Love Those Curtains!

By James Poniewozik

America, there is a war going on in your living room. A war between neighbors. A war between cultures. A war, above all, between your boring overstuffed couch and the crisp, clean lines of modern design.

Last December, Shannon Pitts became one of the casualties. Pitts, 31, of Portland, Ore., signed up to go on TLC's home-makeover show Trading Spaces, on which pairs of neighbors assisted by an often domineering decorator get two days and $1,000 to redo a room in each other's houses. Pitts volunteered her paneled family room, complete with mounted deer heads, envisioning it transformed into a spruced-up haven for her kids.

Spaces decorator Doug Wilson, however, saw instead an Art Deco theater. The finished product included metal sconces, chocolate-brown curtains, sleek metallic chairs and seating platforms, complete with aisle lights, that pretty much ruled out slumber parties. At the "reveal" (the climactic moment when host Paige Davis unveils the remade room), Pitts forced a smile and almost immediately began planning to rip the whole thing out.

It was exactly the kind of aesthetic head-on collision that delights fans of Trading Spaces (Saturdays, 8 p.m. E.T.; reruns throughout the week), TLC's most popular series. It's the ultimate rummage through your neighbors' medicine cabinet, or at least their overcluttered den. (No bathrooms, says executive producer Stephen Schwartz: "We can't fit the camera crew in.") An adaptation of the British Changing Rooms, it plays off the tensions between neighbors, our emotional investment in our homes and our insecurity in our own tastes to create the Survivor of home decor.

There is an educational veneer to Spaces, which offers bold, cheap ways to fight IKEA-fied homogeneity--what executive producer Denise Cramsey calls "the maroon, dark green and oatmealization of America." But what hooks viewers is the race against the clock (the homeowners, helped by a carpenter and crew, pull near all-nighters, sewing and painting like sweatshop laborers) and the personalities.

Perhaps the most watchably divisive "character" is Wilson, the show's Richard Hatch figure: confident and sometimes bitchy, he pursues his high-concept visions (he once designed a bedroom like a Pullman sleeper) even if he has to make somebody cry. The most notorious moment in Spaces history came when he redid a living room for a Seattle couple who asked that he not alter the wife's beloved brick fireplace. It was like waving a maroon, dark green and oatmeal flag in front of a bull. "'Don't paint the fireplace!'" he recalls. "Fine. I won't paint the fireplace." He built a screen around it instead, and the wife duly burst into tears. "[The screen] wasn't earth shattering," he insists. "But her shrieks were."

Such battles reflect the subsurface tensions that make Spaces addictive. For all the talk about the democratization of design--via Martha Stewart, Michael Graves, the Apple iMac--in tract-house America, fluorescent light panels and hastily bought throw pillows are still doing just fine. When the show's hip, urban designers invade the homes of their more conservative charges, it's Karim Rashid meets Laura Ashley, State and Main with slipcovers. A traditional how-to show says your home is an expression of your personality. Trading Spaces says your home is an expression of your personality--and not everybody likes you.

Most homeowners, however, end up happy or at least politely pretend to be. "I had a tremendous time," Pitts says. While her family room is back to normal, she has her memories and a little something extra. "Where," she asks, "can you get rid of a hundred yards of chocolate-brown curtain?" With all those Spaces fans out there, she might want to try eBay.