Overly scary Halloween decor can come back to haunt home sellers. (Photo: iStockphoto)

This year, my 6-year-old daughters have been begging me to up the ante with our Halloween decorations. I have some Halloween décor, but most of it are fairly tasteful displays of the season, like a spray of purple, green and orange pumpkin lights around the door, two pumpkins that my daughters chose at a local pumpkin patch, and a brightly colored "Trick or Treat" sign on the front door …Full Story

Design disasters can wreck a room. (Photo: iStockphoto)

Recently, I wrote about the design lessons to take from the putative design stars. This week? It’s all about the red flags, warnings and downright mess-ups.

Without further ado: The Design Stars’ mistakes and how you can avoid them. …Full Story

The infamous pink geese. (Photo: www.hgtv.com/designstar)

Design Star may be over, but some of the design choices live on as shining examples of beautiful, translatable design. Here are our favorites. Feel free to chime in with your own in the comments …Full Story

Lonni's room and Tiffani Thiessen's reaction. (Photo: hgtv.com/designstar)

Saved By the Bell. Beverly Hills, 90210. The D List. It's not exactly Hollywood royalty, but for this week's episode of Design Star, it'll do. The remaining three designers get a shot at designing a room for (minor) celebrity clients. But will their designs be decidedly D list, too? We’ll see …Full Story

Jason's Pretty Princess room, such as it is. (Photo: hgtv.com/designstar)

Craft store explosions, pretty pretty princess dreck and a Technicolor eco-abode: Just three questionable rooms created by the nervous last five designers standing on Design Star …Full Story

Team Lang's Bad News Bears garage. (Photo: www.hgtv.com/designstar)

This week’s Design Star had all the hallmarks of really good—or really horrible—reality TV. People were throwing their teammates under the bus left and right. There was the confused, the tacky, the possibly homophobic and some great calls by the judges …Full Story

Design snob Nathan and Handsome Dan's winning designs. (Photo: hgtv.com/designstar)

This week on Design Star: Cereal, black bean and charcoal carpets. Shitake mushrooms nailed to the wall. Milk dribbling down it …Full Story

A surprising number of homes on the market have been meth labs.

I get a weekly e-mail update from the National Association of Realtors. It has little snippets of news from Capitol Hill, announcements of online courses,  the usual thing. Then, under the Sales and Marketing Tools section, there was this item: "5 Signs That Your Listing Might Have Once Been a Meth Lab." …Full Story

Team Nathan's whole lotta look. (Photo: HGTV.com)

Would you let a band of as-yet-unproven wanna-be home makeover show hosts loose in your kitchen?

If you said yes, then maybe you deserve the kitchens that two hopeful homeowners got in the Kitchen Challenge of last week's "Design Star." One looked, as judge Vern Yip wisely noted, "like a rainbow threw up in there." The other was like the kitchen of a spaceship after taking a beating in a shower of asteroids -- and where the astronauts have ceased eating …Full Story

Ah, home improvement reality TV. How you lull me in with the promise of home makeover magic, and hold my attention with an hour of snarky remarks, terrible designs and cat fights. Right now, HGTV is my favorite on this front. I made sure to catch HGTV’s Showdown, Sunday nights, for the side-by-side comparisons of what second-rung design show stars could do to bonus rooms and yards in four hours. I cheered when on-the-brink homeowners Fabian and Lisa were able to save their home from foreclosure by out-designing their neighbors on HGTV’s $250,000 Challenge. And don’t even get me started on the fun of Rate My Space. …Full Story