ann maurice - interior rivalry 2

ann maurice – interior rivalry (8/8)
20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor, is on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager, with a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake. Assisting Ann on her search is interior-design expert Gordon Whistance. In the last episode of the series, the two remaining contestants must home-stage an entire house before one of them is declared the winner.

As they face their last challenge, the two finalists, Rolf and Kate, have just five days and a budget of £5,000 to re-stage an entire house. Aiming to add value to the property, the contestants will have the help of two carpenters, a painter-decorator, and a former contestant of their choosing. “I’m going to be expecting a lot from the final two contestants,” Ann explains. “This is going to test all their skills: not only their aesthetic sense, but also their management sense.”

Kate’s property is a £345,000 house in Haringey, North London. Ann thinks that Kate will need to be more assertive: “She’s very young and quite softly spoken. She’s going to have to take charge,” she says. Arriving at the house, Kate finds a home full of clashing colours and painted ceilings. “Everything’s fighting against each other,” she says. Her team will have their work cut out re-painting the entire house with the necessary three coats.

ann maurice – interior rivalry (7/8)
20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor with the flair to make any room shine, is once more on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager, with a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake. Assisting Ann on her search are interior-design expert Gordon Whistance and special guest Duncan Bannatyne. The four remaining contestants battle for a place in the final this week as they have to pitch their home staging ideas to a real client.

Ann and Gordon invite the participants to the local cinema to practise their home-staging pitches. Each competitor is shown a picture of a room on the big screen and has to tell Ann and Gordon what changes they would make. This must be done with care as the home owner will have an emotional attachment to the things that they wish to change. “This is an exercise in tact and diplomacy,” Gordon says. “You’ve got to make everything that’s negative a positive.”

In the event, only Kate passes the test, with a “very impressive” presentation. Ann decides that the home stagers need more practice before they face a real client, so she arranges for them to see a flat owned by a business associate of Duncan Bannatyne. The £1.3m apartment on the Thames has been on the market for over a year without any offers. Duncan explains the challenge: “I’m looking to see if you can express exactly what needs to change to make this a more saleable item.”

Thursday 26 April
ann maurice – interior rivalry (6/8) 20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor with the flair to make any room shine, is once more on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager, with a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake. Assisting Ann on her search is interior-design expert Gordon Whistance. In this week’s episode, the five remaining contestants must make a business pitch to a pair of estate agents, before home staging the ground floors of two houses in less than a day.

This week’s challenge is about the fledgling home stagers learning to do business. Ann has arranged for the participants to make a pitch to two top estate agents in order to practise their business skills. She creates two teams: Kate and Rolf, and Neal, Liza and Jayne, each of whom have only three hours to come up with a business name and identity. They will then meet graphic designers who will turn their ideas into promotional material.

Kate and Rolf hit upon the company name of ‘Revive’ and decide upon a bold black and white colour scheme. The second group choose ‘Selling Solutions’ for their name – but their graphic designer is nonplussed. “It doesn’t quite tell me what you do,” he says. In the end they settle on ‘Staging Solutions’, with a reserved colour palette.

ann maurice – interior rivalry (5/8)
20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor with the flair to make any room shine, is once more on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager. With a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake, Ann has no time for half-heartedness. Assisting her on her search is interior-design expert Gordon Whistance. Tonight’s programme sees the contestants transform three kitchens for a magazine shoot.

It is week five of the competition and the pressure is building for the six remaining hopefuls as they head to the offices of Real Homes magazine. Ann and magazine editor Lisa McFarlane set the contestants their most difficult challenge to date: each team must refurbish a reader’s kitchen for a double-page spread in the magazine. Sticking to a budget of £600, the teams have just four days to complete the task. “This is a fabulous opportunity for the contestants,” explains Ann. “It’s free publicity, so they had better do a good job!”

ann maurice – interior rivalry
(4/8) 20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor with the flair to make any room shine, is once more on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager. With a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake, Ann has no time for half-heartedness. Assisting her on her search is interior-design expert Gordon Whistance, and special guest Duncan Bannatyne. Tonight’s programme sees the eight contestants become just six as two are eliminated.

