Making room for new look

Indulata Prasad

The “Designers’ Challenge” for Leslie Barish was to transform a room

and office space into a hotel suite -- replete with the Tuscany sort

of feel -- comfortable, inviting and elegant. The catch for the

interior designer was that all this had to be achieved within a

$25,000 budget.

Barish, owner of Design Consultants in Costa Mesa, not only won

the challenge but was also successful in creating the “Tuscany

Suite,” which Kirk and Susan Kennedy of Huntington Beach, until

recently, only had dreamt of. The tape showcasing the entire project

will be aired on HGTV Home & Garden Television at 9:30 p.m. Thursday.

The show, “Designers’ Challenge,” is a weekly half-hour series that

chronicles a homeowner’s pick among three room-renovation plans

designed for that homeowner.

The Kennedys added on an additional bedroom and office space

upstairs four years ago. They painted the whole room white and moved

the old furniture upstairs. The couple wanted to accomplish the

Tuscany look -- known for its rustic, warm and inviting feel -- for

the additional bedroom and office space upstairs similar to the look

they had created downstairs.

“We decided on the theme we wanted, but we did not how to do it,

so we needed someone to help us,” Kirk Kennedy said. “It was so white

in there. When I walked into the room, I had to put on sunglasses.”

It was in June last year that the Kennedys e-mailed HGTV and

applied for home-makeover help. They got a response immediately. And

after a couple of interviews with the show’s producers, they were

selected for the makeover project.

The program has three designers each make a presentation on how

they intend to go about the project. The homeowners then select one

out of the three. The designers have to adhere to the project budget

of $25,000.

Barish competed against designers from San Francisco and Chicago.

Each could have as many discussions as they wanted with the Kennedys

to get a feel of what the clients wanted.

The Kennedys had a week to decide which design appealed to them.

It took them little more than an hour to pick Barish’s design.

“I think it was something that appealed to our taste, and we felt

we could live with it for quite long time,” Susan Kennedy said.