Neighborly advice: When your house needs a new look, it's time to trade spaces
By Daniel J. Vargas At times, Frank Bielec feels as if he's traded places with a movie-star heartthrob of yesteryear. Recently he was perusing the aisles at Lowe's Home Improvement Center in Katy, as he often does, when a woman caught a glimpse of him, stopped talking and turned pale. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted. Bielec caught her before her head could hit nearby lumber. When she came to, she wanted to know if it was really he — Frank, the designer from the TLC television show Trading Spaces. Indeed, it was the jovial, bowl-full-of-jelly designer/artist. Always the gentleman, Bielec bought her a bottle of water and made sure she was OK. Of course, everything was fine, because, well, he's Frank from Trading Spaces. "I know how Clark Gable must have felt, for one brief second," jokes Bielec, who lives in Katy. Since hitting the air in the fall of 2000, Trading Spaces has become a hit with housewives, closeted designers, teen-agers, men with a flair for decorating and others who can relate to having a room they would make over, if only they had the time and money. Trading Spaces is TLC's No. 1 show in prime time and has a wood-glue hold on viewers ages 25-54. Each week, more than 6 million people tune in to watch friends and neighbors switch homes for two days to redesign rooms in each other's houses. Each home's owners choose which room will be redecorated, and they can make suggestions, but the designer (one per home) has the final say on theme, colors and layout. Anything in the room is fair game. Think of the designer as the queen bee who gets almost everything she wants, while the neighbors/friends are the worker bees who do the bulk of the sewing, painting, wood staining and tile laying. (They may also have some input into the design, if the designer is in a generous mood.) At the end of the second day, the revamped room is revealed to its owners, who have been kept in the dark. The catch: Although they get the help of a designer and carpenter, they're given only $1,000 for materials, and if they don't like the end result, tough. They'll just have to live with it. Bielec's popularity starts with his easygoing, quick-witted nature. He has that Santa Claus resemblance when his glasses slip down his round, bearded face, and you just want to give him a big squeeze. "Two years ago, I was this little fat man who just mowed his lawn, but since I got this job, it has been amazing," says Bielec, whose wife, Judy, now keeps track of his hectic schedule with a Palm Pilot. "I feel like I'm in an episode of The Twilight Zone every day of my life, and I'm waiting for Rod Sterling to come on out." Not only is one of the show's most popular designers from the Houston area but its production crew was in town recently to tape three episodes — in The Woodlands, Alvin and Kingwood — that will air this month. Tara Playfair-Scott, a spokeswoman for TLC, says the show, the American version of the popular British TV series Changing Rooms, receives 500 e-mails and 75-100 applications a day from homeowners hoping to be on the show. "It's unbelievable when you sit back and watch how it has blossomed so much," she says. Trading Spaces, now in its second season, is not unlike a TV dramedy, with a regular cast of characters with personal quirks, senses of humor and sensitive buttons. The show has one host (perky Paige Davis, the designated clock watcher and bean counter), two carpenters (lanky, overworked Ty Pennington, who provides much comic relief, and adorable/agreeable Amy Wynn Pastor) and six designers (Bielec; shoeless photo fanatic Genevieve Gorder; Laurie Hickson-Smith, who always seems to go over budget; Hilda Santo-Tomas, who has a flair for the unusual; handsome Doug Wilson, who's a bit on the sassy side; and fabric-loving Vern Yip.) Even NBC's Today show contracted Trading Spaces fever and did a week's worth of segments about the TLC show. Not every decorating idea is a hit, though, and that's what makes Trading Spaces addicting: the chance to see people's natural reactions to sometimes unnatural creations. One lady walked into her living room and looked as if she had seen Jeffrey Dahmer sitting on her couch. She started tearing up, left the room and sobbed off-camera. Then there was Santo-Tomas' infamous idea to glue hay to a couple's walls. The owners just stared at the finished product, picturing their young children picking it apart straw by straw by straw. On another episode, Santo-Tomas painted couches Pepto-Bismol pink. On a live "reveal" on Today, a Dallas couple picked apart Gorder's design of their children's playroom. They didn't like the polka-dot theme. They weren't amused by the dirt on the wall. And they hated the professionally constructed puppet theater. (Didn't anyone warn the producers that Dallas folks' noses tend to turn upward?) Most owners gush over their new rooms. (Hey, they didn't have to pay or do the labor, did they?) Some are brought to joyful tears. Some jump up and down hysterically as if they had just won the showcase showdown on The Price Is Right. Cassandra Crowe, 24, of The Woodlands, was a fan of the show as soon as she saw her first episode. She started taking her lunch break at 3 p.m. to watch the daytime episodes. "It's the suspense," she says. "Even the people (on the show) don't know the end result. And you can identify with having a room or an area in your house you don't like and wish you could change. And you can identify with being on a budget." Crowe