'Extreme Makeover' is at work getting Hondo home totally rebuilt in a week

Web Posted: 03/11/2006 12:00 AM CST
What's happening
Sunday: The Craft family returns to discover their new home.
Air date: Scheduled for April 9. 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' airs at 7 p.m. Sundays on ABC.



Eduardo Xol, a designer for 'Extreme Makeover,' hitches a ride at the building site as the frame is going up Wednesday afternoon.



Tanya McQueen (center), a designer for the ABC home-makeover show, gets a ride at the construction site.


Tracy Hobson Lehmann
Express-News Home & Garden Editor

HONDO — Talk about a math problem: Construction crews typically spend 90 days building a house. But a television crew says trim the time by about 94 percent, to five days plus a day to decorate.

It's a problem that seems more like a statistical improbability, and it calls for an extreme solution. When "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" rolled into town Sunday to build a house for Todd and Elizabeth Craft and their four children, crews were prepared to make it work.

Though it seems it would take nothing short of magic to win the race against the clock, success really depends on extreme coordination.

"You just have to have that schedule in order," says Luann Butler, division manager for builder Fieldstone Communities. Here, there's no time for waiting or wasting

The house, designed by architect Betty Nichols, was planned for speedy building, Butler says. It features a simple roofline and standard-size windows and cabinetry. Wall panels and roof trusses were built offsite. All are tactics Fieldstone, a production builder, employs to get homes and neighborhoods built quickly.

But whereas the ordinary concrete foundation would cure over three to five days, the Craft slab need only three hours to dry. That was thanks to denser concrete — 6,000 psi compared to Fieldstone's standard 3,000-psi formula — and a special curing agent in the post-tension slab.
Crews also won't find themselves waiting for required inspectors. For the around-the-clock TV project, inspectors come on a moment's notice — day or night. Normally, projects can halt for a day or two while waiting for the numerous inspections throughout the process.

"It's a matter of having who's next in line here," Butler says. "In a normal home you don't have that."

On Wednesday, the first day of actual building, a staging area was as busy as the home site. Crews at a tent two blocks from the house on 30th Street sorted cabinets according to where they would be placed in the house. Color-coded hard hats distinguished which crew the workers belonged to: white for general workers, blue for plumbers, yellow for heating and air conditioning.

At the building site, a truck dropped off the first pieces of prebuilt wall framing at 1:50 p.m. The west wall was up, though not totally set, by 2 p.m. Another load of the puzzle pieces came off a truck at 2:15, and by 4:30 the wall framing was in place and crews started on roof trusses.

At that point, the crew had made up some of the time lost in razing the previous house when excavating the foundation proved more difficult than expected.

"Now we are in our third season, and we've developed a well-oiled machine," says show designer Eduardo Xol. "Everyone knows what to do."

Like the building, the design pace on the reality TV show bears little resemblance to reality.

"It's much different when the client is much more hands-on," Xol says. "Here, the family is OK with the element of surprise." Whereas interior designers typically have an introductory meeting with clients and spend a few hours in a conceptual meeting before turning out design ideas, "Extreme" designers spend part of a day with the family. They discuss favorite and least-favorite colors and what belongings the family wants to keep. They also take note of themes in family members' collections, sometimes finding inspiration in those.

Unlike the real world, "Extreme" designers don't have to consider budget, Xol says, and they have creative freedom.

"I have designer friends who are envious of my freedom to create," he says.

The designers divvy up the work and get assistance from a design production team that works behind the scenes to collect samples and products. "We understand what we need to get done each day. Sometimes it gets a little crazy, but it always gets done."

For the project here, Xol is working on a special room for 3-year-old Isabella, who was born with a malformed brain and uses a wheelchair. Though the network prohibits the release of any information about the house before the show airs, Xol says he's working on a space that will motivate Bella to be active and be soothing to her at the same time.

It will be important, he notes, to create a space that stimulates all of her senses. "That's something I believe in anyway, so for me, it's a perfect fit."

Designer Tanya McQueen, a Columbus native, says she and her fellow designers have access to the latest and greatest products in the design world, but they take into consideration how the space will function for the family and how the house will fit with the neighborhood.

"You can overcomplicate design," she says. "We always keep the family story first and foremost. It's more about the family than the fabric on your sofa."
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tlehmann@express-news.net

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[bonnington]

I saw it last night and became sleepy after 10 minutes.

[spursfeva_31]

yeah I saw that after Grey's Anatomy. I LOVE this show and everytime I watch it, I cry.

[JamesR]

This is one of the best shows on TV.

But I don't cry