Design Star: Make A Client Happy Or Die

THE CHALLENGE
This week was the Work-With-Actual-Clients Challenge and give some rooms in their house new life. Our designtestants were split into two teams, driven to New Jersey where design is king....I kid...and dropped off on some residential street. I'd hoped they'd be forced to design their way back to Brooklyn, but alas, that wasn't this episode.
Team Callegari

Leslie, Kevin and Kellie took the Callegaris' basement to task, while Doug and Mark did battle--literally--in the living room. The Callegaris wanted a living room to suit their large family gatherings [sidenote:everybody on these design shows always talks about wanting rooms in which they can entertain, but if everybody is entertaining so much, where are my invites??] and we learned almost instantly that Doug and Mark, or as I call them, Oil and Water, or to be more current, JLo and Marc Anthony, would not be a team.

Mark and Doug's lack of teamwork and bickering was obnoxious, and Doug was especially obnoxious, mostly because he wasn't listening to my Little Hairy Hubby, Mark. And, to be fair, Mark was a little preoccupied doing one wall in the space while Doug tackled everything else.
Their lack of cohesion turned the living room into a joke. The Callegaris wanted space to dance, so Doug shoved all the furniture against the wall, because, you know, people can't move furniture once its in place. And he decided to do one of his signature feature walls and painted it the color of Pepto Bismol; I know this, because I was watching the show whilst drinking Pepto and it was exactly the same shade!

The best part of their collaboration was the rug moving incident. It should be capitalized: The Rug Moving Incident. Mark wanted it closer to wall and did so; Doug wanted it more centered do he pulled it back. Mark moved it, Doug moved it. It was a Battle Of [nit]Wits.
Sad to say, it wasn't the rug that destroyed their room. It was the hideous paint color, the ugly furniture, and the bad space design--look at me, i sound like a life-sized Vern Yip--and a total lack of team work.

On the other hand, Leslie, Kevin and Kellie’s basement was very cool, and they played well with others. Leslie told us that she has a wife, which means she is a, yes, Lesliebian, and used her Mommy skills to make the basement a very kid-friendly zone, by taking the kid's art work and making a collage for one wall. It was cutesy, and I don't like cutesy, but the Callegaris do, so that was okay.

Kevin’s take on the family office corner that was cool, not cutesy. His shelving design was very well done--and I may try it in our home office--and, though he went kitschy, as is his style, with the accessories--seriously, a grouping of little ceramic Eskimo women?--he downplayed the tackiness of kitschy and kept it cool.
Kellie took a pair of structural columns and turned it into a seating bar-storage cabinet-room-divider. It made the room into three zones: kid, office, and family, and really brought all three designers and their designs together.

Team Christina
Tyler and Meg tag-teamed the dining room, while Cathy, Bret and Karl were butting heads, and headaches, in the basement entertainment room.

Cathy, Karl and Bret were the Odd Trio. Cathy obviously doesn't think a designer should get her hands dirty, so she went out shopping while Karl and Bret did demolition derby to the space. They removed the kitchen, she bought a table. They tore down a wall, she found the perfect lamp. They built a tree fort, she had an espresso.
By Day Two, the boys weren't having it and, after a short squabble, where Cathy said she could go shopping with Karl and Bret, Bret simply said, 'We'll shop and Cathy will stay here and paint.' Cathy was not happy doing actual work. I believe she leaves manual labor to her Mexican handyman, Manuel Labore.

Their room had highs and lows. Karl's broken tile mosaic backsplash was very cool, even though no one noted that in almost every season of Design Star the Work With Clients Challenge ends with a backsplash left unfinished. Until this year. That was a high point.
Bret’s  little vignette next to the kitchen was a low point. Bad furniture, badly placed does not a designer make. It could have been the perfect spot for a bistro table and a couple of chairs, and maybe some kind of wine storage. Something that made you wanna sit down instead of walk by.
And Cathy, dear sweet Emmy-award winning Cathy. Shopping is not design. Say it with me: Shopping is not design, because if it were, we'd all be designers. I didn't see her do any design work whatsoever, and her whole time was spent showing how she could shop for her Global Perspective. Design! Dammit! Or take those Emmy wings and fly your ass back home,. Oh, yeah.....do some grunt work, too. Lazy bitch.

