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EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - New Orleans Woo!

This week marked the end of the season as well as the end of the two-year quest to do an extreme makeover in each of the fifty states.  It's a good thing they finished - Ty's voice was about to give out. 

There's just only so much yelling one guy can do.

Louisiana was the destination this week and the goal was not one, but two makeovers - a storm damaged church and the battered home of a family of volunteer New Orleans firefighters.

Ty, his caffeinated crew of designers, a coalition of home building professionals, and an army of volunteers in hard hats descended upon the two work sites screaming "WOOO!"  (pictured below)  You see what I mean about Ty's voice needing a break?  That's a lot of WOO.

Since this was a two-hour season finale, we took lots of heart-warming detours on the road to finish the Usea family home and Pastor Willie Walker's church.  You gotta hand it to Extreme Makeover Home Edition - no show on TV is such a shameless booster of community involvement and giving.  It's pretty nice, really.

Anyway, after countless man hours of labor during the course of the week, the Walker church and the Usea home are reborn, better than ever.  Both buildings are built to be hurricane proof - they're constructed of reinforced and resistant material, they have a curved design that minimizes wind damage, and they're jacked up above the flood plain.  These buildings aren't going anywhere.

The Walker church was truly impressive, with a beautiful domed ceiling in the main hall and a fully stocked food bank to help the surrounding community.  The Usea family home was big enough to accomodate several generations of big hearted firefighters and, of course, everyone got tricked out bedrooms of their own.  I particularly liked one of the daughters' castle bedroom - what kid wouldn't want that?

The Extreme Makeover fifty state quest may be over, but the show's mission will carry on next year.  I wonder what challenge they'll set for themselves next season - and whether Ty's voice is up for all the hollerin' required.

--Dave Campbell

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Three Kleenex episode

Over the course of the season I have slowly been building an immunity to the tear inducing effects of Extreme Makeover Home Edition.  At the beginning of the season I would get all misty-eyed EVERY SHOW as Ty and Company helped another deserving and inspirational family with a gut-wrenching backstory.   Over time I grew less sensitive and stopped weeping so much.

Until this week's show.

This was a three Kleenex show for me.  The Extreme Makeover bus travelled to Massachussets, where they helped the Guintas, a family that had been ripped apart by a horrible accident.  Two years ago, Paul and Renee Guinta had a baby girl, Renee.  On the day she was born, Paul was driving home with his two sons when he got into a severe single-car accident.  The boys were fine, but Paul was seriously injured.  The doctors didn't think he'd survive the night. He did, but Paul had serious brain injuries.  He spent sixteen months in the hospital and rehab, but couldn't come back to the Guinta family home because it wasn't wheelchair accessible by any stretch of the imagination.  As Paul struggled to rehabilitate himself, he remained separated from his family.

That's when Ty, his cadre of designers, and seemingly the entire population of the Guinta's hometown come to their assitance.  They demolish the old house with its tight halls and narrow doorways and in its place build a beautiful new house with a spacious open floor plan and all kinds of bells and whistles.  Paul could finally come home and live with his family once again.

The house was designed for the entire family, though.  The kids each got their own theme rooms, like the icy penguin room or the dinosaur suite with a T-Rex canopy bed.  Renee, who cuts hair, got her own salon tricked out with the latest high tech hair gizmos. 

This was an amazing family and it would be pretty tough to watch this episode and not be touched by Paul and Renee's love for each other and their indominatable spirit.  Paul is an incredible guy, and I was really impressed by his wife Renee, who is unfailingly supportive and loving.  That woman has a big heart.

So, yeah.  I cried a little, I'll admit it.  Did you see it?  I'll bet you cried a little too, am I right?

--Dave Campbell

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Wicked awesome! The Rhode Island episode

The Extreme Makeover Home Edition national tour came to Rhode Island this week, where the Silva family needed some serious help.  They've devoted themselves to  providing a foster home for kids, but the Silvas had hit some serious snags:  their house was too small, and their entire property was contaminated with lead.  Would Ty and an army of Rhode Islanders be able to give the Silvas a safe house for their family and foster kids?  Fuggedaboutit!

The demo portion of this makeover was a little more involved than normal.  Usually Ty brings in the wrecking machines and exults at high volume as they destroy the old house, but this time they had to go one step further and excavate tons of contaminated earth from all around the property.  The end result:  a completely uncontaminated, lead-free plot of land.

