Davis didn't say this too emphatically, of course. That's left to the homeowners, whose gut reactions to the renovations climax each show. Davis, upbeat as a Welcome Wagon lady, is quick to comfort when styles collide. "I do feel for the neighbors when they don't like the room," says Davis. "But you've got to really just not care."
Easier said than done. In one memorable moment a Maryland couple returned to their bedroom to find it redone with a gold ceiling, a gold-woven lace runner on the bed and even a little gurgling water fountain. When the wife opened her eyes, "she didn't like anything," says Davis. "'It's Egyptian-looking...That's something that will be gone...It's not what I would have done.'" Before the wife finally yelled for the cameras to be shut off, Davis did her sensible best. "I always encourage people to live with it," she says. "Live with it a little."
Born in Philadelphia, Davis, 32, probably would rather bring down a house than fix up its rooms. An old-fashioned stage ingenue—after studying dance at Southern Methodist University, she understudied Chita Rivera and Marilu Henner in the tour of Chicago—Davis met her husband, Patrick Page, 40, when she played Babette the feather duster to his Lumiere the candelabra in the road production of Beauty and the Beast in 1995.
Apart from red velvet drapes, Davis's own tastes in the couple's Manhattan apartment aren't so dramatic. If she ever redecorates, though, Spaces will influence the space. "The show," she says, "has given me the courage to be bolder." But one thing still gives her butterflies. "If you were to ask me to trade spaces," she says, "I would say, 'Hell, no!'"
Tom Gliatto
Jennifer Wren in New York City
- Contributors:
- Jennifer Wren.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
