours in the stickers. Steve agrees that they're pretty. There are enough of them on the wall now to see what an intense, almost plaid-like pattern they create on the wall. If by "intense," you mean "migraine-inducing." Laura says she's just not sure about using the stickers because Diane and Brian aren't "really big wine drinkers." Close-up shot of the section she's working on, which you can see is pretty crooked. She's not sure what their opinion's going to be. Laura thinks Diane would have preferred them to have just painted over the wallpaper. Steve chuckles.

Laurie explains that the "leather" will be loosely woven, and that some of the wall behind it will show through, so that's why they have to paint that wall.

Hildi asks Laura what would scare her. To return to in her house, is the implication, I guess. MPDP's on the floor behind Laura and says, "Boo!" Laura is completely not scared. Laura says that ultra-contemporary would scare her Diane. MPDP asks Laura what would scare her. Laura says she would hate neon green or neon yellow. Anything neon. Hildi claims that Laurie's favourite colours are neons. Laura seems concerned by that. MPDP backs her up. Seriously, it sometimes seems like half the HOs on this show have seen maybe one or two episodes. Having seen the great majority of episodes, I would advise anyone considering going on the show to reconsider until they have seen practically every episode. If you can't manage that, see at least ten-fifteen of each designer. Seriously. You'll save yourself a lot of heartache.

Laurie talks to Ty, who's wearing a football jersey with the number 69 on it. Maybe it's National Wear Your IQ To Work Day and nobody told me. Ty emerges from the truck and dumps all his tools on the ground. That's a smart thing to do with an armload of clamps. Ty and Laurie perch themselves on the tailgate of the truck; Laurie says she's worried Ty's working on too many of Hildi's things and not enough of Laurie's. Ty: "I wouldn't do you like that. I like to share my love." Yes, I definitely need the Maalox. Laurie shows Ty her plan, and Ty pretends to wipe away a tear of astonishment. Laurie wants him to build a round dining table and a buffet. The buffet is a table with a plywood top and cabriole legs made out of a metal with a spiral detail at the top. Ty tries to tell her that curving the metal is possible up to a point. The table is to be four feet in diameter with a four-inch apron. Then they're going to fasten a table skirt around the apron. Don't like the sound of that. Laurie and Ty blather about aprons and skirts. He asks about whether the wall is going to be leather. Laurie says it is. Ty: "Well, that's where all your money went, isn't it?" Nothing gets past him, even with the room-temperature IQ.

Hildi does her paint reveal. May I just point out that these stickers look terrible with the backsplash? The paint is black. Laura says it looks blue as Hildi makes an "Eep!" face. Hildi says it's black, and just looks blue because of the light from the blue sky coming in the window. Uh, sure. She paints some on an unprimed cabinet, and says that there are so many cabinets that it's really going to take a long time to paint. In the bumper to the commercial, Laurie feigns bullfighting with a length of saddle brown sueded cotton.

Man, I hate that "put up a fun little border" Wal-Mart commercial. Shut up, Fun Little Border Lady.

Hildi shows Laura the yards and yards of bright orange fabric she has for making slipcovers for the wooden kitchen chairs. It's a colour that makes me think of Hare Krishna robes. Hildi says it will pick up the orange in the stickers.

Laurie and her team try to figure out how to put the fabric on the wall. Laurie finds out that Brian and Diane are college sweethearts. She's all gooey over that.

As they work on the slipcovers, Hildi describes to Laura the bench Ty is making.

Brian staples the first swath of "leather." Laurie says that the antique brass nailhead trim will cover all the staples. Laurie wants Brian to put on safety glasses, just in case a staple goes flying. He obliges her. He stares down from the ladder with the glasses on and intones, "Robo...something."

Laura tells Steve she doesn't think their house is Stickerville, or Stickyville. Or Stuckeyville. She hopes, anyway. Steve, priming a cabinet, has no idea. He's doing that thing you see constantly on this show of using a small roller everywhere on a cabinet. That works fine for the broad surfaces, but it does a crappy job on narrow molding and carved detail, which these cabinets have. He says he can't even imagine what's going on in their house, because he couldn't have imagined this. Laura bets their neighbours are having the same conversation: "We'll be back here in a couple weeks, helping Laura and Steve repaint, taking the cowhide off the walls." D'oh! That seems, as my husband says, amazingly prescient. Or did someone tip her off? Either way, I sure hope so. I can't imagine they could live with that salmon paint.

Laurie and her team weave the fabric onto the walls.

