Tracee and Mikey V. are eliminated on HGTV’s Design Star
Watching the previews of HGTV’s Design Star this week you would think that the “dramatic” double elimination was a surprise to the contestants. In fact it was not. Clive tells them right at the beginning of the challenge that two people will be eliminated. You’ve just got to love the drama that these shows try to drum up when they have their previews and commercials.
This week’s challenge was the kitchen challenge and in the previous two seasons of the show it was not completed. That was foremost in the minds of the remaining five designers. They were given a budget of $10,000, a gift card from Sears to purchase appliances, and 24 work hours over three days to complete the task. They would be making over the kitchen of a local family.
As luck or fate would have it, the least liked person of the group Tracee got the paint can with the star so she was named team leader. She didn’t do the best job of it. Trish and Mikey V. had some major problems with her leadership style. In fact with two hours elapsed on day 1 there still were not many decisions made.
A small problem happened at the beginning of the challenge. Trish had hurt her finger during the first challenge and now it was so swollen that her wedding ring was stuck. They guys tried to get it off earlier that day with no success so the fire department was called to cut it off. During judging Tracee tried to use this to shift blame from her to Trish, but Vern said to her that you were only down one person for a few minutes and that didn’t excuse the failings of her and the team.
Tracee spent the majority of day 2 shopping and this was a problem when it came to the tile backsplash. She wanted to do tile while Mikey V. said he would do it as long as there was time to finish. She (Tracee) had penciled out a time line that had Mikey completing the tile by 6:00 or something like that. Tracee bought the tile first and instead of going back to drop it off she continued to shop. She said that no one told her she should have dropped it off but the judges said that wasn’t an excuse – you made up the timeline so you should have realized that you needed to get it back to the job site.
The judges hated the kitchen, saying it was one of the most boring kitchens they had ever seen and that there was no design at all involved. Tracee tried to say that she wanted the design to come through the accessories but the judges called that cliché.
Tracee was eliminated right away and then the remaining four were judged. Since there was no design at all done the judges had to make their decision based on the hosting portion of the challenge. Again Trish and Jennifer did really well so they were saved. Mikey V. never really warmed up to the camera and didn’t make eye contact while Matt was informative but very monotone. In the end the judges sent Mikey V. home.
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