Children like 'Trading Spaces' with throw rugs

Man was born to decorate. At least, that's how television's "Trading Spaces" show sees it.

Give two neighbors $1,000 apiece, designer and handyman services and 48 hours to redo a room in each other's home and you've got a hit show and some really strange and wonderful decorating ideas. It gives a whole new meaning to "love thy neighbor." Our family is hooked on the show. Even Becca and Bailey like watching it.

They could care less about cleaning up their rooms, but watching people paint zebra stripes on a bedroom wall or create a glass mosaic on a run-of-the-mill fireplace is truly entertaining.

Becca and Bailey like the show so much, they've even tried redoing each other's bedroom.

Becca has a style all her own. She put a rug on Bailey's plain wooden chair to make it look bigger. Bailey's yellow, moon-shaped accent rug has a new home atop a wooden desk. A doll bunk bed, turned upside down, serves as a coffee table.

You've got to admit not every 6-year-old has her own coffee table.

Becca put a pillow on a hat box and created an instant foot stool for Bailey's room.

Even Bailey's dry erase board has a new use. Becca wrapped a blue Scooby-Doo blanket around the board and placed it on top of her sister's dirty clothes hamper.

And why did she do this? "It made the room bigger and it looked more stylish," Becca told me. It's hard to argue with our 10-year-old who clearly has a fashion sense as long as she doesn't have to organize her closets.

Bailey, for her part, rearranged Becca's furniture. As part of her decorating scheme, she moved a small bookshelf under a wall mirror and arranged a chair as a side table.

"It's really fun," Bailey explained one evening. She's hard pressed to explain her decorating style. "I started just thinking," she said.

Neither of our girls has tackled any other rooms in our house, but Joni and I figure it's only a matter of time until they want to redo our bedroom. They'd probably cover our dresser in throw rugs or scatter stuffed animals around the room.

Home decorating will never be the same thanks to "Trading Spaces," whose designers seem committed to removing every ceiling fan in North America.

Personally, I like ceiling fans. I'm not ready to turn our bedroom into a bamboo jungle like happened on one of the show's episodes.

But I'm amazed at what purple paint can do for a room. Of course, it helps to have a carpenter on your front lawn who can make new drawer fronts and stylish bookcases planned by the show's designers.

The whole idea is to fashion something that won't end up in a Martha Stewart catalog.

Naturally, part of the allure of the show is the uncertainty, until the end, as to whether the neighbors will still be friends when it's all over and the easy chair's been banished to the garage for lack of style.

Becca and Bailey like the exotic. They'd be happy to splash paint on the walls of their rooms if only we would let them.

We're not ready for that.

Still, we're glad they want to redecorate their rooms, particularly when they can do so without spending a dime.

Now, if I could just figure out how to incorporate the kids' scattered shoes into the design, we'd really have something.

At any rate, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the kids will want to redo the redo and transform their bedrooms once again.

I'm all for it.

The throw rugs won't mind and neither will the stuffed animals.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.