HGTV’s ‘Ugliest House in America’ has some thoughts on WA homes

Comedian Retta (“Parks and Recreation”) has learned a thing or two about disappointing domiciles, but she discovers there are always additional ways to mar a home’s aesthetics in her visits to three Washington residences in “Ugliest House in America” (9 p.m. April 29, HGTV), now in its fifth season.

“I often had to go up steps to get to the house,” Retta recalled of the homes in the Washington episode in a phone interview earlier this month. “I gotta work to get into the house and then there were steps inside the house. Enough with the steps!”

The Seattle home’s owners, Brittany and Mehmet, welcomed Retta into their hall-of-mirrors house. The homeowners explain the house, built in 1965 with a view of Mount Rainier, was previously owned by an artist who attached mirrors to every imaginable surface in the home, including mirror mosaics on the walls and potentially hazardous 3D mirror art in the dining room. In one spot a mirror is even framed by a mirror.

“I think you have all of the mirrors in the Pacific Northwest,” Retta says in the episode.

Except perhaps for in one room: a bathroom, where one would be most likely to find a large mirror, has only a small mirror.

“Of all the mirrors in all the land, there were no more mirrors in Seattle. That’s all they could get,” Retta says in the episode. “The glue people and the mirror people in this town were thrilled.”

(A publicist for the series said the Seattle homeowners did not respond to requests for an interview, what part of Seattle they live in or for permission to use their last names.)

Retta also visits a 10,000-square-foot octagon-shaped house in Sultan, Snohomish County, where she says “every room is shaped like a slice of pie. … And a lot of the square footage is hallway.”

In the Sultan house, Retta also found more mirrors, echoing her Seattle finds.

“I don’t understand why everybody thought mirrors were décor,” she says. “Not everybody wants to look at themselves!”

And she found more steps, not only to get to the home’s entrance but also once inside. One bathroom has five levels.

“When I’m rushing to pee, I don’t want to go up steps!” she says.

Retta’s final stop is a home in West Richland, Benton County, that features two intersecting staircases and a bomb shelter with a curtain instead of a door. A helpful on-screen notation says, “Radiation can pass through fabric.”

At the end of each episode, Retta announces which of the three homes featured will be in the running for a $150,000 renovation by HGTV designer Alison Victoria that will be featured as the season finale episode. But it’s not Retta doing the picking.

“They go through all of that,” Retta said of the show’s producers. “It’s because of the cost, because there is a budget, but also they’re looking for the potential for the best before-and-after. You want to see the change, you don’t just want it to be structural. And a lot of it is the availability of contractors and what kind of speed they can work at because we’re on a schedule.”

Retta says despite all the weird, ugly homes she’s visited, she continues to be amazed.

“It’s simple things, like, why is this an entryway you have to duck every time you go through it? Or when you go into the bathroom you have to walk in sideways because the door doesn’t open more than a foot,” she says. “Why did you agree to this and why haven’t you fixed it?”

Retta seems to get a kick out of the homes and especially the opportunity to use her stand-up comic background to riff on their idiosyncrasies. She says filming “Ugliest House” is a bigger challenge than working on scripted series such as “Good Girls” or “Parks and Recreation.”

“We have to work around logistics,” she says. “In scripted [shows], you’re in one place and you’ve got a transportation team and a set decorator team, whereas there’s just a few of us traveling around and we’ve got to make stuff work.”

That’s included finishing her hair and makeup in a gas station bathroom. Retta says she’s been shooting “Ugliest House” seasons back-to-back. She’s currently midway through filming a sixth season that started in March and will finish in July. Then she’ll be ready to get back to acting.

“I really want to do another [scripted] series. That’s my favorite,” she says. “I like having someplace to wake up and go to work. I enjoy doing films, too. I like doing shows at home and films on location.”