Hildi announces that Ty's going to build a wine rack which will hang right over the stove. The hell? Who stores wine over a heat source? I can't believe she would actually design something so ridiculous even if these homeowners were all about wine. Hildi says it will replace the existing pot rack. Laura says the wine rack will be an interesting feature in this kitchen, "considering they don't drink." Laura and Steve laugh. How very comical.

Ty and Brian wrestle with the table. Man, it's too small. I thought their existing dining-room table was too small, and this one seems even smaller in terms of surface area. Ty does his usual shtick of groaning and moaning and carrying on. Can't he even turn a table upright without the excessive drama? ["Laurie did say there would be drama." -- Wing Chun] Brian tells Ty he's strong. Ty: "It's all in the tendons, you know? It would be a pretty good workout, you know? I'd start with a couple of reps." Brian's lost interest already and is looking at the wall. Which, by the way, looks hideous: that saddle brown with the salmon paint is even fuglier than I'd feared. Laurie says she likes the table.

Paige Cam's on Steve. MPDP is doing an investigative report, now: "We're building a wine rack. And I'm only assuming there's going to be wine bottles in it. Is this a problem?" Steve says, "I don't know that I've been expressing myself correctly." I'll say. "Because it's not just that they don't drink wine...they don't have alcohol in their home. These people are folks of strong convictions, and what you may have is a situation where they're actually offended by what we did, and so that's what I'm kinda concerned about." The time to say this would have been when you walked in and Hildi had all of fifteen stickers on the wall. Not that I actually think it would have changed much, but I would feel better if the HOs had shown a little more spine.

Laurie yaps about the Velcro for the table skirt. Ty crawls under the table and reiterates what Laurie's saying. Which Laurie points out. But, you know, he's saying it crawling around on the floor! With his head under the table? It's visual! It's dramatic!

MPDP and Laura paint the cabinets black. MPDP wants to know why they've decided not to take the cabinet doors off, but just paint them in place? Laura says it's because of time. MPDP knows perfectly well that this is a crappy approach. You don't paint cabinets with the doors in place -- not if you want to do a decent job. Laura says Hildi was worried that if they took the doors down and put them back, the doors would be crooked and they'd never be the same again. How quaint! Hildi was worried about the cabinets never being the same again? Sure thing. MPDP: "Well, too late for that!" If they're not changing the hinge hardware or the placement, there's really no reason the cabinets wouldn't be fine. But better to just slop some paint over the hinges.

Brian and Ty work on the legs for the buffet table. Ty begins to instruct Brian on how to solder. Brian suggests that they wear safety glasses; Ty puts a pair on Brian. Brian thanks him for the "good assist." Ty puts on a pair and says, "Oh wow, these are, like, prescription! That's not gonna help."

Steve comes into the kitchen where MPDP and Laura are painting the cabinets, and says that the paint looks blue. Which is does, but it'll probably dry black. Laura agrees. MPDP: "Yeah, jump on board, dude! It looked blue in the can, it looked blue in the tray, and it looks blue on the cabinet!" But, she says, it's only the first coat.

Ty and Brian work on the legs. Ty says it's going really, really well.

Hildi tells her team to paint all the cabinets, and that if it doesn't dry (black, I think she means), she'll just take it back and get more black. MPDP says that way, they haven't lost any time.

Brian and Diane stuff seat cushions into olive green covers. There's Hitchcock in the back. I would swear that pillow is smirking about something. Diane thinks they're going to look great on the chairs. Brian marvels at the fact that he's actually sewing. I suppose, since we're still stuck in this rut of being amazed when men sew, that my hopes of seeing openly gay male homeowners on this show are ludicrous? Yeah, I know. (Hey, the show should go to Utah, and have two polygamists and their sixteen wives trade spaces. Picture the ambitious room you could do over those two days! Man, what a nightmare that would be to recap. It'd be like trying to keep all those chicks straight in the first episode of Joe Millionaire. Forget I said anything!)

Hildi's outside with her team, showing them the pattern she wants them to use a router to carve into the kitchen table. You heard me. I love it when they carve up the homeowner's things with routers. It's especially practical in a kitchen, particularly so for eating and food prep surfaces. Seriously, you'd think some of these designers had been coddled by maids and servants all their lives, so weak is their grasp of the fundamental, practical, quotidian aspects of life. Hildi's got these six dull gold metal candle sconces in a sort of elongated fleur-de-lys or sword shape, and she wants them to use those as the pattern for carving into the table. Later, they'll be hanging those sconces on the wall. That looks pretty challenging; it's not a simple shape. Hildi traces the outline of the first one and says they'll use the router to carve out a tiny groove, and then paint it gold inside the groove. The crumbs and crap will look so adorable piling up in the little gold ruts. They'll have to vacuum the table to get it clean. This might end up looking good, but it's still a stupid idea.

