Turn the telly on at almost any time of day and there's bound to be a decorating programme on. Real Rooms, Changing Rooms, the Arts and Crafts Hour, Dream House, Home Front, Our House . . . the list goes on. But when the decorators have gone, what do they really leave behind? FIONA TARRANT finds out. Real Rooms, real mess - that's the message from Carolyn West, whose bedroom was revamped for the BBC daytime TV programme.

Although Carolyn, 38, was pleased with the colour scheme and the art deco theme, the poor quality of the work she discovered after the cameras had stopped rolling for Real Rooms left her reeling.

"Some of it was brilliant, some left a lot to be desired. The design was great but the shoddy workmanship really left me annoyed. It was just like a theatre set really, not designed to last."

The BBC Real Rooms team descended on the home Carolyn and her five-year-old son Jack share in Mayfair Road, Cowley, last June, although the programme wasn't transmitted until before Christmas.

They were there for four days, from 8am until 8pm each day painting her room in shades of mauve and silver, and it wasn't until they'd gone that Carolyn discovered:

*Exposed nails, screws and splinters inside the wardrobe doors

*The wardrobe doors touch her clothes because they don't fit properly

*The paint wasn't dry *The floorboards hadn't been sanded or prepared before being painted

*The silver paint used on her bed and other furniture rubs off

*New knobs fitted to the chest of drawers didn't cover holes left by the last ones

*The fascia on the chest of drawers wasn't painted, only the front of the drawers

*They forgot to put bottom batons in the roman blinds

*Her bedlinen was ruined by paint.

"They say they do preparation but they didn't. The quality of the work was very disappointing and I'll have to re-do some of it. Carolyn, a purchasing manager at Unipart, also felt it was very disruptive. Sometimes there were up to 12 people in the house and they took over her kitchen completely.

"There were four workmen there for four, long days. If they'd just spent a little more time doing it properly it would have been fantastic. It's just as easy to do it properly," said Carolyn.

The crew also damaged a cupboard door in Carolyn's kitchen, although she was compensated for it. That was fine but the kitchen had been discontinued, so she couldn't replace it anyway.

Her room was put forward for the programme by her sister, Lisa, as a surprise. Although Carolyn was delighted with the theme and loved the window treatment, the experience wasn't all she had hoped it would be.

"I didn't discover a lot of the problems until after they'd all gone. The room was covered up and they only let me in for the final 'reveal' as they call it. Then they filmed my reaction and went. It wasn't until I looked closely that I saw all these things. "I did ring the programme co-ordinator about the silver paint and they sent me another pot but I don't think they're really interested in what you think.

"I don't want to sound ungrateful but I wouldn't do it again. I was disappointed," she said.

"I think they should do follow-up interviews to find out what people think. I think it's all done for the cameras. What they can't see, they don't bother with.

"These days, if a room make-over programme comes on the TV, I change the channel. It was enough to put me off." Once they heard about the problems, the BBC issued the following statement:

"Real Rooms is all about wish fulfilment and we wanted Miss West to be happy with her make-over and she appeared to be delighted at the time.

"When she pointed out problems with the finishing, we arranged to send a decorator down to finish it off to her satisfaction.

"However, she said it was not necessary. On the whole, we get it right and we are sorry she was dissatisfied."

Story date: Friday 05 February

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.