In Sean and Elaine Perkins’ living room, the Redskins game was on, and four or five men and women sat watching.
Upstairs, in the Perkins’ bedroom, Torrey and Cheryl Hairston were painting the walls a new shade of gray. The Perkins, meanwhile, were across the street in the Hairstons’ house, getting ready to coat the walls with graffiti.
The two couples, neighbors on 1st Road South, were the Arlington stop for "Trading Spaces," the runaway hit produced by The Learning Channel, based in Bethesda. The show puts two interior designers in charge of remaking one room each in participants’ houses. The episode filmed in Arlington should air on Nov. 2 on the cable channel.
The popularity of the show drew crowds of spectators to a taping in Loudoun County, and even brought crowds to tiny 1st Road on Saturday, as the crew prepared to tape the show.
But the neighborhood was fairly quiet as the Perkins and Hairstons got down to the real work on Sunday and Monday. Their yards became encampments for TV crews, with crates and tents scattered here and there.
In the Hairstons’ front yard, Ty Pennington, one of two master carpenters for "Trading Spaces," cut sheets of wood and Plexiglas to spec for designers Doug Wilson and Hilda Santo-Tomas. In front of the house, crew members scurried in and out of the "Trading Spaces" production trailer.
It came as something as a surprise to see all the activity, said neighbor Louise Wyndham. "I saw something about it in the newspaper, and then the next thing I knew I saw folks driving up," she said. "I wondered, ‘What the heck’s going on?’"
<b>GETTING ON "TRADING</b> Spaces" came as something as a surprise to Cheryl and Torrey Hairston, too. Cheryl, a meeting manager for a local training organization, sent in their application last October. After months with no response, they had more or less forgotten about it, she said.
"I love the show, and I thought it was so popular, we’d never get selected," she said.
Across the street, Elaine Perkins, seven months pregnant, said she felt the same. "I didn’t think it was going to happen," she said. "We sent in the application before I was pregnant."
But producers called in July to say they would be coming in September, surprising everyone. "We had started moving things around in our bedroom," Cheryl Hairston said. That also meant she could cope with changing things after "Trading Spaces" left. "If we don’t like it, we don’t like it. We can change," she said.
As she spoke, Cheryl was repainting the walls of her neighbors’ bedroom, and wasn’t sure how they would feel about it. Neither couple would see their own bedroom until Monday night, when the producers reveal the redesigns. Until then, they were staying in each other’s guest bedrooms.
"We’re really transforming the room," said Torrey Hairston, a membership director for an aviation association. They would go on to create a frame for the bed, modeled on a picture frame, designer Doug Wilson said.
But Cheryl thought it might not be an entirely welcome metamorphosis. "I don’t think they’ll like it. What they wanted was something warm," she said. "This is a little too warm, deep colors, heavy fabrics."
Wilson said it’s fine for neighbors to disagree with him, but that wouldn’t change the design. "I have the reputation of being a bad boy," he said, twirling a pair of scissors on one finger. "Then I can shake things up. I’m going to push the envelope, give you something you never thought you’d dream of."
That led to some run-ins, Cheryl said. "I’m a smartass. It’s my nature. Doug and I did banter," she said. "He is tough, but I’m a little spitfire myself."
<b>ACROSS THE STREET,</b> in Cheryl Hairston’s house, Elaine Perkins had similar reservations. Designer Santo-Tomas had designed the bedroom around the theme of a box from Tiffany’s. That meant painting the walls baby blue, with white graffiti serving as a ribbon.
Sean Perkins was up until 2 a.m. Monday putting that white ribbon on the walls, his wife said, and she wasn’t sure how her neighbors would take it. "I would describe it as Keith Haring meets Tiffany’s," said Elaine.
Santo-Tomas frowned at the description – "I suppose," she said.
The Perkins and Hairstons were happy to go into the adventure with each other, because they thought that meant their homes were safe.
"We love all our neighbors," Cheryl said. "But a lot of them are pretty wacky. Sean and Elaine are the most conservative."
She might have to reconsider that opinion, Elaine said. "Wait ‘til they see their room," she said. "I think we were both thinking we were pretty conservative."
Those are the surprises that have drawn people to the show.
"Last May, something happened, and it started morphing," said publicist Tara Playfair. "We used to get 75-100 applications a week. Now it’s 300-400."
That’s why it took so long to get back to the Hairstons and the Perkins, she said. They had to weed through all the applications, and they had to find out when the show would be in Arlington.