A couple who spent $1 million (£522,000) refurbishing their house have been chastised for opting to decorate their living room in all-white despite having a kid.
Nina, an interior designer, and her husband Trent appeared on the most recent episode of Grand Designs Transformation, an Australian spin-off series of the popular show.
The pair, who own a $3.2 million (£1,672,000) mansion on Sydney’s northern beaches, wished to transform their place into a trendy pad complete with handmade marble furnishings.
The five-month restoration brought various opulent amenities to their 1980s four-bedroom house, such as a handmade white marble island kitchen bench and an outdoor bath.
But it was their all-white living room, complete with a white bouclé sofa and a white bamboo silk rug, that left both the hosts and the spectators puzzled.
For co-host Yasmine Ghoniem, the couple’s small son, Harley, was the most obvious defect and risk to the all-white environment.
‘I’m just imagining Harley with spaghetti and grubby fingers,’ she told them.
Trent then acknowledged to agreeing and having a ‘worry’ in the back of his mind.
After taking a tour of the completed house, Yasmine stated that the room may be perceived as more ‘gallery-like’ rather than fostering ‘family life’.
However, Nina said that the facility could be utilised for both since they had ‘quite strong standards’ in place.
‘There are no liquids. Cheese and crackers [are] basically all that’s allowed in this room,’ she said laughing.
Despite this, the interior design decision had already caused them problems following a ‘incident’ involving Harley’s creative endeavours.
‘We had a drawing on the rug incident with crayons,’ he shared, adding the crayons were ‘all colours of the rainbow’.
He added: ‘It really was a work of art, just in the wrong place.’
However, the coffee table became popular with Harley, who supposedly enjoyed ‘jumping’ on it, but there were no worries about him breaking the marble because it was ‘nice and solid’.
As usual, people watching at home flocked to social media to express their impressions.
‘How they ruined something perfectly good. All that horrific, monolithic marble. And the unusable room…the couch didn’t even look comfy, just stylish,’ one person posted on a Facebook group dedicated to discussions about the series, as reported by News.com.au.
‘Over the top! … I had to laugh when they talked about the child drawing all over the plush white carpet,’ someone else shared.
Another added: ‘Try telling your guests you can’t take a glass of wine into the living room (including placing it on the marble coffee table), but cheese [and] crackers is fine. Eye roll.’
Meanwhile, someone person stated that they would rapidly weary of continuously instructing their own children not to enter the living room.
On Twitter, the takeaways were not much better.
‘Grand Designs Transformations is Grand Disasters. People with $1m to spend on marble and zero imagination should be banned from renovating. Yikes,’ Kathy Franco wrote.
Jane F stated the house was ‘tasteless’ and turned off the show.
Another, Heidi, said she was ‘sick of rich people doing wasteful’ stuff after seeing a ‘perfectly good building’ being pulled apart and then ‘stuffed full of marble’.
When asked by the hosts if they would do anything differently in the renovation, the couple admitted they would have instead purchased a rug that ‘cleaned slightly better’.
Grand Designs Transformations airs on ABC in Australia.
Source My Celebrity Life.