applied online to be on the show with her co-worker and friend Amanda Horton. Months went by. Finally the call came: A representative of Trading Spaces wanted to know more details about their living rooms and to see pictures. A location scout took measurements and made sketches. On Feb. 12, they got the good news that they'd been chosen. Crowe and Horton live at Wood-ridge Park Apartments. They received permission to paint and make changes to their apartments because, well, they're the complex's leasing and marketing director (Crowe) and assistant manager. Trading Spaces set up shop March 3. The switch began March 4. "Just being a part of it is so much more than being a spectator," Crowe says. "It's a lot of work, emotionally and physically." Two days later, Crowe and her husband, Justin, went to see their new living room, a space once void of color. "It needed some oomph," she says. The walls were painted a buttery yellow. All their Pottery Barn mahogany furniture was untouched. "And thank God, because it was expensive," she says. A new bookcase bordering the couch took up an entire wall. The designer, Hickson-Smith, had added artwork, a table, two chairs, and blinds and drapes. (Bargain shoppers can get a lot for their money — especially when the show's carpenters build the furniture.) "It looks like an entirely different room," Crowe says. "I thought I was going to cry." A month later, she still raves: "I love it. I haven't changed anything. It's perfect." Things were almost as flawless in Alvin, where two mother-daughter teams, neighbors for 23 years, switched homes. Paige Thomson, 24, contacted Trading Spaces because her mother's master bedroom needed help. It was beige (which most designers will tell you is not a color) and had 25-year-old furniture. "They couldn't hurt anything in there," recalls Thomson, a graduate student at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene. The bedroom now has white crown molding and a smoky-gray paint job to create a Nantucket feel. Antique frames adorn the walls, and the bed sports a stained headboard. As a final touch, Gorder moved in a cement bench from outside. The verdict: Paige and Carla Thomson adored it. Mostly. Carla Thomson, who isn't as big a fan of the show as her daughter, took down new curtains. And she plans to move the cement bench back outside. "They truly did a good job," she says. "I was impressed. I was expecting black walls and a fabric headboard. "They can come in and trash your house. I've seen them do that on the show." Their next-door neighbors, Gayla and Andrea Trammell, haven't changed a thing in their kitchen updated by Bielec. Before, it resembled the Brady Bunch's kitchen. It had apple-green countertops. The wallpaper was green-and-white lattice with strawberries. The tile was avocado green. "It was lovely," says Gayla Trammell, the mother. (One can only assume her tongue was firmly implanted in cheek.) "It looks like an Italian kitchen. It's beautiful," she says, adding that a high school design class visited the kitchen on a field trip. Bielec used little besides paint to make over the kitchen. He painted the walls a warm mixture of gold and rust and complemented them with a caramel-colored floor painted to resemble rocks. "It's like he knew what I wanted before I did," says Gayla Trammell, who plans to add granite countertops and tile to the kitchen. "I just love Frank. He's my favorite." She's not alone, as was evident at a recent home and garden show Bielec attended in Buffalo, N.Y. People paid good money to see him and waited in line to get his autograph. One woman burst into tears. "I wouldn't cross the street to watch me burn," Bielec jokes. In Houston, he has yet to have a hot meal at a restaurant since Trading Spaces began its run. Before his fame, Bielec, who hails from Northeast Texas, taught art at Southmore Intermediate School in Pasadena. He was a florist for almost two decades in Katy before starting a home business with his wife called Mosey 'n Me, an art and needlecraft company. Bielec co-hosted a short-lived arts-and-crafts show on TNN called Your Home Studio. Viewers weren't all that excited, and he was able to lead a normal life. Since Trading Spaces, strangers have knocked on his door at 2:30 a.m. wanting to take pictures of the house where Frank lives. The phone rings day in and day out. Once he had a bodyguard at a public appearance. "It's to the degree that it's surreal. You'd think we sold our soul to the devil," Bielec says of the show's popularity. "It's addicting, and there is not a clinic or Betty Ford for Trading Spaces." Unexpectedly, Bielec has the grueling schedule of a celebrity. And he's grateful for it all. "I think I got the best possible end of this," Bielec says. "Should it end tomorrow, I'd still be happy." He'd go back to being the little fat guy who mows the lawn and enjoys arts and crafts. But to the home-improvement-TV-show world, he'd be remembered as Frank, the jovial Trading Spaces designer. Frankly speakingName: Frank Bielec Age: between 38 and 65 Born: Wallace, in Northeast Texas Resides: Katy Occupation: Trading Spaces designer and artist Favorite color: sage green Motto: "'Tis a gift to be simple." Favorite shopping spots: Carolyn Thompson's Antiques Center of Texas, 1001 West Loop North, and Restoration Hardware, 4091 Westheimer or 12850 Memorial Trading Spaces is broadcast at 3 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Saturdays, and 11 a.m. Sundays. Show times for the Houston episodes are:
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