Florida: Night Owl Lane

MPDP. Jeans, t-shirt. Florida. Ed, Hildi, Amy Wynn. The Gleesome Threesome, or something. We see the Hos -- Jill and Craig, and Carla and Brent -- riding bikes. Jill and Craig are described as "two adventurous souls who believe in the Zen of natural living." Translation: Birkenstock-wearing, rock-climbing granola-munchers. They want their bedroom redone, and lord, it needs it. White walls and ceiling, beige wall-to-wall. The bed is frameless and arranged diagonally in the corner with a folding wooden screen as a sort of headboard. It has white linens and a beige comforter. There's a small rectangular window near the bed, and a couple of large potted plants. Farther down that same wall, there's another window with two small, low bookcases near it in the corner. Another potted plant. There's a small TV on another low, crate-like bookcase near the end of the bed. Near the entrance to the room, there's another large opening that leads to what looks like the bathroom, and perhaps a closet area. There's a small folding chair between the two doors. It's pretty sparse. Jill wants their bedroom to be a sanctuary from the family and the rest of the house. Right now, it would be a pretty good retreat if you were working up to becoming an anchorite. Jill reminds me of someone, and I mention this to Frink. He suggests, "Karen Carpenter?" Dude, no. This makes me wonder if he even knows what Karen Carpenter looked like. I sort of think she looks like Ali McGraw, but that isn't right either. Gloria Steinem? Mimi Kennedy? A combination of those last three, heavy on the Mimi. But actually, prettier than any one of those three. Craig is excited about anything they do, as long as it's not too dark. He doesn't know what to expect from Edward. Jill does: she says she loves him, and is very excited. She says there are no restrictions in the room; they haven't protected anything: "Change anything, tear anything apart, turn it upside down, paint it, I don't care." Yeah, it's easy to talk big when you know you're getting Edward and not Hildi.

Carla and Brent are described as avid art collectors who want their living room redone. Brent has a vaguely Hank Azaria-ish thing going on looks-wise. It's a room with white walls and a cathedral ceiling, and a teal green carpet. There are umpteen pieces of furniture jammed into it; most are pieces from a suite of simple, tailored furniture upholstered in a solid mole brown -- looks like some kind of microfibre. They have a large rectangular wooden coffee table in a warm tone that kind of clashes with the tone of the furniture, and is very awkwardly arranged. The walls are covered with framed artworks; I can count nineteen pictures on the wall just in this one shot. Some of them look pretty interesting. There are sliding patio doors covering most of one wall, through which you can see their pool. These have simple white curtains. To the left of the sliding doors is a baby grand piano. To the right, in the corner, is a TV on a stand. There's an end table jammed to the TV stand. There's a side chair and lamps and another end table. On the wall opposite the sliding doors, there are two more pictures and a large, dark wood bookcase with glass doors. Like the bookcase, especially since it's filled with books and not gewgaws and figurines. Wait, there's another wall with two light-coloured cabinets with glass doors, filled with objets d'art, which is the French word for "tchotchkes." The inside backs of the cabinets are mirrored so the effect of clutter is further amplified. The room feels so crammed that it's like a furniture warehouse. It's a bit overwhelming, and the traffic flow and visual flow are not great. Brent says that he and Carla are collectors, and have thrown everything into the room. He knows it's too busy and admits that they don't have the guts to pare the room down themselves. They're hoping the designer will edit the room. Well, they definitely got one of the ones who can do that. Carla says she likes feng shui and "good flow" and likes rooms you can enter and instantly relax in. The piano (also covered with family photos, another lamp, and assorted tchotchkes) was a gift from Brent's grandfather to his grandmother during the Depression. It seems to be in that room mainly because they have no other space for it. Carla: "I think Hildi's a great designer." Professor Frink: "Loser." Brent says they have a very creative home with interesting artwork and says he's encouraged: "I think she might be able to do a neat job with this."

Key swap. Shut up, MPDP. How does she stay so damn perky?

Jill and Craig run in and find Hildi, who's wearing a white shirt and black pants, and has her hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. She looks so innocent -- almost Mousekeeter-ish. She says they're going to take everything out and just bring back in what's important. She says the room looks like everything's in it just because there's nowhere else to put it, and I couldn't agree more. Hildi and her team are going to install some large shelves where the tchotchke cabinets are, and continue to feature the art as an important factor in the room. Then she alludes to a "treatment" they're going to put on the wall, which will give the room a little bit of texture. Uh oh. Here I thought we were getting good Hildi. Oh, God, what the hell is she going to glue on the walls now? They spend the two days unloading the room. Note that you don't see the piano being moved from the room in this scene.

