Design Star, Season 3 - Episode 4, a.k.a. Passport to Nowhere

The Design Star producers were at it again…this time the lying liars told the designers to head to the airport with their passports for some kind of “around the world” challenge. Let’s see a show of hands…who really thought the contestants were going to start globetrotting?

Yeah, me neither.

Enter the white room individual challenge…the one that separated the winners of the past two seasons from their competitors. This season’s designers had to contend with some clunky dorm-style modular couches from Lovesac. I’ll fess up to my in-depth knowledge of reality TV and point out that the dude who founded Lovesac was once upon a time a reality show contestant himself. The one he appeared on was Richard Branson’s The Rebel Billionaire—which I loved. I do not love the Lovesac. In fact, I think the Lovesac sucks and I think we were all given a great hour-long demo revealing just how much they do suck.

Enough of that...let’s get to it. Mikey V. and Matt were supposed to create rooms inspired by Thailand, Stax and Trish drew Mexico, Crazee and Jennifer: Italy, and Michael drew the wild card, which allowed him to select the country of his choice (Spain).

Mikey V.

Vern said it best when he said Mikey V’s room looked like a stereotype, although I don’t know how they expected everyone to be so familiar with exotic destinations as to create something that was completely authentic. Madam Mam's is about as close to Thailand as I've ever been, so I guess I would have had to rely on restaurant cues myself.

Matt

Oh Matty Boy. You came dangerously close to going home today. I totally dug where you were going, and so did Stax. “I like it,” she said. “It’s like a spaceship.”

Which is exactly what you want someone to say about your Zen Buddhist Temple.

If the judging criteria didn’t have as much to do with the telegenic power of their designs, Matt would never have seen the view from the bottom rung of the ladder. However, I did find myself wondering where his $500 budget went, because all I saw was a bit of wood and a light kit.

Stax

The judges were all over Stax’s room like frat boys wanna be on Stax. Personally, I thought her room was completely unappealing and drab. I didn’t really think she pulled off the cabana thing and for gawd’s sake, was it so wrong of me to want to see a little color down Mexico-way?

Trish

Trish kept saying she wanted to create a relaxing hotel vibe. Well evidently Trish does not have much of a clue when it comes to color theory. Flourescent lime green all over your walls is irritating, cringe-inducing, and is absolutely 180 degrees from relaxing. Soothing, soft, earthy greens: relaxing. Blacklight Special green: not relaxing. Also, high-contrast graphic elements? Not relaxing. Low contrast organic forms? Relaxing.

Crazee

Barbie bordello. ‘Nuff said.

Jennifer

Jenn had a brilliant concept and was clearly the winner of the challenge from the moment she started sketching her wall detail. The idea to create a wall treatment based on well-known pottery from a specific Italian village was awesome and the oversized scale of the graphics on the wall were very today. Out of all of the faux rooms, Jenn’s was the only one inviting enough to have enticed me to sit on that gawd-awful furniture.

Michael

The not-so-amazing Michael was in true form this week, spending what seemed to be the majority of his allotted twelve hours piddling around, scratching his butt around the power tools and trying to incite drama. And where did all that overconfidence and nonchalance take you, Michael? Well, it sure wasn’t Spain.

The following is a recap of what went down in my living room during Michael’s blubbering meltdown and after he was directed to his kennel…er, I mean, the cagey faux elevator of doom. And I swear this is the exact sequence:


ME: Somebody give the Texan a Kleenex.

JEB: Or his mommy!

MICHAEL (crying, on TV): I want my mom right now. I want my mom right now.

MICHAEL (in his head): MOMMY!

Girls Gone Wild

A client-turned-friend and I decided to grab some girl time this week. If you, too, are moms with small children, you understand what a cause for celebration this is. Gallery-hopping is the activity we settled on, hoping for a bit more intellectual stimulation than the average Barbie Mariposa-Diego/Dora-Scooby Doo onslaught we might otherwise contend with during the day.

