HGTV program to feature work of area native

It didn't take much for Jane Rader DeBoe to go from "I don't want to be on TV" to "That'll get me on TV!"

DeBoe, a native of Cape Girardeau and now a noted interior designer in Boca Raton, Fla., will be featured Thursday on HGTV's "Designer's Challenge."

The weekly half-hour series follows one homeowner an episode through the process of choosing from among three well-known designers to renovate a room. Unlike "Trading Spaces" where neighbors surprise each other with a redesigned space, "Designer's Challenge" involves upscale homeowners who select a design from among well-known professional home interior designers.

"It's an incredible house," DeBoe said. "The owners paid $3.5 million for the house a few years ago, and today it's probably worth twice that."

DeBoe, whose design was chosen, took a large, bare, white master bedroom and turned it into a tropical paradise with shades of blue, a hand-painted mural on two walls and a stone fountain surrounded by glass tiles. The room is probably 20-by-24 feet, DeBoe said, and it has three separate areas: the bed, a desk area and a setting with two chaise lounges.

When the producers of "Designer's Challenge" called her, DeBoe said she was ambivalent.

"I ho-hummed around and said 'You know I'm sorry but I've never seen your program,'" she said. "I don't sit around watching a lot of designer shows on TV."

The producers sent her some videos of past programs. Her interest was piqued, but "I didn't want to embarrass myself," she said. "What if I was the loser?"

Then a client reminded her that playwright Oscar Wilde once said that bad publicity was better than no publicity, and added "I think you should do it."

DeBoe went from not wanting to do the show to "I've got to do this very cool house. It's going to be fun."

When she found what would be the focal point of the bedroom, she knew she had reached the point of "That'll get me on TV!"

An ornate king-size bed dominates the room, and DeBoe said that husbands across the country are going to want a bed like this one: it has a built-in plasma screen TV in the footboard and it swivels 350 degrees.

"Can't you see them with that clicker in their hand," she said. "The way the room is laid out you can see the TV from the chaise area, from the desk area, and from all angles. It's really incredible."

DeBoe had a $30,000 budget to decorate the room.

"To those of us from Cape Girardeau that sounds huge," she said, "but for a room like that in a house like that it's a pittance. People who got to put things in the room cut their price. I didn't get paid; I was doing it for the publicity."

Publicity has its value. The mural artist charged $2,000 for work that normally would have cost $10,000, she said. If she'd had to pay regular price for everything that went into that bedroom, including her fee, the cost would have been doubled, she said.

"It's exciting for a kid from Cape Girardeau," she said.

DeBoe said she never dreamed she would have the kind of success she is enjoying as a designer with a clientele in Florida and the Bahamas. She said she grew up with an interest in design and can remember when she and her best friend Rita Vandivort were about 7 or 8 years old and would rake sugar maple leaves in the fall in the Vandivorts' yard at the corner of North and Sprigg streets. Rita raked her leaves into piles.

"I raked them into floor plans, and would say 'that's the bedroom, that's the kitchen,'" she said. "I would tell her, 'now you can play in your bedroom.'"

DeBoe said she has designed in the traditional style for homes in the Washington, D.C. area, has created tropical themes in Florida and the Bahamas, and created a created a setting for the owner of a high-end Cuban cigar company that is reminiscent of Cuba.

DeBoe said her own home is eclectic, incorporating pieces from her childhood bedroom, furniture of her own design, her grandfather's trunk, and things she has picked up over the years that appeal to her.

She prides herself, she said, on getting to know her clients so well that their own taste and no trademark of her own is reflected in their home.

"When I leave there, they still have to live there, and I want them to be comfortable in it," she said.

The daughter of Judge William S. Rader and Birdie Rader, she graduated from Central High School, and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas. She furthered her studies in interior design in Maryland, and worked for a while in the Washington, D.C. area. She is member and past-president of the Florida South Chapter of the American Society of Interior Design., and has won many awards. Her husband, Thomas DeBoe, owner of a finance company, is also a Cape Girardeau native. They have a son, Bill, 27.

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160