And the house?  To say that the Silvas got an upgrade is a massive understatement.  Each of the kids got spectacular theme rooms, Ma and Pa Silva got a beautiful and serene suite where they could chill out, and the kids got the World's Coolest Treehouse in the backyard (pictured).  I thought the best part of the house was the shower, a massive walk-in tile job with a showerhead the size of a UFO and ceiling-mounted shower fixtures - all controlled by two digital control pads that adjust the settings and temperatures.  I WANT THAT.

The Silvas, as you might imagine, were blown away by the new house, totally reduced to tears.  It helps that through the generosity of their fellow Rhode Islanders their mortgage was paid off, so all they have to worry about is taking care of each other and the foster kids whose lives they touch.  The Silvas deserved a house that was just as wicked awesome as they were, and they got it.

--Dave Campbell

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Chicken coop upgrade

 

Before Extreme Makeover Home Edition entered their lives, the Carter family of Montana lived in a chicken coop. 

Let that sink in:  a chicken coop.  

Okay, it was a converted chicken coop. They didn’t live with chickens or anything; that would be kind of gross. Still, converted or not, nobody wants to live in a chicken coop, particularly not one that is falling apart. 

That’s where Ty Pennington and Co. come in.

First, they ship the Carters off to New York City to meet Hanson – yes, as in the group Hanson of “Mmmbop” fame. Then, they gleefully demolish the chicken coop and record the whole thing. Sometimes Ty gets a little too excited during the demo stage – clearly the guy really really likes leveling houses. Next, they build a huge custom house in 3 hours – sometimes longer. Finally, they reveal the incredible new house to the family, who FREAK OUT with joy. Sometimes the family gets so excited that they actually assault Ty, but this time it was just standard non-crushing hugs.

The thing that makes the Carter family unique, aside from the chicken coop thing, is that mom Julie and her 21 year old daughter Jade suffer from a genetic disorder known as Chiari Malformation. They’ve both had brain surgeries and had racked up huge medical bills.  Now it looks as if it’s just a matter of time before Julie’s other two daughters develop symptoms.  Julie runs a support group and tirelessly works to raise public awareness about the disorder. 

Prior to watching this episode I had never heard of Chiari Malformation, so that’s one more person who knows about the disorder now. I’d imagine Julie is pretty happy – Extreme Makeover Home Edition helps her raise awareness of Chiari on a huge scale, and she gets a beautiful new house that in no way resembles or smells like a chicken coop. It’s pretty much a win-win situation. 

--Dave Campbell   

 

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Occupational hazards

This week the mighty Extreme Makeover machine rolled into Alabama to help community activists Stephen and Lydia Gaudet and their six sons trade up from their tiny, disaster-ravaged house into something a little more appropriate for such a big family.

The Gaudets are not just numerous, they’re big-hearted as well as physically big. I don’t know how those boys, ranging from 9 to 22, fit into that house. When Ty and the EM:HE crew show up in their front yard for the customary “Bullhorn Howdy” as I like to call it, the Gaudet boys literally burst from their cramped, run-down house and charge the team, overcome with excitement.

I’m starting to think that there are some inherent risks to being part of the EM:HE crew, aside from getting bonked by the occasional panel of drywall. Sometime people – particularly males – get so excited that they have to express their joy with acts of affectionate violence. Remember last week, when the biker pastor hoisted Ty into the air and spun him around? That was nothing. The Gaudet boys deal out rib-cracking bear hugs to everyone on the show, and when they charge the crew like a pack of rampaging silverback gorillas, tackling Ty and designer John Littlefield.

While all the other designers wisely step out of the way, Littlefield gets love-tackled – hard. The force of the blow sends him off the lawn and on to the street, where he lands head first on the concrete under several hundred pounds of happy Gaudet boy. I winced when I saw that. Seriously, I thought we would next see John in a neck brace with two black eyes. But EM:HE doesn’t hire wimpy designers.  John dusted himself off, took some ibuprofen, and got to work.

While the family was in Disneyland, Gaudet Home 1.0 was demolished and replaced by the spacious, stylish version 2.0. This was a really cool house, with a huge kitchen and living room, a giant TV room that could seat the whole family comfortably, and an assortment of cool theme bedrooms. The youngest son, 9-year old Peter, has Down syndrome, so Ty built him a colorful, cheery room packed with appropriate sensory doo-dads to keep him engaged and stimulated.

