Frank Bielec doesn’t look like anyone’s version of a cable-television phenomenon. Wearing loud print shirts and a mischievous grin set on a round, bespectacled face amid a close-trimmed white beard, he looks a bit like ol’ Saint Nick on summer vacation. He’s from Texas, but his voice and mannerisms are boisterous and flamboyant, and if you didn’t know he was married you might figure him for a bit of a queen. He has an art degree and has done a little of everything: taught elementary school, worked as a florist, hosted a decorating show on TNN called Your Home Studio. He gets really excited talking about beads; he’s an old arts-and-crafts type of guy, and his main concern is his wife’s business, a down-home needlework-pattern company called Mosey ’n Me. One thing he’s never really been is a professional interior designer, and yet as it happens, he’s one of the reasons that being an interior designer is cooler than it’s ever been.
Bielec, who will lend his gravitas to next weekend’s New England Home Show, is one of the featured designers on Trading Spaces, a Saturday-night series on TLC that’s transformed the do-it-yourself home-improvement shows of old into a dramatic, game-show spectacle. The formula is absurdly simple: two friendly couples agree to redesign one room in each other’s home. The show provides a perky host (Paige Davis, a former member of the touring company of Beauty and the Beast), a pair of designers (drawn from a pool of a half-dozen, each with his or her own signature quirks and pratfalls), and a photogenic carpenter (either the smart-ass, skate-punkish Ty Pennington, or the sweetly tomboyish Amy Wynn Pastor). The rules: each team has only 48 hours and can spend no more than $1000. The catch is that neither couple has any say in what goes on in their own house.
As a programming phenomenon, Trading Spaces has done for interior design what Antiques Roadshow did for flea markets, or what Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? did for quiz shows. It has spawned a cult of ravenous viewers, and inspired a rash of knock-offs — including MTV’s Crib Crashers, in which pop-music stars redesign fans’ rooms. A behind-the-scenes DVD is scheduled for March release; already, each of the first two seasons has been released on video. There’s also what you might call a greatest-hits series called They Hated It! culled from the juiciest episodes, in which homeowners are reduced to tears.
They Hated It! explains a crucial part of the show’s allure: as with pro-wrestling stars, the designers on Trading Spaces are essentially either good guys or bad guys. In an online poll ranking viewers’ favorite Trading Spaces designers, the friendly, always-tasteful golden boy Vern Yip trounces all comers (Bielec is a distant second); but one suspects that the reason people keep watching is to see what the evil Hilda Santo-Tomas, who has been known to wallpaper a room with hay, will do next.
On the phone from a Nashville hotel where Mosey ’n Me is holding an annual convention for craft-shop buyers ( " You’d think it’s all these sweet old ladies, " he says, " but they’re all June Cleavers in leather panties " ), Bielec is a bit on the defensive. He’s been pigeonholed as the series’ Wild West gunslinger, and at least one critic has called him a " kitschy country bumpkin. " It’s true he has a propensity for whimsy when it comes to color, and his handmade folk-art touches (a headboard in the shape of giant red lips becomes the mouth of a wall-size smiley face, for instance) don’t play by anyone’s design-school book. " I’m not just French Country, " he says. " I get called ‘the chicken guy’ a lot, but I only ever did one chicken. "
Although he’s clearly the show’s resident wild card and free spirit, Bielec refuses to trash-talk about his fellow designers: " To me the purist is Hildy, " he says. " She has her vision and she goes for it. It always amazes me that people think Doug [Wilson] is a bad boy. People say he doesn’t listen to the homeowners. He does listen, he just doesn’t interpret things the same way. "
Bielec seems unlikely to profit much from the show’s success. Mosey ’n Me has a modest, low-tech Web site, but you can’t buy anything on it; there used to be a link to an antique shop that sold his paintings, but he sold them all and has no immediate plans for more. ( " They’re like Krispy Kreme doughnuts: when they’re there, they’re there. " ) And while he’ll be offering up design tips at the Home Show next weekend, you certainly won’t find him saying yes to any of the numerous offers he’s had to design rooms outside of Trading Spaces. " I don’t have time to decorate my own living room, " he says. " Why should I do somebody else’s? If I get any free time, I’ll do what I’m going to do right now: my wife is ironing something, and when she’s done we’re gonna pick up a friend and go look at a bead store. "
The New England Home Show runs February 22 through March 2 at the World Trade Center on Northern Avenue, in Boston. Frank Bielec appears February 22 at noon, 3, and 6 p.m., and February 23 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Call (781) 849-0990 for more info.
BY CARLY CARIOLI
