Hi. My Name is Kim and I'm an HGTV Addict
I love HGTV. Love it. I'm waiting for the Eddie Haskells out there to say "if you love it so much why don't you marry it?" so I can say "put it in a tux and bring it down the aisle for me, baby," because I totally would marry it. In a "my world is weird" kind of way, turns out my best friend from college's husband just accepted an executive position with HGTV and I was squee'ing like he was a rock star. Speaking of rock stars, when they married, he worked for Rolling Stone and I remember wondering what the wedding band would do if they knew half the people at the reception were Rolling Stone execs. But I digress. I was talking about HGTV.
When I say that half my tivo season passes are for HGTV shows, I'm not kidding. Recently chele74 (who is made of awesome) asked me to make a post of my favorite HGTV shows. I can so do that.
7. reDesign. Patience, thy name is Kenneth Brown. That's a nice way of saying that the home-os (i.e., homeowners) on this show range from really likeable gay men to insufferable rich housewives. Kenneth is an amazing designer, and not just because he is a gay man. His style resonates with me and he has yet to design something I haven't drooled all over (figuratively). However, he's kind of the Martha Stewart of HGTV in that he doesn't seem to care about costs at all. (Martha, I will never decorate my Christmas tree with imported fresh roses as I am not a gazillionaire like you.) Kenneth doesn't quote budget numbers but my guess is his rooms are in the $25-30K range for a living area, $40-50K for a bathroom, and upwards of $80K for a kitchen. My man Kenneth seems to find the most expensive materials possible (check out this antique handpainted Moroccan tile I found, I'm importing 500 for you!) but the home-os don't bat an eye. Instead, they argue with him about ridiculous things (the piping on this pillow is taupe but you said it would be army green). The rich and stupid get on my nerves. Although I love Kenneth, sometimes I delete this show before I watch it.
6. Over Your Head. I find this show hilarious but I make no claims about the transferability of my sense of humor. The premise involves otherwise perfectly sane people who have attempted to renovate their homes but have no clue how to do it and find themselves "over their heads." Then, this Viking hottie (Eric Stromer) arrives with a team to fix it for them. The situations these people get into just boggle my mind. My favorite episode involved a guy who decided to install a jacuzzi tub for his wife in their only bathroom as a "surprise" gift. Of course, he rips the tub and shower out before realizing that he's measured wrong and can't get the tub installed. Instead of calling a plumber, our hero rigs a great a work-around that involves running a hose from the kitchen so they can shower in their backyard. Can you imagine that conversation? "I know I ruined the bathroom honey but I fixed it. We're going to shower in the backyard from now on." One look at his wife and I could tell right away she was not the 'sit in a lawn chair and get all lathered up' kind of girl. Another episode showed a woman whose son had destroyed (as in ripped all the sheet rock from the ceilings and walls) her first floor and then left it that way. For eight years!!! You cannot pay for this kind of entertainment!
5. Designed to Sell. If you want to sell your home, you want to be on Designed to Sell. The gist of it is... a real estate agent does an eval of a home that the owners are going to put on the market soon. After a frank and usually hilarious walk-through (is that a light fixture hanging from the ceiling or is it a wok ?) a designer arrives with a carpenter/handyman team and $2,000 to put things right. There's a lot to like about this show. Clive Pearse (LA host) is charming and funny, and designers Lisa LaPorta (LA) and Monica Pedersen (Chicago) are flat-out talented. Watching what they can do with a rundown living space will really help you hone your own designer's eye. However, don't be thinking that you can get those same results. Bitches don't have to pay labor fees. Because the hotties laborers are supplied by the show, their fees don't come out of the $2K budget. It's a great deal for the home-os because labor is the biggest part of any renovation project. To get similar results in the real world, you'd need to increase your budget estimates by a factor of at least 2.5 - 4 (i.e., $5,000-$8,000).
4. My Parent's House. The tagline for this house is something like "We're about to enter a land that time forgot. This is My Parent's House." Truer words, dude. This show is fun because the grown kids nominate a room in their parent's house for a design makeover. The rooms are awesome - like, the basement of the Indian dad which hold his beloved disco ball (not kidding) or the kitchen wallpaper from 1962 (dad put this up the year I was born). The rooms are one attraction but the main attraction is the relationship between the hosts. Emmanuel Belliveau is other worldly good looking (again, not kidding) but he quarrels with Andrika Lawren like they really are siblings. I always get a warm fuzzy feeling after watching it because ultimately, it's about family and love. The kids are doing it for their parents which means tears, hugs, and "I love you so much"es. Worth catching.