Tyler and Meg’s dining room went all Hampton-y, beachy and fun. Tyler did a wood technique on one wall, but did anyone else notice that he walled over a sink and a niche with his wood? I mean, it may have been the fever, but I could have sworn I saw him walling up a sink! And I kept thinking he was going to cut out the spaces, but when it was all said and down, he just covered it up. If I was Christina, i would have been all, Where's my sink, gay boy?

And Meg, Bruiser Meg, Scared To Meet Her In A Dark Alley, Meg, repurposed a hutch into a buffet, which she did by taking the top off, sanding it, and repainting it. That really isn't repurposing; that's dismantling, sanding and painting. if you wnated to repurpose the hutch, you could have turned it into a sink, since Tyler lost the sink behind a wall. That would have been remarkable.
And while their room was pretty, it looked an awful lot like a vignette at a Rooms-To-Go showroom, where you can buy all the pieces for $999.00. And then you get it home and find out there's a sink hidden behind the wall.

CAMERA CHALLENGE
Once again we spent several valuable minutes on the camera challenges, only to have them disappear and never be seen again. But, oh, what we learned....
Meg showed us how to sand, while Tyler gave us nail-gun tips. Bret patched a hole while Karl showed us how to paint a crisp line using tape. Cathy sewed...badly...apparently her seamstress was off that day, while Lesliebian matted photos. Kellie created a drip hole in a paint can--though I will admit I'm gonna try this one--while Kevin covered holes, which is different than patching. Mark showed us how to cut in while painting while Doug talked about carpet removal.
Soooooo challenging.
Such helpful tips.

THE JUDGING
Kevin, Kellie, and Leslie's basement family room was called fun. The kid art collage got points for bringing some of the family into the room, and Kellie's bar wall was a hit. But the judges loved Kevin's desk area most of all, and said that this room seemed like the designers were of one mind, and that it was a good mind.

Not so was Doug and Mark's room. The judges loved the floor, and Mark's wood wall, but Doug's taste level in furniture was deemed unfortunate. Genevieve Goiter hated his paint choice, and I......a......greed. Which means I must have really been sick, or it was a really bad paint color, or both.
Both.
Tyler and Meg's dining room got wows, but also got knocked for looking too showroom. Hey! I already said that! They also got knocked because there was no family in the room. it could have been anyone's dining room; well, not mine, because I would'a looked at the wood wall, and screamed, a la Joan Crawford: Tear down that bitch of a wood wall and put a sink where a sink ought to be.
And......................................................scene.
Karl, Cathy and Bret got points for their beautifully designed, if bland, room. Vern hated Bret's "Cappuccino machine waiting area" chairs--look, Vern made a funny--and they all called Cathy's furniture selection boring, except for the Global perspective coffee table. Karl's backspalsh was a winner. Like I said.

YOUR SHOW IS CANCELLED
Sister Cathy of the Clean Hands and Boring Furnishings Order was safe, as was Showroom Meg and Tyler. The Lesliebian was also safe, probably as an homage to NY Marriage Equality.

Karl gets the Second Place finish for his backspalsh, while Divider, Not Divisive Kellie takes Third. But the winner is Kevin, for his kitschy, cool office space. And Kevin also gets the award for Subtlest Dig at the hosts for saying, only to guest judges Cortney and Bob Novogratz, "This means so much, especially coming from you."
I guess it wouldn't mean as much coming from Vern Little and Genevieve Goiter.
Bret is then awarded a safety, leaving Mark, my Hot Hairy Hubby in my Head, and Doug as the Bottom Two.

Mark gets nailed--and not in a good way--for not speaking up and not being a team player, and focusing on one aspect of the room. But it's Doug whose Show Is Cancelled, Doug who Packs His Swatches And Goes, Doug who is Auf'd, Doug who is voted Out Of The Condo.
And he should have been. Even he noted that he had done 98% of that room,. Though he also noted that meant he shouldn't have gone home. But, um, Doug, if ninety-eight percent of the room is ugly, should you stay?
Doug?
Doug?
Dougie boy?
Oh, that's right. You're gone.
You are out of this picture.