But Kathryn's sitter was coming at 10 am (my own kiddo goes to daycare MWF) and most galleries open at 11...except for Russell Collection, on W. 6th Street, which I'd never been to. "Never been to" was part of my own personal criteria for this outing...we were looking for a bit of adventure. And according to the Interwebs, they were featuring works by Dali and Kandinsky.

Salvador Dali and Kandinsky Kandinsky? At an art gallery in Austin? We were intrigued.

When we arrived at the gallery, we had the place to ourselves. Evidently, Austinites are not clamoring for fine art at 10:30 on a Friday morning. This turned out to be very fortuitous, because not only did we get the grand tour from Jacqueline Martinez, the art consultant on deck, but it also allowed us to bombard her with all sorts of questions about the art we might have been too self-conscious to ask, had there been other patrons in the place.

It was so thrilling, this experience. It seemed so indulgent to see these prints and tapestries to begin with. (Dali did Aubusson tapestries? Who knew?) Then to get all the inside scoop from Jacqueline about the inspiration for each of the series featured, plus a lot of anecdotal information about Dali himself that I never learned in all the semesters of art history I took in college...it really helped us connect with the art on a more personal level.

After spending quite a bit of time with Jacqueline and Salvador (I felt we were on a first-name-basis after talking with Jacqueline), I noticed a small sign informing me that the gallery offered twelve-months-no-interest-financing. My eyes went from the small sign to my favorite of the Dali prints on display just a few steps away. Small sign, $7205 Dali print. Small sign, $7205 Dali print. I kept looking back and forth, the gears switching to overdrive in my mind. Impulsively, I whipped out my BlackBerry and started crunching the numbers. Could I really afford to possess my very own Dali? Could my new Dali print peacefully coexist with the cartoon-y etchings I did in printmaking in college? Was it right to put Dali in a duplex?

I know I will someday kick myself over it, but Salvador and I parted at the door. Jeb and I are trying to save for a house right now and I couldn't come up with a rationalization that would allow me to divert funds toward an impulse buy on that level.

Still, it was fun to feel like a superrich art collector for half a second.

Russell Collection is located at 1137 West 6th Street. If you are normally intimidated by art galleries, find out when Jacqueline is working. She was awesome and immediately put us at ease.

New for Windows (The Glass Ones...Not Your PC)

If you spent any time at all perched on my shoulder, you'd hear me rave on and on about using opaque window film for those instances where you want a minimal window covering and lots of light, but need privacy. It's easy to apply (just mist water on glass, pop the film onto the window & squeegee out the air bubbles) and peels off easily if/when you develop DADD (Decorative Attention Deficit Disorder) and want to do a little design switcheroo.

Now that I've seen this stuff, I just want to close off all my dang windows with it:




But of course sometimes curtain panels are in order...I just noticed these drapery rod finials that are to die for, and are at field-trip-worthy Motif Modern Living, south of Austin in Kyle, on the east side of I-35:

Design Star, Season 3 - Episode 3

This episode of Design Star finds us at Oak Lawn, the supposedly haunted historic former mansion of Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Ghostly shenanigans abound at convenient intervals to move the episode along--accessories flying off the walls, disappearing extension cords, and the mysterious reappearance of a disposed paint tray--whether these events were fact or fiction remains to be seen. I would vote for the latter.

This episode was so BOR-ing, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time chatting about it. The challenge was to modernize four near-identical living rooms and incorporate a yard sale item into the space. Let's just hit the highlights, shall we?

