I Hate You, HGTV.

People ask me how it feels to have my childhood story open to criticism by the masses.  The answer is, not always great.  But, I did sign up for it.  I expected it.  And just like every other working person in the world, who has to deal with snarky comments from the boss and nausea-inducing annual evaluations, I consider it part of the job.  That doesn’t mean I like it, but I endure it because it’s only a small part of my life.  I can go home at the end of the day. 

Sweet, soothing, forgiving home, where I won’t be critiqued, nitpicked, or annoyed. 

Oh, that used to be my home.  Until my home went on the market. 

My husband and I were among the fortunate group that didn’t have to go on the market during the mean season.  We did it voluntarily, just to see what we could get for it.  We thought it would be “fun,” an ”adventure,” and ideally, a chance to move out and build the dream house we’d always hoped to design together.  I recall uttering the phrase “What do we have to lose?”

[Note to myself as a writer:  Since when has that phrase ever foreshadowed anything good?]

In this case, the answer was our self-esteems.  For, never in our born days did my husband and I envision the soulless, all-knowing, all-righteous, meancing BULLY that is today’s homebuyer.  Swooned by the lure of ”taking a chance” like poor Charlize Theron in The Devil’s Advocate, we happily signed over permission to let these beasts into our home.  Such hopes we had!  Such dreamy visions of groundbreaking and pretty new blue floorplans danced in our heads!  We invited them to wipe off on our welcome mat, not even noticing the cloven hooves. 

After all: WHAT DID WE HAVE TO LOSE?  [Please, those of you who believe in God, instruct your churches to dip you three times in boiling oil and drive a stake through your heart the next time you utter that phrase.]

Overnight, the home we loved and nourished for years became (according to prospective buyers) this horrible shell of a shack that needed different paint, different carpets, different stain on the hardwood floors, different layout, different landscaping, different photography on the walls, different parking arrangement, this-and-that wall knocked out, different granite, a litter on which the prosepctive homebuyer could be carried from room to room while eating grapes, a ceiling fan, a ceiling fan removal, different block, different furniture (yes, someone criticized the size of the bed we received as a wedding gift), different trees, different lighting.  Oh, and the services of a “stager” — a person whose job is, as near as I can tell, to make it appear that a homeowner does not have any possessions, save a single orchid in a vase and a bowl of pinecones.  

Any day now, I expect T-Shirts to come out saying “Homebuying, Summer 2008.  It’s not just a privilege, it’s an attitude.”                

If you ask me, HGTV is to blame for the universal spike in our nation’s home architectural and decor experts.  (Have the nation’s top art history professors heard about it, by the way?  Cause it’s a total, total renaissance.  Just ask one of the multiple fine individuals in cut-offs and Crocks with Slushy stains on their shirts, who stopped by to enjoy our Open House air-conditioning, made it clear that they had no intention of buying, but gave us free household styling and beauty advice.)  

It’s bad enough that they’ve figured out how to air the exact same television show in every time slot, 24-7.  (We get it; it’s a room redo.  Whether you call it Make This Space, Sell This Space, Trade This Space, New House, Old Nest, Trick My TeePee, Freshen Your Brothel, it’s the same show.)  It’s so frequent, and apparently so cheap and easy, that anyone can do design!  Anyone can teach it!  Just like designing a dress on Project Runway!  Or writing a book.  Anyone and everyone can be a critic!  The process is easy:

1.  Just watch five or six episodes of your choice.

2.  Pick up your golden ticket lender approval letter.

3.  Wave it in every home seller’s face as if it’s an entitlement to the crown.

4.  And finally, make Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory look like the poster child for graciousness. Nothing’s too good for you, sweetcheeks, so feel free to hint that you’ll consider buying if they’ll replace those “horrible” granite countertops with the quartz ones. No one should expect you to sit on one of those common plastic toilet seats either, when you hear that they actually make gold-plated ones. Point out the fact that you don’t like the current homeowner’s dress in her wedding photos (Or, if you do like it, why not demand the dress itself in the purchase? Same goes for that adorable infant you saw in the photo upstairs!) And don’t forget to demand at least fifty grand off the asking price (well, maybe forty, if you want the dress), just because you can.        

After all, these aren’t peoples’ homes you’re criticizing, they’re “projects!” That cute hunk carpenter they always have on air could show up in a flash and do any sort of “project” for free (didn’t these style-less home sellers know that?)  And don’t you just love that word, “project.”  So full of potential — potential input, potential rudeness, potentially getting a big footprint on your rear end as you leave my house.

Weren’t going to buy it anyway?  Fine.  You can share your reasons for not doing so once you get within the confines of your own home.  Unless, of course, Rate My Space is on.     

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