Garden of the Day: King of Dirt in Bburg
[nggallery id=”26800″ template=galleryview] If you’ve got a garden or an interior or any cool architectural project you’d like to share, send us a note. And now, a TV-worthy Williamsburg garden: We purchased our townhouse in Williamsburg in 2004 and the yard was literally the last thing on our mind. First off the ground floor of…
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If you’ve got a garden or an interior or any cool architectural project you’d like to share, send us a note. And now, a TV-worthy Williamsburg garden:
We purchased our townhouse in Williamsburg in 2004 and the yard was literally the last thing on our mind. First off the ground floor of the building was being squatted in so we didn’t even have access to the yard for the first 10 months while we were in and out of court battling our illegal tenants. Once we got access to the yard and the bottom portion of our house we got to work on reinforcing the frame of the house with steel and gutting the entire interior to make a triplex for ourselves in the cellar, basement and first floor and two rental apartments on the top two stories. Again the yard was an afterthought and mostly was used as a dumping ground for our GC during the renovation.
We wrapped up our interior renovations and got our permits and CO squared away in April of this year and finally started thinking about what to do with the pile of dirt and rocks out in our yard. The issue was that we had completely depleted our bank accounts with the renovation and had little to no money left for the yard. We also had a healthy distrust for contractors in general after the ringer we went through with the series of clowns we mistakenly hired. We were very skeptical of hiring someone else so we chose we wait the summer out and spent a lot of time trying to find the perfect person to work with at the right price.
We did spring for a solid fence early in the summer mostly to keep our crazy, noisy neighbor’s prying eyes out of our space. We were not able to justify going with a wood fence due to the fact that we would either need to put the nice side facing to our neighbors or pay for a double sided fence. We had a couple of fence contractors tell us that due to our small doors and tight space to bring fencing material through the house that our best bet was vinyl, so while it didn’t match our aesthetic we couldn’t argue with the practicalities.
The we started the process of trying to find someone to help us design and create our yard. We spoke with all the major players that come up for all the yard work on this site but everyone was either out of our budget or if it was within our budget it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for. Then we saw an ad on craigslist looking for backyards to renovate for a TV show filming in the NYC area and sent our info in on a lark—and we were accepted! The very next day the crew was onsite along with the production company filming for a show tentatively called King of Dirt for the DIY network. The gist of the show is that we spent all of our time, energy and money on the interior so they were going to hook us up in the yard. They also wanted to focus on smaller, more urban yards that are often overlooked during backyard renovation shows that usually deal with huge suburban spaces. They talked quite a bit about the challenges of doing yard work in the city, bringing materials through the house and the design elements one can use in a smaller yard.
Our main contractor Gino not only did the work but was also set up as the host of the show (as opposed to most renovation shows that are hosted by actors) and he took extremely good care of us. One of our biggest challenges was what to do with the sunken concrete area in our yard. The cost of ripping out all that concrete and hauling it out through our house was too daunting to consider so Gino proposed a different idea. He brought in a stone distributor from PA with a product called Everlast Stone to veneer our existed concrete floors and ledges with their slate products. We chose their multicolored slate ledgewalls, floor tiles and tumbled pavers. We asked Gino to create a seating area in the upper section of the yard as the lowered section was not quite big enough for us to put a big enough table to sit 4 people.
The crew was in and out in just 6 days, including filming the before and after sequences for the show. The only thing they were not able to do was seal the slate stone to give it that wet look. For shooting the reveal sequences they sprayed the stone with water to make the colors pop, but the next week we tested out a few sealers and settled on one that brought the colors out but didn’t look too wet.
The plants include Bar Harbor Junipers, Weeping Norway Spruce, Creeping Euonymus, Coral Bells, Globe Blue Spruce, Maiden grasses, Weeping Alaskan Cedar, Golden Hinoki Cypress, Meadow Sage, Weeping White Pine and Sky Pencil Holly
Here are some links to the various people involved in the project:
www.ginoscrew.com/ – Contractor
original-media.com – production company
diynetwork.com – TV network
ayerssupply.com – Everlast Stone
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Looks beautiful! Of course, I had the luxury of seeing it in person (in the dark and pouring rain, though). 🙂
hmmm…we’ll have to see what happens with the lights. I couldn’t find any info about how much cold they can stand so I brought all the removable tops in for the winter just in case. I’ll report back in the spring to see how they hold up.
My issue with the solar lights is not how long the batteries last on the daytime charge but that after about a month or so the batteries just don’t even charge anymore.
I’ve got electric out there for the fountain and a few flood lights…maybe I’ll install some low voltage path lights next year.
My issue with the solar lights is not how long the batteries last on the daytime charge but that after about a month or so the batteries just don’t even charge anymore.
FSRG–we did also like the more classic Bluestone option for the stone but we chose the multicolor and I think it worked well for us…but to each their own. Also the space in the upper seating section was made so we can also move our two table 2 chair set from the lower section to sit 6 if we needed to. Plus there is room for our outdoor heater or an offset umbrella. The back edge of the garden has a lot of tall, leafy trees on the other side of our fence so there is not a ton of direct light back there so we might not even need the umbrella. It turned out to be a comfortable amount of space when you are in it.
The solar lights seems to last about 3 hours right now but they never really got a full day of spring/summer sun so we are hoping they will last longer eventually. I do like the look of them as well–thanks!
hey AEPE–thanks, we do like to think that we are nice people but our one bad neighbor dictated a lot of what we did and how we did it. He called the DoB on us dozens of times during our reno with all sorts of bogus claims so we just didn’t want to take any chances. I got a lot of conflicting info on exactly how the law would intervene on the whole “nice side of the fence” issue, so I just decided to play it safe. Plus we figured a wood fence would need treating and repairing and there is no way our one neighbor would let us into his yard if anything ever went wrong. Vinyl just seems more practical and it has a life time warranty from Amendolas. It’s amazing the compromises you make that you never thought you would…
CGmodern, good call. The fence in the back is 8 feet and the sides are both 6 feet. The original chain link in the back was 8 and all of our neighbors have 8 in the back as well so we figured no one would rat us out! Also behind us is a city owned building and they have their own 8 foot fence back there so replaces ours didn’t see to have any effect on them. They were very hands off during our entire reno so we figured they wouldn’t mind.
wine lover–we are waiting to see how the solar lights do in the spring/summer with more direct sunlight to work with…otherwise we might be digging and running wires as well to get something wired out there.
Townhouse lady–thanks! Actually we addressed the drainage during the house reno. We put two drains on the raised slate area, one that feed into the main drain under the house and that other that lets off into the area at the bottom of the steps right outside the sunroom that has a drain that goes to the main drain. We did have issues with the original drain covers that were installed as they were too small and had a small indent in them so leaves would collect there and backup the drains. Now we have much larger stainless drain plates and the addition surface area seems to have solved all the drainage issues. But it was not without some trial and error!