Reprinted with permission from www.redesignrevolution.com

HGTV Star’s final three – Jeribai, Brooks, and Tiffany – are off to Palm Springs to design fancy shmancy hotel suites at a resort that may be called Rancho Las Plamas, which is like Rancho Relaxo for the luxury audience. They have three days to design their suites, and will do a walk-through of their finished spaces for the Camera Challenge. David Bromstad will be on the panel for the judging, so the contestants will be provided with other help…in the form of returning losers. I mean designers. Well, both:

• Brooks’s team: Anne & Tylor
• Tiffany’s team: Boris & Tobin
• Jeribai’s team: Jessie, Cris, & Abby (his suite is larger, so the extra womanpower evens out)

Jeribai’s concept is a beachy vibe with a turquoise and purple color palette. Tiffany is going for “resort modern” with funky elements and a soft blue wall color and punches of orange and yellow. Brooks is thinking Versailles with deep blues, reds, and golds, which he will somehow combine with mid-century modern. Sure, why not.

The next day, the Property Brothers, Jonathan and Drew, pop in on Tiffany. They are concerned about the size of the fireplace she is creating on a giant wall. Their next stop is Jeribai’s suite. They caution Jeribai on the vast quantity of accessories he will need to finish the space. The Property Brothers’ final stop is with Brooks, and they are worried that his mid-century modern Versailles vision will be dark and confusing.

More shopping, carpet stores, and Tiffany finds a whole mess of pop art for the walls and a giant giraffe for…something. When everyone returns to the space, wall paper has been installed and Jeribai realizes that the blue on his walls is unsophisticated. With six hours to go, Tiffany’s dining room table may not fit up the stairs. They eventually skip the steps and lift it up and over the balcony, so phew! Brooks is rearranging his furniture, including a giant yellow leather couch that is a gorgeous focal piece. Jeribai has two hours to get his furniture into the suite and accessories arranged.

With thirty minutes to go, Tiffany’s modern fireplace is finished but her bedrooms are not. Brooks is scurrying around, rearranging accessories, and Jeribai is just exhausted. But the challenge is not over, because the contestants still have to complete a Camera Challenge.

The panel arrives in Tiffany’s suite and calls it fresh. Genevieve loves a circular ottoman with a brass tray, and David enjoys the addition of a fireplace. Her colorful aesthetic is also a hit, but her dining room table and chairs is “predictable” and the choice of a jute rug in the bedroom is disappointing.

Jeribai’s suite is called “pleasing,” and the panel is impressed with his accessorizing. He also designed a beautiful bedroom, but the graphic carpeting is not hotel-friendly.

Brooks’s suite gets a “wow” from the panel. Genevieve calls it “pretty cuckoo but fun,” though Vern does not like the blue wall color with the gold molding which seems out of place for Palm Springs. David calls Brooks’s bedroom wallpaper “a lot,” and it is noted that he overall has too much going on in the space.

The panel then reviewed the Camera Challenges. Genevieve praises Jeribai’s segue from the living space into the bedroom, but his energy level is low. Tiffany absolutely kills her Camera Challenge with a dynamic, substantive performance. Brooks is an improved version of himself for the Camera Challenge, which is a good thing, I guess.

The panel also has some thoughts on the hotel suites. Jeribai achieves a successful color palette with the orange couch and blue walls, but he left a giant, empty space in the middle of the living area. Tiffany’s fireplace is “phenomenal, but the dining area loses its playfulness. Brooks’s entryway is a “slam dunk” and his layering style is a hit, but the wall color and coverings falls flat.

The panel has reached its decision. The next HGTV Star is Tiffany! Yay! Though I would really enjoy watching a weekly show of Brooks’s bloopers.

Reprinted with permission from www.redesignrevolution.com

We’re down to four designers—Tiffany, Anne, Brooks, and Jeribai. David Bromstad tells the designers that their next camera challenge will be huge. They are going on The Talk, where they will perform a segment with Julie Chen and Sheryl Underwood where they teach the hosts and viewers an inventive and unconventional design tip. And, their main design challenge is also huge because the designers have three days to make over the inside of stripped down buses. They can turn the buses into any kind of space at all and are encouraged not to play it safe.

Tiffany thinks school bus…kids…fairy tales…Alice In Wonderland…a crazy rendition of the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Anne used to design luxury motor coaches, so she creates an elegant living space and bedroom space, completely ignoring the instructions to not play it safe. Brooks is talking about a time traveler’s lounge for aliens. Jeribai imagines the ultimate man cave in the form of a boxer’s lounge.

The Camera Challenge is on live television, so there’s lots of potential for disaster. Tiffany goes first. She takes a vintage frame and turns it into a white board that you can write on. Kind of boring, but she did it with panache. Jeribai is next. He show the hosts how to transform a dresser into a kitchen island….which is a nice idea but a dresser is the wrong height for a kitchen island. But the audience loves him. Anne is nervous and it shows. She demonstrates how to make a pet bed out of an end table. The audience eats it up, but honestly, the pet bed looks stupid. Finally, Brooks. He turns a vintage suitcase into a medicine cabinet in a crazy manic way. He says “curiosities” about a thousand times, dropping things on the floor….he is being Brooks.

