Ready, set, design!
Tampa Bay area interior designers vie for a nationally televised design job when HGTV's Designers' Challenge comes to town to film two renovations: one in Pinellas and one in Hillsborough.
By JUDY STARK, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 26, 2003
 |
|
|
[Times photo: Fraser Hale]
|
| Margaret and Pat Courtney describe the kind of nursery they want in their Tampa home for cameraman Chris Buck of Buckshot Productions and producer Laura Patterson. |
|
Sometime next fall, when you tune in Designers' Challenge on HGTV, you'll see familiar Tampa Bay faces: seven local interior designers competing to design rooms for two families, one from Hillsborough, one from Pinellas.
The television production company was in town this month to do the initial taping.
Margaret and Pat Courtney of South Tampa want to turn a guest room into a nursery for their baby daughter, who is expected to arrive July 10. The Pinellas family, who preferred to remain anonymous, sought the show's help in creating bedrooms and a playroom for their daughters.
The crew taped Pat, 33, and Margaret, 35, walking through the guest room, talking about what they want: furniture, accessories, window treatments. It also taped the designers as they showed their floor plans and sample boards, each hoping hers will be the one the Courtneys choose. (Margaret is a lawyer with Hillsborough County; Pat's a lawyer in private practice.)
"We're taking a remodeling project, adding in a TV production schedule - this is nuts!" show producer Laura Patterson said as she coached the couple through their paces.
Adding to the "this is nuts" quotient is Margaret's pregnancy and the fact that the Courtneys are involved in a whole-house remodeling job, putting in a second-floor master suite and turning their 1957 ranch house into a "contemporary tropical" home with a metal roof.
One of the big challenges for the Tampa designers was the Courtneys' design preference: No pink. No Winnie-the-Pooh.
The couple's home is furnished in a sleek modern style, and they like dark wood stains, so they wanted their baby's room to fit in.
"They're very stylish, they have very good taste," one of the hopeful interior designers, Karen Brown of Tampa, said of the couple. "They like a lot of gray, and neutral colors. They also have very exciting artwork. That says something about them."
Margaret was watching TV on Gasparilla weekend (Pat was off doing the pirate thing) and saw an announcement that the show was coming to the Tampa Bay area and was seeking participants. She fired off e-mails to the producers, who were intrigued at the idea of doing a nursery. (They get lots of offers of bedrooms and living rooms but like to do more unusual rooms.)
Tampa Bay, by the way, provided "dozens and dozens" of responses, Patterson said, far more than the three other cities the show is visiting this spring: Phoenix, Detroit and Baltimore.
The show sets minimum budgets for its projects "so the designers have something to work with and can show off a little," Patterson said. Kitchens are a minimum of $40,000; living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms, $20,000; secondary bedrooms, $5,000 to $10,000. The budget for the Courtneys' nursery is $7,500. The homeowners pay the costs of labor and materials, but the designers who participate are not compensated.
The show got in touch with Gloria N. Ellinwood, a St. Petersburg interior designer who heads the local chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers, the trade association for the design industry, and asked her to suggest ASID designers who might be interested.
For the Courtney project she suggested three Hillsborough designers: Coren Weiss of Inner Creations in Lutz; Rhonda Lyons and Susan Lanson of Lincoln Design in Tampa; and Brown.
For the Pinellas project, the designers who made the pitches were Ellinwood; Tony Marsh of Interiors by Tony Marsh in Belleair; and Linda Noble Welch of Deranian-Noble Design in St. Petersburg.
HGTV "is widely watched by all our clients," Rhonda Lyons said. "Our clients refer to it all the time."
"It's good exposure," Marsh said. The show also tapes a segment in the designers' studios and shows images of their previous work to give viewers an idea of the designers' style.
"It's not a matter of losing," Welch said. "Even if you're not selected, you had the opportunity to show what you could do."
The two families had a week to study the designers' plans, then choose one. (We won't spoil the suspense by telling you whose designs were selected.) The work will be done over the next eight weeks, and the show will return in late July or early August to tape the finished projects. The shows will air in the fall, but no date has been set.
Related stories
See creativity bloom on garden tour
Home Front
Ranch dressing
Ready, set, design!
Saving trees in the bulldozer's path
The welcome mat's out in Pasco
Et cetera
HomeBuyer U
Community LivingBeing a board member isn't easy
Manufactured HousingThe first steps in selling your home
Back to Homes
