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By Karen Gardner
Couples get $1,500 to remodel
This is the first in a series of articles on how two local couples traded places for a home makeover. “Changing Places” will follow the couples as they meet, plan, work and surprise each other with the unveiling of their final designs.
North Adams Transcript
Ever wonder what it might be like to participate in a home improvement show, decorating a room in someone else’s house while others transform one of yours? Two Berkshire County couples will find out what that’s like this month as they take part in a reality show in print.
Mark Badorini and Shannon Briggs of Cheshire and Tom and Kathy Morawiec of Lee will work with two area professional interior decorators to transform part of each other’s homes. They were total strangers before they were selected by The North Adams Transcript and The Berkshire Eagle to participate in “Changing Places.” Although they will not have the typical makeover show crew to help them, both couples come with some impressive home-improvement skills.
Real do-it-yourselfer
Mark, 42, an engineer by profession, is an experienced do-it-yourselfer. His recent projects include opening up his kitchen to the dining room, adding an eat-in bar, installing countertops and building kitchen cabinets to match existing units.
Shannon, 35, a paraprofessional at Cheshire Elementary School, is proficient in making curtains and pillows, and she is a self-proclaimed bargain shopper. Together, the couple added a garage and a breezeway to their stately saltbox-style home.
Tom, 38, is an electrician by trade. The many projects he has completed around his house include tiling a bathroom and building a gazebo. His wife, Kathy, 39, is a stay-at-home mom who sews for a local curtain company in the dining area of the family’s cozy ranch-style house.
Armed with $1,500 to spend, the couples will make over each other’s master bedrooms. Tom and Kathy are charged with bringing some life to the blank, white walls of the bedroom in the Cheshire house, and Mark and Shannon must solve a tricky problem: how to add much-needed closet and shelving space to the smaller room in Lee.
Out of room
“Our bedroom is very square and very small, and right now there’s one closet,” said Kathy. “We have way too much clothes.” Because they ran out of space, the Morawiecs use an industrial metal shelving unit in the room.
“We just cram as much clothes as we possibly can cram on it,” Kathy said. “That’s the biggest dilemma. We’ve got to do something with the clothes. We try to give away clothes and it just seems like they end up on the floor or next to the bed.”
The decor of the bedroom features a safari theme, and the walls are painted with a tan faux treatment.
Besides the metal shelving unit, two dark-brown-stained, wooden dressers and a matching queen-size water bed dominate the space. Several shelves are built diagonally into one corner, a remnant of when a double bed was positioned beneath them.
Nothing off-limits
No change is off-limits for the Morawiecs, including ripping up the neutral-tone carpeting. Anything goes, they said.
“I was telling somebody, if they did chocolate brown with teal and pink, I’d be fine with that,” Kathy said. “I’ve decorated every room and I’ve painted so many times, I just want to walk in and go, ‘Wow.’ “
“We’ll try all sorts of things,” said Tom. “Painting is a sport here.”
While storage is not a problem in Mark and Shannon’s bedroom, the decoration is lacking.
“Basically, our room is one big white square,” Shannon said. “We have basically a bed, no headboard, white curtains, white walls right now, and some antique furniture, which is the only thing we ask not be painted.” The room contains several pieces of antique furniture that belonged to Mark’s grandmother. Its main focal point is the bed, which is covered with a quilt in a double Irish chain pattern. The rose-colored, wall-to-wall carpet can go, “If it has to,” said Shannon.
Not particular about the bedroom’s style, Mark is agreeable to Shannon’s preference for a “shabby chic” theme.
“It’s kind of romantic, but old and new mixed together,” she explained. “That’s what I would like to see in the room.” Like the couples in the popular reality television show, “Trading Spaces,” the “Changing Places” couples will trade keys and live in each other’s houses for a weekend as they work on their projects. The aim is to spend all of the $1,500 -- without going over budget -- as they redesign each room.
Both couples described themselves as huge “Trading Spaces” fans. As such, they expressed excitement at the prospect of being involved in “Changing Places.”
“I thought there was no way in heck I’d be picked,” Kathy said. “I was incredibly surprised. ... I was on the phone with Tom, saying, ‘Can you believe it?’ “
“I love the whole idea of going and doing someone else’s space,” said Shannon. “It’s going to be interesting to see their reaction when they walk in the room, to see what we actually did,” Mark said.
“That’s going to make it worth it, I think.”
Karen Gardner can be reached at kgardner@thetranscript.com. © 2005 New England Newspapers, Inc. |
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