a winner!

After an excruciating reunion show, in which SparkleJosh's reference to Tammy Faye was the highlight, Ms Fabulous Kim was announced the winner of hgtv's Design*Star 2.

I voted for her, of course! Mainly because of all the designers after Sparkle, she was the only one whose personality was not merely watchable, but actually enjoyable. She's cute, funny, clever, crafty and I think she'll make a lovely host.



Some of Kim's rooms were - not as fabulous. Way Newton's guesthouse kitchen (above) in which she was yoked to the heinous Robb, is not fabulous (or finished). As everyone as noted, the furniture was not well balanced. But she chose a great buffet, and I loved the tile-look mirrors she chose, as well as the wall color.

Her "deserving" design, the "rustic livingroom" at the right, was - well, let's face it: she had shit-all to work with from the beginning. Her challenge was enormous, and she had some limitations placed on her (the family did not want a hard wood or laminate floor, for instance). I like the colors she chose, and the addition of a dining space was a lovely, thoughtful touch.


This is "sumptuous simplicity," from the dollar-store challenge (which was kind of a crappy one, I think; I resented very much that the spaces were more art piece - they didn't need to be functional. wtf?). I have to say: I really like what Kim did here. It shows real ingenuity and creativity, along with some real artistic, or craftistic, ability. The rice-and-peas "rug" is genius. The paper plate "leaves" on the walls are great. I LOVE the shades of brown and pink she chose. And the coffee table "mosaic" is brilliant; i'm contemplating a similar paint trick in a small space in my own house. It was a weird challenge, but I think Kim managed to pull off some REALLY strong elements (with a few weaker ones, admittedly). I like this space!

And the finale, the Hawaiian daydream suite! Kim excelled here, she really did. And compared to the Hammerhead Shark and Jellyfish "decor" next door, Kim was absolutely a shoo-in for winner.
My favorite elements in this space? I loved the wooden cutouts she used (you can see some reflected in the mirror above the sofa). I LOVE the palette she used - that aqua-and-chocolate in the kitchenette is to die for. And the rich tangerine on the wall is well set off by the more sedate browns of the room. It wasn't a hysterical burst of color; it was a thoughtful mix of colors that ended up looking both very Hawaiian-vacation-fun AND luxurious. Even though her room divider was unfinished, the idea is great. and i'm inclined to cut slack on things like that, especially since it's only in close-ups that it's visible. And you know in a real world project, it would never be left undone.

anyway, Kim is a totally fabulous choice, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing her new show in the spring! (I must say, I hope it's better than what poor sweet darling David Bromstad has been reduced to.....).

Many congratulations to KIM!!!!!

kim ftw

(image taken from cuteoverload.com)

Kim! Kim! Kim!

come on, her final design is lovely - I'd be delighted to stay there, in her tropical punch suite. the aqua and brown are a favorite color combo of mine.
I'll do a full blather about this episode, but I LOVE the wooden cut-outs on the left in this photo (against the orange). The placement, the shapes themselves, all of it: gorgeous. I even love the screen she built to divide the seating from the kitchen area.


Todd's suite has a drawing of a hammerhead shark in it.

this one is a no-brainer.


VOTE FOR KIM! voting closes at noon on wednesday (est), so hit the polls! I still haven't figured out how to send text messages so i'm stuck with once-a-day internet voting, but for those with textability, VOTE!

design star 6 - "deserving" design

Episode Six repeats a challenge from last year's Design Star: the three finalists are randomly assigned a redesign project and sent to locations across the country. This year, the three families were located in California, Indiana and West Virginia.

Before I go on, I need to say that I'm conflicted about this concept of "deserving" design. The families are chosen on some sort of need-based criteria. This also seems like a prelude to Vern Yip's new show, "Deserving Design." This smacks a little too much of the "deserving poor" which has a lot of connotations I don't really like. It's also loaded down with ideological weight; for example, the Indiana family was made up of six children (ages 16 to 18months) and the parents are both firefighters. Their "before" room was basic but nothing hideous. Why choose them? Presumably because the parents are "first responders" - everyday American Heroes!