D. Paul & Trish

This pair seemed to work well together but did not stretch as far in terms of the modernizing side of life. They created a forest green, overplayed gentleman's club sort of room. D. Paul was called onto the carpet for spending a lot of time enhancing the crown molding...in reality he did a nice thing for the room, but it wasn't a dramatic enough change to warrant the effort. Trish's yard sale item, a tacky metallic art piece, was brilliantly converted into a planter base, but I found it curious that they stuck it on an unnecessary table in the corner of the room rather than showcasing it on the coffee table. Instead, they put this lonely urn-style vase on the coffee table...a questionable design choice at best. I did like their paint color and think if they'd incorporated simple khaki furniture into the space and some zebra prints and African textiles, they could still have had their manroom but with a modern twist.

And Trish? Will not crack. Not a single tear shed so far. When will she finally break down and make my prediction come true? Stephanie sobbed hysterically during the final throes of episode one. Crazee Tracee has had crying fits through both of the last two episodes. Will someone please take away Trish's Mary Kay bag so we can finally see her cry and I can retain some semblance of the voice of authority here?

Michael & Matt

These guys seemed to have a vision early on...black walls, white art objects (using Matt's white mannequin legs as one of the pieces), blah blah blah. They were feelin' it, I was not. Black walls, yes. Mannequin legs on a pedestal, not so much. It just seemed too simplistic for someone of Matt's ability to stick his object unchanged on a pedestal. Well, thank gawd my man Matt's light bulb finally went off and he started slicing and dicing those plastic legs into mod botanicals to insert into Michael's garage sale vase. Phew!

The end result of this room was fairly sophisticated, with awesome couches, but three blank black walls are just not acceptable. Also, I hated...well, loathed...the "art" behind the vase on the fireplace. Seemed kinda cheesy to me.

When Cynthia Rowley said she loved their room, Michael exploded into such arm-flailing and air-suckage, I thought I would die laughing.

Crazee Tracee & Jen

Here we go! For some reason, Jen starts out seemingly to allow CT to drive the bus on color and furniture selection. Note to Jen: if someone is taken to task for poor design choices on an earlier challenge, you may not want this person to be in control of buying all of the elements going into your room.

This room seemed all over the map. I don't mind an eclectic approach but this room seemed to suffer from an identity crisis. That, and an appalling paint choice--saccharine sweet mint green. Also, the walls were as naked as the mannequin "art" on the fireplace.

It came as no surprise that the claws did come out midway through the execution of the room...anyone working with Crazee is going to have a problem expressing a differing opinion from hers. Crazee tried to chalk the discord up to the other designers considering her too much of a threat. Why is it that every reality show contestant who utters the phrase, "they just see me as being too much of a threat," is never the one who actually demonstrates talent?

Mikey V & Stephanie, a.k.a. Stax

Mikey V proved himself to be focused. Stax held up her airhead rep. ("I like this one better because it looks expensiver.") They seemed to complement each other stylistically though, so good for them. The final room was fine--pretty fleshed out compared to the other rooms. The trouble I had with the space was that the moldings added above the new chair rail were too large and terribly out of proportion. I loved Mikey's yard sale conversion project...he turned a set of shelves into a bench seat. Yard sale item a la Stax? Meh.

Crazee Tracee and D. Paul ended up on the chopping block. Who went home? D. Paul. Did you really think they were going to eliminate this season's villain so soon?

Interestingly enough, when I did a little research on the Interwebs, I discovered this house was just listed for rent yesterday. So if you're looking for a spacious rental in Nashville with some quirky provenance, check it out!

My Clients are the BEST!

I recently began working with a photographer on his new studio space and the subject of a rust effects paint I used on the fireplace below came up.


While discussing the (exciting) possibility of using this material on the main entrance wall, I mentioned the problems we had when the sealer was applied over the rusted finish on this fireplace. All of the beautiful rust patterns disappeared and the whole look was destroyed. It was so disheartening that the homeowner, who'd applied the rust surface originally, couldn't bring herself to repeat the process and hired me to tackle the second round. We didn't seal it this time, so the question my photographer client and I were pondering was, would the unsealed rust rub off?