Ty and company did a great job on this one, and the new house was much appreciated by the Gaudets. I tried to keep score of the number of crushing hugs in this episode but gave up after 25. Suffice to say, the new home went over very well, and the EM:HE crew lived to build another day.

--Dave Campbell

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Pastor Steve overhaul

Steve Boettcher of Nevada doesn’t fit the typical image of a minister – he looks more like a Viking warrior. He’s a tall dude with intense eyes and a wild man’s beard who spreads The Word from the back of a motorcycle. Pastor Steve has a heart of gold under that tough exterior though, and he and his wife Mary have turned their garage into a teen community center where kids from all walks of life can hang out safely and enjoy a hot meal.

Of course, their makeshift community center could use and extreme makeover, to say nothing of their small house, which they share with their daughter Stephanie and her baby Joshua, who was born with a serious medical condition that requires he be on oxygen. These people need a bigger, better home.

Fortunately, building bigger and better homes is what Ty Pennington and his crew are all about. They ship the Boettcher’s off to Hawaii, destroy their house, and in one short week they’ve replaced the old double-wide trailer with a full-on Palace of Awesomeness.

The best EM:HE episodes are the ones that balance the human interest elements with the neat-o home building. Don’t get me wrong, I find the family stories compelling, but I’m equally interested in what kind of house they’re building the family and what bells and whistles they’re putting in the house. This episode had all that. The new house was very cool – I particularly liked the “daylighting” tubes that they placed in the roof to take advantage of Nevada’s sunshine. Daughter Stephanie’s private suite was decorated like a castle, with a few rock walls and exposed timbers, to reflect her Irish heritage. I was worried that it was going to come out looking cheesy, but they did a fantastic job – she even got her own veranda. The best part was the new and improved kids’ community center (pictured above), which was a 500% improvement over Pastor Steve’s converted garage.

The Boettcher’s were PSYCHED to see their new abode when the big EM:HE bus finally moved.  Pastor Steve physically picked up Ty, who is not a small guy, and spun him around on his shoulders. I was half-expecting Steve to execute a bone-jarring inverted suplex, but the Pastor held off on the wrestling moves and returned Ty safely to Earth. Phew. 

This episode didn’t make me cry (a first since I’ve started this blog!) but it did warm my heart a little. This home makeover not only had a huge impact on the Boettcher family, but on the community as well. Not bad for a week’s worth of work.
 

--Dave Campbell

 

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Hardhat not included

You know how on every episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Ty and Co wrangle up an army of local volunteers who descend on some lucky family's house like a swarm of blue-shirted locust?  These are magic locust, BTW, because instead of leaving ruined farmland behind, they leave a brand new house in their wake.

I'll bet you get to keep the blue shirt if you're an EMHO volunteer because it'd be more trouble than it's worth trying to collect them and wash them and store the blue shirts every week.   But here's what I've been wondering:  do you get to keep the white hardhat?  Seriously, I want to know.  Do the volunteers hand the hardhats in at the end of the week for disinfection and de-lousing so they can be used by the next horde of volunteers?  Or do they get to keep them as a memento of their time helping out the EMHO crew?  I'd like to think the volunteers get to keep them, and that maybe Ty and the designers sign a few of the hats as well.  You never know, though.  Those hats can't be cheap.

So if anybody out there has contributed to Extreme Makeover Home Edition, or knows a guy who knows a guy who was a volunteer, please let us know:  did you get to keep the hardhat? 

I tell ya, these are the kinds of questions that wake me up in the middle of the night.

--Dave Campbell

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Special Civil War episode!

Here are the stats for this week’s episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition: 

# of hugs: 12

# of group hugs: 2

# of times Dave cried: 2

# of times Ty spoke much louder than necessary: 17
 

The EMHO bus traveled to Virginia to help out the Lucas family, whose father is serving in Iraq as a member of the Virginia National Guard. Patriots and Civil War history buffs, the Lucas family bought a historic piece of property that was once the site of the Chatham House, a significant Civil War locale. They began building their dream house on the property, but only got as far as the foundation and frames before the war interrupted and dad was sent overseas. The rest of the family had to live in a small run-down house while their building site rotted.

That’s where Ty, his team of super-enthusiastic designers, and the usual horde of volunteers step in and that’s when the hugging and Ty’s yelling starts.  Did he suffer inner ear damage when he was a kid or something?  Because the dude yells.  A lot.