In California, we had Bridget, a young teenage girl with some condition that requires her to remain wheelchair bound (her bones break exceedingly easily). Will ended up as her designer, and did what I thought was an outstanding job.

Todd drew the "easiest" challenge - swanking out an already-okay livingroom for the firefighters and their spawn.

Kim got the saddest one: designing the livingroom for a young couple (with baby) in West Virginia. He is a coal miner.

The rooms:
Will is just amazing. I love his aesthetic, even though it isn't MY style. He uses color well, I think, and in this episode in particular, he was really sensitive to the needs of his wheelchair bound, teenage client (and teen girl would be hard enough!). I like the colors he used, though I'd never choose them myself. My mom hates the green sofa, but i actually like it a lot. One of the design features Will pointed out was that, by painting the walls in color blocks with a white border, it makes the ceiling seem lower, so that from a wheelchair, one would feel in a reasonably-sized space. He also installed a refrigerator and a kick-ass media center. He kept it clean and simple, gave Bridget loads of places to lounge around while recuperating from injuries (that darker blue square is a padded "side" board to the bed, so she can sit up sideways or lengthwise on her bed. The one thing I felt the room was lacking was some sign of BRIDGET'S personality; the space is almost too clean. There should be a few trinkets or photos or something around that indicate that this room actually belongs to someone, and isn't a showroom. But I loved it on the whole- it's such a clean, bright space! - and I felt like Will's presentation was a vast improvement from his last hosting foray (the judges disagreed).

Todd's space, like I said, seemed kind of okay to livingrooms I've ever been in. He took over and turned it into a monstrosity. He tried to to Toddlike carpentry "tricks," but was confounded by time, space and the presence of a begin with - nothing special, but like most of the load-bearing horizontal beam. The room he ended up with is cheap and ugly, in my book, and is like staring into an oven. The vicious red wall is NOT complemented by the vicious orange walls; the reds in the chaises (which i do like), the cushions and the carpets don't match. Having backless bookcases sets means everything needs to fight against the hideous redness. The sectional sofa is ugly. The wooden corner "bench" toybox he built is a lame storage idea; throwing all your kids' crap into a large bin is NOT organization. Moreover, as my mom pointed out, it's a hinged box for use by very small children; pinched fingers and bonked heads are a probability. Todd would have been much better off getting some sort of storage unit with canvas drawer-bins into which the kids' junk could have been sorted. The red area rug over the white carpet is dumb. I hate wall to wall carpeting, myself, but I hate rugs over rugs even more. Todd bought high-end gaming systems and TV, and the room seems set up more as a teenage boy's dream gaming room (those chaises) than anything else. And, as one of the judges pointed out, the bulk of the seating does NOT face the TV - and the family said they use the space for movie nights frequently.
Martha McCully tipped her hand and revealed her foolish infatuation by saying "I like watching Todd." Well, Martha, you're the only one. Todd is a toolbag of the first rate.

Now for Kim. Oh Kimmy! You had the most difficult challenge - a dirt-poor room at the end of a dirt road in Nowhere, West Virginia. Her shopping options were more limited, and I think she had a lot more to accomplish. Partly she took this challenge upon herself, by expanding her design to include the family's eating area, which, she explained, is visible from the livingroom, and thus should be included (I agree, and Vern gave her an A+ for that one). Kim's had the most dismal "before" which is why I'm posting a picture of it. Look at the sad, saggy vinyl blinds. The carpet remnants over plywood floors. the utter lack of anything approaching luxury. By comparison, the Indiana "before" room was a dream (this made me angry, to be honest).
Kim worked some wonders. The couple wanted rustic, and the final product manages to pull that off without being tacky or gimmicky. Now, if it had been up to ME, I would have gone Arts & Crafts "rustic," but maybe arts & crafts isn't how they roll in WVa. What she did was totally transform a dismal, cold-looking space (you know they freeze in there in the winters....the only souce of heat is the wood-burning stove). She put in a lot of attention and time, hand-staining (is there any other way?) the wood elements they liked, getting furniture and things unloaded and arranged in a mud-inducing rainstorm, schlepping from outpost-shop to outpost-shop to find what she needed for the room.
The results?