Diane says she trusts Laurie, so she think it'll be okay, but it's pinker than she would want in her dining room: "But they love that Southwestern feel." I thought this was supposed to be old-world Spanish something or other? I have no idea what they're going for here.

Hildi's routed out the first design, saying it's a "little jaggedy there." She admits that it's hard: "It's fun...it's hard...but you gotta be steady."

Brian wonders, "Do you think they're doing any colours, like, pastel-ish, in our house?" No worries, dude. You should have such problems. Diane can't even guess. Brian says he would freak out. Diane says she would, too, but they would just repaint it. Brian says something about using his head as a battering ram and battering through it. Um, okay. I don't really know what that's about. Diane says, "Steve and Laura will defend us, I think."

Hildi comes out to see the table, which Laura and Steve have finished carving up. She says, "Wow, what a great job!" They do seem to have done a pretty decent job. Hildi wonders if she should add more designs onto it; Steve thinks that's plenty. Hildi starts filling in the groove with gold paint. This would look better and be more practical under glass.

Laurie assigns her homework, promising that it should go quickly. All the fabric is on the wall now, with squarish bits of salmon wall peeking out at each intersection of fabric. She wants them to insert thin squares of batting behind each horizontal section of the fabric on the wall. Isn't that going to make it look kind of bulge-y in places? I don't understand. I guess she's trying to give the wall more dimensionality, because it's pretty flat and uninspiring now. They need to staple the bottom of the fabric, shove the padding in, and cover the staples with nailhead trim for homework.

Hildi tells her team and MPDP that all that's left to be done is the second coat of paint on the cabinets and the rest of the stickers. And stain the faade of the bench. Steve asks if that's all. Hildi says that it is. MPDP intervenes, saying, "Actually, that's not all." Steve asks what else. MPDP whispers, "Would you like to discuss an issue with the designer?" Laura brings up the wine rack. She says, "Since we're pretty sure our neighbours don't drink wine, I don't know if it's, you know...how offended they'll be if they have wine in the house, but I don't know that, but I know that they won't utilize a wine rack. So, uh, I was hoping maybe if there's places for bottles, if we could put maybe sparkling cider, or you know..." Hildi, snidely: "Yummy." Is that really called for? Just once, couldn't she admit to making a mistake? Laura would just like to put something else in there so their neighbours don't come in and see a wine rack. And then maybe they could hang the pots around it or whatever. MPDP says that it could be a budget concern, because she doesn't know if Hildi can return the wine she bought. I really cannot believe she would spend money budgeted for renovation purposes on wine, particularly absent any information about the homeowners being oenophiles. Hildi tells them to let her put her head together with Ty's to see if she can modify something.

Laurie shows her team the nailhead trim. They agree that it's been an awesome day.

Hildi speaks to Ty. "Okay, this is serious. Um, Steve has a very, um, serious concern about the wine situation. Supposedly Brian and Diane do not drink." "Supposedly"? The hell? Sure, they're just making this up to vex Hildi. Come on! Does she really think she knows Diane and Brian better than Laura and Steve do? I just find her attitude incredibly off-putting. Hildi continues, "They might drink on occasion, at, you know, whatever, but they don't want alcohol in the house." I don't know where she's getting this "might drink on occasion" stuff. It's nowhere in the show as presented -- which doesn't mean it wasn't said and cut, but if the show's producers are at all interested in being fair to Hildi, they shouldn't edit the show so that she looks any more obnoxious. She doesn't need any help in that department. Hildi feels that Diane and Brian will need something up there, above the stove: "It just cannot hold or look like it's gonna hold wine." Shot of something made out of wood with about fifty F-clamps on it. Ty says he'll work on it, and ascertains that she doesn't need it tonight. They agree to think about it overnight and discuss it in the morning.

Day Two. Laurie comes in and swoons over the wall. She tells Steve and Laura how beautiful it is. She notes that they made the executive decision to anchor the four points where each panel intersects with the one with a decorative nailhead at each corner. You can easily see that despite the fact that all interstitial squares of salmon are supposed to be the same size, they're totally not. You know Vern would have gotten that right, or died trying. They all agree the fabric needed to be secured at the intersections. Laurie pronounces it "gorgeous."

