HOME VIEWING
Families battle for dream home in My Rona Home
October 31, 2009
JENNIFER WILSON-SPEEDY
YOURHOME.CA EDITOR
Decorating and maintaining your home is tough enough, but can you imagine having to build it too? That's the challenge for two Calgary families in the new series My RONA Home (Sundays, 9 p.m. on CityTV).
In My RONA Home, modelled after a successful French series, the families go head-to-head to build and decorate the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified home of their dreams. Working next door to each other, they must also compete for viewers' votes, as the winning family will get the house and everything in it – valued at $400,000. The losing family will be offered a chance to buy the home they worked on.
The families, paired with a designer, contractor and two assistants, get a mere 30 hours to complete a room; building up from the studs to drywall, paint, install fixtures and decorate.
In addition to being a keen competition, host Elissa Lansdell says the show taught her some valuable do-it-yourself lessons, including the importance of pacing.
Lansdell says the first time the families faced their 30-hour challenge "people were physically ill from staying up all night." They dealt with hard labour and paint fumes, and they didn't take much time to sleep or eat and found that their efforts, and spirits, suffered. After that, like seasoned weekend warriors, they "learned to hustle on day one," stay fed and hydrated, and steal a few hours sleep to get an early start the next morning.
Cohesion was another key lesson, says Lansdell, noting that the families didn't have a say in their floor plans. The competitors had to learn to think about the house as a complete space rather than a collection of rooms with disparate looks. Envisioning how the spaces worked together, and finding ways to link them, helped create continuity and flow for a more put-together house overall. Plus, having a general theme in mind helps narrow down the seemingly endless decorating options for quicker decisions – a key aspect when you're running up a contractor's time or struggling to complete a room on deadline.
And, says Lansdell, no matter how design-savvy the plan, your home's look has to be true to you and your family.
"A designer can tell you it's a no-no, but you're the one who has to live in the house," says Lansdell, citing an on-show debate over a television in the kitchen. While it may not be cutting edge design, if it's something useful or important to your lifestyle it's worth making it work.
Show update: HGTV's Realtor vs. Realtor (previously Wednesdays at 8 p.m.) will be relaunched under a new name in January.
AIRING THIS WEEK
Sunday: Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (8 p.m., ABC), My RONA Home (9 p.m., CityTV)
Monday: For Rent (8 p.m., HGTV), Income Property (8:30 p.m., HGTV), House Poor (9 pm, HGTV), Love it or List it (9 p.m., W Network), Yard Crashers (9 p.m., DIY Network), My First Place (9:30 p.m., HGTV), Take This House and Sell It (10 p.m., W Network), Save Us From Our House (10:30 p.m., W Network)
Tuesday: Pure Design (9 p.m., HGTV), Dear Genevieve (9:30 p.m., HGTV)
Wednesday: Real Estate Intervention (8:30 p.m., HGTV), Property Virgins (9 p.m., HGTV), The Unsellables UK (9:30 p.m., HGTV)
Thursday: Holmes Inspection (8 p.m., HGTV), Family Renovation (9 p.m., HGTV), Colour Confidential (9 p.m., W Network), Divine Design (10 p.m., W Network), Love it or List it (11 p.m., W Network)
Friday: House Hunters International (8 p.m., HGTV), Relocation Relocation (9 p.m., HGTV), BATHtastic (9 p.m., DIY Network), Kitchen Impossible (10 p.m., DIY Network)
Daily: Carson Can (5 p.m., HGTV), House Hunters (7 and 10 p.m., HGTV), Sweat Equity (8 p.m., DIY Network), Desperate Landscapes (8:30 p.m., DIY Network).
Read more from Jennifer in the Yourhome.ca Editor's blog.
Toronto Star