Two Residence Hall Rooms on Lincoln Park Campus Get a Makeover on TLC Network Broadcast

College residence hall rooms vary widely from campus to campus. Some are barely larger than a closet, with cold cinder-block walls and a utilitarian tile floors. Some newer facilities have more amenities and creature comforts, but still remain somewhat spartan. However, residence hall rooms are almost never at the cutting edge of interior design.

That will change this Wednesday night, Aug. 10, when two rooms at DePaul University’s Belden-Racine Hall that were given a facelift by a nationally-renowned interior designer are unveiled on national television. The makeover was filmed on the Lincoln Park Campus for an episode of the popular TLC Network show "While You Were Out." The episode is scheduled to air at 7 p.m. Chicago time.

The show features participants surprising their roommates or family members by re-designing one room of their home in two days. The roommates and family members are sent away with the help of an accomplice during the two days, usually with a cover story of a weekend vacation or an event like a bachelorette party. Upon their return, they are surprised by the new room design and the plot of the show is revealed. Seeking to do a special college episode of the show, TLC selected DePaul for the setting, and chose to give a stylish new look to connecting double rooms occupied by Holly Tworkowski, a DePaul junior from Bloomington, Ind.

Filming was completed over a two-day period in May, and the immediate area around Belden-Racine Hall, 2311 N. Racine Ave., was transformed into a working television studio for 48 hours. During the shoot, three study lounges were converted into craft project and sewing work areas, a computer lab doubled as a storage area for cameras and lighting rigs, and a vacant room in the hall was turned into a make-up and catering area for cast and crew. Also, the show’s signature logo-emblazoned trailer, seen at the beginning and end of every episode, was parked in an alley just north of the hall, and the temporary carpentry tent was set up in an adjacent loading dock. All of this was done while the crew attempted to keep disruptions to a minimum, with classes still in session heading into the final weeks of the spring quarter. The crew also filmed the show’s host, Evan Farmer, designer Chayse Dacoda and carpenter Andrew Dan-Jumbo at various locations on the Lincoln Park Campus, including Richardson Library and the Quad.

"This was a great opportunity to showcase our campus and the ingenuity of our students," said Lauren Schielke, manager of marketing and communications for housing services at DePaul. "The residents in the hall really got behind the students participating and made it a fun experience for everyone involved."

Tworkowski worked with the show’s three stars to create a chic new look for the two bedrooms of the quad room, working furiously on craft projects, sewing decorative fabrics and using power tools in the carpentry area to build new shelving units, among other tasks. Her three roommates, DePaul juniors Lindsay Edling and Jessica Foote of Geneva, Ill., and Joanna Vavouliotis of Morton Grove, Ill., arrived home to a stunning and high-fashion re-design of their living quarters.

In conjunction with the episode, a photo spread of the finished rooms is slated to be featured in the September issue of Seventeen Magazine, due to hit newsstands later this week.

The episode is scheduled to re-air at 10 p.m. Wednesday night and again at 10 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 14 and 4 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 19.