I called the fireplace client to get some reconnaissance info and this is the message she returned:

"I have no idea if the rust would rub off, but if you'd like me to go rub my butt against it to see what happens, I'm happy to do that. Love you!"

Do you see why I love my people?!

Design Star, Season 3, Episode 2

PSYCHE!

When we last left Design Star, the nine contestants were supposedly challenged with building their cast dwelling in seven days...but the producers were foolin'.

Hook your finger in the side of your mouth and repeat after me: "Fished in! Fished in!"

Turns out, the real challenge was to design two bedrooms, the living room, dining room, and a sunroom. That's more like it, eh? The group split into several teams and got to work. I don't so much want to recap the show as I want to critique the work...and also to point out the crazy and the catty.

First of all, it's no surprise that Matt came up with "the single best bedroom design I've ever seen on this show," according to Vern. I would go one step farther and say it's got to be the best bedroom you've ever seen on any reality show. This guy will undoubtedly give David Bromstad (Season 1 winner) a run for his money. It's no small task to cram five twin beds into any bedroom but most reality shows resort to bunk beds and converting larger rooms into dorm-style bedrooms. Matt's idea, on the other hand, was to shove four of the beds together (two side-by-side pair arranged headboard to headboard) and through the addition of L-shaped partitions, created some privacy for each of the beds:

The fifth bed in the room was inserted loft-style into the contemporary canopy area above the four on the floor. All of the construction (completed by Matt and Mikey) was finished out professionally and pristinely (at least it appeared so, even in hi-def) and the color palette was very restful. Sleeping in this room would certainly take the edge off all of the potential pitfalls of life on a reality show--aside from Matt's snoring--but I travel with earplugs and melatonin so I think I could hack it.

Okay that's one end of the spectrum. Now for the worst room in the house.

The upstairs bedroom, designed by Scotty, just flat out sucked. The arrangement was lacking, especially when compared with the bedroom downstairs...probably not an entirely fair comparison. Scotty's design was completely unimaginative...no art on the walls, horrible brown-rust-white tie dye bedding, and the single worst window treatments I've ever seen on TV. We know you like bowties, Scotty...but the rest of us? Not so much. We're especially not so fond of them when you blow them up to gargantuan size and stick them on top of the cornices on all the windows:

Ech. You finalists assigned to this bedroom--I feel your pain. However, I will say I did not hate the wall color as much as everyone else seemed to...you know I heart orange. But I would've done something with it, man.

Moving on to the living room and the adjacent sunroom, D. Paul, Crazee Tracee, Michael, and Trish teamed up to knock out these rooms. You know this is gonna be trouble, right? First of all, too many cooks in the kitchen. There's no way four people--let alone four designers--can ever truly have a meeting of the minds on any subject, so this arrangement was never destined to work out smoothly. Cue the typical reality show bickering and butting heads while everyone else glides along in peace and harmony. What this group ended up with was a living room that was just fine but not anything special, aside from the silver leafing on the built-in bookshelves flanking the fireplace...and a sunroom that was anything but sunny. They gave a lot of lip service in the beginning to relating the design of the sunroom to the living room since the two rooms were open to each other, but there's no evidence of this philosophy in the final outcome. If I were coordinating with their slate blue/white/silver/zebra living room palette, I would've put a chamois color on the walls of the sunroom, bought in all-white lounge-y furniture, and added pops of blues with accessories, art, and pillows.

As for the pool table, I love the concept of it but am just a total hater of the one they purchased. I understand the whole budget thing and respect that the price was right, but I probably would've left it in the store because it was just so ugly. Sue me.

Stax (Stephanie) and Jennifer took on the dining room, and seemed to be such girly peas in a pod, I thought they were going to put on their pj's, play Light as a Feather and Truth or Dare, then attack each other with a giggly pillow fight. That's great though, I was happy to see two reality show women get along so well...but I was appalled and agog when Stax got all confused over how to set up a ladder.

"I've never used one of these before."

