San Diego: Duenda Road

MPDP appears in front of a huge pool, wearing a Sea World wetsuit, and she seems pretty excited to be there. The whole thing is so incredibly cute that I'm not even going to make fun of all the fishy puns. She turns to the pool behind her and shouts, "Hey, Shamu: how about a black and white theme?" On cue, two killer whales jump out of the water and do a flip. Frank and Vern, also in Sea World wetsuits, are shown with the dolphins; Vern's riding one, and Frank's sitting to one in very shallow water, petting him. The dolphin opens its mouth and appears to be smiling in that irresistible way dolphins have. You know, Frank actually looks really good in black and grey. I know he prefers to wear as many shades of orange, yellow, red, and blue as possible, but the black and grey really work on him. Amy Wynn (not in a wetsuit -- sorry, AWP fans) is sitting to a seal; she and the seal keep turning their heads toward each other at the same time and opening their mouths in surprise. Oh, it's ridiculously cute. , MPDP's at the edge of a pool where two killer whales are in shallow water. She talks about the challenge of the show and asks, "I'm still thinking we're going to have a whale of a good time. You think so?" The whales nod. I'm just plotzing with the cuteness, here.

Our homeowners -- Buddy and Mary, and Richard and Kelly -- are feeding some birds in a pond. Kelly and Richard have a large, beige box of a bedroom with a very high, angled ceiling. The walls and carpet are beige; they have a suite of orangey-toned contemporary furniture, and a bed with no headboard and yellow bedding. A closet with four large sliding doors takes up most of one wall. They want the room to be more romantic. Richard mentions that he would like to see some colours like reds or golds or greens. As she listens, Kelly's smiling at first but then starts to give him a screwy look. He's open to anything. Kelly, not so much: she hesitantly says she doesn't want to see any of Frank's murals. That makes two of us, lady. She thinks Frank might be unable to resist the lure of all that open wall space. She says that he's a professional designer, so she just hopes he knows what he's doing. She doesn't sound convinced to me.

Buddy and Mary want their living room redone. I'd tell you what their living room looks like if I could see anything other than the 65" TV that overwhelms it. I think these folks win the prize for the most humongous TV ever featured on this show. Okay...apart from the TV that ate southern California -- which is housed in an entertainment unit which was clearly designed to go with it -- the room is a normal height, with light tan walls and a greige carpet. It has one of the sillier fireplaces I've ever seen: not only is it rather off-centre on the wall, but its chimney breast is a shallow projection from the wall of just a couple of inches on one side only. And that runs from floor to ceiling at an angle. The mouth of the fireplace is an arch surrounded by bricks, and the hearth is covered with the same bricks. All of the fireplace wall is the same as the rest of the walls; drywall, I suppose. Then there's a thick, shallow white shelf serving as a mantel, which runs from the corner of the room to a few inches from the angled part of the wall. That angle is one of the most gratuitous details ever. I seriously do not know what they are teaching architects these days, but from what I see in almost every newer home, they clearly are not offering any classes in symmetry, proportion, or scale. I guess this is supposed to be some quasi-southwestern look, but I'll bet there are a bunch of Pueblo people laughing their asses off somewhere. There's a green sofa and a coffee table placed cattywampus (tm Frank) to the TV, and a matching green single chair directly opposite it. There's also a blue wing chair off to the side. Behind the sofa are two large picture windows covered with white vertical blinds. There are various pictures and tchotchkes around the room. Mary thinks they need to redo the room because of that whale of a TV. (See, I can play, too.) Buddy grins that that's his favourite part of the room. Suddenly the screen goes completely black. No, wait -- that's just because the cameraperson decided to shoot their TV screen. Mary's not quite as enamoured of the TV as Buddy is; she describes it as a big, black box. She says you have to work with the TV and try to decorate around it. She mentions that she totally does not like the southwestern thing. Mary says likes the reveals where the transformation has been so dramatic that people don't even recognize their rooms. Buddy says there's a lot of work to be done.

Key swap. For some reason, MPDP rags on Richard, teasing him that his bag is full of hair products. Richard doesn't have hair that looks particularly fussed-with; it's really short and simple. No idea what that's about.

Kelly and Richard find Vern looking at a slate tile. He tells them they're going to cover the fireplace with slate, and correct that ridiculous angle in the wall. He wants the fireplace to be stronger so that it can compete with that monster TV. Vern says they're going to modify the cabinet and move it to another wall. Kelly says she'd like to see something done with the vertical blinds on the windows. Vern says they're saying bye-bye to the '70s. They're getting new window treatments. The room is unloaded.

Buddy and Mary find Frank looking under their neighbours' bed. Frank pronounces the room completely free of dust bunnies. Frank is wearing a black and grey shirt. I'd call it a shout-out, but I just mentioned it, like, in the first paragraph. Buddy says he wants the room be very manly -- to reek of mighty he-man, testosterrific, Y-chromosome power. Okay, he doesn't quite put it that way, but he does emphasize manliness. Yeah, good luck with that. Professor Frink: "This show isn't about the men." Mary says, "Not too manly." She wants to see romance; she wants the room spiced up a bit. Any takers for a bet on which way this room is going? Frank says they're going to get rid of the vertical blinds and hang drapes. He wants to get rid of the armoire opposite the bed and build something to house the TV and the dresser on which it sits in the corner. He's got new bedding, and he wants to make a headboard that goes all the way up the wall to these two plain sconces that are probably at about the ten-foot mark (hard to judge with so little on the walls with which to compare them). Yikes. That's going to be a honking headboard. Those sconces are way too high, especially for their size. They're also placed on the same plane as a vent, which is just way-centre in the wall, calling more attention to the vent than anything. Frank describes a "false canopy coming down in silk." Frink: "Oh, that's manly." Mary likes that. Frank wants to do the closet doors in soft, muted colours. They unload the room.