Carla and Brent find Edward sitting on the bed, pretending to meditate and chanting, "Om." He says he's trying to get inspiration for the room, and asks what they see going on in this room. Brent: "Nothing." Edward cracks up. Nothing gets past Brent. Edward says that Jill is "really into the Buddhas; [she's] really loving the Buddhas," and that Craig is impartial (indifferent, more to the point). Edward wants to put bright colour on the walls; do a nice window treatment; add a piece of artwork to the wall between the windows; reposition the bed against the back wall, and make it a focal point; put the TV on a new stand; and put a drape in front of the opening to the bathroom/dressing area. Edward asks what they think. Frink: "Just screams 'Buddha' to me." The team's on board with it. Time to unload the room, which Edward says should take about thirty seconds. Maybe they can go door and give their neighbours a hand. They could probably use it. During the unloading, Frink gets all pissed about Edward dancing on the mattress in his shoes. But hey, he's jumping on the EdBed (tm somebody in the forums). I think that's a shout-out to you guys. Near the end of the sequence you see Edward and his team playing "Duck, Duck, Goose" with MPDP and Amy Wynn. Frink thinks that's just hilarious. See, if you just don't clutter up your room with a lot of stuff, your neighbours will have time to play fun children's games with the cast.

Hildi discusses her carpentry plans with Amy Wynn in the trailer. Hildi's wearing a grey-green jacket I love. I'm in love with greyed greens. I find them so utterly restful to my vastly overstimulated eye. Hildi wants Amy Wynn to build three large deep shelves, with a short end wall to support them, in the space where the cabinets were. Amy Wynn is hoping to hear that this is Hildi's only project, but Hildi also wants her to build a ten-foot valance to hide her cheap curtain rod. Amy Wynn says that the valance will happen "last, last, last." Hildi: "Maybe it could happen first, and then you could have, say, the hardest for last." Amy Wynn: "Maybe, and then if a project gets cut, then you're stuck with just a valance." Hildi, gesturing to the shelf plans: "But this is a simple project. Don't cut it." Aw. It's just like it's her very first show. Amy Wynn: "Maybe you could take your plans and shove them where the sun don't shine." No, I kid. She'd never talk like that. Ty would, though. Perhaps not to Hildi. He'd tell Doug that, for sure.

Edward reveals his paint. Now, when I watched this on my other TV -- the one with the screwed-up colour -- this paint looked like an aggressive peach. In fact, what I scribbled on my notes was "looks like the colour of liquid foundation makeup from 1973." So I didn't get why MPDP is going on about how she walks into the room and suddenly there's sunshine. I figured she was just yammering. Anyway, I wrote in the recaplet that it was peach, and threw the forums into mass confusion. Don't put too much stock in what I write in the recaplets, folks. Until I've watched it on my good recapping TV, take it with a grain of salt. Or Valium -- whatever gets you through the TLC programming schedule. The paint is yellow. It's a bright, sunny, Laurie Hickson-Smith yellow. In fact, I think the new yellow American Traditions comes out with should just be called "Laurie." She deserves that much, don't you think? Actually, I can't believe she doesn't have a whole line of paints: ninety-six shades, all yellow. MPDP grills Edward about the Buddha figurines and whether he's bringing them back in. He assures her that he is. There's a whole "Buddha concept" going on in the room. I'm pretty sure nothing about trading houses for two days and spending $1000 bucks is all that Zentastic, but then, I'm not an expert on Buddhism. He paints some yellow on the wall and receives much approval. There's some brown on the wall, too, which is going to be for the furniture. Gah, more furniture painted brown.

Hildi says that Carla and Brent's room is all about the art, and that she wants to give the room a new look, without changing the colour. She's got a large bucket of some gooey white substance which she rolls onto the wall. Oy. These people apparently have the last home in America without some cheap-ass, crappy-looking texture on the walls, but by God, Hildi's not going to take that sitting down, nope. We are never really clearly told what the substance is, either. As she rolls it on the walls, she notes that it gets everywhere. Jill wonders if they're going to put something on over it. By way of answer Hildi turns to grab a tool, but the first one she grabs isn't right and she tosses it away. She grabs something else as Jill asks, "Is this the snack-down technique for the walls?" "Snack-down"? I don't know, but it sounds like that's what she says, and the closed-captioning agrees, although the closed captioning has been wrong about once a minute so far, so I'm not putting a lot of stock in that. If you want to know about smackdown technique, though, I could tell you a thing or two. Hildi isn't sure how to answer Jill's question either. She starts smearing the thin layer of goo with a wide metal putty knife, explaining that she's going for a soft effect, without sharp edges. Sigh. She really will do anything not to just paint walls normally. Which, ironically, is probably less work than stapling 6,000 flowers to the wall, or lining up some florid fabric perfectly or sticking umpteen thousand wine labels all over kitchen walls or any of a dozen other nutty notions. I used to think it was largely about laziness but I just don't know anymore. I think it's just about insanity, and using other people's houses for experimentation she'd never get away with in paying clients' homes.