I was actually more interested in the house than the family this time around, but that must just be because I’ve opened myself up to EMHO in the past and just ended up crying a lot. I’ve got a job to do, man, I can’t be crying while I watch TV. So although the Lucas family did pluck gently at my metaphorical heart strings, I found myself more involved with what the end product was going to be like. 

You can take a look at the house here on ABC.com, it’s excellent. BTW, every week some intern with EMHO uploads literally hundreds of photos of the homes on that week’s show. It’s a great resource and you can get some really cool ideas from all the interior shots of the house – go check it out. 

The new Lucas family house is a modern recreation of the Chatham House, incorporating 19^th century aesthetics into a state of the art structure with all kinds of neat appliances. The interior décor is all evocative of the Civil War era, from the floral wallpaper to the brick floor in the kitchen. The team stripped and refinished a set of French doors and a beautiful mantle piece that the Lucas’ had salvaged from the original house and worked them seamlessly into the design. You could tell the family was impressed and touched – and psyched! Their house is awesome! Pa Lucas even got an outbuilding as his own private museum of Civil War memorabilia as well as artifacts donated by generous history buffs.

The two Lucas boys each got their own custom rooms, the only places in the house that were free from the 19^th Century. The oldest boy is interested in oceanography and got a lavish undersea room (pictured below) that I would have absolutely loved as a boy. Those glowing bubble pillars alone would have sealed the deal for me. The youngest son Joe, who is on the autism spectrum, got a pirate-themed room with a treasure chest bed, bean bag chairs, and all manner of swashbuckling decorations. Again, Young Dave would have loved a pirate room, too. How come my parents never got me an over-the-top pirate room? If I had only brought home more As on my report card… 

Although I was really interested in the end result, the home, this week, it wouldn’t be Extreme Makeover Home Edition if I didn’t end up crying. You know what I’m a total sucker for? Military dads who surprise their kids. We’ve all seen the human interest pieces on the news where a serviceman comes home from overseas and surprises his kids at a school assembly or in their classroom. That’s good stuff, isn’t it? You’ve got to be made of stone if that doesn’t get you a little emotional. 

This week Ty and Co hid Pa Lucas on the bus when they first went to meet the Lucas family, and then he jumped off the bus to everyone’s surprise. I mean, I’m sure they knew he was coming home soon because of the show and all, but it’s still great to see the family receive such an unexpected and welcome surprise. I love stuff like that.
 

-- Dave Campbell

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Cry America! Cry!

I’m keeping a tally – I cried FIVE TIMES watching this week’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Did you see it? Come on, you got a little choked up, you can admit it. We’re all friends here. 

This episode focused on the Hughes family of Louisville, Kentucky. Patrick John and Patricia Hughes have three boys – Cameron, Jesse, and 19 year old Patrick Henry, who was born without any eyes and is restricted to a wheelchair, unable to fully use his arms and legs. Patrick Henry has a gift for music and a sunny outlook on life that is humbling and inspiring. He plays a mean piano and is a member of the University of Louisville marching band, where he plays trumpet while his dad pushes him around the field in his wheelchair in synch with the rest of the band. Pretty unbelievable, and I mean that in a good way. 

Of course, their house sucks, or they wouldn’t be on Extreme Makeover Home Edition, would they? Narrow doors, narrow hallways, small bathroom, cramped kitchen – it’s just no good for a blind guy in a wheelchair, to say nothing of the rest of the family. Cameron, 16, and Jesse, 12, have to share a bedroom, and mom and dad don’t get a lot of privacy. 

Ty Pennington and his crew of hyper-enthusiastic designers descend on the Hughes home with their characteristic high energy and can-do spirit. What do they feed these people, anyway? They’re so darn peppy. They must have strong coffee on the Extreme Makeover bus. The team’s goals are to destroy the Hughes house (which sounds mean, but wait) and build them a new house that will give Patrick Henry the independence he deserves and the space the rest of the family needs. As usual, Ty recruits a bunch of contractors, some generous sponsors, and a screaming mob of townsfolk to help them.

You know, just once I’d like to see them let a screaming mob of Vikings tear apart the house instead of all that heavy demolition gear. Maybe they could borrow the “what’s in your wallet” Vikings from those Capital One commercials. 

The team even did an extreme makeover of the marching band’s practice field at U of L, replacing the old worn out grass field with a huge expanse of white sand that looked pretty but couldn’t have been easy to march on. Ah, I’m just kidding – the new field was grass. 

