The banal yard makeover on Design Star. (Photo: www.hgtv.com/designstar)
Have you ever set out to improve your home and ended up messing up your relationship?
Sure you have. The snits, the accusations, the cowardly passing off of blame, the cost overruns…
Yep, this week Design Star had it all, as the four remaining designers set out to transform a giant and empty back yard into a Zen modern escape.
Design Star becomes Renovation Reality, but with better production values and more money.
This week, the four remaining designers (again—how is Poor Torie still there? Oh that’s right, Jason was exponentially worse than her last week) are told that even though they’re in the home stretch, they’re doing a group challenge. Again.
And when they arrive at the home of the Zimmers, they discover what a big job it is, indeed. The 10,000 square foot back yard is a wasteland of dusty dirt and a fenced pool. It’s huge. The couple, who have a young son, want a place that’s lush but modern, with room for their son to play, for the couple to host parties with up to 50 guests and a new grill for dad. You know, the usual.
They get $25,000 and 36 hours to complete the challenge and Torie mysteriously is selected as the team leader.
Which means, of course, that she gets down to work—taking notes for the other designers and not offering any opinions at all. Instead, it’s Antonio who starts barking out ideas and directions, while Lonni and Handsome Dan chime in with a few ideas.
Torie, really. Didn’t you learn anything from Amy?
Apparently not.
And apparently the rest of the designers haven’t learned anything on the show, because not a single thing in the yard is designed by the so-called designers: There are $4,000 worth of tropical plants selected by Lonni to give the place that lush feel. There’s a jungle gym for little Calen they pick up. They buy a ready-made and blindingly white pergola.
Oh, the pergola.
Here’s where the fighting and snippiness and blame come in. Couples, prepare for flashbacks to your last remodel.
So here’s how it goes down: Torie, Antonio’s puppet leader, doles out $5,000 to Dan to buy a pergola. But Antonio complains that it should be $10,000, and repeatedly asks Dan if he got $10,000, saying he should get $10,000. Dan repeats that it’s $5,000 but then looks off into space like he’s not paying much attention.
Problem number one.
Then Antonio and Dan head to the premade-pergola shop, where they’re told they can’t get a price now, that they’ll have to wait till someone comes out to the site to give them an estimate.
Problem number two.
When the salesman arrives, he gives them a price of almost $11,000. Yes, $11,000 for a white, plastic-looking pergola that does nothing to bring modern or Zen or lush to the space.
Problem number three.
And then Dan says OK and signs the contract—without getting any outside opinions.
Big, huge, problem number four.
Anyone who’s had a fight with a loved one because he or she made a big purchase without consulting anyone else knows what’s coming. And it does.
When Lonni and Torie return from plant shopping, first they give Dan the benefit of the doubt.
“You’re joking, right?” says Lonni, a smile frozen on her bewildered face.
No, unfortunately he’s not joking.
“Oh c’mon,” she laughs, clinging desperately to her denial. “This is a joke.”
No. Really, Lonni.
And then all hell breaks loose. The team realizes that, without having purchased any furniture at all, they’re now $5,000 over budget. All you home renovators: sound familiar?
No one’s smiling. Dan looks like he’s been slapped once he realizes what he’s done. And Torie flips.
“I seriously couldn’t believe my ears,” she sputters. “I knew as soon as he said that that we were totally screwed. There is no one in their right mind that would make the decision to buy an $11,000 outdoor gazebo! I’m just beside myself, seriously.”
In her polite, well-mannered Southern way, Torie looks like she would break Dan’s nose if she could get away with it. Later, when they’re planting the plants, Torie’s not over it. She says she’s taking out all her aggression digging holes for the plants, but she looks weak and harmless when the camera pans to her.
The guys make it worse. Of course they do. They don’t want to take the blame. Dan keeps saying “it was a huge miscommunication.” Uh, no Dan. It was a mistake. Your mistake. Own up, dude.
Antonio, meanwhile, is the one who planted the $10,000 figure in Dan’s head by insisting that’s how much Torie gave him. And we know this because HGTV replays the exchange on a constant loop to show us how it went down. Still, Antonio not only takes no responsibility, but he also blames Torie for Dan’s mistake.
“The bottom line is that we should have been more clear about the budget this morning,” he says completely without irony. “There’s no reason we should be $5,000 over-budget right now. Torie doesn’t know what to do. She’s, like, panicking. It’s lack of leadership.”
On the one hand, I don’t like Torie any more than the rest of them. Her style is boring, she doesn’t ever take a risk and she’s not going to be the next Design Star unless the others catch a serious virus or die the last week of the competition, a la Drop Dead Gorgeous.
On the other hand, it’s not Torie’s fault Dan didn’t think.
(As a side note, raise your hand if you think they’re letting Torie dig her own grave. First they let her be team captain knowing how meek she is and knowing that if it goes bad, she’s going home. Then, they let her shop for furniture, knowing her style is boring beige and she has no idea what modern really means. Plus, she’s hampered by the serious handicap of having to buy all their stuff at Sears. I get that it’s a sponsor of the show, but Sears isn’t known for its mid-century modern appeal.)
