If only he’d gone to Ikea!

Or had his family’s carpenters around!

Determined to showcase his furniture design skills, Nathan Galui, our hometown design hero, decided to design — and build — his own entertainment center for this week’s challenge: Homes of the Brave, designing family rooms for two Los Angeles-area military families.
Palm Beach Gardens native Galui, whose grandfather is developer Otto “Buzz” DiVosta and whose father, Gene Galui, is also a home builder, was a contestant on HGTV’s Design Star reality show. The winner gets his or her own show on the network.

And yes, that does read “was a contestant.”

After five weeks and five challenges (which produced a hip lounge, renovated kitchen, orange-slice chandelier, sophisticated garage and this week’s all-in-one living room), the judges sent him packing — but not because they didn’t like his design skills or thought he wasn’t talented.

They disapproved of his time-management skills!

According to the judges, our baby-faced boy took 22 hours to design and not-quite-finish the construction of the shelving unit — but, we say, at least he’s not as bland as his teammate, Jason (who’s from Sarasota, by the way).

After all, Nathan, 25, does know how to design furniture — he has his own graffiti-inspired line — but maybe if he’d spent a sweaty summer on a construction crew he would have known how to build it.

Still, we were impressed when he refused to whine or shift the blame for his failure.

“I made some wrong decisions,” he said in the exit interview. “I realized I don’t have as much experience as some of the other designers and I just lost sight of the bigger picture.”

This week, after the show aired, he admitted, “I definitely had to hold back a bit” when it came to his final comments.

“I’m happy I left gracefully, but I actually did much more than the editing showed,” he said. “I spent four hours shopping and I helped Lonni (Paul) with her painting.”

Home for good, Nathan is making the most of his brush with fame.

He’s opening his own shop, which he’s calling Mesh studio, in The Whitney condominium in downtown West Palm Beach in late fall. In addition to his own furniture designs, he plans to showcase other up-and-coming local designers and artists, as well as friends from the Savannah College of Art & Design.

And he’s turning the tables on the show’s judges by becoming a design judge himself. Later this fall, two area nonprofit groups will take on a version of “the white room” challenge by decorating rooms using only items from The Lord’s Place upscale thrift shop in West Palm Beach.

And this time, Nathan gets to make all the snide and snarky comments.

CATCH UP: To see a gallery of Nathan’s work from the show, go to: http://www.pbpulse.com/tag/nathan-galui/