Design Star 2: Long Island Home

Episode 2 of Design Star aired July 30 on HGTV. Ramona’s departure last week left nine contestants competing for their own HGTV show.

HGTV's Design Star Cast

The Challenge

Host Clive Pearse brought the group a challenge close to his own heart - the chance to remodel three rooms within a Long Island home that had been on the market for 8 months (Pearse is of course something of an expert in this field, having hosted HGTV’s Designed to Sell program). The rooms up for redesign were the:

• kitchen
• living room
• master bedroom

To divide up the rooms, each contestant was told to open a paint can. Those who found stars under their lids were team captains, and under the star was the room to which their team would be assigned. Team captains each chose two other players to fill out their teams - the order of the picking spoke volumes about the relationships between the designers. The teams were as follows:

• Donna (Team Captain), Dave, and Temple/kitchen
• Tym (Team Captain), Teran, and Teman/master bedroom
• Joseph (Team Captain), Vanessa, and Alice/living room

Vanessa, last week’s star, was first picked, and Temple, who had a hand in Ramona’s questionable mural, was last. The combination of Temple and Donna would prove to be volatile as they completed their tasks.

Each team received $2,000 to spend on their project and had 24 hours to complete the job. The object of the task to produce a design that would appeal to as wide a range of buyers as possible, as economically as possible - the money spent on the project should be more than made up for in increased value to the home.

The Work

When the Design Star hopefuls arrived at their destination, it soon became clear they had their work cut out for them.

Living Room

The original living room was large, but narrow, and decorated with a disjointed set of furniture. Joseph, Vanessa, and Alice decided to try and improve the flow of room by creating three separate seating areas (confusingly enough). The original sofa in the room was a large sectional. The team decided it was too large, and Joseph cut the sofa down to size. Reupholstering the sofa proved the only real conflict within this team, as Vanessa and Alice bickered about the material. Though the team worked well together, a major faux pas occurred when they painted a portion of an heirloom table. They managed to correct their mistake, but the error was a big time designer no-no.

Master Bedroom

Joseph's Show was Cancelled

How can mere words describe this bedroom? The theme apparently was “castles” - with faux stone walls painted around the room, opening up to painted scenes of medieval castles. Tym, Teran, and Teman guessed just about anything they did would be considered an improvement - and they weren’t wrong. They cut birchwood tiles for the floor, painted away the “Sword in the Stone” motif, and created a simple, clean bedroom sure to give the feeling of “blank canvas” to potential buyers.

Time was the problem for this team, who only just managed complete their project.

The Kitchen

Yellow teacup wallpaper, offensive brown tiles, and a hodgepodge of design styles were the problems in the kitchen, but Donna and Temple were so busy fighting that they barely noticed. Dave barely noticed either, as his time was spent trying to smooth out the differences between the women. Their solution for the kitchen amounted mostly to antiquing the cupboards, painting the table and the walls, tying a bunch of twigs together to make a sculpture, and filling the room with plenty of bad karma.

And who was to blame? There’s enough to go around - Temple is pretty mouthy for a woman with no design training, but then Donna certainly spent a lot of valuable work hours shopping. This conflict will be one to watch.

The Results

On a whole, the judges were pretty under whelmed by the work of all the teams. The changes to the rooms simply were not that drastic, and many of the changes that were made would have added little value to the house. Tym Teran, and Teman were picked as the winning team, though they were advised they should have incorporated more color into their design. Donna’s team came in second place, with what the judges called “mediocre” work. In the end, Joseph’s team destruction of the couch and painting of the heirloom table was too much for the judges to overlook. Vanessa and Alice were given another chance by the judges, but for as for Joseph, his show was cancelled.

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• Bathroom Design Pictures
• Interior Paint Color Combinations

• Country French Style Basics
• Common Themes for Teenage Bedrooms
• Designing for Small Spaces
• Basics of Color Design
• Asian Style Interior Design

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