3. Hidden Potential. I totally get this show because I'm facing a similar challenge that all the hopeful home-os on this show face. I want to buy a house but can't afford anything nice in the areas I want to live. When this happens, you have to get creative. Enter Hidden Potential. Buyers budgets are established right up front. Then, they're taken to see three houses in the neighborhoods where they want to live. The kicker is that the houses are pits (shacks, hovels, lean-tos, whatever). However, hottie architect (isn't that a yummy combination?) Barry Wood has already prescreened the houses and uses 3-D computer graphics to show the hopeful home-os what the houses will look like once renovated. ...and the renovations all fit within their budgets. In the end, the buyers pick the one they want and live happily ever after (you know, once the places are gutted and rebuilt).
2. Small Space, Big Style. Finding creative solutions for maximizing space really appeals to me (because my condo is small) so, of course, I love this show. I'm not sure if they have a maximum square footage allowance but I don't recall seeing any space that exceeds 1,000 square feet. However, you'd never know it from watching this show. The creative ways some home-os lay out their space is genius. Tables on rails that move along a wall and fold up when not in use, sleeping quarters positioned above a kitchen, and closets organized to within an inch of their life make a 400 square foot apartment in NYC livable. I recommend tuning in just for some of the color combinations alone.
1. Get Color! This is my favorite program on HGTV because it's all about color. Jane Lockhart, the host, is a color expert. She helps confused home-os decorate rooms by finding out their interests (we love going to movies, or we just went fly-fishing in Montana) and then shows up with a giant color wheel filled with stuff that relates to their interest. A home-o may not be able to articulate their color preference but they can say "ooh, I like that hot pink fishing lure." Then, she takes the color they pick, paints it on the walls and brings them back into the room. Cue excited home-o happiness. Color choices continue to be made from the color wheel and presto, the room comes together. This show rocks! ...and it's taught me that there is no such thing as colors that don't go together.
Other shows I'll watch but don't tivo include If Walls Could Talk and Cash in the Attic. Both are entertaining and if you like history, you'll especially like these. I'm also taking a 'wait and see' attitude with Color Splash. It's hosted by David Bromstad, the winner of Design Star. While I like him and his rooms, his delivery leaves me a bit cold. He's totally trying to hard and it's tiresome to watch. I'm hoping he'll calm down and get in his groove soon.
When I say that half my tivo season passes are for HGTV shows, I'm not kidding. Recently chele74 (who is made of awesome) asked me to make a post of my favorite HGTV shows. I can so do that.
7. reDesign. Patience, thy name is Kenneth Brown. That's a nice way of saying that the home-os (i.e., homeowners) on this show range from really likeable gay men to insufferable rich housewives. Kenneth is an amazing designer, and not just because he is a gay man. His style resonates with me and he has yet to design something I haven't drooled all over (figuratively). However, he's kind of the Martha Stewart of HGTV in that he doesn't seem to care about costs at all. (Martha, I will never decorate my Christmas tree with imported fresh roses as I am not a gazillionaire like you.) Kenneth doesn't quote budget numbers but my guess is his rooms are in the $25-30K range for a living area, $40-50K for a bathroom, and upwards of $80K for a kitchen. My man Kenneth seems to find the most expensive materials possible (check out this antique handpainted Moroccan tile I found, I'm importing 500 for you!) but the home-os don't bat an eye. Instead, they argue with him about ridiculous things (the piping on this pillow is taupe but you said it would be army green). The rich and stupid get on my nerves. Although I love Kenneth, sometimes I delete this show before I watch it.
6. Over Your Head. I find this show hilarious but I make no claims about the transferability of my sense of humor. The premise involves otherwise perfectly sane people who have attempted to renovate their homes but have no clue how to do it and find themselves "over their heads." Then, this Viking hottie (Eric Stromer) arrives with a team to fix it for them. The situations these people get into just boggle my mind. My favorite episode involved a guy who decided to install a jacuzzi tub for his wife in their only bathroom as a "surprise" gift. Of course, he rips the tub and shower out before realizing that he's measured wrong and can't get the tub installed. Instead of calling a plumber, our hero rigs a great a work-around that involves running a hose from the kitchen so they can shower in their backyard. Can you imagine that conversation? "I know I ruined the bathroom honey but I fixed it. We're going to shower in the backyard from now on." One look at his wife and I could tell right away she was not the 'sit in a lawn chair and get all lathered up' kind of girl. Another episode showed a woman whose son had destroyed (as in ripped all the sheet rock from the ceilings and walls) her first floor and then left it that way. For eight years!!! You cannot pay for this kind of entertainment!
