Extreme Makeover Tour

by Ronnie Godfrey

I was like a kid in the candy store with a pocket full of change when I found out that the Redhead and I were going to get a VIP tour of an Extreme Makeover Home Edition jobsite. Wow! It was fantastic. We’ve met some of the celebrity designers before but never thought we would be getting a tour and watch them do what they do.

We’ve just returned from Florida and the International Builders’ Show (IBS), formerly known as the Builders’ Convention. We had a full slate of exhibits that we planned to see and seminars to attend. It would be a grueling 3 ½ days. However it didn’t open until the morning of January 12 and we were in Orlando on the 11^th because of the invitation we received.

We were told it was going to happen and when, but not where as they had not told the lucky folks who would be receiving the makeover. Late Monday the invitation confirmation email came through. The Jobsite was just a few miles east of Orlando. We drove to our designated starting point, signed releases, given official T-shirts, name tags, and then bused to the location.

They woke the lucky family Friday morning and tore down the old home on Saturday. By the time we arrived on Tuesday they had placed the foundation, framed the structure and were roofing and dry-walling. Like ants crawling oven a dropped jelly sandwich, workers covered the construction. There must have been at least a hundred workers at any one time on the site. And half that many eating lunch or building items to haul over to the home later. 

They worked 24 hours a day, rain or shine. Lights on extendable poles were set up to allow the workers to see and for the cameras to capture the progress. Several cameras were mounted in semi permanent locations to shoot time lapse, and then there were folks carrying cameras everywhere. I talked with Brady Connell, one of the producers, and was told that they would video 200 hours and then boil that down to 41 minutes for the TV show. I got to see inside the command center and saw the 14 monitors with live action being recorded constantly.

As we walked around the job site in our hard hats I noticed that there were a fair amount of folks who were helpers, toting boards and picking up trash, and then about as many skilled craftsmen. They had all sorts of heavy equipment, trailers, and trucks moving about no-stop. I guess it was to be expected as they were collapsing 4 or 5 months of normal construction activity into a week. The logistics to pull this off were phenomenal.

They have an advance man, Johnny Piccioni, who also served as our tour guide since he was more or less caught up with part that he plays. He hits the ground running a couple of weeks prior to the actual construction and works through getting the neighbors on board with what is about to happen, about how they are going to be invaded with an army of workers, security, show production staff, celebrities, and invitees like us.

We didn’t get to meet Ty Pennington, the team leader, as he was starting another makeover at another location. They overlap the makeovers so that they have 2 going at the same time. They split the celebrity designers between job sites. The site we toured had Eduardo Xol, Paige Hemmis and Michael Moloney adding their special touch. We did get to see Ed Sanders at the IBS. We’ve met him on a couple of occasions. He gave Suz a kiss on the cheek.

Celebrity designers get to express their style preferences as well as take on special projects. The special projects which might include exotic, one-of-a-kind furniture pieces or decorator items, are built in a tent dubbed Art World. This was set up in the celebrity motor home parking area in some neighbor’s backyard.

The show is produced by Endemol USA; and is a 2 time Emmy Award winner. They film 22-25 shows each year with an estimated USA TV audience of 16 million viewers. The shows are dubbed in various foreign languages and shown around the world with a total audience is about 1 billion.

I wish that I could pass on to you the atmosphere of the place and the attitude of the folks there. All of the staff that I met was friendly and eager to answer questions and show us their piece of the activity. Our guide said “they create the spark and the community does it. What happens is a mini miracle; it affects everyone who works with it.”

We have posted a short slide presentation to show a little of what we took in. Take a look at the link in the side bar: labeled Extreme Makeover Home Edition.