The Property Brothers Encounter a Spectacular Bathroom Design Fail—One To Never Have in Your Own Home
HGTV
HGTV stars Jonathan and Drew Scott are always eager to please their clients when renovating a house, yet the people they meet on the latest “Property Brothers: Forever Home” throw them for a loop.
In the episode “Bright Future Ahead,” Chris and Melody in Burbank, CA, tell the brothers, with straight faces, that they want a design style they call “alien eclectic.”
You can almost hear a record scratch.
“Did you say alien eclectic?” Drew asks incredulously. “That’s a first.”
Thankfully, Chris and Melody reveal they’re just kidding—and, in reality, dig a modern farmhouse style. They also have a generous budget of $190,000 to redo their living room, family room, dining room, and kitchen.
Some awkward layout choices will be a challenge to fix, but the property brothers are up for it—and give us some great lessons for our own abodes.
A bathroom near the dining area is a terrible design fail
A hall was added between the dining room and the bathroom.HGTV
What was the builder of this house thinking? There’s a door to the bathroom right off the dining room!
“So you’re dining, you’re eating, you’re entertaining, FLUSH!” jokes Jonathan.
“This does make it feel a little awkward,” says Chris. “Especially for entertaining.”
“Nobody wants to be eating while someone’s using the restroom,” Melody adds.
The property brothers will add a small wall with a hallway behind it to give more privacy to bathroom users.
Mix woods
Mixed woodsHGTV
Down with matchy-matchy! These days it’s OK, even preferable, to mix metals and woods, as Drew explains while he walks Chris and Melody through an inspiration house for ideas on what they like.
Drew is especially fond of mixing woods for the modern rustic farmhouse style the couple prefer.
“Light woods, dark woods, midtones” all work well together, explains Drew.
The reclaimed beam they use on the mantel, over lighter wood flooring and midtoned wood furniture, is a good example of this.
It’s not all black and white
Gray and white kitchen floor tilesHGTV
Those bold, black, and white kitchen floors? The retro diner look is out, and especially won’t work here, in this modern farmhouse-style home.
But, “Melody had mentioned they do not want hardwood in the kitchen. They want tile,” Drew tells Jonathan.
“Melody was clear that she wants checkered kitchen floor tiles, so I’m thinking we do them in gray and white, and I prefer the squares,” Drew continues. “And for something a little more different, we’re setting them in a diamond pattern. It means more cuts and more material, but it looks a lot classier when it’s on a different angle.”
It might cost $3,500 for the kitchen floor, but the elevated results are certainly worth it.
Get rid of the coat tree
A pegboard wallHGTV
If your front door opens right into the living room and there’s no foyer, one of those old-fashioned coat trees can be a little awkward. Not only can they be unbalanced and fall over, but they also look a little messy.
“We’ll add pegboard storage, which will be a big improvement over the single coat tree they had before,” says Jonathan.
“This is a much better use for this space,” he continues. “They needed to have storage, they needed to have a wall where they could just hang a whole bunch of coats, somewhere to put the boots.”
Now they have a whole wall where they can hang and store things in an organized fashion.
Add a window to the front door to allow more natural light into a room
A front door with windows adds more natural light.HGTV
“This door is solid. It’s a beast,” says Jonathan as he lifts the old front door from the frame. “Really, it just needs to be sanded down, painted out. You could even add a detail to it and it would be nice, but the problem is no matter what you do to this door, it will never let the light in.”
Ah, but the new door they’ve selected will.
“The new door is beautiful because it’s got all the glass, and it’s still got the energy efficiency and the security,” says Jonathan.
It costs $2,000, but “this is going to be something that really improves their living room,” concludes Jonathan. Bonus—they will saw the old solid wood door into shelves they’ll paint and use in the family room.
Do the property brothers deliver?
Even the property brothers have their doubts, with Drew admitting, “We’re always nervous doing a design hoping that we get it right.”
But he needn’t have worried, since the couple are delighted.
“I love seeing you guys so happy in this space,” says Drew, obviously relieved.
“Oh, you really did it,” says Melody. “Everything is so comfortable. This feels like home.”
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