5. Designed to Sell. If you want to sell your home, you want to be on Designed to Sell. The gist of it is... a real estate agent does an eval of a home that the owners are going to put on the market soon. After a frank and usually hilarious walk-through (is that a light fixture hanging from the ceiling or is it a wok ?) a designer arrives with a carpenter/handyman team and $2,000 to put things right. There's a lot to like about this show. Clive Pearse (LA host) is charming and funny, and designers Lisa LaPorta (LA) and Monica Pedersen (Chicago) are flat-out talented. Watching what they can do with a rundown living space will really help you hone your own designer's eye. However, don't be thinking that you can get those same results. Bitches don't have to pay labor fees. Because the hotties laborers are supplied by the show, their fees don't come out of the $2K budget. It's a great deal for the home-os because labor is the biggest part of any renovation project. To get similar results in the real world, you'd need to increase your budget estimates by a factor of at least 2.5 - 4 (i.e., $5,000-$8,000).
4. My Parent's House. The tagline for this house is something like "We're about to enter a land that time forgot. This is My Parent's House." Truer words, dude. This show is fun because the grown kids nominate a room in their parent's house for a design makeover. The rooms are awesome - like, the basement of the Indian dad which hold his beloved disco ball (not kidding) or the kitchen wallpaper from 1962 (dad put this up the year I was born). The rooms are one attraction but the main attraction is the relationship between the hosts. Emmanuel Belliveau is other worldly good looking (again, not kidding) but he quarrels with Andrika Lawren like they really are siblings. I always get a warm fuzzy feeling after watching it because ultimately, it's about family and love. The kids are doing it for their parents which means tears, hugs, and "I love you so much"es. Worth catching.
3. Hidden Potential. I totally get this show because I'm facing a similar challenge that all the hopeful home-os on this show face. I want to buy a house but can't afford anything nice in the areas I want to live. When this happens, you have to get creative. Enter Hidden Potential. Buyers budgets are established right up front. Then, they're taken to see three houses in the neighborhoods where they want to live. The kicker is that the houses are pits (shacks, hovels, lean-tos, whatever). However, hottie architect (isn't that a yummy combination?) Barry Wood has already prescreened the houses and uses 3-D computer graphics to show the hopeful home-os what the houses will look like once renovated. ...and the renovations all fit within their budgets. In the end, the buyers pick the one they want and live happily ever after (you know, once the places are gutted and rebuilt).
2. Small Space, Big Style. Finding creative solutions for maximizing space really appeals to me (because my condo is small) so, of course, I love this show. I'm not sure if they have a maximum square footage allowance but I don't recall seeing any space that exceeds 1,000 square feet. However, you'd never know it from watching this show. The creative ways some home-os lay out their space is genius. Tables on rails that move along a wall and fold up when not in use, sleeping quarters positioned above a kitchen, and closets organized to within an inch of their life make a 400 square foot apartment in NYC livable. I recommend tuning in just for some of the color combinations alone.
1. Get Color! This is my favorite program on HGTV because it's all about color. Jane Lockhart, the host, is a color expert. She helps confused home-os decorate rooms by finding out their interests (we love going to movies, or we just went fly-fishing in Montana) and then shows up with a giant color wheel filled with stuff that relates to their interest. A home-o may not be able to articulate their color preference but they can say "ooh, I like that hot pink fishing lure." Then, she takes the color they pick, paints it on the walls and brings them back into the room. Cue excited home-o happiness. Color choices continue to be made from the color wheel and presto, the room comes together. This show rocks! ...and it's taught me that there is no such thing as colors that don't go together.
Other shows I'll watch but don't tivo include If Walls Could Talk and Cash in the Attic. Both are entertaining and if you like history, you'll especially like these. I'm also taking a 'wait and see' attitude with Color Splash. It's hosted by David Bromstad, the winner of Design Star. While I like him and his rooms, his delivery leaves me a bit cold. He's totally trying to hard and it's tiresome to watch. I'm hoping he'll calm down and get in his groove soon.