The team is disjointed and pissed at each other—until host Clive Pearse appears. And here’s where being on TV makes all the difference. If this were a family and they’d gone over by $5,000, it would be something each of them could bring up for years to come when they got into an argument (“Oh yeah? I may have bought too many clothes this month, but you bought a $11,000 pergola. Seriously—what were you thinking?”). But because this is TV, Clive appears, feigns ignorance of their financial bind and then comes to the rescue with an extra $5,000.
Personally, I don’t get how $5,000 fixes their problem. That should mean they just broke even and still can’t afford to buy any furniture. But this is TV, so I guess it means the show actually gave them $10,000--$5,000 to break even and another $5,000 to finish the design. Don’t you wish you had a Fairy God Pearse when this happened to you?
Now that the financial strain is resolved, they can go back to what they do best. Torie buys boring furniture. Lonni plants her plants. Dan takes off his shirt to show off his defined but blindingly pale pecs. And Antonio is a jerk.
“We’re down to the wire and everyone has to take control of their part,” he says, building up to his punchline, so pleased with himself. “Lonni has to take control of his planting. And Dan has to take control of… taking his shirt off and doing whatever he does.”
Oh, Antonio. You’re just jealous.
And as David Bromstad says in his vlog this week, “it’s not original, but it’s very much appreciated.”
David, you may recall, is the first Design Star and famously said that he’d take his shirt off every week if it would win him the show. Or something like that. Maybe Dan’s willingness to be beefcake is what judge Vern Yip means when he says during judging that Dan has that “special It factor” and is telegenic. His pecs certainly are.
Anyway, we digress. The yard comes together and, to my eye, instead of looking lush and Zen, it merely looks complete. There’s new sod, a new plain concrete pad around the pool, the crazy-expensive but not crazy-good pergola, some immature plantings that don’t yet have that wow-factor and some seating sprinkled around. It’s fine. It’s what the homeowner could have done, but it’s not what will win you this show.
And I have a bone to pick with the design: This is what I don’t like about interior designers designing landscapes. Bring in a landscape designer, for goodness sakes. They plant bamboo around the fence to create a living fence, without any barriers at all. Bamboo is a crazy-invasive plant and in five years will have taken over that whole yard and be the biggest pain for that family.
The Zimmers have a son but they remove the security gate around the pool. This place was the perfect opportunity for someone to assert that green label and plant drought-tolerant species that also impart a zen feel. What about a rock garden? How about some succulents?
The family says it wants modern and Zen. Even I know that could be accomplished by building a few posts around the side and draping it with fabric, and then planting some beautiful papyrus plants. They’re drought resistant and striking.
Seriously, I could have done better.
And the judges think so, too. Well, not about me. But about the design—or lack thereof.
Candice Olson feels the space is “shopped for but not designed.”
“You have a table, you have a barbecue area, a play area,” she says. “I’m concerned this was a missed opportunity to design.”
Vern asks where the wow-factor is: “I would have loved to see architectural design around the pool, with tall column planters with big palms coming out,” he says. Later, he adds, “Each of you have designed that incredible ‘A ha!’ moment. That’s why you’re standing in front of us now. But you didn’t do it this week. Where are the hot pink geese? Where’s the focal wall? Where’s the great white-walls challenge with the halved apples? Where’s the tissue scrolls?”
And then when they find out that they went $5,000 over budget, they admonish the group for not spending wisely. Candice says they paid “a high-end custom price for not a high-end custom look.”
True.
“The fundamental issue here is that you didn’t use your money as wisely as you could have,” concludes Vern. And now for the blame game: He asks whose fault it is.
Remember what I said before about bringing this mistake up to throw salt into wounds during a stressful moment? Here it is.
Dan blames Torie because she’s the leader, cowardly saying, “I don’t know who else….”
Ugh. Dan. You were the only one who I thought I could bear to watch with his own TV show on this channel. But your cowardice is changing my mind. What happened to your mea culpa before judging?
Remember? You said, “I absolutely know budget issues will come up during elimination and at the end of the day I was the one who was there. I signed for the contract. I made the decision. This is on my shoulders.”
But faced with elimination, Dan doesn’t fall on his sword. He stabs it in Torie’s back.
And Torie, perhaps to her credit—or is it that dumb thing girls are taught, not to fight back?—doesn’t attack Dan. She just stands there fuming.
When they go back to the green room to wait for the decision, they break down into what they must have been like as kids: Lonni stays out of it because it isn’t her fight. Torie crosses her arms in front of her and grunts that she’s “not taking responsibility for” the $10,000 snafu. Antonio is argumentative, telling Dan to calm down. And Dan, getting more whiny and less attractive by the second sniffs that he’ll shut up—but not because Antonio told him to.
I swear I said the same to my sister when I was 10.
The results are in, and Lonni’s plantings give her the win. Next is Antonio, for stepping in and being the leader—even if no one wanted him to be.
And so it’s down to the one who made the mistake and the one who didn’t take charge. Which will it be?
And… it’s Torie.
I’m glad to see her go, but not like this. She wasn’t a good leader and her design style stunk. But she’s not the one who went $6,000 over budget on a pergola.
Still, Torie manages to hold herself together. She doesn’t cry. She merely says she really wanted to win, had her heart set on it. She’s upset and disheartened. That’s right, girl. Hold your head up. You’ll live to design beige rooms another day.
—Heather Boerner