Hildi arrives to find Laura and Steve still stickering the walls. Hildi says they have to finish the stickers, finish touching up the paint, put all the hardware back on the cabinets, and install a new light. Hildi says she spoke to Ty, and that they're just going to turn the wine rack into a pot rack: "So there'll be no wine, so whether they drink or not, whatever, there'll be no wine rack." I simply can't understand why she's having so much trouble accepting the idea that Brian and Diane do not drink. She has absolutely no information or indication that they do, and she keeps resisting what Laura and Steve keep trying to tell her. She also says all this with an air of defeat or concession which I don't think is warranted. Just stow the freaking attitude already. Huge portions of the world's population do not drink, whether because of religious belief, being in recovery from addiction, health reasons (cirrhosis of the liver, anyone?), allergy -- whatever. It's not rare, unusual, or bizarre. In fact, it's really so common that it's quite surprising to find someone in Hildi's circumstances for whom this seems to be news. I find it quite hard to understand how she could have failed to ask herself if "alcohol" might not be too loaded (heh) a theme for a room for strangers. How educated, well-travelled, sophisticated, sensitive, or just plain sensible do you have to be to suss out the potential here for controversy and offense? What if one of these HOs had been a recovering alcoholic? (For all we know, one or both of them could be.) It's probably not something we would have heard about on TV, or which their neighbours would have felt comfortable revealing, so the whole thing would have just gone ahead and quietly caused someone a lot of pain. There are, like, a million reasons not to do this in the absence of any information about the homeowners being into wine, liquor, or whatever. You don't need that much imagination or awareness to come up with most of them, either.

Laurie and Diane work on the table skirt. We get a better look at the fabric, which has quatrefoil patterns. The fabric, as I said earlier, has a pale olive field, and the pattern on it is done in a medium olive colour, a dark butter yellow, and a dark terra cotta. It sure as hell isn't that salmon colour on those walls. I don't mind this fabric at all, but I just don't see this room working. Laurie's also made stencils in a square shape and an octagonal shape to paint on top of the table. She shows Diane a diagram of how they'll appear on the table. Imagine the large octagons as four place settings and then the small squares set between them with one in the centre. Laurie says it will look like a Spanish tile. And apparently, these stencils are going to be a butter yellow. I don't know about that. The centre of the shapes will be the wall colour. Yeah, let's work some more of that into the room.

Ty and Steve work on turning the wine rack into a pot rack. There seems to be a lot of gluing involved. The bumper to the commercial features Brian tackling Ty; Ty goes down easily and Brian sits on him.

Coming back into the show, the bumper is Brian with his hand on Ty's forehead and Ty waving his arms around trying to whack Brian. Hildi and her team install the faade for the bench. It's very reminiscent of that room she did where she painted the walls black and installed hundreds of thin wooden slats in front of it. They're covering up an outlet by installing this in front of the existing faade, but no one seems to care.

Laurie and Diane paint the shapes on the table top. For some reason, they're using brushes that are way huge for the work they're trying to do. Doesn't anyone on this show ever try to match the brush to the job? I could spell it out using small words and visual aids, but I think I'd be wasting my breath. Laurie acknowledges that she's come up with some tedious projects in the last two days. That wouldn't be so bad if the results were anything to write home about. Diane teases her about being a drill sergeant, but says it's been worth it.

Steve and Laura bring in the bench seat. They place it over the existing seat. It's more or less held in place by compression; they're not fastening it. It'll probably be fine as long as the kids don't get too rambunctious. I can see the back edge of it flipping up if kids are sitting on the front edge of the seat. Or bouncing, as children seem to be wont to do.

Brian installs the new light fixture as he tells MPDP that he had vivid nightmares about his house last night. His nightmare was mostly that nothing had been done because there had been "such a blowout and fiasco." MPDP wonders, about what? Diane finishes telling Brian's dream, saying that everybody had left because there was a fight and they came home and it was almost the same. Yeah, you should be so lucky. Diane is almost positive that's not what will happen. The light fixture is a horizontal circle of black metal, suspended by chains, with arms sticking out for fake candle-looking lights. I'm underwhelmed.

Hildi shows Steve how to recover this big, white, slightly flared lampshade she got at the Sally Ann for two bucks. She's got black fabric with a tone-on-tone diamond pattern on it. Well, I like the fabric. That's the first thing I've much liked in the room. But it looks like a tablecloth; I don't know if I'd use it for the lampshade. And it turns out it is a tablecloth. Hildi shows Steve how to mark the fabric for cutting.

