Vern! Frank! Will you help me with my family room?
Written: Aug 03 '03 (Updated Aug 22 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Enjoyable bios of cast members
Cons: Not as comprehensive enough
The Bottom Line: Despite enjoyable bios of cast members, the book is incomplete and not as well-organized as I would have liked.
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| gracef's Full Review: |
Although my husband and I have been married for thirteen years, you could still classify our household décor as marginally better than post-newlywed. With the exception of our bedroom furniture, everything has been picked up as needed over the years, and much of our furniture has been banged up by multiple moves and daily use. But we're getting to that age where all of our neighbor's houses look like pages out of Martha Stewart Living or Better Homes & Gardens. I don't feel the need to keep up with the Jones, but I do think that there's something to be said for having a couch that doesn't stab you when you sit down or walls that don't look like they were tackled by a pro football team. So I've started to watch home decorating shows for ideas that would allow me to transform our eclectic, quasi-functional home into one that is uncluttered, comfortable, and beautiful. My favorite show of them all is Trading Spaces. I've become such a fan of this show that my daughter bought Trading Spaces: Behind the Scenes for me for Mother's Day.
The show Trading Spaces, which appears on The Learning Channel (TLC), follows a simple concept, Two rooms. Two designers. One carpenter. Two sets of homeowners. Two days. And a $1000 budget. The idea is to show run-of-the-mill homeowners how they can redecorate a room using a minimal budget. The decorators, an odd assortment of Personalities (capital 'P' intended!) come up with a design. Then the homeowners and a carpenter help to make the changes in the rooms over a two day period.
The show is classified as "reality TV", but as with most "reality TV", it's not quite reality. (Who has a spare carpenter just hanging around to create huge custom entertainment units out of little more than MDF?) But the show is fun and does give some good ideas for giving life to old sofas, lamps, coffee tables, etc.
Trading Spaces: Behind the Scenes looks like something that show designers Hildi Santo Tomás, Kia Steave Dickerson, and Doug Wilson would come up with if they collaborated on a book design. It's cluttered, extremely colorful, and at times hard to follow. It's filled with photos of the rooms that have been decorated on the show, quotes and photos of cast members and homeowners, and funky clip art silhouettes. The text is squeezed in between all of this graphic decoration and brief blurbs about decorating concepts, designers quirks, etc..
The first chapter covers the overall show concept and production. While the show taping covers two days, a huge amount of work goes into getting up to that point, including screening applicants for the show and shopping for the items needed to complete the design. The most helpful part of this is "Know the Lingo" which explains some of the more commonly used terms on the show. (For instance, "MDF" is (Medium-density fiberboard): Made of compressed wood pulp and glue, MDF is low cost and paintable, so Trading Spaces designers and carpenters often use it to build furniture and shelving.)
This is followed by a series of chapters on show designers and carpenters. Each cast member chapter gives a brief biography of the cast member along with a two page (supposedly "poster-sized") picture, and a few of the design concepts and practices that he or she favors. I enjoyed these sections thoroughly because it really accentuated the differences in the personalities on the show. Frank Bielec talked about how upset he was when one lady homeowner with whom he had worked looked at her Doug-designed room and ran out in tears. Meanwhile, Doug quips off-handedly, "Just remember who the designer is here." Vern Yip is extremely organized and meticulous, oftentimes working from pages and pages of typed notes and CAD drawings, while Genevieve Gorder favors marked up photos and hand-drawn pictures.
Finally, the book provides an episode guide so that the reader can see what has happened on each show in the first three seasons. Each episode is listing identifies the cast members involved and includes a description of the overall room design. Some episodes are marked with graphics that indicate tearjerkers, demolition, homeowners with power tools, diva fits (a large number of these are episodes where Doug is the designer), and other common trends on the show.
Like most "made for the fans" books, Trading Spaces: Behind the Scenes is something of a rip-off. It is appallingly incomplete. First, some of the show history is completely glossed over. While a little of the show's history is revealed, not a word is mentioned about the British predecessor Changing Rooms, nor is there any mention of the spin-off series, Trading Spaces: Boys vs. Girls or Trading Spaces Family. First year cast members Alex McLeod (the host that preceded Paige Davis), Dez Ryan, and Roderick Shade are only referenced in the episode guide by their first names, with no further mention elsewhere. In addition, new cast member Carter Osterhouse isn't mentioned at all.
The biggest disappointment about Trading Spaces: Behind the Scenes is the episode guide. It irritatingly drops off in the middle of season 3. This is a pain, especially since the remainder of the book frequently refers to shows after the cut-off, and many of the room photos are from shows that aren't in the episode guide at all. Finding episodes is a pain as well, since Paige Davis' intro to the show oftentimes does not match the name of the episode. For instance, one episode that Paige introduced as "Downer's Grove, Illinois" is listed in the episode guide as "Chicago: Fairview Avenue". (This annoying feature is shared in the official episode name and the Trading Spaces website, but I felt that a book such as this could have included additional information to simplify identifying episodes.) In addition, some of the information that is available on the Trading Spaces web site (like before and after photos) isn't included in the book.
I enjoyed reading through Trading Spaces: Behind the Scenes, and it was a nice gift to receive. More than anything, my daughter enjoys flipping through the episodes, trying to find the show despite the mismatched cues from the titles. And we've been keeping track of which rooms we like best and which ones we absolutely hate. (We've decided that we really need a visit from Vern or Frank!) But honestly, the book left me feeling like I would have felt if I had been the homeowner for Hildi's infamous silk-flower covered bathroom... intrigued and slightly entertained but not so much as to recommend that others run out and get one too.
Bottom line? Spend your twenty bucks on Paige By Paige: A Year of Trading Spaces. Or save your money and go visit one of these sites instead:
The Official Trading Spaces web site
http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/tradingspaces /tradingspaces.html
No Ceiling Fans
http://www.noceilingfans.com
Recommended:
No
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gracef
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