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"&amp;amp;#8220;All right stop. Collaborate and listen. Ice is back with a brand new invention . . .&amp;amp;#8221; Seriously, did anyone ever think that &amp;amp;#8216;90s superstar Vanilla Ice would reinvent himself in 2012 as a home improvement expert? Uh, did I ever think that I would be spending Saturday night watching the premiere of his DIY Network show the Vanilla Ice Project with the mam himself? Definitely not. Especially because my teenaged self back in Miami spent many a weekend with my friends trying to see his Star Island mansion (no luck, you basically needed a boat or needed to be in his entourage to get even a glimpse). Life is a funny thing because fast forward and on Saturday night I was hanging with Ice and chatting all about home decorating and improvement fun&amp;amp;#8212;a topic he&amp;amp;#8217;s insanely passionate about. Seriously, the Vanilla Ice Project is one of the DIY Network&amp;amp;#8217;s biggest hits! Each week we watch Ice and his crew renovate a different room of a home they&amp;amp;#8217;re trying to flip&amp;amp;#8212;with results that would give Nate Berkus a run for his money! So, if you&amp;amp;#8217;re looking to upgrade your current apartment, plan on buying a home soon or are just wondering how in the world Vanilla Ice ended up leaving the world of rap for the world for the world of contractors&amp;amp;#8212;trust me, you need to keep reading. Glamour: You&amp;amp;#8217;ve done a lot of reality TV from the Surreal Life to the British ITV series Dancing on Ice&amp;amp;#8212;but you seem to be having just so much fun on the Vanilla Ice Project! Vanilla Ice: I don&amp;amp;#8217;t watch myself and have never watched myself on any reality TV that I have ever done--but I cannot take my eyes off the Vanilla Ice Project. I never watched one episode of the Surreal Life or Celebrity Bull Riding and not one episode of Dancing on Ice. Not one. I would rather live it than watch it. I&amp;amp;#8217;ll look at myself and say why did I wear that shirt or what was I thinking with those shoes. But this show is just so entertaining. I never predicted it or expected it. I never thought this would be that exciting to add a camera and people would want to see me put paint or put carpet on! Glamour: How did this home improvement side of your career come about? VI: I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been doing home improvement for 15 years now. I did &amp;amp;#8220;Ice Ice Baby&amp;amp;#8221; when I was 16 years old. I went around the world and bought a lot of houses and thought I would be using them but I never even saw them. I went out on tour for three years and I would come back and there would be cobwebs everywhere. I was like, &amp;amp;#8216;That was a waste of money - lets sell them!&amp;amp;#8217; I bought a house in Laurel Canyon next to Michael J Fox, I bought a place here in New York City on Bleecker Street in the West Village, I like to snowboard so I had one in Utah, one in Dallas and one in Miami. I bought all these houses and thought, &amp;amp;#8220;What a bad idea!&amp;amp;#8217; so I sold them and I made millions. And, I went, &amp;amp;#8216;Really? Lets go buy a bunch more!&amp;amp;#8217; So I bought a bunch more and I learned you could make money in real estate. Glamour: So when did you start renovating? VI: I lived in my home on Star Island for 12 years and it was completely decorated by professionals. It was art deco, so I had red rooms, green rooms, yellow carpet, purple carpet--every room was a different color. When you walked in, it was like you were living in a nightclub. Not home, not warm, not welcoming. So I started looking through the home d?\uFFFDcor magazines and would see things that looked so warm and inviting. I found out about earth tone colors, pillows and I put in a fireplace to make it nice and cozy and dimmed the lights to make it warm and inviting the way a home should be. I got the bug right then and there to keep doing this because it felt like a whole different house. Glamour: What is your favorite tip? VI: Don&amp;amp;#8217;t worry about adding things that are going to appeal to every demo of your neighborhood. Make it personal, make it happy and inviting for yourself and your family. Glamour: Lets go room by room. What do you recommend for the living room? VI: Leave the great room alone and focus on the kitchen. 