After the commercial, Jill continues trying to understand what effect it is Hildi wants them to achieve with the wall goo. Hildi basically tells them to figure out whatever looks nice. She also points out that they're focusing on a small patch of wall right now, and emphasizes that it's the whole that's important. Frink: "Yeah, it'll be bigger and look worse."

Amy Wynn and Edward discuss carpentry. He has four pieces: a bed frame, two open squarish boxes for night tables, and a longer box for the TV. Edward wants a simple bed frame with tightly curved feet ("to give us that Oriental flair"), and he's made a pattern for the shape of the curve.

Hildi and her team roll and smear the goo as she touts the greatness of the idea for adding texture to the walls. Or you could save yourself a lot of trouble and just buy a new house, since it seems to be nearly impossible to buy a new place without some nasty-looking texture on the walls.

Edward wants a flat board to mount on the wall behind the bed, upon which he's going to mount two Indonesian bulletin boards. Indonesian...bulletin boards? No, I don't know any more about that than I do the "snack-down technique." He also wants two night tables that are basically boxes open at the front with a shelf inside. He adds that if she has time to do a routed edge on those, that would be nice.

Hildi explains how the shelves and wall they're building are going to become a little hallway, and laments how the cabinets -- which she calls tagres, though I think by definition tagres are open at the front -- are rather dated. Craig asks about the floor. Hildi doesn't want to tell them what they're doing with the floor until they've finished with the wall, but says it's going to be a huge change.

Edward sprays primer onto a wide, nine-drawer dresser. Carla and Brent think it's nice. They all agree that it's a diamond in the rough. Edward got it at a thrift store for $69 along with two mirrors and a narrow coffee table that they're going to use as a bench. That's pretty damn good. The dresser drawers each have really ugly routed detail and an ornate escutcheon-like thing behind the pulls, but I'm hoping they'll fill the routing and pry off the escutcheon. The dresser also has some carved or turned detail down each side, kind of like a thick rope. That, I don't mind. Edward wants his team to start painting the furniture brown. There's something a little perverse about priming and painting all these wooden pieces (even if it's cheap wood/wood laminate) so that they can be a different shade of brown. Edward adds that they're going to go back and jazz up the pieces with some black and gold paint. That sounds kinda scary.

Jill confesses to Hildi that Carla and Brent were very afraid of Hildi working on their room. Hildi laughs softly about this. Craig says he was excited that his neighbours were getting Hildi. She quickly comments, "Yeah, 'cause you know you'll have more fun." Sure...that's the reason. Jill says that they were a little nervous because they didn't know which way she was going to go. Hildi says she's "being really good here," and does a partial curtsey for effect. Jill says that Carla's going to be so happy.

Edward's talking through the screen of a sun room to Carla and Brent, who are inside painting. Carla's not jazzed about the chocolate brown paint. Edward says that chocolate brown is his "absolute favourite colour." Carla's willing to have faith in Edward, though. He assures her that it will be stunning: "I don't do ugly, so..." Carla: "No, of course not!"

Hildi and Craig pull up the carpet, and she's thrilled to find that the underpad is not glued down. She announces that it would have been a perfect floor to stain. Craig asks, "Is that what we're doing to it?" Hildi, happily: "No!" She adds that they actually couldn't because of the damage from the tacking strip, anyway. She exults about how easy it's going to be to remove the carpet.

Edward and Carla are in Sewing World. He's got two flat white bedsheets upon which they're going to stencil a pattern, and make a curtain for the bathroom entrance. He says he's trying to bring in the "Indonesian look of henna, where they paint on the hands and all that." I think mehndi's more Indian than Indonesian, but as usual for cultural and religious ripoffs and references on this show, the designers are vague at best on the facts. The stencil itself is sort of a scrolly, floral pattern. Edward shows Carla how to dab a big sponge in brown paint and "pounce" the paint onto the fabric. He seems to be using the furniture paint, so I doubt these curtains are going to be washable.

MPDP helps Hildi's team roll up the carpet. Jill tells MPDP that her neighbours hate the carpet and will be thrilled that it's gone. When MPDP learns that the carpet's not glued down, she comments on how easy it's going to be, but then chides herself for using the word "easy," thinking she may jinx things.

Edward and Carla keep stencilling.

Hildi and her team haul the carpet out of the house.

Edward and Brent staple brown fabric to the wall behind the bed, up to the ceiling. Boy, I really do not like chocolate brown and bright yellow together. It reminds me of McDonald's uniforms and restaurants from the '70s. Edward explains that he's using the fabric to extend the look of the headboard, and that they'll put upholstery tacks down each side.