here is the house...

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

Forgot to Mention…

I know I'm majorly overdue for an update here…it's coming. Just realized I forgot to mention that our backyard was the "Garden of the Day" on the Brooklyn real estate site Brownstoner.com a few weeks back. The people there had some pretty nice things to say about our finished product which was very nice—the comments on that site can be brutal but everyone was super positive about our space so that is a good thing. I also made a new backyard gallery on this site that shows the progression of the garden in chronological order, starting from way back in 2004 when we had no access to it and it was just a disgusting pile of weeds! Oh how far it has come…

Check out the new Garden Gallery here

Garden at Night

All the stone is now sealed and looks amazing. When Eric saw it this morning he initially was worried that it had rained overnight (you are not supposed to apply the sealer if rain is in the forecast for the next 24-48 hours) However it had not rained, it just looked like it had, so I would say that is proof positive that the wet look has been achieved! The garden is now officially done! The sunroom still needs work but there is time for that in the future. For now, here's the garden at night, illuminated by the perimeter of solar lights

Sealing Slate Stone

Say that 10 times fast, if ya can! So here are the results from sealing the upper patio area by hand yesterday. I have to say it turned out very well. The stone doesn't look wet per say, but it does bring out the colors and really makes the stone pop with the plants. We likey:

Today we worked on sealing the lower patio section plus all the ledgewalls, which is a much larger area. We still have to do hands and knees cleaning to get the stone as pristine as possible, but we were able to use our new paint sprayer to apply the sealer to all of that stone which did make the task go much faster.

Eric used the new paint sprayer to apply the sealer (which is actually blocked in this photo—doh!) but you get the idea. We used Behr's wet look masonry and natural stone sealer which was a fraction of the cost of more expensive stone sealers and specifically rated for outdoor use.

You can see the sealer soaking the ledgewalls with it's iridescent glow:

Poor Monkey wanted so badly to join us outside all weekend he spent almost every moment waiting for us by the door out to the sunroom. Poor little guy, he feels so left out.

I did buy harnesses and leashes for both him and Jules so once everything is sealed and clean out there we can take them out (supervised of course) We can't let them out right now because we still have this big uncovered hole that we need to get a covering for. Our landscaper Gino said he would make one for us since his crew accidently threw out the cement board we cut to go there. Regardless we need to get something to cover this hole ASAP lest children and/or animals plummet down this hole. No good!

Once we got back inside Monkey got lots of tough love, don't you worry!

Daylight Yard Pictures – Now With Tables and some Chairs

The crew was back again today to do more shots of the backyard but luckily I didn't need to supervise them. They were out in a couple of hours and I got the pleasant surprise of a table and chair delivery. I had ordered one square table for the upper seating area and four arm chairs plus one two person table with two folding chairs for the lower area. The big table is made of Acacia and the smaller one is Eucalyptus. I ordered them late on Saturday so I was pretty shocked that they arrived so quickly. Unfortunately the Acacia chairs will not arrive until tomorrow but the rest of the order was put together and out back in time for these daylight pictures. I'm sure you all are getting sick and tired of seeing the same pictures over and over again but I just can't help it. I can hardly believe this is my yard; I keep expecting to wake up and realize it was all a dream and I am stuck with my old, ugly concrete yard. But it's real! Not only that, but I'm getting better at identifying plants. Check me out!

Here we have the Eucalyptus folding table and chairs and in the planter potted mums. Creeping over the ledge are Bar Harbor Junipers and the large tree behind them in is a Weeping Norway Spruce.

More of the Bar Harbor Junipers and the Weeping Norway Spruce. The green perennials near the path are Creeping Euonymus. The purple plants behind them are Coral Bells, which will bloom with white flowers in the spring. The green perennial behind them is a mystery plant. I couldn't figure that one out and Gino couldn't remember what it was called but he said it will also bloom with white flowers in the spring. .

The big tree that looks like an umbrella is a Weeping Birch and it's my favorite plant in the whole garden. The little evergreen in the foreground below is a Globe Blue Spruce.

In the back left corner are some maiden grasses on the far left, a Weeping Alaskan Cedar in the center and a Golden Hinoki Cypress in the foreground. The purple flowered perennial is Meadow Sage.

The waterfall in the right corner is surrounded by more maiden grasses and another Meadow Sage.

Looking back towards the house from the waterfall corner is a Weeping White Pine, flanked by more Meadow Sage.

Camouflaging the AC units are 10 Sky Pencil Hollies. Near the path and ledgewalls are more of the Bar Harbor Junipers, Creeping Euonymus and Coral Bells.