MPDP and Brian are holding up the curtains in front of one of the windows. Laurie says it looks really pretty. Diane enthusiastically says that she likes it. They have got to be kidding me. It looks like ass. Nothing goes with anything else: we've got salmon walls, olive curtains, and a saddle brown sueded cotton "focus wall." And a beige carpet. Seriously, what the Frank? I don't think I've ever seen such an addled colour scheme from Laurie. Frank? Sure. This is only slightly better than Doug's frat house makeover, and that was hideous. You could maybe get away with the salmon and brown if you dumped the olive, but even then, ew. This is just...no. Just no. Laurie repeats that it's pretty, but I think she's trying to convince herself. She's standing right under the light, so that the central framework forms sort of a halo over her head, and Diane says, "I like your crown, too!" Laurie vogues with it for a moment and MPDP says it looks like a torture device. Laurie jokes, "I'm not the Queen of the Ring, I'm..." but everybody's talking at once and I can't make out the rest.

Hildi's pinned the fabric cover onto the lamp shade. The pattern looks slightly crooked to me, but not too bad. She says she has to finish stitching it, and since that's a "one-woman job," Steve can go back to the kitchen.

Laurie's outside with Brian. She's cutting some kind of plant matter for decoration, and he's getting ready to spraypaint the buffet table. She decides to get out of the downwind.

Hildi and MPDP are in the kitchen; Laura asks what kind of art project Hildi had in mind for the blinds. I actually think the blinds look pretty good in the kitchen as is; there's no reason to do anything to them. Hildi: "I was going to paint on the blinds as if it was my canvas." Oh, dear. MPDP tells Hildi to do every single thing she possibly can prior to that. MPDP goes on and on; Hildi tunes her out pretty quickly and gives her an "aye, aye, sir," salute. MPDP tells them to keep the design very simple and not to get elaborate with it, so that if the pot rack arrives, they can start staining it. MPDP doesn't want them to be all busy with the blinds and unable to do the other stuff when it comes in. I'm not sure why she's got her thong in such a twist about this. Hildi pretends to listen and agree and then smirks, "I'm gonna go get my paints!"

Diane ties a seat cushion onto a chair. Laurie's got one of the candle sconces in her hand and a plain white plate with a decorative edge in the other. She says she's going to hang their mirror horizontally over the buffet.

Oh my God. These blinds are some of the ugliest blinds I've ever seen. I hope those weren't real wood blinds they just ruined, 'cause those things are plenty expensive. The top two-thirds of each blind is painted a strong, dark orange; the bottom third is a greyish blue. And it's a messy, blotchy job of it, too. They're just a complete eyesore. They look like a not-very-talented teenage boy's first attempt at airbrushing a mural onto his car. What on earth is she thinking? They're a painful, sloppy contrast to the black cupboards -- which look sharp if you don't examine the paint job too closely -- and the strong grid pattern created by the stickers. I believe the mess on the blinds is supposed to be suggestive of the orange and blue graphic on the wine labels. Whether it is or not, it's an abject failure. Steve is installing the light, moving it so that it hangs over the table by tacking the cord along the ceiling (which always, always looks bad). Hildi says that it would have been nice to start on the blinds first thing in the morning, because then they would have had more time for their "masterpiece." She mentions several times that "we're getting what we're getting" and "we have what we have" and "they are what they are" which I guess is designer talk for "Huh. This looks like shit. I should have left them the way they were." Or maybe, it's disgruntled-employee talk for "Banyan, why do you make us incorporate arts/crafts projects into every stupid episode whether we have an idea for them or not, and whether the room needs them or not? It's frequently the ugliest and most disposable aspect of the show, and typically a waste of money. See what you have wrought?" Hildi says they need to keep moving until Ty brings in the pot rack: "At which point we'll stop." Good gravy, get Ty in here stat.

Laurie shows Diane how she's going to put a white plate on the black candle sconce. What's so Spanish or old world about that? Every room does not need plates on the wall, especially if they're nothing special. She should just put candles on them. Brian comes in with the buffet table, which kind of looks like their original dining-room table cut lengthwise down the middle. It only has legs at the front and will be attached to the wall at the back. I'm wondering if the legs -- which I believe are made of copper and painted black -- are going to be strong enough to support this. I think copper is kind of soft, and these legs are very spindly. Laurie is very happy with how the circular detail on the table matches the backs of the chairs. She says they're going to hang a big cream plate over the mirror and then place the sconces with the other plates on each side. Or something. I find myself not caring at all.