A ladder? You've never used a ladder? How much of a dang princess do you have to be to not ever have used a *expletive* ladder? And okay, let's say you've never used one before...is a ladder not self-explanatory?

Their design seemed cool...black walls in a dining room can be very chic. But when they took that bee-yootiful slice o'tree dining table and poured paint on it, my hand flew up to my gaping maw and I nearly fell off the couch. And I'm someone who has no compunction about painting wood if it's necessary, but this just seemed so wrong. I wondered, what was the point of bringing in this natural element (rough hewn edges on the table top) if you were just going to paint it? Why not make something out of MDF if you were just going to paint it? Well, I was a convert at the end...ironically, it looked like faux bois, which I'm kind of a sucker for. I didn't love the fireplace they stripped down though...and agreed with the judges that it seemed poor time management to paint a natural table white and strip a white fireplace down to wood when you could have basically gotten the same kind of effect by keeping these two elements in their original condition. Maybe this would've afforded them the time to remove all of the blue painter's tape from the wall art and the crown molding.

And, umm, it must be mentioned that Jen totally pimped out Stax at the furniture store, imploring her to pull her (already low-cut) T-shirt down and ask the manager for a big discount on the dining table. And umm, then? The producers totally pimped her out again when they aired a gratuitous ass shot--nothing but Stax's butt filling the screen. On HGTV? That's classy.

Cut to the judging panel and all hell breaks loose among Crazee Tracee and her cohorts. CT throws Michael and Trish under the bus (fastest toss of co-competitors that I know of on any show). CT's driven from cast's waiting room in tears while the other finalists wail on about how much they hate that they're fighting already. Stax unleashes her inner Tammy Faye (albeit apparently with waterproof mascara) and cries throughout the entire judging process and the backstage drama. I guess I was wrong about Trish being the first to cry, but I still have faith in her ability to turn on the waterworks here in the near future.

It's no shocker that Scotty (Tie-Dye Bow Ties) is the first one to hear the the sound-proof doors slam shut behind him after the judges "cancel his show". (Ugh, I just hate that dismissal phrase.)

My vote for the winner is still Matt, but my husband made a good point that Matt's perfectionism could bite him in the butt somewhere down the line. Either that, or D. Paul's going to rub him out during some kind of sleep-deprived "ragin' Cajun" kind of mehlee.

Just kidding. We have yet to see D. Paul's personality, much less see him enraged...

TGIF

You thought the Segue was a crazily-designed people mover? Get a load of the Conference Bike!

I'll take one in orange please! Seriously, how fun would it be to take this down to the veloway?!

Also on the design-related video front, IKEA has some adorable, animated cartoons ("IKEA Madness") that give you the background on how some of their products were designed. Some of them are incredibly informative, all of them are entertaining. As with everything else that IKEA does, these cartoons are simple, fun, and endearing. Click on floating Swedish designer heads and find out their stories!

Home Consignment

In case you're unfamiliar with Home Consignment, up north in the Arbor Walk shopping center, it's proven to be an invaluable resource. Between 50-75% of what you see in the store has come from model homes, so this is your opportunity to get brand-new furniture and accessories for rock-bottom prices.

A few pieces I spied during a visit Wednesday night:

This metal table is sure to be a hit with those of you who want to live inside the pages of Domino magazine, and at $149, it packs a lot of style punch for very little money.

Bring this cafe set home to your patio (or breakfast nook), serve fresh French pastries and piping hot coffee, and your staycation feels more like vacation. The table and four chairs are a steal at $499.

I love the color of these chests...flanking the bed with silver sage paint on the wall behind? Gorgeous. $169 each.

A pair of these wood-topped bronze tables would be great in a small space and are scary inexpensive. $69 each! Can you just die?


Yes, I'm still in lurv with orange, and this chaise--with the tags still on, mind you--is priced shockingly low. $599!

This $199 abstract just needs to live with the orange leather chaise, no?