Blocking the AC line are planters filled with assorted pansies and another large planter with mums.

Here the whole yard with the square Acacia table in the upper seating section. I'll get pictures of the arm chairs when they come tomorrow.

But this is what the table and chairs should look like, without those cushions though

What a Difference Some Plants Make

Between the crazy day at work, the ongoing family issues and supervising the final day of yard work at the house today, I'm absolutely knackered. I'm getting ready to pass out any second in order to be ready for another crazy day of issues tomorrow, but before I did that I wanted to put up the photos from the end of today.

The plantings are pretty much done except the final touches which will be done on the day they shoot the reveal (which has yet to be decided, but maybe someday over the weekend) In the meantime we are going to get some additional plants and put them in the large pots for around the lower patio section. But here is how it looks so far:

Here are some of the plants that will go in our new large planters in the next couple of day. We need more of the yellow flowers for the long skinny planter we plan to use to hide the AC power lines at the bottom of the fence.

The big issue today was with the waterfall that Gino got donated to us from Superior Faux Products. I guess maybe the company sent the wrong pump and the wrong hoses with this unit by accident because Gino and Ralph spent at least 3 hours trying to get this thing to work with no avail. They finally took it with them and said they would get new hoses and a new pump and get it working in their shop. Then they can bring it back and set it up real quick right before the reveal. From what I saw of it, it did look pretty awesome. It will go in the back right corner and have some rocks and grass planted around it.

Backyard Weekend Work

Most of the work this weekend consisted cleaning the yard and the sunroom in preparation for the next few days of TV show related fun. When the crew left on Friday everything was covered in a layer of grime, both inside and outside of the house. We wanted to do some painting on the stucco areas around the sunroom and windows but unfortunately it was a bit too moist outside to do all the work we wanted to do. Instead we did tons of cleaning and worked on the conundrum of achieving the wet look on our stone while it is dry. When the stone is wet it looks amazing but when dry it looks hazy and dirty.

Case in point, wet vs. dry:

This is what everything looks like wet

The first task was to scrub all the stone dust off the rock so even when it dries lighter it doesn't have that dirty haze on it. We did 5 passes on all the stone with a stiff bristle brush and the power washer

After 5 passes the stone actually did look nicer dry

We did one pass with a stone sealer we got at Home Depot on Friday that was hysterically enough called "Impregnator" but while it prevented that white haze that can form on stone, it didn't give the stone that wet look at all, which was kind of the point. We returned it and purchased some Behr stone sealer which specially says it will achieve the wet look. However the next few days are supposed to be rainy and the product specifically says not to use it if rain is expected in the next 24 hours. So I guess we will have to wait. Oh well. So it won't be sealed for the reveal filming but we can just mist the stone to get that wet-look for the camera. We'll do it the next dry weekend we have. Ah the magic of television!

Now the big question is whether or not the crew will be back tomorrow to do the planting. The weather is looking grim and moist for Monday which might not be ideal planting time. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Outdoor Steps Redux

This might seem small, but the stairs up to the upper patio have always bothered me so seeing them redone was a huge, exciting thing for me. Here is the previous look:

Here's what steps looked like last we saw them

And here's what they looked like at the end of the day on Friday—awesome!

Backyard Reno Update – Day 4 Almost End of Day Progress

Things appeared to slow down here this afternoon, but tons of work was still being done. The majority of it was the crew hauling out buckets and buckets full of stone out of the yard and into Gino's truck to remove it from the site. They also laid down the upper seating area stone earlier in the day in a space much larger than the final section would be. Here is the final layout before the cutting

You can faintly see the blue line above showing where the stone needed to be cut. They cut the stone in place with a dry saw, so as you can imagine it was very, very dusty

And here's the final shape after the cuts!

Backyard Reno Update – Day 4 Mid-day Update

Work goes on out back as I work to pay the bills upstairs. I've been sneaking peaks to see the updated look as they are now working on the upper seating area using the mesh-backed multicolored slate stones. It's looking pretty awesome thus far:

That upper seating area is coming out much larger than I originally thought it would, which is cool. We have to look to see if we can find a nice outdoor dining set for before they film the final reveal next week. I'm leaning towards this teak set, mostly because it's in stock nearby, very reasonably prices and expandable to set either 4 or 6 people. Also, I think a wood table would soften up the look out back with all the stone we have now.

The cats seem to be handling being stuck upstairs okay. Monkey was going a bit insane for a while but seems to have settled down. And now, your gratuitously cute kitten pic! So sleepy!