Scenes from the Neighborhood

"Catalogue Wars" transforms ONK living room

		Above, Amy Porter on her porch surrounded by her furniture and video and audio equipment used in the 2-day shoot.

In the cold of January in Old North Knoxville you might just find a bit of April in ONK … if you look in the right place. That place is your TV. Scheduled to premiere sometime after the first of year is a new show on the Fine Living network entitled "Catalogue Wars." 

ONK residents Amy, Russ, and Chloe Porter will be on the show. For about 2 days in April, 16 people showed up to film. Not including the Porters, there was the makeup artist, Gigi - the host, 3 producers, the executive producer, 3 executives from L.A., 1 sound guy, 2 cameramen, 2 movers, a go-to guy, and another technician monitoring everything. "It was quite a circus," Amy said.

What were they fixing/repairing/adding/creating? "Basically," Amy said, "our living room. Prior to doing this show, it was cozy, but not harmoniously designed … and more importantly, not very functional." 

The Porter's living room is a fairly large room, but is challenged by what makes it architecturally attractive: 3 large windows, 3 doorways, plus a wide French door entrance to the dining room, and an extra wide mantel.

"Then there's the fact that our furniture was a collection of what each of us had left over from college days," Amy said, "plus a few random pieces more recently purchased." But there was no couch, "because we didn't have a wall left to put one against." The Porters also had hundreds of books, without enough bookshelf space, "so the excess was stacked in piles in all the corners, just waiting for our inquisitive toddler to knock over." And there was a grand piano, "which demands a bit of space, and was not where I liked it."

All this created lots of traffic patterns, with no expanse of unbroken wall, making the placement of furniture very tricky. So, this was the challenge of the show's host and crew: do a complete redesign of the living room, accomplished entirely through domestic home furnishings catalogues. In other words nothing custom made.

Part of the redesign also involved painting the room, which was done from Thursday evening into the early hours of Friday morning. The Porters wound up "enlisting several good friends willing to wield a paint brush/roller for a while. We ended up working straight through the night" in order to get the room taped, plaster cracks filled, walls primed, walls painted with 2 coats of paint, and then everything cleaned up. They finished at 4:30 a.m. That left time for "a big 2-hour nap" before the crew arrived on Friday morning for the second day of shooting.

Was the redesign a success? Was it worth it? "It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun," Amy said. "For the duration of the shoot, you definitely feel as if you signed your life away. Russ says he'd never do it again, but the blessing of our new and improved living room definitely outweighs the chaos of the process. We are very grateful for the experience, and love our room." [Editor's note: exact air times were not available when this story was written. Check your local listings.]

	Above are "before" and "after" photographs (left to right) of the left side of the living room (top row) and the right side of the living room (bottom row).  Photos furnished by Russ Porter.

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