Remodeling for the fearless

‘Trading Spaces’ comes to Everett

Julie Muhlstein Herald Columnist

There are two camps. Until last week, I was in the first camp: people who’ve never heard of "Trading Spaces."

I have now met the second camp. These folks are head-over-paint-can crazy about the cable show airing seven days a week on The Learning Channel.

"I am so excited. This is my 15 minutes of fame, right here," Julie Tarr said days before a "Trading Spaces" crew showed up at her Everett home.

Tarr is planted firmly in the second camp of "Trading Spaces" fandom. "Julie watches it every chance she gets," said Nancy Puetz, who lives across from John and Julie Tarr on a cul-de-sac near Pecks Drive west of Evergreen Way.

Tarr wasn’t kidding about her 15 minutes of fame.

Whenever I mentioned "Trading Spaces" shooting an episode in Everett, someone would stop in their tracks. "Really?" would come the reaction. "Wow. Have you watched that show?"

On the ladder of fame, there’s Mick Jagger, there’s Colin Powell, and then there’s Ty.

In the "Trading Spaces" camp, Ty needs no introduction, except devotees might say my fame ladder is upside-down. Ty Pennington, the show’s carpenter/model/actor, is on the top rung.

Oh, I exaggerate. But to people glued to the show at 4 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and noon Sundays, "Trading Spaces" in our midst is big news. Tarr and Puetz said groupies lurked outside while they toiled in each other’s houses during the shoot Monday and Tuesday.

"Trading Spaces" is zany mix of reality TV and Martha Stewart, with perhaps a touch of Jerry Springer thrown in, as neighbors swap keys for two days and transform a room in each others’ houses. With a modest $1,000 budget each, the neighbors do the work while "Trading Spaces" decorators give directions. No peeking allowed.

When the work is done, "Trading Spaces" turns the verb "reveal" into a noun as homeowners return blindfolded to see what’s been done.

This Learning Channel description of "Trading Spaces" host Paige Davis gives you an idea:

"In addition to the incredible designs, it is the reactions of the homeowners, whether tears of joy or expressions of horror, that she feels keep viewers watching. For Paige, the moment before the ‘reveal’ is what the show’s all about."

For Nancy and Lennie Puetz, it’s now about one wall covered with real rust, another covered with orange paint, and an Asian-influenced room that’s a jarring contrast to the rest of their traditionally decorated house.

"At the ‘reveal,’ I didn’t want to seem ungrateful," said Nancy Puetz, sitting on a black slipcovered couch with gold and silver pillows that used to be a muted floral-plaid blend.

"We’re not real hip on the Asian style," Puetz added, explaining that when producers asked what they’d like, they had said a comfortable place for kids.

Her formal glass coffee table is in storage, replaced by a low, fabric-covered table constructed by carpenter Ty "that looks like there should be a hole in the floor and we should take off our shoes," Puetz said.

Applicants choose a room that’s already furnished and explain what they’d like to achieve.

It was 13-year-old Tiffany Puetz, a fan of the show, who conspired with Tarr across the street. "I went over to Julie’s and said, ‘Want to do it with us?’ I

e-mailed the application," said Tiffany, as her mother joked that "little missy had too much time on her hands."

The style is a shock, but the experience was "very, very fun," Puetz said. Their episode, No. 23, is expected to be broadcast in February.

Across the street, "Trading Spaces" fan Julie Tarr is still getting used to the drama in her downstairs family room.

Unlike Puetz, Tarr was no stranger to brightly painted walls and bold decor. "It’s what I live for," Tarr said of the "home decorating thing."

"Nancy’s house is neutral," she added, "but there’s nothing neutral about me."

Tarr’s flair shows in a hand-painted blue ribbon in her foyer and in dozens of other crafty touches. I had my eye on a ladder-back rocker in her living room, but didn’t see how to sneak it out.

I did not covet Tarr’s transformed recreation room. She calls it a "home theater," but it looks to me like the inside of a hot-pink circus tent.

Fabric is draped from a ring in the ceiling down all the walls. There are new magenta couches, the result of a long story that began when decorators tried to spray paint her old sofas on a rainy night. The show picked up the tab for new Ikea couches to replace the soaked and ruined ones.

"It’s shocking, it’s not at all what I was expecting in my imagination," said Tarr, showing me where "beautiful French doors" had been removed to put up a pink movie-curtain entrance.

Tarr said her husband and three children love the room, with its squishy balls intended for use as computer chairs and foot stools. "It’s growing on me, but it didn’t need to grow on them," she said of her kids, who are now pushing for a big-screen TV and a surround-sound speaker system.

Would she do it again?

"In a heartbeat," Tarr said. "And I got a movie theater."

See? There are two camps. There are gutsy decorators like Tarr, who’d turn a room over to "Trading Spaces" in a heartbeat, and there’s my camp. My house needs help, but I’m inclined to say no thanks if "Trading Spaces" comes knocking.

Then there’s Nancy Puetz, whose front window wears a silk obi suitable for a Japanese kimono.

She’s a nice woman, friendly and soft-spoken. Looking up at her window, though, her voice takes on a tougher tone:

"Antique or no antique, that obi is going."