Other property makeover shows thrust glasses of champagne into the hands of shocked-looking participants as they discover what the flamboyant host has done to their homes. Not so in Neville’s Doorstep Challenge, TV3’s new television series — but those who take part don’t seem to miss the bubbly.
Lyndsey and Peter Jordan, from Enniscorthy in Co Wexford, heard about the new show on the radio and thought it was the perfect opportunity to do something about the dreary feel of the master bedroom in their bungalow.
“Because the room is so big and because we are in a bungalow, the kids have the run of the place, so it always ends up full of toys and mess,” Lyndsey says.
“I decided to try to get on the show because I thought our room was never going to be important enough for us to spend money on it — there would always be another bill to be paid.”
The Jordans have owned their home for three years and have tried their own design schemes. But with white walls and a dreary brown carpet, stencilling fleur-de-lys on the walls was never going to make much of a difference.
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“There were plenty of jokes about my stencilling with the crew afterwards,” Lyndsey says. “We never really put any thought into the interiors as such. We just painted everything white when we finished the house. Peter is more into gardening.”
Neville Knott and his team chucked out just about everything in the room, except for the couple’s bed. They used yards of flowing fabric, a luxurious carpet, subtle colours and good old-fashioned make-and-do to give the room a cool and romantic makeover.
“They asked me if there was anything we wanted to keep, because otherwise it was going. I said, ‘Definitely the bed,’ because it was the one thing we had spent a bit of money on,” Lyndsey says.
“They did a very clever thing with the panels, making upholstered cushions that slotted in. The colour of these can be easily changed if we decide to redecorate.”
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Lyndsey says she is pleased with the results. “The best thing about the change is that the room is now ‘mammy and daddy’s room’ and the girls actually ask to go into it. Beforehand, Peter and I didn’t feel like we had a private space in the house.”
Knott is best known for presenting Showhouse, a boom-time television blingfest in which interior designers were pitted against each other to kit out display homes for a new development. His latest offering is much more touchy-feely and uses a wealth of affordable fabrics. The designer has tried to give the format of makeover shows a much needed post-austerity revamp.
“You can’t expect to get an honest reaction from somebody when you give them a glass of champagne,” says Knott. “And that is genuinely what I wanted to hear from people.”
Fans of ‘doer-up’ shows may already be familiar with Doorstep Challenge, which is into its third week. For those who are not, it involves Knott taking on problem rooms in participants’ houses and transforming them over a weekend with a budget of just €1,000, provided by the show’s producer.
Upcycling and recycling are important elements, reflecting current trends. Blinds are likely to become bunting, old curtains could end up as new cushions, while furniture is more likely to get a lick of paint than to be thrown out.
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People are genuinely surprised to be in the show. They apply to take part and say which room they would like revamped, but hear nothing until Knott and his team show up on the doorstep.
“We wanted to come up with a show for the times — where there is a strict budget that has to be adhered to. We also wanted to do a show where there was no trickery. All of the improvements had to be real and had to be finished over the weekend.”
Knott says that Neville’s Doorstep Challenge also has another rule: that the participants have no say in the design and are banished from their homes while the work is taking place.
Ailbhe Garvey is a huge fan of television makeovers, and applied to get the knock on her own front door. She says: “I have to say I was a bit nervous when they showed up, but I absolutely loved it when we came back.”
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Garvey and Jonathan Duff, her husband, submitted a picture of the room they planned as the nursery for their baby daughter in their home in Crumlin, Dublin.
“The results are quite girlie, not the sort of thing I would usually go for, but it is really calming for Sophia. She loves it, especially the ceiling. That is the most important thing,” Garvey says.
In keeping with the DIY ethos of Neville’s Doorstep Challenge, each project requires a team effort to get it done in the set time. Knott says: “We have one DIY expert and we expect the production crew to muck in as well.
“We don’t want to be doing anything that anybody couldn’t do themselves, which is why Trevor is the only expert with us. Crew members are beginning to specialise. Some choose painting and others prefer sanding. It can be really hard going — 16- and 17-hour days are the norm.”
For busy single parent Ben Dunne, another participant in the show, the real “doorstep challenge” came on Tuesday night when he put the finish applied by Knott and his crew to a proper test. Adam, his 20-year-old son, had a party in the newly decorated kitchen/dining room of their house in Donabate, north Dublin.
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“The place was full of teenagers having a good time,” he says, “but this morning it was completely intact, which is a testament to the workmanship that has gone into it.
“People wonder about the quality of materials and work that goes into this kind of show, but I can honestly say it is top-class. My kitchen-diner is brighter and fresher. Although it has always been clean, it feels cleaner. The back of the house has always had a lot of light but, before this, the kitchen did not take advantage of it,” Dunne adds.
Dunne, who has two other children, Colin, 17, and Ellen, 10, lost his wife, Anna, two years ago. He applied to be on the show, asking for help with two rooms, saying the ground-floor kitchen “desperately needed updating”.
Dunne’s late wife had chosen most of the decor and had a good eye for interiors, but he felt the look belonged to a different time.
“The kitchen was a perfectly good, solid-pine kitchen. It would have been in vogue when we bought the house in 2000, but probably belongs more in a country kitchen now. I had made a start on decorating the two rooms, but finding the time was beginning to prove impossible,” he says.
For Garvey, too, a lack of time inspired her to apply to the show. “I am the DIY-er in the house. Jonathan does nothing. I had actually started on Sophia’s room, but she arrived 16 weeks early and we ended up spending most of our time in hospital. I just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to get someone else to come in and do it?’”
Knott hopes the show will inspire people. “In times like this, we need a bit of cheering up. There is so much gloom around that, if you are in a space that’s gloomy or messy, it will make you feel even worse. Doing something about that can really make a difference to how you feel, even if it is something as simple as just painting a room a different colour.
“Ever since we lived in caves, people have been trying to make their personal space their own. That is what cave drawings were all about and it makes us all feel better.”
Five years ago, could the same makeover have been done for less than €1,000? Knott says: “Yes, probably, but people just wouldn’t have done that. They would have just thrown everything out and spent a load of money.”
Neville’s Doorstep Challenge, TV3, Tuesday, 7.30pm