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Oh, yes!
Need any help?
Can I go home with you?
Oh, I don't know if my husband would like that.
NARRATOR: Matt Blashaw is striking out today.
No.
Yeah.
Ohh.
Yeah.
NARRATOR: But he's not letting that keep him down.
I got burrito in me.
He's determined to find one lucky homeowner
that will agree to a landscape makeover
with its own secret garden...
huge storage benches...
a custom barbecue surround...
and a ton of gorgeous plants.
Here...comes...the...yard! Whoo!
You want to take me home?
NARRATOR: Professional contractor Matt Blashaw
stakes out home-improvement stores...
I'm giving away gold.
...looking for do-it-yourselfers
I don't know.
What they don't know is he's gonna transform
their simple project into a total backyard makeover.
WOMAN: It's amazing.
It's like winning the landscape lottery.
Yes!
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
Don't run!
[ Chuckling ] No, no.
I'm on a mission.
What are you on a mission for?
Bringing the breast pump to the mommy.
I was gonna say, "Can I help you?"
But I don't want no part of it.
You're interviewing. You're not a contractor.
No.
Guess who's gonna get a little lunch --
this guy, huh?
So do you want this mat,
You.
So we're done with this?
Sure. Come on.
Not you.
We all know each other.
Yeah. You want to do the yard?
Not today?
But you can come over anytime after today.
[ Chuckles ]
Let's make an appointment.
Anybody have an appointment book?
Yes.
Why are you shopping out here on such a chilly day?
Because I have a backyard that needs a little help.
We have all of these old railroad ties as like a fence,
and it leaks tar everywhere.
Creosote.
Yeah.
Well, you sit on it, and it doesn't wash out.
[ Laughs ]
How big is this yard?
Well, it's a 10,000-square-foot yard, front and back.
And we got married back there,
so we kind of tried to fix up a little bit.
Where's the husband at?
He's at school -- mechanical engineering.
He's a smart guy.
[ Laughs ]
What do you do for work?
Nice.
How about if you put some trust in me right now?
Uh-huh.
And then I maybe give you a brand-new backyard.
What's the strings?
That's -- [ Chuckles ]
No strings.
Do I have a trustworthy face?
Absolutely.
Even better.
Is that good?
Yeah, I totally trust you now.
[ Chuckling ] Now? Yeah.
[ Laughs ]
Yes? You're there?
I'm all over it. I'm all over it.
Absolutely.
All right.
Oh, you got...
That's an ax handle.
Remind me not to give you any of my tools.
Off to make another happy customer.
This is my house.
Love it! Okay.
It's locked. [ Knocks ]
[ Laughs ]
Hey! Stranger with your wife!
I'm Matt.
Matt? Kevin. Nice to meet you.
No.
[ Laughing ] No?
I convinced her to take me home with her to do your yard.
Sounds good.
All right.
Sure.
Yep.
All right. Great.
Let's go. [ Laughs ]
MATT: Man!
Yeah, we have a lot of work.
This is big!
Problem 1 -- railroad ties.
We're not liking the railroad ties?
Why not?
KEVIN: If you sit on them, you get tar.
Man, railroad ties are just -- It's not the way to go.
It does. It looks like...
Teeth.
I like the mounding, but it's not a clean look.
I need some order in my chaos.
Yard order.
I want lushness. I want a secret-garden feel.
Just nice little spots -- tranquil.
Little spots that you stop in and look around.
And less lawn.
KEVIN: There's too much water,
and for me, just maintenance, maintenance, maintenance.
She said, okay, about your lawn skills,
that you're one of the best.
And she just wants to make sure
that you study more and cut less.
You owe me.
[ Laughs ]
Totally.
You got a nice deck up here!
Nice composite material.
We've taken, like, chairs, and we'll put chairs out here
and have people out here, but it doesn't really --
I guess there's really not any continuity
between this and out there.
I'm excited.
All right.
You think you're out of the shock now?
I'm out of -- Yeah.
I can tell I'm still in shock.
I need about a group of friends from you.
'Cause all this stuff is gonna go out.
Yes.
All right? We're gonna rock this thing out?
