‘You Live In What?’ comes to Washington

Published 7:46 pm Tuesday, July 23, 2013

 SCARLET SPLASH: A shot of Beth and Chris Collier’s entrance way in the old Tayloe Hospital. The home will be featured on HGTV’s “You Live in What?”

SCARLET SPLASH: A shot of Beth and Chris Collier’s entrance way in the old Tayloe Hospital. The home will be featured on HGTV’s “You Live in What?”

 

If you’re a fan of Home and Garden Television (HGTV), you may be seeing some familiar places on its show “You Live in What?”

The hour-long show spotlights unique homes around the world — homes that started their lives as something else entirely: wineries, historic banks, greenhouses, caves, churches and anything else some enterprising person had the vision to convert into living space.

Two of those unique homes just happen to be in Washington.

On Aug. 16, an HGTV film crew will cruise into town to film two converted spaces: Beth and Chris Collier’s home in the old Tayloe Hospital on the corner of West Main and Washington streets and Scott Campbell and Bill Sykes’ condo on Market Street, in a building that began as the M.A. Smith Shirt Factory in 1912.

Beth Collier said the show producers contacted her after seeing the Colliers’ and their home featured in the April/May edition of Garden & Gun magazine, but filming nearly fell through because of geographical misunderstanding.

“They thought we were in Washington, South Carolina,” Collier said.  “They’re out of Dallas. I think it was a little too far for them.”

Instead of letting HGTV give up on the idea, Collier instead pitched them another unique home in Washington — Fire Station lofts, two luxury condos owned by Scott Campbell and Bill Sykes. After interviewing Campbell and seeing images of the lofts, the producers decided to kill two birds with one stone, Collier said.

“The thing they like the best is that we are the original owners and developers,” Campbell said. “They liked that about both spaces — the Colliers’ and ours.”

Another draw was the history of the homes: Fire Station lofts started as a shirt factory, became the Washington fire station where U.S.O. dances were held during the WWII years, eventually became the Beaufort County Technical Institute —precursor to the Beaufort County Community College—before Sykes and Campbell bought part of the second floor of the building 2006. In 2004, the Colliers’ renovated the main building of Washington’s old hospital, which later became the Britthaven nursing home, into three condos.

“The part I’ll like the best is that we have a professional crew to document the Fire Station,” Campbell said.

There’s no word yet on when the Washington segments will air, but she was told the two would not air together in the same show, Collier said.