Again with the wall-to-wall carpet! bah! Throw down some nice pergo flooring. It isn't hardwood, I know, but my pergo floor looks pretty damn nice, and it's easy to clean mud and muck off of it. And since Mr. Homeowner (the home is a doublewide trailer) is a coal miner, mud and muck comes into the house every day. Even a larger tiled entryway would have been more practical. The judges criticized Kim mostly for her furniture layout, and I guess I see the critique. Things are kind of where you'd expect them to be; why not put the sofa as a "room divider" at the natural break, and then two chairs facing it, backs to the window? The chair and table in the foreground are sort of random, but they do face the wood stove which is now actually kind of nice to look at.
I think if it was my space to do, I would have gotten a small, really comfy loveseat, and angled it in front of the woodstove, instead of the chair and table. That way, on chilly nights, the couple could snuggle up near their heatsouce. If I had insisted on using that rug, I would have laid it between the stove and the loveseat.

I LOVE the log box/table Kim had her carpenter construct. It's really sleek and modern looking while still fitting the space wonderfully, AND being highly functional.

Kim's presentation, as always, was stellar.


Will's show has been cancelled, with means awesome Kim and the Toolbag will be off to Hawaii (?? was there some sort of cut rate if you have your reality show's finale in hawaii? see: top chef, season two). America, now is the time to do your duty and VOTE FOR KIM!!

does anyone but Martha McCully REALLY want to watch Todd toolbagging around without his shirt on?? what would his show be? Pimp my dorm room for 19 year old boys?

I'm ready for the finale, though; I'm dying to know what the challenge is, and I REALLY hope my boy SparkleJosh comes back to help!

design*star Toolbag Todd

as of Toolbag Todd hasn't butched it up enough by ripping off his tshirt at every chance, and performing vaguely xtreme-sport tricks (skateboarding, handstands, handsprings), his official Q&A on hgtv.com provides even more adolescent masculinity-posing:

Dream design project: Maxim magazine's headquarters.

ugh. ew. and icky.

but then Todd throws me for a loop, by claiming art deco and nouveau as two of his favorite design styles. by "nouveau," I'm assuming "art nouveau," although maybe there is a design style called nouveau that I don't know.

this hurts me. art nouveau is probably my very favorite style of anything ever, and deco is high on my list.

they're also stereotypically queer styles.

oh Todd. why must you confuse me so? Gay or Straight ?





















answer: it doesn't matter because either way, he's still a toolbag!!!

design star 5: finally!

Tonight's episode of Design*Star was weird like all the rest have been....the final four were randomly put into two pairs, and assigned projects in Wayne Newton's guest house. I'll skip the vulgarity of Wayne's actual house (and the utter silliness of having him as a guest client on the show) and get right to the challenge.

Kim, who I like more by the minute, and Robb the jackass were paired to tackle the kitchen; Malibu-Kendoll Todd and Will got the livingroom.

Everyone agreed that the kitchen project was more of a challenge (judges, Wayne, and the contestants). What I don't get is, given this, why didn't the kitchen team get some counterbalance, like an extra 2 hours or something? so they had a bit of a pass, or maybe the other team was critiqued more harshly.

anyway, the main drama was the interaction between the Jackass and Kim. He was profoundly condescending, loud-mouthed, abrasive and nasty. Disagreements are one thing; a dominant personality is another. But Robb was just a prick, to Kim and in the "confessional" interviews, saying that "if she had even half a brain...." she would just ride his coattails. It was ugly. And because Robb has been so buddy-buddy with Todd, I wonder if there isn't a broad streak of sexism in him. The fact that I don't like his design style doesn't hurt, either.