Rock it.
Very cool. Nice meeting you.
All right. My pleasure.
All right. Talk to you guys soon!
Get ready!
Wow. That is one big yard.
[ Horn honks ]
[ Cheers ]
MATT: There we go!
Good morning.
Good morning.
Whoo!
Whoo-hoo!
[ Cheers ]
I want them to call the cops!
[ Laughter ]
No, I don't. Just kidding.
You guys ready to give me two days of hard work?
You want to meet my team that's gonna help out with us?
All right.
I have brought the legend, the man, the myth!
This is Dave Bushnell.
He does nothing short of incredible work in a backyard.
KEVIN: You bet!
You guys ready to work?
Okay. Let's go to the back. Come on!
You ready?
Yes, I'm ready.
I know you're gonna love it. Check it out.
Oh, wow.
Cool.
This is a total redesign of your backyard...
NARRATOR: Starting with an expansion to the existing deck,
an elegant fire table, custom storage benches,
a built-in surround for the grill,
and a planter-pot water feature.
Back over here, this section, this is ugly.
So Matt's gonna spruce it up with a flagstone seating area
and a hanging-plant wall made from rain gutters.
And then for you, my dear, a secret garden...
With a living arch at the flagstone entryway,
bench seat, giant boulders along the garden beds,
and easy-to-maintain artificial turf.
You guys ready to go?
Grab the truck!
Let's grab the tools! Let's go!
Whoo-hoo!
Yee-ha!
Whoo!
Get them out of here!
There you go.
Let's see if you can just take those things out like that.
One last kiss at the arbor.
All right.
Go.
Ohh! [ Laughs ]
NARRATOR: Coming up, Matt introduces Trish to her new planters.
That's called hypertufa.
[ Chuckling ] Tufa.
"Tufa" nothing.
[ Chuckles ] Right.
These boulders make an impact.
Wow! We got rocks!
NARRATOR: And Trish feels the power.
You got this dialed in.
You got it.
[ Both chuckle ]
TRISH: I need some order in my chaos.
Yard order.
NARRATOR: Kevin and Trish agreed to a yard crash.
Yee-ha!
NARRATOR: So Matt brought out the big guns.
KEVIN: It's just amazing how quickly the transformation started.
I mean, it was like "***!"
NARRATOR: With the ugly railroad ties gone...
Get them out of here!
...the next phase of Matt's master plan
is an overhaul of the existing deck.
We're extending the deck, all right?
But we're also gonna make that cutout for the barbecue.
Now, Kevin has a lot of tools in his garage.
So either they're trophies, or he knows how to work.
All right? I'm thinking he knows how to work.
So you get him to work, all right?
Kevin and Dave mark their measurements for the cutout.
Then Kevin proves he's not just a tool collector.
Now it's time for Matt to test Trish's talents,
as they get started on a unique planter project.
We are gonna make a trough -- a tufa trough --
that's called hypertufa.
It's great for putting plants into,
allows it to breathe, good for drainage,
and it's really lightweight.
All right. First things first.
1 1/2 parts of the sphagnum moss.
They grate the moss to eliminate clumps...
Okay, we're gonna put this there.
...then mix in perlite,
which serves as a soil amendment.
So now Portland cement.
Matt sprinkles in fiber mesh,
which will give the planters their strength.
So that's all mixed.
Now we're putting in a little bit of water, okay,
with some acrylic in it.
Now, we're gonna add the water just a little bit at a time,
'cause we can always add more water,
but we can't take water out.
And the consistency we're looking for
is like pizza dough.
Mmm. It smells lovely.
[ Chuckles ]
[ Sniffs ] Sphagnum.
I might need to put my mask back on.
[ Both chuckle ]
They line the form with paste wax
to keep the hypertufa mix from sticking to the plywood.
The more butter, the more better --
How about that?
Two small pieces of PVC go in for irrigation.
Then they press a 2-inch layer of hypertufa mix
throughout the form.
And now for the easiest part of the tufa job, okay?
Guess what we get to do.
Let it dry.
Yes. We'll see that back tomorrow.
Good work, hmm?
All right.
