HGTV - Day 7 - The Blog of Revelation

It's finally done! The big reveal!

But to fully prep you for those changes... let's take a moment to reflect on the "Before," shall we?
And who could forget...?In honor of the Black Eyed Peas, as well as our British crew who loved singing their songs, join Steve and I in a little ditty... "Our dumps! Our dumps! Our lovely lady dumps! Check it out!"

Thankfully, everyone showed up for work yesterday-- early-- and designer/host Matt James returned from being sick to help us finish the garden. When he left, the only thing that had been worked on was clearing out and building the planter box. Here he is, seeing the space for the first time. Trust me, this was snapped at an off time but he was really thrilled with the space. According to Matt and the film crew, they had never done a cool space like this and were very excited.
Needless to say, so were Steve and I...

Meanwhile, Chuck Carr of Carr Landscape Management-- who does a ton of work for the HGTV shows-- came in with his team to get everything finished up: tiles, bar removal, light installation, LOTS of painting (even though we thought we'd done a lot ourselves), cleaning up, etc. Here's Chuck cutting the bars off the windows.


Later in the day, while Steve took young Bernie (director) and Ian (the infamous cameraman-- I don't know why we gave everyone titles, BTW) on a location scout for Matt's show introduction that would feature downtown LA in the background, our friend Saydi stopped by with her baby Hannha (So yes, that would be "Saydi with a baby!"; say it out loud and it makes sense.) Saydi is the person who first introduced us to watching The City Gardner, Matt's U.K. show, so it was only fitting to get her in a photo with Matt.


Then the plants came in...
They even got planted...
And the backyard was transformed.


Mind you, by 8:00pm Steve and I ordered dinner for the crew and dug out the cold beers, then we started the interviews and blazed through them-- which is why when you watch the episode in July you'll realize we did a night-time reveal. Thank God our yard is so beautiful because it made for an absolutely lucious reveal and final interview. (And thanks to Megsbian who stopped by and took the only picture we have with Matt James.)

But let's take a moment and reflect on the amazing things a beer or two will do to get the words flowing. I mean, sure, we had two cameras rolling, but we only had to go through the interview twice, basically, and that was a real accomplishment. (Whether it really had to do with a director who was too tired/tipsy to care anymore while he filmed us on top of our roof, remains to be seen...)

Here is a shot of Matt when he does his final segment, talking to Bernie, Phil, and Ian on the roof of our house (see what you can achieve even when you can't afford an expensive crane shot?)

We finished around 11:oopm. Steve and I then sat in our new backyard and looked around, amazed by the transformation and wondering how we got so lucky. We still think it's the house.
But as Matt James described the house as a "Modern Med" design (short for Modern Mediterranean, ya see), we both realized our backyard has been transformed from being the butt of the pink cupcake house into Club Med.

Forget the bars, kids, the parties are at our house this summer. (We'll have daytime photos soon, but we both have to go to work now.)