HGTV Heads East of the River

• July 29th 2010

by Mark Wellborn

The first home to be featured on the DC season of HGTV’s My First Sale will not be a Federal row house in Georgetown or a two-bedroom condo in Logan Circle, but rather a renovated home in Historic Anacostia.

The home may look familiar to some as it was featured on UT a couple months ago. Owner David Garber (the brains behind blog And Now, Anacostia) spent eight months rehabbing and renovating the property, and now gets the chance to show off his work to a national audience.

The production company for the show approached Garber about featuring his home after reading hi blog and learning about the renovations that he had completed. After two auditions, Garber and his agent Darrin Davis got word that they were in.

“The filming is ongoing, and won’t end until the house is actually sold,” Garber told UrbanTurf. “So far there have been about three full days of filming, and on one of those days we were required to bring a change of clothes to make it seem like it was a new day.”

The first day of filming involved covering the pricing of the home, as Davis pointed out the positives and negatives and the two settled on a price of $289,800. The following segment filmed the staging appointment as Susan Campbell of Lemon Tree Staging explained what should be done, and the furniture was delivered. The most recent taping was of the broker’s open house.

The change of clothes mentioned above was just one part of the illusion that is reality television, as Garber also told us that he did multiple takes of each scene and had to reenact key events that weren’t filmed when they actually took place.

“It’s easy to fall into the habit of acting like the show is scripted because we are fed possible lines like ‘so, I think I need to drop the price,’ ” Garber said. “But I won’t lie, it can be fun.”

Despite the formulaic aspects of the show, Garber is happy to have the opportunity to show off the Historic Anacostia neighborhood, and some of the things that have been done to the house to make it more attractive. For example, he got a grant from the city to do sustainable/native landscaping at the house, a process he thinks will be a great teaching opportunity for a national audience.

Garber’s agent Davis has been equally satisfied with the experience.

“When David approached me with the idea I was interested, but not sure about the show because I’d never seen it,” Davis told UrbanTurf. “I realize now that it will be a great opportunity to let viewers know that despite what you’ve heard or seen on the news, this neighborhood is a great place to live.”

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/hgtv_heads_east_of_the_river/2320.