Todd and Will created a gimmick in a well-appointed room. Todd built a rotating platform to contain the livingroom furniture. It was semi-cool, but mostly....a gimmick. The judges seem totally swept off their feet by Todd; I think he's like a perpetual 15-year-old who happens to be good at carpentry. The revolving platform is definitely neat, but it's heavy to move, and - well, I don't know. The DESIGN of the space is very nice, and that seemed to be Will's handiwork. Todd imagined and built the centerpiece, but the real design and decor of the room seemed to be Will's. I find Todd's surferboy schtick to be tired, unappealing and immature. WHY the judges like him is beyond me; it's like the teachers in highschool fawning over the kid who gets away with murder because he has a glib tongue.
I like Will, a lot. He knows his stuff, design-wise, and even though he doesn't come up with superflashy tricks, he has consistently presented solid, lovely spaces. His personality is quiet, but not "flat," though he obviously needs to work on his presentation skills. Then again, season one's winner (the adorable David Bromstad) had awful camera skills and still won.

Still, the platform seems more awkward than anything; 360 degree views are all very nice, but somehow it seems to be a bit clunky. I imagine myself barking my shins and ankles on that platform daily. I love the chair on the platform, though.


For starters, with that kitchen: I hope that rock looks better in person, because i just don't love it. I'm puzzled by the wine cooler on the righthand side of the stone piece; is that extra piece of wood on the right a cabinet? it looks off-balance and awkward, though the storage shelves are very lovely. The wooden framing is just too heavy for my taste.
Kim did a lovely job selecting accessories; I like the buffet very much, and I LOVE the two tile-esque pieces hanging it above it. The little dining set is only meh - the chairs seem a little insubstantial in the space; the room is just a desert between the entrance and the chairs. I loved the glass-tiled backsplash, but that may be because I love glass tiles. I'm not sure it was the best choice for the space.

Curiously, the judges didn't talk much about the actual DESIGN. No one mentioned the refrigerator that didn't make it in on time. Wayne Newton and his wife Kat seemed to like both spaces very much. The judges ended up focusing more on personality because!
tonight was the night when the contestants presented their spaces on camera. I found Robb and Todd both far too butch. "sweet" is not the adjective I'm EVER going for in ANY interior design, unless it's a room for a baby or an old lady who loves roses. I really do wonder what KIND of show HGTV wants for the winner of this contest; David's wasted on Color Space, and his "sidekick" is a drip (even though I adore David, I rarely watch that show). I keep picturing those Manly Shows like "over your head" and such, where some dudely type fixes all your troubles without making you look whipped by your wife who wants all pink floral decorations.

Will explained the space, which was more than Todd did - all Todd said, essentially, was "Cool dude! check this sweet platform! it spins, dude!" Will discussed texture and design.

Robb just sucks.

Kim was FABULOUS. her presentation was cute, pleasant, intelligent and witty - and she is obviously a natural on camera. I really do love her; she's so damn normal and talented!

Robb's elimination showed even MORE of what an asshole he really is. I can't believe the judges left him in this long; Scott and SparkleJosh were far better designers, in my book, and a thoroughly repugnant personality is enough to get kicked off a hosting challenge. Robb's final word, of the judges' decision, was "Fools." He's like the Arrogant Hung of Top Chef fame: he never, ever saw that he was wrong, or that maybe there was some justice in the judges' decision.

what a freaking tool. I am SO glad that jackass is gone.

But I feel weird about the final three. They are a really disparate bunch; it's apples and oranges, really. Last year, with Alice and David, i felt like it really did come down to their final design. Both had lovely personalities and presentations. This group of misfits, though - I dunno. Kim is the only one I'd want to watch, but Will definitely has skills, and a kind of quiet presence that *I* appreciate, from inside my own introversion. I'd also love to see a Black guy hosting a design show. Or a Black woman.

In the end, neither of these designs from tonight's show was especially mindblowing. Robb's attitude was mindblowingly appalling, and thankgod, for once, the judges agreed with me, and he was cancelled.

I am firmly on Team Kim from now to the bitter end, and I will be voting!!!!

design star episode 4

I missed the first showing of this, and didn't get to see the rerun until Friday night (unlike Bravo, HGTV doesn't rerun its shows ad infinitum).