Amy Wynn arrives with a level about a foot taller than she is. Frink's duly impressed. Vern explains how he wants her to build in the wall, so that the angled section is perpendicular to the floor.

Buddy's taping up the ceiling. He's backwards on the top two rungs of a fairly tall ladder, and is leaning over way farther than is safe to do it. It just makes me cringe...because even though I've been stupid enough to do very similar things on a ladder, I don't like to see that behaviour modelled on television. It really is a bad idea, and I'm an idiot for being too lazy to get down and move the ladder to the right position. Do what I say, and not what I do, and all that. Frank comes in; he's propped a bunch of pieces of door casing against the wall. Frank tells Buddy to be careful, and that he doesn't like him leaning over like that. Tell him, Frank! Mary says she'll catch him. Buddy says she'll miss on purpose. Mary asks what the molding is for. Apparently, it's for the headboard. He says the room is so big that a little headboard won't cut it. The molding is apparently going to be run vertically up the wall; two pieces will run as far as the sconces, and the other pieces will be cut in shorter lengths so that they form a convex curve on the wall. I'm not sure about this. The bumper to the commercial is Amy Wynn playing with a sea otter. The sea otter brings her some little toy or something and she takes it from the animal and pats its head. Too. Cute.

During the commercials, they show the spot MPDP did for Enterprise. Her husband appears in it but doesn't get any lines; he just has to stand there and look vaguely disconcerted when she hands him some joint compound. The bumper back into the show is a seal roaring.

MPDP arrives to ascertain Vern's team's reaction to the slate project. They like the idea, but are concerned about how long it's going to take. Vern acknowledges that it will take a long time.

Frank shows his paint; fortunately, he announces that it's a very soft green, because on my screen, it looks like the most vaguely green shade of beige ever. He's got two quarts of paint for the closet doors; one he calls "kind of a white" -- it looks pale shell pink to me. The other is "kind of a beige" -- yeah, I'd go with that. Mary and Buddy say they like the colours. Frank's going to do the closet doors in alternating kinda-white and kinda-beige. Why? Why not just paint them the same colour as the walls? There's nothing special about them; they're huge flat sliding doors. There's no reason to call attention to them. On the other hand: no peach! No. Peach. Paint. Alert the media. And thank you, God.

Vern shows his paint colour, which is a very soft green. There's another similar shade of soft green that he says will be a furniture colour, and then there's a small amount of a slightly stronger -- but still very soft -- shade of green which is for the art project. Richard likes that. They're all kind of pale pistachio shades.

Frank and his team are painting. Mary loves the colour. It still looks really greyish-beige on my screen. Frank gives them some pointers about stretching their muscles after painting to avoid injury. He also tells Mary she doesn't need to strangle the roller.

Vern tells Amy Wynn he wants to put the speakers in the cabinet on each side of the entertainment unit, but that means replacing the glass in those doors with something solid so that you don't see the speakers. But what about hearing them? I suspect, with a TV the size of an Austin Mini, that these people must spend an awful lot of time in front of it. Which means that they probably wouldn't open and close the doors in front of the speakers all the time; they'll just leave them open. He should probably just take the doors off altogether. He also wants her to make some doors to cover the television. I would make the same comments about that. I guess the idea is to give Mary the option of hiding that behemoth, but I'll bet in reality she'd almost never get to close them for long. Vern wonders if he can have the doors by the end of Day One; Amy Wynn's not sure. She says she'll be done with the fireplace thing in a few minutes.

Frank and team continue painting. Mary wonders if they're going at a good pace. Frank says it's usually the second day where all the "trauma" happens: problems with installing stuff, carpentry issues, etc. Mary asks if he's having a lot of pieces built; Frank says it's just the one piece to house the TV.

Amy Wynn and Richard install the box she built to fix the angle of the fireplace.

Frank and Buddy make pillows. And there's Hitchcock. That pillow's probably worried that all the adorable marine mammals are stealing its thunder. Frank shows Buddy how he lines the inside of the pillow with a flat layer of batting to give it a smoother appearance after it's stuffed. Then he shows him how to stuff in the stuffing.

Vern and Kelly mark the grid onto the wall for the slate tiles. He mentions that some of the tiles have been specially cut so they need to know where they're all going.

Frank shows Buddy the white curtains with tucking detail he bought for the room. He mentions he bought some for himself, too. That certainly adds to my suspicion that Frank indeed lives in a home featuring an all-white, clean, simple, modern, unfussy dcor. He wants to hem the curtains to 96". Buddy mentions that the tucking detail is like a tuxedo shirt. Frank says he's trying to give them as little homework as possible. Buddy: "You're my favourite designer right now."

Richard mixes up mortar as Vern cautions him not to mix up too much at once, because it sets really fast. He also advises him to use the mixer on low speed.

Frank asks Buddy how long they've been friends with Richard and Kelly. Buddy: "About two days." He bursts out laughing. Frank jokes about their having been friends just long enough to get on the show. Actually, they've been friends just over a year. Frank: "It's like one of those personal ads: 'Friends needed for episode of Trading Spaces: we don't have to like you, you just have to live close to us.'"

Vern and his team scrape mortar onto the fireplace.

Frank talks to Amy Wynn, who's got her leg up on the table in such a way that Frink asks, "What's with the yoga leg?" Frank seems to be imploring her for help with an idea for this storage unit. She suggests building an armoire which would have the TV on a shelf in the top half, with the dresser fitting inside, underneath the shelf. He thinks that's perfect.