When the designers return to their buses, Tiffany finds hers painted in aqua paint, and Jeribai sees wooden floors and wood paneling. Brooks tries to describe a three dimensional eggshell lounge to the carpenter, and it’s a huge risk because what on earth is he doing? When David visits Anne’s bus, she explains her lounge and bedroom glamour concept. He says that she has played it very safe, so she needs to turn it up a notch. David tells Tiffany that dark and pretty is hard to achieve, but she should go for it while still making sure it reads as her design. David also cautions Jeribai about the drapery he is planning. Since the drapes will be so prominent, they need to be sewn perfectly, which is not Jeribai’s forte. Sadly, they look awful.

With ninety minutes left, Tiffany brings foliage into her space, Brooks styles his space with “curiosities” that make the viewer unclear what decade they are standing in, Anne is frantically putting sheets on her bed, and Jeribai is…something. There’s a lot of running and carrying and polishing.

The panel is super excited to step inside of the buses. Jeribai’s bus is first.

It looks pretty slick and cool except for those drapes which the panel calls horrible.

Anne’s bus is next, and it looks…crowded?

The furniture is waaay too big. The panel loves it, but Genevieve points out that they’ve seen this style from her before and she failed to accessorize.

Brooks’s bus gets a lot of “wows” from the panel. The crazy three dimensional back wall is called incredible.

Tiffany’s bus is immediately recognizable as Alice In Wonderland, and the panel responds well to it overall. But, the back wall is unfinished and it shows.

It’s time for the designers to hear what the panel thought about their spaces and Camera Challenges. Jeribai gets high marks for his Camera Challenge and his bus. The only criticism he received was for the accessories—candlesticks without candles, and drapes that had no business in a man cave. Anne’s Camera Challenge did not go as well. Her fear came through on stage, with her shoulders hunched over and her failure to pull a funny moment out of the host’s ineptitude. Her bus is better, but Genevieve notes that everything Anne does is pretty, and she wants to see more. Also, her furniture was too close together. The panel felt that Tiffany held her own in the Camera Challenge, and they loved her bus. Vern called it a bus to crazy town, and he wanted to get on and never get off. But, the back of her bus seemed like leftover space. Brooks’s Camera Challenge was a bomb, but his bus makeover was a hit.

The panel decides that Tiffany had the most impressive showing with her Alice In Wonderland bus. Jeribai will also be moving forward in the competition. So the choice is between vanilla bean (Anne) and banana split with a wasabi sauce (Brooks), and the panel goes with Brooks because the design world does not need another pretty room.

Then, the panel tells the designers that they are so impressed with each one of them that all three will be going to the finale.

Next week is the season finale in Palm Springs, where the designers will makeover luxury hotel suites to determine who is the next HGTV Star.

Reprinted with permission from www.redesignrevolution.com

Welcome to Occidental College! The five remaining designers will be making over the common room of a fraternity house, and a sorority house. The introduction mostly goes on about something about Alpha Sigma Lambda Phi Mega Alpha. That turns out to mean that the teams will be taking on two separate rooms at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and Alpha Lambda Phi Alpha sorority–so it’s girls against the boys.

The sorority room common room is filled with cast-off furniture from various parents’ homes. There is a neglected fireplace, and the sorority sisters are looking for something sophisticated. In contrast, the fraternity common room has a pool table, a ping pong table, and not much else.

At the sorority house, Tiffany selects grey-on-grey walls highlighted with red doors to bring in the sorority’s red and white colors. Tiffany works with a carpenter to revamp the fireplace, but the brick doesn’t demo cleanly and leaves a lot of construction for her short timeframe.

Over at the fraternity house, Boris plans floor-to-ceiling drapes while Brooks and Jeribai shop for furniture. They’re going for a dark wood “gentlemen’s lounge” look with purple and gold to match the fraternity’s colors.

On Day Two, Jeribai gets stuck refinishing the biggest dining table in the world. Meanwhile, Anne and Tiffany arrive at the sorority house to find their red paint accents looking a bit too orange. But the fireplace is finally in one piece, so that’s a huge improvement.

For the Camera Challenge, the designers have ninety seconds to present a decorating tip to a student. Jeribai explains how to install hardwood floors and falls a little flat. Boris talks about different paint brushes and rollers and finally doesn’t come across as creepy. Boris teaches a student how to install a chair railing and forgets to let the kid speak. Tiffany teaches a student how to patch up a hole in the wall that is way too basic. Anne explains how to make a perfect stripe with paint on an uneven surface that impresses David.

While Anne and Tiffany shop for accessories, their carpenter finishes up the fireplace and installs ebony wood flooring. But at the end of Day Two, the fireplace is still unfinished. At the fraternity house, Jeribai gets bogged down with the dining room table. Boris spends his time shopping for furniture. When it arrives the next day, Jeribai questions the choice in a linen couch because it will get dirty.

When Brooks and Jeribai return from lamp shopping with ninety minutes left, they go into scramble mode to stage the room. With thirty minutes left, the sorority house is still unfinished. But it’s amazing how quickly people can work on a deadline, and both groups pull their spaces together.

