Brooklyn Life

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…

by lisa

12/11/2008 21

[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 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 larkâ€”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