Paige Davis Reveals What Really Happened After the WorstTrading SpacesRoom Reveal (Yes, the One People Will Never Forget)

Mar. 15, 2025

Paige Davis (left); the controversial ‘Trading Spaces’ fireplace (right).Photo:John Nacion/WireImage; TLC

John Nacion/WireImage; TLC

Sometimes well-meaning plans go awry.

Paige Davis — who was the host of TLC’sTrading Spacesfrom 2001 to 2008 — opened up on a recent episode ofThe Jason Showabout one of the series’ most infamous episodes. In the episode, a couple, Pam and John Herrick, agreed to have their neighbors and designer Doug Wilson redo one of their home’s rooms with a $1,000 budget, as long as they didn’t touch the fireplace. They, in turn, renovated a room in their neighbor’s house.

But Davis, 55, defended the controversial redesign onThe Jason Show. “He says, ‘I don’t see anything remotely the way I left it.’ And it was really hard for me not to say, ‘Well, duh,’ ” she told host Jason Matheson. “Like that was kind of the point, for it to change. It was kind of offensive to say, ‘All I see is a lot of firewood.’ ”

Davis continued, “People at home were looking at that room and thinking, ‘This is a beautiful room.’ It was gorgeous, especially for the amount of money. And that fireplace — I don’t think it was sentimental to her, I think they just thought it was beautiful.”

The fireplace with its facade.TLC

TLC

“What Doug did to that fireplace was so much more special and rich and elevated that room in a casual way. It still flowed with the rest of the house,” she said.

Davis noted that in contracts for the show, contestants could “protect” certain things. Wilson, she said, followed the letter of the contract — since he didn’t touch any fireplace bricks — but not the spirit, since he transformed it. Davis defended him, noting the fireplace was the “main thing in the room.”

Pam, she said, was “not prepared for any change,” but she noted that the show “never redid” a room because someone didn’t like it. “She felt that she had protected the fireplace, and so she felt we had violated the contracts she had signed, which we had not, technically,” she said.

John and Pam Herrick on ‘Trading Spaces.'.TLC

Speaking toPEOPLEin 2018, Davis defended the show’s work as a whole. “So much of the time people loved it. Butsometimes they hated it!"

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“We remember those episodes because they were so rare,” she said. “They stand out. It was always tears of joy and happiness. I think if it were always that they hated it, we would have never had a successful show because people wouldn’t have signed up for it. People might have liked watching it, but there wouldn’t be anybody willing to do it.”

source: people.com