The panel visits the Sorority House first and it’s really quite nice and sophisticated, and Genevieve and Vern like the orangey-reds. Although Tiffany gets credit for taking on such a big project as the fireplace, it is noted that she failed to accessorize it at all. At least her floor carpet tiles are a big hit as a smart solution for a heavily trafficked area.

At the Fraternity House, Vern feels the college vibe in a polished environment. Boris’s black drapes create big black holes in the room, and the linen couch is wrong for the space. Jeribai was in charge of lighting and didn’t bring in enough to offset the overhead fluorescents, and Brooks’s molding confuses the panel.

When David brings the Sorority Sisters into their house, there’s a whole lot of squealing and happiness. Vern enjoyed Anne’s color palette, but Genevieve criticizes her sloppy spray painting of another otherwise good piece. Tiffany is applauded for the fireplace but her lack of embellishment left a big depressing neutral in the space.

The fraternity brothers have a similar reaction to their space, only at a lower frequency. Brooks gets praise for the pool table, and Jeribai’s dining table is a big hit. However, the lighting is a problem, as is the linen sofa and the black fabric panels. But overall, the space is a dramatic transformation.

The panel gives the win to the Sorority House, which leaves Brooks, Jeribai and Boris up for elimination. And just like that, Boris is given the chop.

Next week, the designers make over a bus and appear on a talk show.

Photos: HGTV Versus

Reprinted with permission from www.redesignrevolution.com

Another week of HGTV Star, another challenge and another chance for the designers to display their taste, grace, and style. For this challenge, David Bromstad divides the contestants into four teams and gives them two days to turn a huge empty space into a livable loft with distinct areas for living, eating, sleeping, and working. Also, each designer must purchase a vintage item and re-envision it for their first Camera Challenge. The teams are:

• Jessie, Boris, and Abby (kitchen/dining/foyer)
• Cris and Tylor (living)
• Anne and Tiffany (bedroom)
• Jeribai and Brooks (office/den)

As a group, the designers decide on a hypothetical glam rock star client to keep the space cohesive, as well as the use of “cooler tones” like blues and purples. Then, it’s time for a trip to a vintage shop where everyone gloms onto various galvanized whosiwhatsits. After choosing her tchotchke, Abby returns to the loft to paint the foyer purple and bright blue. Cris is transforming a camera into a super nifty floor lamp over in the living area, and Tylor is turning the hood of a car into…something even less attractive than the hood of a car.

David arrives to take a peek at the rooms in progress and suggests that the color choice may be a little “juvenile,” which is so true. He then introduces the Camera Challenge which gives each contestant 45 seconds to show the audience how they are repurposing their vintage items. Tylor bombs, failing to get even an ounce of info into his clip. Anne is “authentic and nice.” Cris does great, too, and David calls her camera lamp repurpose “new and fresh.”  Brooks blows the challenge by teaching the audience nothing, which is weird because he’s a professor. The rest are a smattering of ordinary with a splash of adequate.

To address David’s concerns about the colors, Abby paints the blue walls black. This leaves her no time to shop for furniture and accessories, so she makes a shopping list for her teammates and hopes for the best. She also volunteers to sew drapes for Jessie’s kitchen area, so she’s either the best teammate ever, or the worst reality contestant in the world. Or, both. To make matters worse, she lays the finished black curtain panels on top of the kitchen counter…that Jessie just painted white.

With thirty minutes left, the contestants go into scramble mode. We get a few product placements, and then David calls time. In walk the panel (Vern Yip, Genevieve Gorder, and Sabrina Soto), who are immediately underwhelmed by Abby’s foyer.

Abby’s Foyer.

Vern says it feels empty and separate, and Genevieve questions the color palette.

Boris’s dining room.

Boris’s dining room is also a dud, but the team is somewhat redeemed by Jessie’s kitchen, but just slightly.

Jessie’s kitchen.

Tiffany and Anne’s bedroom.

Tiffany and Anne’s bedroom makes everyone smile, though Vern does not like the lighting behind Tiffany’s otherwise badass headboard.

Brooks and Jeribai’s den.

The den and music area is a hit, including the corrugated metal wall.

Tylor and Cris’s living room.

When the panel gets to the living space, it’s a mixed bag. While the panel loves Cris’s camera lamp, they call Tylor’s wall décor “a bunch of garbage.”

So how did everyone do? Cris and Tylor are safe, but the rest of the designers are sent in for evaluation. The panel calls the bedroom layered and appropriate, but it doesn’t have any “wow” moments. They are more excited about the den and work area created by Brooks and Jeribai, which has “fabulous ideas.” When the panel gets to Abby, they wonder what she was even doing since she seems to have spent the entire time painting rather than designing. Jessie’s kitchen is also problematic since it was so sparsely accessorized. Also, Boris cheapened his dining area with a bad fabric choice.

The panel gives Anne the win for the camera challenge, and Tiffany, Brooks, Jeribai, and Boris are safe. Then, in a battle for last place between Abby and Jessie, the panel decides to keep Abby and send Jessie packing.

Bye, Jessie!

Next week, the designers work with real clients.

 

Photos via HGTV