HGTV: My Highs and Lows

Our writer shares her tales of wow and woe when it comes to following the DIY advice of HGTV's design stars.

I tried to make an upholstered headboard once. I got the idea from an episode of HGTV's Design on a Dime. Armed with an oversized piece of fiberboard, soft batting, a staple gun and a bolt of fabric, I set to work measuring, cutting, padding and stapling. Hours later, I was the proud owner of a DIY headboard.

The problem: It was a $156 mess. There were lumps in the batting, the fabric was crooked and it didn't have that "hotel chic" promised by the on-screen designers. I rescued the fabric, which is still buried -- unused -- in a dark corner of a storage closet, tossed the fiberboard in the trash and bought a headboard instead.

It was not the first time I'd been the victim of an HGTV-inspired makeover-gone-wrong. Trading Spaces designer Vern Yip shared a great tip: To make the windows in the bedroom look larger hang the curtain rod at ceiling height. What he failed to add was that one should measure the curtains first to ensure that each panel is long enough to reach the floor. It doesn't take a good designer to know that window treatments, like pants, should never be too short. It took me several hours, a container of Spackle and two coats of paint to relocate my curtain rod six inches lower.

Next, I watched as Divine Design's Candace Olsen advocated having a feature wall to create visual interest in a space. I tried this in the bedroom, painting three walls a light shade of blue-gray and using a much darker blue-gray for my feature wall. The room looked like a toss-up between a collegiate locker room and the nursery for a bouncing baby boy. It took an entire afternoon and another gallon of paint to understand the reasons interior designers spend semesters, if not years, learning how to work with color.

I tune into HGTV with a mission: I want inspiration. I watch Dear Genevieve, Divine Design and Colour Confidential and I'm left with so many options: Should I sew new pillows to add a bright pop to my chocolate brown sofa? Add texture to the bathroom walls with wallpaper? Create original art on canvas? Refinish an old cabinet?

I've spent countless hours attempting to replicate the looks I've seen, going to great lengths to find the same materials and to follow the design advice to the letter. And I have had a few DIY successes, including a pair of handmade curtain panels and a paint treatment of turquoise and white stripes in the powder bathroom. But more often than not, the projects I attempt suffer the same fate as the upholstered headboard – the trash.

I was at IKEA recently and like all good HGTV fans, I picked up a set of black picture frames to turn into custom frames for treasured gallery using fabric mats. Several attempts (and countless four-letter words) later, I removed the crooked and bulging fabric and resorted to using the plain white mats that came with the frames. On the plus side, while I was inside the Swedish superstore, I found a pair of brown velvet curtains for the bedroom-the very ones that Color Splash's David Bromstad and Vern Yip have used in their makeovers.

Even so, for a long time I felt like a failure for not being able to replicate all the DIY ideas I saw on HGTV. They looked so simple on TV. How could I mess them up? Therein lies the problem: The network has snagged top-notch designers, allocated them huge budgets, stocked trailers with all the tools of the trade, hired talented craftspeople and edited the hell out of the footage to make it look possible -- even simple -- to transform an entire room in the span of a 30-minute segment.

Meanwhile, at my house, there are no color consultants, seamstresses or teams of painters. I don't have a design degree, a big budget or the skills to use a jigsaw. I don't even own a jigsaw (though I do have a laser level that I love showing off). It's just me, an idea, a meager checking account, a couple of paintbrushes and the determination to save the living room from looking like the "before" pictures I see on HGTV shows.

Still, I haven't given up on having a home that looks like it belongs on HGTV. Along with legions of homeowners, I plan to upload gallery of my home makeovers to the message boards for Rate My Space, in the hopes of achieving a 5-star rating from fellow design fans. Low ratings and pictures of outdated kitchens, lackluster living rooms and bare master bedrooms can earn viewers a room makeover courtesy of the show's host Angelo Surmelis.

Better yet, I know that all it will take is a knock on the door from Genevieve Gorder, Vern Yip, Candace Olson or David Bromstad, a camera crew, a trailer filled with the tools-of-the-trade, a team of talented carpenters and a week of chaos (which will be edited down to a 30-minute episode). I have even practiced my look of surprise when it's time for the big reveal.

Now, you'll have to excuse me. I have online applications to fill out if I want my house to be the next HGTV makeover.

Jodi Helmer lives in an uninspired home in Charlotte, North Carolina. When she's not dreaming about built-ins or attempting to choose a paint color for the living room, she is a freelance writer.

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