REWahoo
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give
Any of you familiar with the ABC show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”? It’s way too schmaltzy for my taste, but they do some good work for deserving people, and I find the 7 day destruction and construction of a house very interesting.
The show selected a family in a nearby small town and the making of the show dominated the news the past two weeks in the local paper...both issues (it’s a weekly
). The paper covered a lot of the background on how the family was selected and how they were able to complete the house in less than 5 days!
The family was nominated by the high school team where the dad is a coach (ABC says it receives 5,000 nominations per week for the show). The family has four children and two are disabled. The three year old is so severely impaired by a brain deformation that she cannot sit or stand, is legally blind and is fed through a tube. The old house was small and had no handicapped access making it very difficult for the family to care for the severely disabled daughter as she grows.
Although the selected family didn’t find out about their selection until the TV bus pulled up in front of the house, they had been told by ABC they were one of 6 finalists and that show staff would need access to the old house to determine what needed to be done. In reality the family had been selected for the makeover more than two months earlier, and ABC had met with the city council in secret and asked for cooperation in staging the construction of the house. A lot of coordination is required with local permitting agencies who had someone on-site 24/7 during construction so there were no delays while inspections were completed. Police, utility, and other agencies were brought into the planning process weeks prior to the event and all sworn to secrecy. They were able to keep the whole thing under wraps for almost two months, an amazing feat in a small town.
If you are familiar with the show, you know that idiot Ty Pennington is the “star”. ABC is producing a makeover series on the Gulf Coast, and Pennigton was busy with that production. So, ABC found a suitable substitute star to fill in for him...Kermit the Frog.
The paper covered lots of details about how they stage all the materials and work crews. For example, the concrete used for the slab is twice the strength of the concrete normally used and allowed framing to begin with 3 hours of finishing the pour. The destruction of the old house began on Tuesday and the new house was completed and furniture was being moved in on Saturday night, total elapsed time: 120 hours.
I thought about driving over to take a look at the work going on, but not being a big fan of crowds, decided to pass on the opportunity. We did drive over this weekend to take a look at the finished product. I was expecting something very showy, but it is just a very nice looking house, one that fits in with others in the neighborhood. The family cannot discuss with anyone what the interior of the house looks like until the show airs in early April. They did say the new house was a little over 3,000 sf, compared to 1,900 for the old one.
If I wasn’t retired I woudn’t have had the time to savor this exciting local event...
The show selected a family in a nearby small town and the making of the show dominated the news the past two weeks in the local paper...both issues (it’s a weekly
). The paper covered a lot of the background on how the family was selected and how they were able to complete the house in less than 5 days! The family was nominated by the high school team where the dad is a coach (ABC says it receives 5,000 nominations per week for the show). The family has four children and two are disabled. The three year old is so severely impaired by a brain deformation that she cannot sit or stand, is legally blind and is fed through a tube. The old house was small and had no handicapped access making it very difficult for the family to care for the severely disabled daughter as she grows.
Although the selected family didn’t find out about their selection until the TV bus pulled up in front of the house, they had been told by ABC they were one of 6 finalists and that show staff would need access to the old house to determine what needed to be done. In reality the family had been selected for the makeover more than two months earlier, and ABC had met with the city council in secret and asked for cooperation in staging the construction of the house. A lot of coordination is required with local permitting agencies who had someone on-site 24/7 during construction so there were no delays while inspections were completed. Police, utility, and other agencies were brought into the planning process weeks prior to the event and all sworn to secrecy. They were able to keep the whole thing under wraps for almost two months, an amazing feat in a small town.
If you are familiar with the show, you know that idiot Ty Pennington is the “star”. ABC is producing a makeover series on the Gulf Coast, and Pennigton was busy with that production. So, ABC found a suitable substitute star to fill in for him...Kermit the Frog.
The paper covered lots of details about how they stage all the materials and work crews. For example, the concrete used for the slab is twice the strength of the concrete normally used and allowed framing to begin with 3 hours of finishing the pour. The destruction of the old house began on Tuesday and the new house was completed and furniture was being moved in on Saturday night, total elapsed time: 120 hours.
I thought about driving over to take a look at the work going on, but not being a big fan of crowds, decided to pass on the opportunity. We did drive over this weekend to take a look at the finished product. I was expecting something very showy, but it is just a very nice looking house, one that fits in with others in the neighborhood. The family cannot discuss with anyone what the interior of the house looks like until the show airs in early April. They did say the new house was a little over 3,000 sf, compared to 1,900 for the old one.
If I wasn’t retired I woudn’t have had the time to savor this exciting local event...