It's midday,
and the crew has nearly gutted the yard.
Kevin helps pour out concrete slab for the barbecue.
And friends and family are refinishing
the teak patio furniture,
but they're gonna have to make way for a massive delivery.
Railroad ties -- so not natural-looking.
And what are we gonna replace them with?
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
Boulders, baby! Boulders!
Seeing these rocks show up was like, "Wow! We got rocks!"
Is that a thing of beauty?
...beautiful thing.
[ Sighs ]
[ Chuckling ] Yes!
Huh?
NARRATOR: The crew continues hauling back the boulders,
and Matt and Trish start on the storage benches
that will sit on the deck.
Okay.
Ready.
So, we got to cut literally like 300 pieces
of this T&G at 17 inches.
So I screwed in, okay, a little piece of wood --
a block of wood -- to our chop saw here.
I just take my tape measure.
You can see the little line I made right here.
Now I grab my block...
...and screw it down.
Now, there's no guessing.
I don't have to bring out my tape measure anymore.
[ Chuckling ] I know.
Knowledge is power.
No. Power tools are power.
You're on fire, girl!
Okay. You got this dialed in.
You got it.
Okay.
200 more.
200 more.
Now that you've poured your slab,
we're gonna lay the block.
Now, where we're coming up,
the top of the wall is gonna be 56 inches above our slab, okay?
To there.
Yep. Right up to here.
NARRATOR: Kevin stacks the cinder blocks
using masonry adhesive to hold them in place.
Let's start popping these in one right after another.
And Matt and Trish continue on the benches,
first applying glue...
then nailing the tongue and groove
to an 8-foot-long piece of trim.
[ Imitates gunshots ]
Okay. We're done.
Time to see if Matt's fancy measuring works.
Fits!
It should fit beautifully.
The last step -- screwing the sides together.
Okay. One more side.
Ooh!
Wow.
...but we'll save the lids for tomorrow.
Okay. That's doable.
With the day nearly over,
Kevin sets the last block for the barbecue surround.
A little while ago,
it was just a little tiny bit of cement.
And now, bam!
The patio furniture gets some fresh tung oil.
And the posts for the hanging-plant wall are set.
All right.
We got a lot done, but we still have a lot to do tonight.
We need to put the piers in for our deck expansion.
All the material needs to come back here
for our grading tomorrow.
Boulders need to be kind of slightly adjusted,
'cause, tomorrow, we got a lot happening.
Let's say bye to the cameras.
Bye.
Overtime! Let's go!
NARRATOR: Coming up, another monster delivery.
[ Chuckling ] Holy cow!
NARRATOR: Trish gets a little trigger-happy.
What happened?
And the handmade planters have Matt a little nervous.
Help us so that if we do break it,
we can blame it on each other.
NARRATOR: For Matt's favorite projects and tips,
head on over to the "Crashers" page
at hgtv.com/crashers.
Good morning!
NARRATOR: It's the last day of this yard crash.
Last night, the entire team worked late
to set the giant boulders in place,
prep the ground for the synthetic turf,
and build the rest of the bench boxes.
We have even more work to do today.
We have planting of like a thousand plants.
We have decks to finish. We have fireplaces to finish.
This show never gets easier.
All right. Let's go!
NARRATOR: Kevin gets to work on the deck expansion
while Matt and Trish handle the first delivery of the day.
I know what this is!
You know what this?
My trees!
Entrance to your secret garden.
Oh, my God!
We got huge cypress trees, all right?
I love those.
Now it's gonna be amazing if we get these off the truck.
Yee-ha-ha!
Kevin. Special delivery, buddy.
[ Chuckling ] Holy cow!
NARRATOR: Next up for Matt and Trish -- nailing the bench lids together.
Okay.
So this is gonna be the back.
So let's start lining up all this tongue and groove.
You are on a mission today.
[ Chuckling ] Hold on.
Hold on! Hold on!
[ Laughing ] Oh, no.
What happened?
You don't want me to turn this over right now.
Ohh!
Did I totally miss that one?
I didn't even put any nails in it?
Oh, no!
War zone! [ Laughs ]
Good gosh.
