In the four-week “$250,000 Challenge,” the finale of which is at 10 p.m. Sunday, HGTV has taken the home makeover that is the foundation of the network’s programming and put it in the hands of amateurs.

With a limited budget — money provided by the network — each team of two homeowners has had to spend wisely and yet meet the criteria for making over rooms in their home.

Coupled with the network’s Web site, www.hgtv.com, viewers can get money-saving ideas for do-it-yourself home updates.

This has been fitted as a series for the New Depression — one husband is long unemployed, one woman needs to win the $250,000 prize to keep her house from foreclosure, and so on.

The contest started with five couples from the same street redesigning the rooms of their houses, with a team eliminated at the end of each episode and a cash prize at the end.

A rotating cast of personalities from other HGTV series is there to help, advise and judge.

The stresses of time, of budget and of working together with one’s spouse (or one’s sister, in one case) have been the basis of the drama, although, for the most part, the teams have cooperated and cohered in a situation where there is much potential for friction, if not grounds for divorce.

The ticking clock is the real adversary, and it reaffirms the fact that on a deadline everything takes longer than you think it will.

We also see that shopping — even with other people’s money, even when there is nothing else you are allowed to do with it — can make a person weep in frustration.

Still, it’s the makeovers we come for; they provide a kind of psychic relief. (That is the promise of the show: that your Before can have an After.)

And these amateurs do well, all told: Their new rooms improve greatly on the old, suggesting that money, spent wisely, can liberate taste.

It may not buy you happiness, but it can get you a sectional sofa or a new floor, which can amount to pretty much the same thing.