King of Dirt - Our episode

Here it is in all of it's mortifying glory.  Editting is truly an evil thing, as is the weight I gained before my abdominal surgery last fall.  Luckly most of that is gone already and things are much less stressful around here.  But if I ever need inspiration to hop on the treadmill, I can just watch this video!  It's too bad they left a lot of stuff out, there was some good little moments we filmed that must have ended up on the cutting room floor.  I was afraid the editting would make us look like dopes, but I would say on the dope scale of 1-10 we are only about a 5, which is better than I expected.  Regardless, we got a great yard.  Not sure why they have the budget so high, we didn't spend nearly that much, but I guess without all the material discounts it would have been closer to that--I would have thought higher actually.  Oh well.   In the end even though I'm not exactly thrilled to watch myself from last year on video, I would do it all again cause we love and backyard and Gino was great to work with (even though he kept calling me "Daner" and his brother Ralph kept referring to me as "da lady!"--haha)

Look closely and you can see Maui a couple of times (in the shot from our kitchen looking at our stairs they kept using to show the inside) and Monk (on the balcony in the sunroom in the shot they kept using to show the before status of our yard)

TIP - Make sure to click on the HD button in the bottom right corner of the YouTube player to view in HD

King of Dirt - Oasis in a Tiny Backyard Part 1

 

King of Dirt - Oasis in a Tiny Backyard Part 2

Comments

[modernemama]

Amazing transformation, the yard looks 10x bigger than before. Did the veneered walls stand up to the snow and ice this winter?

[dana]

thanks--it feels 10x bigger too and much more usable space! The walls stood up really well...not much got on them since there was a slight overhang from the capped stones. The floors also held up well--they got a slight gray haze to them but it came right off with water. We will probably seal the stone again at some point cause it's super easy with a paint spraying and keep spraying it once a year to keep the color vibrant...

[Tijmen stam]

Wow, a great show and I love to see some interior shots as well. I never got from your blog posts how much they used your house with the downpour! Also, the yard really looks beautiful!

One little point I'd like to make is that the little lights you have (are they solar?) look so plasticy. With the qualitly of materials you have elsewhere you should go for either a more metal look or something different. But maybe it's just bad filming.

Other than that, I love it.

It's also funny because a friend of mine is trying to buy a house (he's living at my place for 3 months allready - and while he's a good friend that can cause some itches once in a while) and because the credit crisis hit Holland too, he's on a very tight budget. So he has an eye on two houses which are nothing but bare concrete inside - only central heating and the fittings for water and sewer lines are installed. Se we were calculating today what would be the absolute minimum cost to make that livable - a bathroom, kitchen, paint on the walls and a floor - then I showed him your blog and he said "ooooh, likey" but I think financially it's a bit at the other end of the spectrum. He is especially in love with your little bathroom tiles!

[dana]

hmm...the lights are metal, and we actually have more of them now which makes them look better. They do seem to look a little plastic-y on film, but in person they look very nice. Strange. Both the lights and I look better in real life than we do on film :-)

We have a couple of boxes of extra little blue bathroom tiles if you friend wants to come here and get them! Probably big enough to make a nice shower for his dog or cat...haha...