Drawing on the Walls.

Forget brightly colored walls, ping pong tables or a video-game room. Online real estate company Homestore.com Inc. has taken unique d[acute{e}]cor to new extremes.

After solidifying plans to move from its Thousand Oaks headquarters to a new facility in Westlake Village in early September, Homestore.com Chairman and Chief Executive Stuart Wolff decided to let employees go wild.

During the first two weeks of July, 400 Homestore employees broke up into teams and turned 16 office walls into art. Using a stipend of less than $250 per wall for decorating materials, teams battled it out to win an all-expenses-paid day trip to the nearby destination of their choice.

Finished walls included everything from a "Wheel of Fortune"-style wheel marked with prizes including vacation days, cash and other prizes, to a "Who's Who" wall containing a picture of each employee, and a wall featuring actual bird cages with pictures of the team members inside.

But it was the finance department's "Bean Counter" wall -- featuring more than 8,000 green-and-white jelly beans formed into a wall-sized replica of a Homestore stock certificate -- that took first prize in the final judging last week.

"It's really well done," said spokesman Jeff Charney.

Second prize went to the legal department for its Velcro wall that a person could stick to, a la David Letterman.

The winners came as a bit of a surprise to some.

"Finance and legal, the numbers one and two, are groups that aren't perceived to be very creative," Charney said. "Give people a chance to be creative and you wouldn't believe how much people can shine."