The recent hullaballoo over a “minimalist” home renovation with an exorbitant cost of $95,000 got a lot of people highly perplexed — that cost is way higher than the average price of renovating a four-room HDB BTO flat ($55,000).
Not to mention the apparent willingness of the homeowners to fork out the money without much grumbling, despite the interior designer hitting far beyond the initial budget of $60,000, and the fact that the completion was delayed by six weeks.
Now, adding to even more confusion, things may not be as straightforward as they seem. On the Mediacorp reality series Designer In The House, audiences were led to believe that the interior designing firm — D5 Studio Image — was just helping out a random couple who needed their new house renovated. After all, the couple said in the episode that they chose the firm’s design consultant, Sharon Ong, based on her “impressive” portfolio.
But some digging from HardwareZone forum users revealed that just maybe this may not be the case. Allegations have been made that one of the homeowners, Max, is actually an employee of D5 Studio Image and that he was totally fine with the “inflated” renovation costs because it was apparently subsidized.
Someone then tipped off Mothership about Max and his wife allegedly being pictured together with other D5 Studio Image employees during a company retreat in Bangkok. Max (or some dude who really looks like him) is apparently wearing a company t-shirt too.
What a twist, if true. But if it is indeed true, we don’t see anything unethical about it — nothing wrong with an employee of an interior design company getting his house renovated by his colleagues. Reality shows are scripted after all, and the producers of Designer In The House may have opted to get Max and his wife to act like clueless homeowners.