The new house was fantastic, a spacious mansion with plenty of room for Patrick Henry, cool customized rooms for the kids and parents, and loads of high tech appliances and gadgets. You can check it out in the photo gallery on ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition page.

But enough about the house – this kid, Patrick Henry, was amazing. He was born disabled, sure, but he was blessed with two fantastic parents who sacrificed a lot for him and clearly did an incredible job raising him, because he has the most inspirational outlook on life and refuses to let himself be limited by his disabilities. “God made me blind and unable to walk,” Patrick Henry says. “Big deal. With music I know that I can do anything I set my mind to.” He’s not just saying that – he believes it 100%.

And that’s where the whole crying-five-times thing comes in. You’d have to be made of stone not to be touched by this wonderful kid and his supportive family. It really made me take a proverbial step back and do a little comparison/contrast between my life and Patrick Henry’s life. Before the show began I was kind of stressed out about the burnt-out heating element in our hot water heater. After the show, that hot water heater didn’t seem like that big of a deal at all. Thanks Patrick Henry, for being so awesome. 

Next time, I am going to keep a running tally of how many times I cry and how many times people hug. There’s a lot of hugging going down on Extreme Makeover Home Edition.  You can't really blame 'em.

-- Dave Campbell

EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION - Try not to cry

I told myself, as I always do, that I wasn’t going to cry watching this week’s episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. No, this time I was going to be strong and keep my emotions in check and not hand Ty Pennington another victory in our silent war.

But no. I probably didn’t even last ten minutes before I started tearing up a little.

I’m admittedly a bit of a softy - I choke up while watching dog food commercials. But Extreme Makeover Home Edition really hits my buttons, and this week in particular seemed carefully engineered to make me cry.

This special two-hour extra-touching episode focused on the Gilyeat family – four kids and a decorated Marine father who lost a leg in Iraq. There current house was no darned good – cramped, not easily accessible for Dad, and full of dangerous pitfalls and venomous snakes. OK, I’m lying, there were no snakes, but it wasn’t hard to visualize Dad taking a bad fall trying to get up those steep stairs.

Since it was a two-hour episode, they padded this week’s show with plenty of vignettes and misty-eyed interviews that seemed designed to make us cry every ten minutes or so. Mr. Gilyeat is an inspirational guy, a real hero who is trying to raise four kids by himself while dealing with a life-altering injury – plus all the mundane trials of daily life in a house that doesn’t work for the family at all. These guys need help.

I don’t think anyone would begrudge the Gilyeats a new house. But since this is Extreme Makeover Home Edition, they don’t just get a new house – they get a mega-house!

They never have a family on Extreme Makeover Home Edition that just kind of needs a new house. You’ll never see an episode where the parents are hanging out drinking coffee in their expensive kitchen saying, “Well, we’ve always wanted a breakfast nook but with Skip going to Yale we just didn’t know if we could make our dream a reality. Luckily, Ty heard about our situation and we’re going to get some help. Maybe a bigger garage, too? Fingers crossed.”

Enter the EMHO Team with 5,000 volunteers. Ty and company gleefully raze the old sucky house to the ground and, through the magic of editing, replace it with a beautiful sprawling single-story house complete with a wheelchair accessible layout, custom bedrooms for everybody, and a gleaming new garage stocked with thousands of dollars of gear. Oh, and a new car. And a hovercraft. And a pony.

OK, I’m lying again. But a hovercraft and a pony wouldn’t have been out of place – the Gilyeat’s new home is loaded with cool extras. As usual, the team creates wonderful over-the-top bedrooms specifically designed for each family member. Dad’s master bedroom was the best – Ty made a Zen warrior’s shrine complete with modern Asian wall paneling, samurai swords, and stone guardian statues.

You could tell that this makeover was going to have a HUGE impact on the quality of the Gilyeat’s lives – doubly so because the mortgage was paid off! Sure, EMHO is carefully tuned to illicit sympathy and tears from the viewer, but basically the show – and this episode in particular – celebrates the virtues of community, volunteerism, and recognizing those who sacrifice so much. So while EMHO may be a little manipulative in a reality-TV show kind of way, at its core the show is built on a foundation of honest emotion and neighborly goodwill that is hard to dismiss. You’d have to have a cold heart not to be moved by the Gilyeat scenario.

This is why I don’t feel bad for crying – manfully – more than once while watching this episode, even though I told myself I wouldn’t.

You win, Ty Pennington. This time.

--Dave Campbell