I am HORRIFIED. Las Vegas might be a sexy dynamic new location, but it's also apparently totally devoid of taste.

I'm not really into high-end decor. Top Design sat crookedly with me in part because the designs and furnishings were TOO upscale; the aesthetic was far beyond my means and my interest. I watch design shows to steal clever ideas that I might replicate one day. Staging a booth in which the MAIN FEATURE, and really only item of interest, is a $5,000 chair, is NOT within my reach.

That said, I'm also not appallingly low-class and tacky in my design preferences, either. So Episode Four's challenge - design a wedding for two people with no taste - was just horrific.

The couple had extremely different desires: she wanted a lavender sparklepony wedding, he wanted "50s rockabilly/vegas style." She was, evidently, willing to cave totally. The design presentations were not spectacular; Kim's and Will's were the two that seemed most tasteful, as well as meeting the desires of both bride and groom. But based on the strength of stacked, gigantic revolving red dice, bride & groom chose the design of the Odious Robb.

The couple loved his design, though it didn't really incorporate much of the Princess Dream Wedding. Instead, it was big, tacky and hideous. Giant poker chips. Huge playing cards. Garish.

Vegas garishness is one thing for, say, the strip: the outside of casinos and bars and clubs. Everything is big and outsize in vegas - and it's where postmodernism got its start (sort of). But, as others have pointed out, Robb's design was painfully literal in its Vegasness:
The ugly arch reading Viva Las Vegas is neither clever nor stylish. It's perched on gigantic, ugly-colored stacks of poker chips, which were then draped to hide their ugliness, instead creating a BOWER of ugliness. The "flames" behind the dj booth look like something a 13-year-old would put in his basement/video game room. The lavender tablecloths and violet and white feather boa drapes are just ugly; and the feathers reminded me of the tweeny first design Robb participated in, the "living lounge" of ugliness and wasted space in their apartment. It looks like Claire's Boutique and PacSun and Hot Topic all had a baby together, and THIS room is what that baby vomited up.

I was really undone by the bride's excitement over the giant revolving dice. The fact that "they spin" seemed to just blow her mind. The fact that they are also enormous, cheap and tacky evidently didn't bother her, nor did the flashing red lightcubes in martini glasses which were used as centerpiece vases.

The fact that the couple was pleased with their space demonstrates their shitty taste. What's upsetting is that TWO people were eliminated based on the crappy needs of two tacky people. Christina's design ignored the "rockabilly" and focused instead on a My Little Pony sort of froth of lavender, so I guess she didn't meet their needs. BUT, and I think it does matter, her design wasn't awful. It's not like she created something that looked like baby poop. And the outsized poker chips, and Shirtless Todd's enormous guitars, looked like hell. (Now that I think of it, why did our two most butch manly contestants feel the need to go so......big? Compensating for anything?).

Sparkle Josh is my beloved, and losing him over this challenge....is horrifying. His style is not my style, but he does have taste and he can shop and choose accessories well (not everyone can). I actually LIKED his dollar store room; it reminded me a lot of Matt's early room on Top Design (which I also loved).


This is Matt's Top Design room, which is chic, tasteful and a bit glam (and definitely a "celebuteen" room - precisely the kind of girl he was designing for).








And this is Sparkle Josh's room. Everything in it came from the 99 cent store, except: couch, coffeetable, end tables, single lamp and bookcase. Matt's budget was considerably higher. Looking them over, the palette is the main similarity, but I find both rooms rather charming in similar ways.





The remaining Design "Stars" are not stellar. Todd and Robb have abrasive, obnoxious personalities and lame design. If you're a 13-year-old boy, you probably think they are fantastic dudes and designers. For the rest of us: ugh. Will is a very tasteful and quiet designer, but his personality is too hidden so far - I can't see him hosting a show. Kim is the only one I'd actually tune in to watch: she's cute, smart, talented, enthusiastic.

But none of the four is a Design Star.