The modifications to the house or garden have to be completed before an unsuspecting owner gets home. The idea is to show the viewer just what can be achieved in one weekend with nothing more than a few hundred quid, a brace of experts, a couple of television researchers, and the chance to scrap it if it all goes wrong. Transformation rather than evolution is the name of this game. This is not about living with one or two considered pieces of furniture and then deciding what you'd like to add - the way most of us actually live. In Changing Rooms , things are stapled, tacked and glued over the top of existing materials.
Paint is sloshed on without stripping the wallpaper.
The end result looks swanky but must feel odd to live with, akin to inhabiting a stage set. Two weeks later, surely the new layers begin to fray and shed. The format poses particular problems as soon as you step into the garden. According to the self-imposed rules of Ground Force, there is no time to water a plant, let alone watch it grow. With the wiping out of time and history comes a flattening of social context.