“Workshop Day” – Flea Market Flip Recap #2

Yes, we were on Flea Market Flip this past Sunday.  Have you been hiding under a rock or something?  #onlyconceivableexcuse  If you’re catching up, start at our first recap of “Buy Day” here.

We did feel a little better after our first day of filming.  As hard/stressful as it was, it was now a known experience, and we had made friends on the crew and had a good time!  We also had our items and some projects that we were pretty excited about.

However, there was a gap of time for us to stew before our workshop day — and stew we did!  Would we make a fools of ourselves when confronted with real tools in the workshop?  Had Michael and Victoria bought totally awesome things for like no money, setting up our utter humiliation?

We directed all that nervous energy toward being productive.  We were tasked with thinking about our projects and picking up some supplies before workshop day, so we shopped and planned.  We also tried out some of the materials that we were planning to use, so our first experience with adhesive vinyl and chalk paint wouldn’t happen on live television.  Hence, our spoof chalk paint pumpkin and Naomi’s garage cabinet with vinyl decals!

The workshop is in Connecticut, and we drove down the day before and stayed with Sage’s friend, Lish, and her husband, baby, and dog. We tried to be friendly but were mainly just terrible house guests and went to bed early after continuing our pre-filming tradition of eating Mexican food.

The day didn’t exactly start off “easy” — Naomi got barely a little more sleep than before Buy Day, and then had a short job interview phone call that was scheduled the night before set to happen 15 minutes before our filming call time at 9:30.  We arrived at 9:14 due to traffic, and Naomi took the call while Sage stood around the corner trying not to distract her by creepily staring at her.  And then we went in at 9:30.  Stress levels were very high! (Sage’s note: Naomi got the job, so clearly she performs well under pressure.)

The workshop was amazing and huge. Michael and Victoria were already there and had claimed their workbench so we got the other one. It was great to see them again, and all of our new FMF friends! We were also relieved that our Brimfield purchases seemed to have made it intact.

It was the last workshop day to film, and people were tired, and poor Sam (our producer) was sick, but was trying to be very nice to us.  We sure needed it!

We’d gotten used to the flow of things, so it was all much easier now that we knew what to expect.  The day started with interviews and filming “intro” bits on each piece either talking to each other or to Cija or Mark (the amazing people who are responsible for anything good that happened to our pieces) about what we wanted to do for the  project.

When they let us get to work, it was very strange!  We started unscrewing hardware but it is NOT the same with a camera watching.  Suddenly you wonder, how does a screw driver even work?  What do I do with my hands?

Our plan had been to stay together, but we immediately had to split up.  There was too much to do!  There was one camera for both of us, and we had to wait for it before starting something new (like starting to sand something or making a first brush stroke).

We did get to do a few things together but mostly were working on different projects, and checking in when we could.  They filmed our decisions and conversations on camera so the show could follow along.

Lara came in to do her consults.  She gave us a lot of advice, and we took most of it — or at least adjusted course based on her concerns even if we didn’t do exactly what she said.  For example, we changed our bedside table plan from black paint to gray on her advice.

Overall, we did a lot ourselves but a lot was also done by the experts due to time constraints. Also if you hd amazingly talented people to help you, wouldn’t you make use of it?

It was a total blast, but it was not all smooth sailing!  Our sewing table fell apart like 5 times and it truly only came together through the force of Cija’s will.

Cija is an absolute rockstar, truly amazing, beautiful, talented… all the praise-ful words that you can think of.  Brainstorm a list and apply them here please. (And just a reminder, Cija is who we accosted way back when at Brimfield to give our contact info to casting in the first place. Cija, we literally owe you everything.)

But the biggest challenge of the day was the coffee table.  It wasn’t always easy to work on schedule (waiting for the camera, lots of projects going at once, sharing space/tools with the other team) and the coffee table only got painted after lunch. We then had to wait for it to dry and apply the vinyl decals. We finished it right under the wire and so it is a very good thing that it all ended up working out!  Thankfully we were prepared with templates and experience working with the materials.

Maybe the biggest thing that we learned is that we are not as funny as we thought.  Our sarcasm and irony doesn’t translate to film.  We tried a few snarky conversations followed by Jim Halpert looks at the camera… it did not come through. Mostly they just told us to stop looking at the camera, and wisely they didn’t use those bits in the final episode.  (Please tell us in the comments how funny we are when writing to make us feel better.)

The timing of the show is spot on — it really is just one day to make everything over!  We finished everything by 7pm (with help from the experts) and then did final shots and interviews.  Of course we took some celebratory shots with the amazing crew!

We were surprised we didn’t get more time with Micheal and Victoria.  On Buy Day we had been sitting around the full day and so had gotten to hang out  a lot.  On workshop day, we were in the same room the whole time but were so busy we barely got to talk!  We were also mic-ed the whole time, and whenever we tried to chat the cameras would come and shoot us to capture the interaction, so it was “higher stakes.” Of course if you saw the episode, you saw Sage sneak in a serious burn about the upholstery choice (definitely not staged…).

Their projects were amazing and came out beautifully.  We both wanted their bar for our own houses, and their coffee table was so nice.  We left feeling a little down, thinking that they had a better chance of winning.  Our only hopes were that they paid a lot more than we did, and that maybe we would be selling in Manhattan where our smaller items might do better than their larger ones.

We drove right home from the workshop.  It was late!  We left at 8:15, stopped for McDonalds at like 10:30 (we hadn’t exactly been hungry for breakfast or lunch…), and then got home after midnight.  Naomi had to get up at 5 a.m. for work for a big event, and Sage had meetings the entire next day.  We sure didn’t have time to stew on things this time!

So that’s our recap of Workshop Day, and on Friday we’ll be back to share our final recap of how the last day (and triumphant victory narrow win) all went down. (Update: here is the link to our posts about Filming Day #3: Sell Day, and the link to see our episode on Amazon for $1.99 (Season 8, episode 5).)