HGTV’d: a house log

As some of you folks have already discovered, we had the strong pleasure of having our house photographed for the latest issue of HGTV Magazine. Well, our last house (we’d likely bat someone away with a stick if they tried to snap pictures of our new place simply yet). And since a bunch of you have been asking for the behind the scenes scoop, here it is.

That day was such a blur that we were not even sure that we had any behind the scenes photos to share, but when we looked back in iPhoto, it turns out we remembered to snap a few photos. This is Clara the editor. She’s telling us what we need to fix for the shot to work better (“you need to see more of my toys”).

The HGTV Magazine crew (which included a photographer, his assistant, a stylist, and an editor from the mag) spent two days in our house. They were plenty of lively and quite gracious guests… even as our dining room became a makeshift office for 48 hours.

Well, except for when it had to be tidied up and photographed. Notice how there are only 4 chairs instead of 6? It was their trick to make it feel open and show off the pedestal a bit more. All part of the lively of seeing your house through someone else’s eyes.

And of course there were moments when the room had to be nearly entirely cleared to get the ideal angle. This was the set up they used to photograph us in our office for the opening spread.

Sherry and I are quite comfortable with the chaos that comes along with a whole-house photo session (nothing can compare to the three straight weeks of book shoots). And by now I’d say our kids are getting fairly cool with it too.

Rachael, the photo stylist, was excellent with flower arrangements, pillow fluffing, and Clara. They even developed a secret handshake to assist her feel at ease with all of the strangers around. Although I fear this photo gives away the whole secret (it was simply pressing their thumbs together). Plain or not, we enjoy Rachel for thinking of that.

We also enjoy that she and Jen (the editor) brought some lively props with them. You may have caught this Instagram shot of our kitchen doused with fairly food and accessories. It was eye candy and literal candy all at once.

You can see some of those styling props hard at work in this picture of our kitchen, which we think is simply about the prettiest shot of it ever taken. But even as photo-styling goes, we enjoyed the balance the HGTV Magazine crew struck. In our opinion, it was not too over-styled (it still looked like our kitchen) but it was fluffed sufficient to make it look interesting on the page and to give us some new ideas about what we might want to tweak ourselves (more on that later).

Perhaps the only bummer about the feature was that some of our go-to shots did not make the cut. We knew they were taking more pictures than they’d have room for, but we saw some along the way that we had our fingers crossed for – like this one of the lately-completed fireplace.

That shot also featured our new go-to term: “an aggressive sandwich.” Someone deemed the prop sandwich too big at one point, dubbing it too “aggressive” for the shot. I think they eventually tamed it by removing a tomato slice. We all had a good laugh about what goes into these shoots, and Sherry still trades emails with our new HGTV friends by signing them with “xoxo, Aggressive Sandwich”

Here is a peek at what could’ve been, had these shots ended up in the spread.

The frame wall never looked better. Here is one of our over-their-shoulder shots of the hallway styled up with some fairly flowers by Rachael.

I wonder if the photographer feels a little sad when certain shots do not make it. He took a ton of time setting each one up, but he’s likely used to it. Oh and you will notice that we had to take down the basket light in the kitchen because it was casting weird shadows during the fireplace shot, so down it came.

Fortunately, we got to enjoy the fresh flowers, even if the photos did not make the final cut.

Oh, and they also cut a shot of the two of us prepping food in the kitchen (when we took this Instagram picture). But we are 100% sure that we looked far from natural in it, so we are forever grateful (us + cameras aimed at us = especially awkward). The funny thing is that we thought this might be a 2-3 page spread and it ended up being 10 pages long! Fully mind-blowing, and way more than we expected.

Speaking of abundance, there were plenty of flowers. Which of course means that Sherry was in some state of flower-induced euphoria the whole time. They had a box shipped directly from the flower market in New York City and, thanks to our cooler, the sunroom became a makeshift florist shop for the two days they spent with us. Seriously, the room smelled like one giant flower for like two weeks afterwards. Sherry enjoyed it. I thought it was kind of spooky once the flowers were gone (“where is that smell coming from?!”).

You should have seen Sherry creeping around the house whispering “If only they would last foreverrrrrrr.”

At least we have pictures to remember them by.

Besides tempting us to blow our life savings on fresh flowers (do not worry, I will rein Sherry back in), one pointer that we picked up and were inspired to put into action by watching the pros involved the pillows on our sectional. Rachel loaded it up with a bunch more pillows than we’d ever used… and Sherry was in heaven. Picture her doing one of Oprah’s over-the-top “a-ha moment” faces. You cannot truly see them in the final magazine shot, since they used a picture of the living room with us in it, but Sherry may or may not have picked up some of the pillows directly from Rachel when they were done (they were $20 from HomeGoods) to fill out her already robust pillow collection. Simply picture me rolling my eyes in the background.

Oh, and you cannot tell from our picture above, but this little table was deemed too short for their shot so they borrowed some scrap wood from the basement to give it a lift. Also note how our usual desk and mirror got the boot so that our chalkboard could take its spot (see the picture above).

Wardrobe tricks were also employed – namely for one of Sherry’s loose shirts that was deemed “too maternity looking” for the way it draped in the shot of us in the office. She ultimately swapped this outfit out for something less breezy (which is why she’s in a distinct shirt in the other shots) but lo and behold, the original test photo with the pre-clipped shirt ended up in the magazine on the first page of the spread.

As for some literal “behind” the scenes dirt, when they took the picture of Clara playing in her big girl room, I hid behind the wall in the closet so that one of us was nearby while they snapped away. The toughest challenge was getting her not to run in there with me.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for them was shooting the outside of our house, since late March in Richmond was not looking as spring-y this year as it typically does. Not to mention we had yet to begin plenty of our recent improvements out there…

So now you know why the pictures of our outside are fairly small or simply limited to close-ups of us on the porch. Although they did a strong job of cheering things up by moving our red adirondack chairs (swiped from the patio) to bring in some semblance of color.

Oh and although the article mentions our moving plans, we in fact did not share them with HGTV until we shared them with you folks on April 30th (via an email that Sherry most likely signed “Aggressive Sandwich”) – so they brought in that right at the end before the issue shipped. It truly was locked deep in our brains until our alarm system was in and we were ready to tell the world at large, so I think only our parents, siblings, best friends, and the realtor knew before that. It was especially lively to at last tell the HGTV crew though, because we were able to explain how meaningful it was to us to see our house captured in such a major way before we said goodbye. It was a pleasant last hurrah, and they were psyched to have been the ones to document it all.

So we are incredibly grateful that they thought our home was worthy of their magazine, and we will end this little behind the scenes spiel by sending out a big thanks to all of you who have stumbled upon it and said such kind things via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, journal comments, email, and carrier pigeon. Simply kidding about the carrier pigeon – you folks know we only accept ravens.