Extreme Home Makeover

December 01, 2011

We have lived in Daybreak for about 2 and half years when we get a notice on our doors that the empty lot in front of our condo will be made into an Extreme Makeover house - this was happening in June. It was a crazy month watching all the behind the scenes stuff happen and then house built all right from my porch!

A few days before the real action started.

Church parking lot behind my house. They used half the lot for the 2 weeks they were around.

The unveil of the lot is about to happen.

Crowd getting ready to welcome new family. Red shirts are Real SL soccer team.

Here comes the bus with the new family.

And let the fun begin. This was about 8 pm.

about midnight. Could not sleep much over all the noise.

Payton had school still during this construction so we had to have a loud fan on to drown out the noise.

Woke up the next morning to see they had progressed this much.

Camera crews

This is about 2 pm on the second day.

Ty Pennington

We thought since we would not be sleeping much that we would volunteer to help. We chose Friday night since Payton would be sleeping and it was the weekend. We helped from 8 pm - 2 am. Our job was to help pull out the footings from the foundation - they are heavier than they look!

Saturday morning. The 24 hour camera is no longer able to see the front door so we can go out and not worry about being put on national TV.

We were given passes that allowed us to walk more freely without being stopped and questioned why we were walking around to get our mail or just walking. This also allowed us to go to the food tent and eat the food that was brought in for the volunteers - we had Red Robin, Famous Dave's, Cafe Rio, Chick-Fil-A and more. They usually had food brought in a least 4 times a day.

This would make the house vibrate as they compacted the dirt for the driveway.

Paige doing a segment.

Michael Mahoney posing for me. He was really fun to talk to - did not come off stuck up at all!

Xzibit - the rapper

Xzibit and Michael about to do a segment.

That crowd was very common when a segment was being shot - you always knew when one of the designers was around by how big the crowd was.

More Xzibit

The little boy that the house was built for really likes soccer and is good friends with Real SL team. So the players came to write their names in the driveway cement. Here is Kyle Beckerman, captain for the team and Xzibit playing around while we sit on the porch.

Kyle willing to take a photo with Payton on our porch.

Writing their names in the cement.

This is the last night of building. They are bringing in all the landscaping.

This is the great spotlight that sat on the sidewalk all week.

This is a large tree they are trying to put in - it was taller than our balconies.

You can see some of the crowd that is lined up for the unveiling. The rest are on the other side of the house.

Soccer team coming to surprise the family.

Michael going for a smoke behind the house. The church would not allow them to smoke on their property - someone asked what he was doing behind the house and he said he was hiding from the Mormons.