The Truth Yurts
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Episode 8 finds us down to the final 3: Danielle, Britany and Hilari. This week's challenge was to design a bedroom suite in a yurt. What the eff is a yurt you ask? Well, it is defined as a portable structure from Central Asia that is round and built on a lattice form. Easy Japanese-y. Literally.
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But wait! Round walls! This is, of course, a challenge because most furniture is not round. Sounds like these designers could really use the help of some, err, interior designers to help them tackle this not-so-out-of-ordinary challenge. Seriously?!! Haven't you ever designed in a round room before? Um, gazebo? Lighthouse? Rotunda, turret, hobbit house? Ring any bells?
(Oh and fear not viewers at home, if you want to purchase your very own yurt for all your portable round lattice-enclosed outdoor-living needs, HGTV gave us a couple glamour shots of the Colorado Yurt Company logo, so you can tell the folks at CYC who sentcha.)
Anyways, because yurts are round and round spaces are *so insane* the ladies were granted the help of not just NORMAL carpenters, but CELEBRITY carpenters. When they said celebrity, I was hoping to see Karen and Jesus walk out, but unfortunately celebrity is a loose term, and the celebrities happened to be Chip Wade, Joel West and Jeff Devlin, who all host shows on HGTV. OK, probably for the best. I bet Karen Carpenter would be total crap with a handsaw.
Hilari was teamed up with Jeff Devlin and decided to create a glamorous fantasy suite from Bali. She bought a spectacular daybed and a shit ton of magenta and purple dupioni silk. There was some drams about assembling the daybed but, puh-lease girl, you don't just have ANY carpenter, you have a CELEBRITY carpenter so ain't no thang. She also picked out some pretty hot bookshelves with gold-leaf shelves. I thought they looked pretty damn good. In fact, I thought the whole place felt pretty true to her vision, complete with hanging orchids. Gotta say though, I was worried cause you know, making an Asian-style yurt seemed a bit obvi, don't you think?
Meanwhile, Britany worked with Joel West to create her "not glam-chic" minimalist modern beach bungalow. She immediately thought about creating a moving bed as a solution to the round dilemma. Then while the camera man was changing his tape, Joel turned to Britany and was like, "Dude, are you sure you want me to build a moving bed? Who ever wants to move their bed?" but then Britany was all like "But it has to be an ever-changing yurt!" And then she looked up at him and batted her eyelashes with mascara on the bottom ones and he totally caved. Back on camera, he was all for it because he's a team player. So he built a 4,000 pound bed that had wheels and enormous retirement home-style hand rails. Then Britany placed stools, and plants and shit all around the bed and put porcelain plates on the back shelves so you couldn't move the bed an inch without destroying something.
Also adorning her walls were pictures of leaves and dirt and twigs and shit. But don't call them pictures, they're "photography" because Britany is a "photographer" and if you call them "photography" then they're a whole lot more than pictures of leaves and dirt and twigs and shit.
Finally, Danielle teamed up with Jeff Devlin to create her "global contemporary retreat for the modern traveller!" (make all your dreams come true! extra wishes sold separately). I love how "global" basically means you get to buy any f-ing thing and if people are like, whoa that's random, you can be like, it's global! She had cowhides, Thai carved screens, horsehair chairs, a tribal rug, yellow vinyl wall coverings, salvaged eucalyptus wood... a whole lotta everything in there.
She seemed to have a bit of a communication error with her celebrity, Jeff, on the construction of her bed though because it came out looking like it belonged in a doll house. Surely it couldn't be celebrity carpenter Jeff Devlin's fault though! Danielle, aware of his A-list status in the carpentry world and not wanting to get blacklisted, dared not ask His Excellency to make some changes to the 2 dimensional gingerbread bed. She ended up trying to cover it with cheer organza (or mosquito netting?) white drapes, which ya know, cover up so much. She also copied Britany's patented put-the-vinyl-cover-from-your-yurt-inside-the-lattice-technique, which I thought was going to be DRA-MUH but it turns out it was no biggie.
Next it was time for the camera challenges, of which there were to be 2 this week. Is it me or do camera challenges seem a bit, oh, remedial? Camera Challenge #1 was to talk about their celebrity carpenter, not the sociopolitical repercussions of stem cell research on developing nations, and yet it might as well have been. Hilari is always the best, because even when her bed falls apart mid-challenge, she has a natural presence in front of the camera and a charismatic personality. Even if she totally forgets that it's supposed to be a design show and ends up talking about toenails or ex-boyfriends or turtles, I don't really care. I suppose this is a larger concern to HGTV than it is to me though, because the judges kept having to remind her to give more information about her designs. I say, wait for the show! They got cue cards for that!
Britany was cute as a button with her mascara on her bottom lashes. But she's not so hot on the talking thing. You can tell her carpenter was the real deal though- total star material. Finally, Danielle was a hot mess once again. She just can't seem to get it together with the camera rolling. David, kind as ever, delivered his critiques to the women with the sensitivity and decorum reserved for alopecians giving self-bikini waxing lessons.
Taking David's critiques to mind, most of the women do markedly better in their second camera challenge. After her disastrous first round, Chip Wade took Danielle to the Sawdust Saloon and she slugged back 3 tequila shots and then went back and nailed her 2nd camera challenge (this all happened off camera, don't ask me how I know). The judges remarked on how they could finally see her personality come out because she said things really loudly, but that was just the tequila talking and I don't think she'll remember it in the morning. Who cares about the other 2, the camera challenges are boring and they never show the whole thing and that pisses me off.
And then it was time for the final judging of the rooms. I'm getting sick of these fakey judges- give me some Simon Cowell already! If the rooms look like ass crack I just want to hear them say, this room looks like ass crack but for some reason they want to be respectful of the designers for making it this far so they don't. Yeah, that's ONE way to do it.
The judges loved Hilari's daybed and bookshelf but were concerned about the dead space on either side of the bed. Genevieve also thought the silk paneling looked a little sloppy.
They lurved Britany's sense of scale with the oversized chandelier, her "photography" and the creative use of space with the moving bed. I lurved watching Britany tug at the bed like the dog tugging on underwear from the Water Babies sunblock bottle. But, gotta hand it to her, the ceiling draping, to me, really makes the room. And I'll admit the closet behind the bed is a great idea, but the moving bed is such a gimmick and I didn't think the judges would fall for it. WHY SHOULD A BED EVER MOVE IN A FANTASY SUITE?!! IS MOVING BEDS SEXY?!! Either the judges are taking crazy pills, or I am.
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Finally, the judges loved Danielle's eclectic furnishings and rustic vibe but had a problem with her fugly bed, which was admittedly the focal point of the room. And, really, shouldn't the bed be the most important aspect of a fantasy bedroom suite?
But then Vern, with an icy stare that he's been rehearsing all week, called Hilari first and WHAM! sent her home. I was SHOCKED, and really, that never happens to me with reality TV anymore. I was already bidding my adieu to Danielle but I guess those tequila shots really saved her!
All I gotta say is, Hilari you were hosed and I'll miss you. But sometimes in life, the truth yurts, amirite?
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