Extreme Makeover Home Edition Sunrise Kentucky

DEAR TIM: Have you ever watched one of those shows where they tear down the house of a deserving family and build them a new house in an extremely short period of time? When I say short I mean four or five days.

It's great theater, and when we see the video of the beautiful and well-appointed new home, I am very impressed. But really, how to they do that?

Sure, they have a huge crew of knowledgeable and dedicated professionals, but my experience would tell me that these folks would be stepping on one another, interfering with one another, and aggravating one another until the whole thing would erupt into a construction catastrophe. Even if they work with modular stuff (I do not know if they do), how does this stuff get done?

Also, the finished product looks great on television. Have you ever heard whether it looks as good close up? Craig M.., Dayton, OH

DEAR CRAIG: The Extreme Makeover: Home Edition television show is doing this exact thing right now 50 miles south of Cincinnati, OH. The show's host Ty Pennington, a professional home builder, numerous subcontractors, building material manufacturers and suppliers and an army of 250 volunteers are doing a blitzkrieg building project by tearing down a house and rebuilding it in just one week.

This extreme home makeover is indeed television theater at its best. It whips people such as you into a frenzy of excitement, wonder and amazement because of the speed of the project. I can tell you the concept is not new by any means and I have done it myself on a smaller scale on two separate occasions.

Years ago, I was challenged by an oral surgeon to do an extreme office makeover. I was given just one week to completely remodel his interior offices. It was a daunting task, but I accomplished it with detailed planning, fantastic support from my suppliers and subcontractors and precisely timed inspections.

I was the lead builder for one of the first Habitat for Humanity houses built in Cincinnati, OH years ago. My interest in the project was fueled by what I could do with 30 eager volunteers each Saturday. It was absolutely amazing to see how much work could be accomplished in just eight hours.

Members of the Jehovah's Witnesses have done the same thing for years. It is not uncommon for them to build a church in a matter of days. They have hundreds of talented building construction members from other cities swoop down onto a location and work non-stop for days to complete a new church for a grateful congregation.

The methodology employed by the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition television show is no different. They plan far ahead, pre-order all materials and stage these materials in a warehouse. Countless pre-construction meetings are held that outline exactly what will happen when. The entire job is broken down into small parts where perhaps a crew of three people is assigned a highly specific task. Each crew knows what to do and how to avoid confusion and overlap with adjacent crews.

A certain amount of the work may also be done in advance. Walls can be prefabricated at a factory and simply set in place at the jobsite. With enough planning, the walls can even have all holes predrilled in them for electrical cables and plumbing pipes.

You would be amazed at what can happen in advance. Sinks can have faucets attached and water supply lines dangling form them before they are dropped into a countertop. This work can happen days in advance of the start of the project. Woodwork, doors and other trim can be pre-painted or pre-finished before it is installed. Some trim can already be precut before it is installed. This is possible as carpenters already know the needed measurements based upon the frame size of the doors and windows.

Then imagine what happens if you place 15 or 20 qualified electricians in a house at the same time, with each one assigned just two or three things to do in distinct locations. Doing this, you can see it is possible to have a house completely wired in just a few hours. The same is true for each and every task.

Think about the drywall for just a moment. Can you see how fast you could hang every sheet of drywall in a house if a separate crew was working in each room? In fact, two crews could be working in a room at the same time and not interfere with each other if it was planned properly.

The local newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, published a special story the Sunday after the house was completed. In this behind-the-scenes look, they produced a comparison of the normal amount of time certain tasks take in new construction vs. the compressed time frame in the Extreme Makeover method of construction. Here are the comparisons as shown in the Enquirer:

As for overall quality, I can't make a judgment, as I have never seen one of these projects up close and personal. But I can tell you from working in the television industry myself for the past eight years that a slightly out-of-focus camera lens and the resolution of traditional television sets are very forgiving. New high-definition television sets can show far greater detail, and you might find that cameramen will not zoom too closely if the quality is low, or they may adjust the focus ring on a lens to disguise a blemish.

The recent project in Sunrise, Kentucky could be fraught with all sorts of hidden problems. The framing of the house happened during two days of intense rainy weather. Although I was not there, I have to believe the lumber absorbed lots of water, and it is possible insulation was placed in damp wall cavities and then immediately covered with a plastic vapor retarder. If this happened, mold and mildew could be growing like wildfire hidden behind the drywall in this brand-new home. As they say in Hollywood, the show must go on.

The magic that happens during post-production in the editing suite is also something to behold. Mistakes, problems and defects may be there on the digital recording tapes or discs, but for some odd reason they just don't seem to make it onto the final cut of the show. For those who think these jobs are mistake-free, well, I have several bridges and an airport I would like to sell to them.

Column EM0026