All right. Slow and steady wins the race.
They sandwich the tongue and groove
with two more pieces of trim to give the lid some strength.
Like a glove.
The fence and existing planter beds are being stained,
and the barbecue wall gets a stone countertop.
The flagstone pathways are being laid,
and the deck is coming along,
and the base for the water feature is set in place.
Matt and Trish begin the delicate process
of freeing the hypertufa planters from their forms.
If this breaks, you know how many backups we have?
[ Chuckles ]
Yeah.
Nice job, guys!
The hypertufa is in one piece!
NARRATOR: Matt wants the planters to have an aged look,
so he and Trish apply a moss-colored stain.
MATT: Just kind of blot it just on the top there.
And all I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna dilute it.
And see how we get that dripping?
That's what we want.
The rest of the staining is gonna have to wait
because another huge delivery has just arrived.
Oh, my gosh! Oh, my...
So let's start unloading these things.
Come on up! Grab some plants!
Guess what.
The cypress that we put up, all right...
Yeah?
...aren't gonna make an arch.
So guess what
we're gonna put instead.
What?
Blue cedar.
NARRATOR: The cypress trees turned out to be too big and strong
to bend into an arch.
So what we're gonna do is
we're just gonna kind of tie these off
one after another, okay?
And then they'll just follow their way down
the whole entire arch just like that.
NARRATOR: Coming up, Kevin shows Matt his skills.
Whoo!
I picked the right man for this job.
But will this crash reach the finish line?
Let's go! Sun's going down!
We have all these old railroad ties as like a fence.
NARRATOR: Kevin and Trish agreed to let Matt
crash their uninviting yard.
Yee-ha!
NARRATOR: And that's exactly what he did.
Get them out of here!
Now it's down to the wire
to get this magnificent new yard completed.
Trish is finishing staining the hypertufa planters,
the storage benches are getting painted,
and the artificial turf is rolled out.
The posts are set for the privacy wall.
Matt and Kevin get going on the plant wall,
starting with ordinary rain gutters.
We need to cut these down to six foot.
Then we'll start putting all the hardware in them.
Whoo!
I picked the right man for this job.
Now we got our pieces.
Put our little end caps on it.
Once you got them on, just crimp them down.
They line the gutters with brackets
to keep them from splaying apart.
Now we got to put little eyebolts in.
I had these made up.
Oh, my God. Look at this.
They're all just gonna hold off each other like that,
and the weight should straighten it out.
NARRATOR: This crash is running out of daylight,
so Matt kicks the crew into hyperdrive.
Let's go! Sun's doing down!
Bark, plant, deck, and then we're done!
NARRATOR: The plant wall gets its plants.
The barbecue is ushered into its new home.
Whoo!
And the hypertufa planters are mounted.
Done.
And this crash is complete.
Here it is.
The secret garden.
Look how nestled we are.
Sit down. Sit down.
[ Chuckles ]
We're done!
I don't care if it's secret anymore!
Two days ago, we had railroad ties.
We had plants everywhere.
We had mishmash.
We had nothing cohesive at all.
KEVIN: The lawn was huge.
It took a lot of mowing, weed whacking.
We don't have to do that anymore, 'cause it's gone.
It's all gone.
I will be spending a lot of time in that secret garden
with my book, my feet up, and a cup of tea.
Barbecue.
The barbecue area is really nice.
Yeah. You're the barbecue man.
'Cause he's gonna be cooking dinner every night.
We made the deck, all right, just a little bit bigger.
But guess what. It looks twice as big.
And now you've got all that seating for everyone,
plus storage underneath.
We got a water feature. I didn't even ask for that.
Very tranquil.
I've got the synthetic grass.
It's gonna save me a lot of water, a lot of time.
I love the gutter-planter wall.
It really came together well. It's beautiful.
Can't ask for anything else. It's wonderful.
All right. Give it up to my crew.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Dave Bushnell and Team Bushnell.
Hey, are you sad that America now knows
what your secret garden looks like?
I know.
[ Laughter ]
That is a yard crash.
Enjoy.
Get out of the garden!
We're done.
Yeah!