As a veteran design show watcher, this one is a little breath of fresh air. The concept is fun (48 hours to change the look of a cottage) and the people involved are reasonable. Anthony, the carpenter, is a tiny bit hosehead in his accent (which I love as it's disappearing from our culture).
It suffers from the same formulaic set-up as all the design shows, which is mildly irritating (Anthony and Merrill unload the truck, this cottage needs work (always true), we're scared we won't get it done on time, there's this problem we didn't anticipate that is dire etc.) but basically it's a nice show with precious little greige on the walls.
The amount of money and people and scope means that many of the changes are merely surface changes, but that is also fun, because it means that some of the things they do can be done by the home viewer. Also, Michelle is often stuck being unable to change a layout, because cottages... Occasionally, I think she does things that are a little too visually noisy (and I notice that when this happens, they are often easy-to-change accents), but that's also more interesting than greige.
Also, Michelle has a nice talent for adding flea market finds and natural found materials.
The cast seem earthy, natural and fun to drink beers with.
All in all, I like this one and hope they do another season sometime.
It suffers from the same formulaic set-up as all the design shows, which is mildly irritating (Anthony and Merrill unload the truck, this cottage needs work (always true), we're scared we won't get it done on time, there's this problem we didn't anticipate that is dire etc.) but basically it's a nice show with precious little greige on the walls.
The amount of money and people and scope means that many of the changes are merely surface changes, but that is also fun, because it means that some of the things they do can be done by the home viewer. Also, Michelle is often stuck being unable to change a layout, because cottages... Occasionally, I think she does things that are a little too visually noisy (and I notice that when this happens, they are often easy-to-change accents), but that's also more interesting than greige.
Also, Michelle has a nice talent for adding flea market finds and natural found materials.
The cast seem earthy, natural and fun to drink beers with.
All in all, I like this one and hope they do another season sometime.