Daphney Massey recently realized a few truths — such as that two women can move refrigerators and king-sized mattresses up and down stairs by themselves if they put their minds to it.
The Vernon, Alabama, native, now living in Birmingham, is teamed with her close friend, Lucy Farmer, on HGTV’s new reality show “Beach Flip.” On the program, four teams of two people each compete as they renovate outdated beach houses on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Each team gets a $40,000 budget and eight weeks to get the job done. The grand prize is $50,000 and a feature spread in HGTV magazine for the team judged to have added the most appraised value to their project.
The show, which has four episodes remaining, airs on HGTV Sundays at 8 p.m. CST. Each episode features the renovation of a different room in the teams’ beachfront properties. Judges award weekly prizes.
Massey, a real estate agent, and Farmer, a home and jewelry designer in Birmingham, have been friends since their freshman year at the University of North Alabama. After attending an open casting call in Atlanta in 2014, they kept receiving call-backs. Word came in December that they had been chosen for the show. The hitch? They would have to leave their families and careers for seven weeks and live in a house with six strangers.
“That was probably the hardest thing, being away,” Massey said in a phone interview Wednesday. For seven weeks in February and March, their world consisted of a two-mile stretch between the cast house they stayed in and the house they had to transform. “We did not go outside those two miles,” said the mother of seven. Cameras followed them from the minute they woke until the time they went to bed.
Since filming wrapped in the spring, Massey and Farmer have had to patiently wait for episodes to air. They are, of course, forbidden to divulge the end results. Two highlights, however, have already aired: They won the first episode’s master bedroom challenge and also came out on top in last week’s midway appraisal.
“Lucy and I watched the first two episodes together, and episodes three and four we watched with our families at home,” said Massey. Her 4-year-old, Lila, has even begun coming up with her own “Beach Flip” room designs.
Naturally, Massey’s parents, Jerry and Judy George of Vernon, don’t miss an episode.
“We’re glued to the TV on Sunday nights,” said Judy George. “I think, ‘Wow, they’re dynamic; they are sure of themselves.’ … They really complement each other.”
Designing women
Massey and Farmer both have some experience in design, building and remodeling, but “Beach Flip” put their brute strength to the test. The experience could have been called “Survivor HGTV,” joked Massey. Almost anything they chose to do in their renovations, they had to do themselves, with no assistance from the show’s crew. While the other three teams each had a man as one of the partners, the two Birmingham women persevered on their own.
“The decorating part was easy; the challenging part was the construction end,” Massey said. “I never want to scrape another popcorn ceiling; I never want to scrape another piece of tile … but I know I could.”
The friends relied on humor to get them through. They even earned the nickname “Laphne” on the show, a combination of their names, but also a nod to their frequent laughter. Sometimes that was all that kept them “sane” in pressure cooker situations. They learned they could push themselves farther than they ever imagined.
The show was an experience of a lifetime, Massey said.
“Going into it we thought, are we crazy, leaving our families and jobs for seven weeks? But in the end, we kind of had that Thelma and Louise attitude. We just said we’re not going to fail, we’re just going to have to figure it out.”
Jan Swoope is the Lifestyles Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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