Design Me A Star: Week 3

Episode 3 of HGTV’s Design Star evoked memories of an old TV favorite and memories of designs from past seasons of Design Star. The first individual challenge was introduced and it was the white room challenge. This year’s twist: all the shopping had to be done at a grocery store. Still with a $1000 budget and two cans of paint this didn’t sound too bad to me at all. It screamed Project Runway rip-off but then again how many variations are there to reality show challenges. Watching Clive set the shoppers of on their way brought back memories of Supermarket Sweep. This used to be my favorite distraction from studying back in the college years.

Anyhoo, I saw all sorts of questionable choices during the shopping period. Nathan says he’s going to poor milk on the walls and my first reaction was “gross” and the second was “it will never work.” Lonni’s choice of using plastic cups seemed predictable to me as I thought she’d use Solo cups to cover something. The only one that jumped out to me was “35” year old Torie’s choice of charcoal. I wonder if Whole Foods is exclusive to Bravo! and what this non-descript grocery store got out of this deal. All in all, the shopping choices left me uninspired but thankfully some did translate into beautiful rooms. Let’s break them down by the good, the blah and the ugly.

The Good
Nathan- Who knew that his milk wall would work so wonderfully? Now granted he did cheat a little by mixing the milk with primer but the result was spectacular and I’m happy to eat crow on this one. His graffiti couch reminded my partner of Jen’s graphic pillows from last year but was also a standout, as was his oatmeal floor. My only gripe was his choice of blue tables. I didn’t think that fit at all.

Dan- His deconstructed orchard was not only a bold concept but an original one. I loved the color pallet and the crisp execution of everything he did. It was one of the few rooms I’ve ever seen on Design Star where I had nothing at all to bitch about.

Antonio- While I agreed with the judges that his room was a bit sparse and I didn’t love the whole watermelons in his toy wheelbarrows, the graphic design elevated this room near the top for me. Also the fruit loop bins were one of the best accessories in the challenge.

Torie- While this room didn’t appeal to me I had to give it props for execution. Her floor design was painstakingly detailed and her wall of crumpled paper looked like art and not a rushed exercise in design.

The Blah
Jason- While Jason’s hair gets weirder every week his designs get more boring. The yellow and brown was boring but not enough to get me fired up enough to send him home.

Janey- Speaking of boring, Janey continued to just slide by from week to week. While using the asparagus as flower stems was a great idea, her graphic looked awfully familiar to one from last season and her odd choice of word art really did not work. Respect what?

Lonni- So she went a completely different route with the cups then I thought she would and in the end it failed. Thankfully she had a safe and boring back up plan that saved her ass. I must say I appreciate her being competent enough to pull something off last second.

The Ugly
Tashica- Once again Tashica had my least favorite room. Hated the design, loathed the copy cat light fixture, and was struck by how incomplete and sloppy the execution was. Her feigned ignorance of copying her light fixture from a past contestant made her look even worse than her room. I thought for sure she’d be going home finally but then we had…

Jen- The color maven once again proved she has no sense of color. I don’t buy for one second that we’re missing something because it’s not translating to TV. Her room looked unfinished and lacked anything resembling polish. Also did anyone else notice that she aged like 10 years in the span of three episodes? TV was not kind to you honey.

So Tashica lives to fight another day and Dan, Nathan (despite last week) and Antonio continue to stand apart from all others. Let’s hope next week brings an end to Tashica and maybe some better work from the