Homes of the Brave



Home swapping network: The Knapp’s dining room before and after the Romanos got to it.

Let your neighbors redecorate a room in your house? You’d have to be crazy — or on the new TV series Trading Spaces.

by Debra Auspitz

There’s an old saying: You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t decorate your friend’s house. Okay, so that’s not exactly the saying, but many would agree that it should be — decorating your home is extremely personal, and even some of our best friends have home decorating tastes that make us cringe. So, in the spirit of reality TV, The Learning Channel (TLC) has introduced a new program called Trading Spaces, wherein two very brave (or very stupid) sets of neighbors agree to exchange homes for 48 hours. In that time, with $1000 and the help of a decorator, a handyperson and an extremely perky host, each team must redecorate a room in their friend’s home, only to return at the end of the two days to discover what has happened in their own house.

Based on a hit British show, Changing Rooms, Trading Spaces has only aired a few episodes to date, and in late October they wrapped up on a Philadelphia shoot.

Jim and Cathy Knapp and Mike and Megan Romano of Havertown agreed to work with designers Douglas Wilson and Laurie Smith to re-do the Knapps’ dining room and the Romanos’ sunroom.

The Knapps and the Romanos are a storybook suburban set of families. Jim and Mike have been friends since high school, and Mike and Megan had their first date at Jim and Cathy’s wedding. The Knapps have four children, the Romanos have three (all of which match the Knapp’s youngest in age). Cathy Knapp saw a piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer in September advertising the upcoming Philadelphia shoot, and, as she tells it, called in and then asked her neighbor Meg, who lives one house away, to call as well. As Meg tells it, "Cathy made me do it. My life is so darn busy, I didn’t want any part of it." Meg was swayed, however, and quickly became excited as the shoot approached. Both families had moved into their homes less than a year ago, and were in the process of redecorating anyway.

In Manhattan and Jacksonville, MS, respectively, designers Douglas Wilson and Laurie Smith were also preparing, with only measurements and pictures of the rooms. Wilson, who worked with the Knapps on the Romanos’ sunroom, has been designing in NYC for years, working for "big names" like Albert Hadley, Kate Spade and Brooke Astor (he designed a library for her). The producers of Trading Spaces contacted Wilson after seeing his work in Home and Garden magazine. Wilson admits that this sort of design is challenging, and not only for the monetary and time restrictions — the neighbors must be dealt with as well. Wilson speaks of a woman in Tennessee who "fancied herself an interior decorator," making the implementations of his ideas not so simple. The show relies heavily on the designer’s input for the décor in the rooms, rather than the neighbors themselves, but the neighbors have ultimate veto power. Wilson is enamored, however, of "the chaos of it all," and sees the show as an educational tool to teach the public about design.

Smith has only recently begun a career as a designer, having worked in communications and advertising for the past decade, working along the way with ABC and TNT. Smith decided to go to the New York School of Interior Design in Manhattan two years ago, and now she works for Annelle Primos and Associates, a design firm in Jackson. She has been involved with Trading Spaces from the first episode, and she claims to not have had a single negative experience, but, then again, the designers are conveniently shuffled out of the room for the crucial "reaction shot" (the money shot of reality TV), when the neighbors return home to see what has been done.

Smith sees the ridiculousness of the show’s premise, but finds it exciting. "Working with a client, you know the intricacies of their lifestyles, how they use the room. On the show, I’m not allowed to talk to the homeowners. I go into some poor person’s house and rely on the neighbors, who might have completely different taste." Smith sites her "best friend in the world," as a perfect example of soulmates divided on the issue of home décor. "I love her like a sister, but we walk into her house and, well, we don’t have the same taste."

The logistics alone of such a show are daunting. First, there are the seven children, who, TLC politely told the parents, had to go. Off to a friend’s house for the night, crisis solved. But the couples had to switch houses, and there was absolutely no going near the other house once the chaos ensued. The Romanos forgot their toothbrushes; Cathy had to put them in the Romanos’ mailbox for Meg to run and get without going too close to the house. According to Cathy, there was no cheating, no late night phone calls to gossip about what colors were being used or what was happening to the rooms.

After the shoot, reactions were warm but, well, shocked. Both women, Meg and Cathy, had expressed beforehand a preference for earth tones, "the Pottery Barn look," as Cathy called it, and have tastes so similar that they inadvertently bought the same living room set for their homes. Meg’s sunroom ended up bright "blue lagoon blue," as Cathy described it, and Cathy’s dining room now has orange walls. Cathy’s reaction to the experience? "It was great. I had a ball." How about her reaction to her dining room? "I was kind of shocked. It took me a while. I would not have pictured this in my dining room." In the end, both families say that their eyes were opened to new design ideas that they never would have come up with themselves.

So, maybe it isn’t so bad to decorate your friend’s house — as long as there is a camera crew present to keep things from getting violent.

Trading Spaces airs Fridays from 4 p.m. -5 p.m. and Sundays from noon–1 p.m. on The Learning Channel. The Philadelphia shoot is scheduled to air in early December.