Ready Set Go! | Design + Build | Trading Spaces Boys Vs. Girls

One Year after Trading Spaces started, and became an overnight success, NBC approached Banyan about doing a kids version of the show, with much bigger budgets and heavily designed theme rooms. Banyan hired me early in pre- production to get the construction part of the show started. Using Trading Spaces Classic as a model, but enlarging and diversifying everything, I treated it like movie, and got a 24 ft. truck to build out like a full- on Art Department prop and set building mobile shop. The entire interior of the truck was skinned with ¾ ply and we built shelves and electrified rolling carts to act as mobile workbenches and tool storage. There would be one large mobile shop under tents in one of the houses’ driveways, and a smaller satellite shop at the other house, with “Taco” carts filled with hand tools and art supplies at each house. This allowed us to build everything onsite, and scenic paint and install it in the 48hr time period. It was a massive amount of work to get done in 2 days, but these rooms, to this day, remain some of the most amazing, satisfying “sets” I’ve ever worked on.

Credits:

Client: NBC/ Discovery Kids
Production Company: Banyan Productions
Executive Producer: Karen Solomon
Designer: Scott Sicari
Designer: Jordin Ruderman
Host: Diane Mizota
On Camera Carpenter: Ginene Licata
On Camera Carpenter: Bart Shadlow
Behind the Scenes Carpenter: Christopher Jones
Behind the Scenes Carpenter’s Assist: Jaime Weiss, Steve Yutsy-Burkey
Scenic Shop: Brendan Kilroy and Erector Sets