80 percent of the time - I study statistics like you wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t believe - 80 percent of the time you spend in the home is in the kitchen. Everyone has to eat and when you&amp;amp;#8217;re hungry your subconscious takes over and you go to the kitchen. If you have a really warm and inviting kitchen that you can just lounge around and hang out in ans eat and have some coffee in the morning - that&amp;amp;#8217;s the main focus. So if you&amp;amp;#8217;re going to spend some money on your home - you are going to get it back in personal enjoyment because that&amp;amp;#8217;s the place where you feel comfortable. Everyone migrates to the kitchen. In the kitchen you can do little things like changing the handles - you would be surprised at the difference it makes. Instead of changing the cabinetry--you can paint it. And the greatest thing is changing the countertop--that makes a huge difference. Get rid of the Formica - it&amp;amp;#8217;s gone, it&amp;amp;#8217;s never coming back. They have new materials like limestone and quartz and compressed composite materials that look great. Glamour: What about the bedroom? VI: The bedroom is more for the female aspect so try floral print in the carpet. Open it up and make it real bright and airy to where at night you can shut it off. If you want to sleep late in the morning, you can do it in total darkness. Do blackout blinds, blackout shades but make it really warm and cozy inviting and floral print for the carpet because the guys don&amp;amp;#8217;t really care. Glamour: And finally, the bathroom! What do you think? VI: In the master bathroom, maybe add a Jacuzzi tub or add more shower heads. Everyone loves more shower heads. I have 12 in this and a massager. The whole ceiling rains on you and it squirts out from every angle. You can also have a plumber give you more pressure. You want that pressure! When you have low pressure, it&amp;amp;#8217;s aggravating! It&amp;amp;#8217;s like, &amp;amp;#8216;I just want that soap out of my hair!&amp;amp;#8217; Glamour: And what can you tell us about the home you&amp;amp;#8217;re building this season on the Vanilla Ice Project? We heard it has iPad controls and all kinds of state of the art features! VI: I am obsessed with home products and state of the art new features that I can showcase on the Vanilla Ice Project. This season&amp;amp;#8217;s home is a smart house plus I put in a lazy river&amp;amp;#8212;no one has ever done that, I put an elevator in that&amp;amp;#8217;s all clear and panoramic and I have iPads controlling everything. I lived in London for eight months and we got a lot of ideas over there that we don&amp;amp;#8217;t have here that I&amp;amp;#8217;m bringing over. We have a Murphy bed that comes out of the ceiling! I made a room called the &amp;amp;#8220;Ice room.&amp;amp;#8221; Everything is white and looks like it&amp;amp;#8217;s melting ice and all made of glass. The floor is made of glass and there are chandeliers everywhere that look like icicles. There&amp;amp;#8217;s lots of bling and curtains made of really furry cloth that looks like a big white polar bear. The Murphy bed goes up and a 70-inch plasma TV comes down. Everything is self contained and controlled with an iPad. The desk comes out, the bed comes down and it converts back after your guests leave so you can lounge around and watch movies! Have you guys been watching the Vanilla Ice Project? Would you let him renovate your home? What do you miss most about rap star Vanilla Ice? Oh, and because it&amp;amp;#8217;s just too hilarious not to share&amp;amp;#8212;check out my husband Nathanael and me just chilling with Vanilla Ice on Saturday night! More reality TV scoop! * Wow, Kim Kardashian Just Seriously Opened Up About Her Divorce On Live! With Kelly * Pets That Kill, Celebrity Bashing and Plastic Surgery . . . Or Just Your Average Night With Joan and Melissa Rivers! * Justin Bieber Doppelganger Wows The Judges On Last Night&amp;#x27;s American Idol. (Do You See The Resemblance?) Photo credit: DIY channel (two in front of houses) and YouTube (Dancing on Ice) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2012/01/vanilla-ices-awesome-home-deco>