Home Consignment is at MoPac and 360,
in the Arbor Walk shopping center.
(A second location is in Bee Caves, at 71/620.)

10515 N MoPac Expy, Austin - (512) 346-2900

Design Star, Season 3 - Premier Episode

The third season of Design Star premiered tonight, and if you read my cast critique or saw their audition videos yourselves, there weren't many surprises.

*Spoiler alert: I'll reveal the winner of the online poll for the 9th cast spot and talk about the shocker of a first challenge.

Let's get right to the identy of the ninth finalist. The HGTV.com voters selected Stax...um, I mean Stephanie Cook, who beat out a cute, petite woman from Tyler, TX to take the last spot in the lineup. If you saw her audition video and/or tonight's show, you probably noticed that Stephanie was workin' her bustline every chance she got, to garner a spot on the show. Her portfolio was admitedly pretty great-looking--very streamlined and Vern-like (as in Vern Yip, one of the DS judges), but I don't know how competitive she can be if she can't build anything for the upcoming challenges ("I've never touched a power tool in my life!"). Since their first assignment is the mind-blowing challenge of building their cast home with a deadline of seven days, methinks Stephanie's going back to her home in Irvine, CA at the end of next Sunday's episode.

Stephanie Cook

And speaking of this first challenge, the sight of the nine of them driving up one by one to find two stacks of lumber, two tall toolboxes, and a rectangle marked off in orange surveyor's tape in the drizzling rain and mud brought to mind the season of The Apprentice where each week's losing team had to camp outside the winning team's mansion digs. It remains to be seen if they'll get some unexpected help with parts of the equation--surely they will not be expected to install the electrical and plumbing in a property that will presumably be sold off after the competition is over--but Jennifer echoed my own reaction to this prospect when she said she considered getting back in the car, that maybe she wanted to try out for a different show!

Other impressions:

Traci has a more relaxed on-air persona than her audition video seemed, but we caught her stressing over her manicure in slow-mo when host Clive Pearse tossed the first paint can o' money (a hundred grand!) at the group. Man up, lady. You're gonna be getting your hands dirty. Or didn't you watch the previous seasons of the show?


Props to Matt's OCD-on-crack-style presentation "boards" (more like an installation). That was c-r-a-z-y cool.


They brought far too many freaks out to LA for testing (Tidy Whities Guy, Nautical-or-Nothing Guy, I Don't Understand Juxtaposition Girl, Dude Looks Like a Lady).


One whackjob with his own catchphrase ("America, it's official. I'm amazing.") managed to charm the judges somehow and made it onboard. I'm still scratching my head over it because during his meeting with the panel, our local-ish guy Michael struck me as someone too instable to make it through the competition without going postal on the other finalists. After watching him whine and struggle to articulate his point of view as a designer, and appear to resent the question, I only have one thing to say about him. Freak Boy, it's official. You're annoying.


Looking forward to seeing what'll happen next week.

Fave Fabrics at Fanny's

If you know me at all, you know my favorite place to shop for fabrics is at Fanny's, down on South Lamar (and Treadwell). It's the only place in town where you'll find a funky mix of traditional textiles as well as mid-century modern designs you won't find anywhere else. The people there are awesome and go the extra mile to help out their customers. You also won't find a better selection of trims and I'm in love with their square wooden buttons. Very cool.


Here are some of the fabrics at Fanny's that I'm itching to use:

Tingari in Suede, $14/yd.

Interlocked Gold, on sale for $9.80/yd.

Majolica Plates, $14/yd.

I am dying to do a girl's room with this pair!

TOP: Location in Horizon, on sale for $8.40/yd.
BOTTOM: Snowflake in Olive, $14/yd.

Fanny's Fabrics is on S. Lamar, near Treadwell,
in the same shopping center as Alamo Drafthouse South.

1150 S. Lamar
Austin, TX 78704
512-442-8255