It is week four of the competition and all the remaining contestants are under extreme pressure to redeem themselves after last week’s failure to impress. For their fourth challenge, the would-be designers head to Princess Park Manor –a Victorian renovation in North London containing a number of expensive, luxury apartments.

With the intention of testing their high-end homestaging skills, Ann splits her apprentices into two teams and assigns each a show flat. The teams have three days, £500 and as much rental furniture as they need to redesign their flats. On the fourth day, they will run stalls at the Ideal Home Exhibition to promote sales interest in the flats, and impress guest judge Duncan Bannatyne. The show flats are currently empty, and Ann is keen to see how the students cope with such freedom. “A blank canvas can actually be more challenging,” she explains. “You’ve got no starting point.”

Ann Maurice – interior rivalry (3/8) Thursday 5 April: 20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor with the flair to make any room shine, is once more on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager. With a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake, Ann has no time for half-heartedness. Assisting her on her search is interior-design expert Gordon Whistance. Tonight the contestants face the double challenge of making over a bathroom and a bedroom, two of the most critical spaces in a house.

For the third week’s challenge, the eight remaining participants are divided into three teams: Jayne, Neal and Rolf; Dani, Kate and Jennifer; and Rachel and Liza. Each team will have three days to breathe new life into a bathroom and bedroom, with a budget of £700 and just one handyman to help.

The first team – Jayne, Neal and Rolf – are tasked with a small but horrendously masculine bedroom, painted a deep shade of purple and complete with horns over the bed. Their bathroom is in a terrible state of repair and includes the unusual feature of a plant growing through the window. But the team are slow to decide on their plan, and Rolf is soon exasperated with his team mates.

ann maurice – interior rivalry 2 (2/8)
20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor with the flair to make any room shine, is once more on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager. With a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake, Ann has no time for half-heartedness. Assisting her on her search are interior-design expert Gordon Whistance and business tycoon Duncan Bannatyne. Tonight, the remaining contestants are faced with the difficult challenge of turning a negative into a positive.

It’s week two for the prospective home-stagers. With contestant Nigel having to drop out of the competition for health reasons, Ann puts the remaining nine into three teams: Joe, Jennifer and Rolf; Rachel, Jayne and Dani; and Liza, Kate and Neal. Each team is given two days and £400 to make over a room – and the room will contain a bad feature that they can change but not remove. Each team is going to have to do their best to show what they can do, since at the end of this challenge, one person is going home.

ann maurice – interior rivalry 2 (1/8) 20.00–21.00

Ann Maurice, the no-nonsense House Doctor with the flair to make any room shine, is once more on the hunt for Britain’s best home-stager. With a prize worth more than £50,000 at stake, Ann has no time for half-heartedness. Assisting her on her search are interior-design expert Gordon Whistance, while business tycoon Duncan Bannatyne lends his expertise later in the series.

In this first programme we meet the 12 lucky finalists who have been selected from the initial applicants. Ann divides them into teams of four and each team have 22 hours and just £450 to make over a living room. Every room has its own distinct challenges, and Ann and Gordon have a clear idea of what type of changes they expect.

Team one, who will be tackling a room in Willesden, are operations manager Liza, PA Dani, teacher Jayne and artist Rolf. Even before their room has been cleared of its old-fashioned grey suite and other furniture, the team’s three alpha females are clashing over matters of taste. Liza and Jayne in particular do not see eye to eye. “I wish she’d shut her big gob for five minutes and let someone else get a word in edgeways,” says Jayne. What the whole team does agree on is that they cannot afford to replace both the dated suite and the ugly carpet. They reluctantly opt to keep the suite, so will have to rely on a clever layout to make the best use of their space.