Extremely   

ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition just finished filming its second home build show here in Kentucky.

        Our hearts are with houses, and the families that make them homes.  Even so, this was special.

         And we love the buildingest country on the planet - the U.S.A.  This is a nation literally built by hand from dirt to world leadership, in everything from housing and building codes to computing, in about 200 years.  No other nation comes close.  So call it double special.

        Connect those dots, and add that we're gonna give it all away after we finish, to a Kentucky family that can really use it, and it is extremely special!

                       Before

       Extreme Makeover taps those threads of our lives and history.  They arrived earlier this month.  We joined them at the rally for the volunteers on a Saturday (10/16) in Louisville.  The blueprints and build schedule had arrived for the home inspectors just a day or two before, so our group was rearin' to go.

        This was one build to behold.  The home was in Fairdale, KY, basically in a gully.  The drop from the ridge at the rear to grade at the foundation was about 200 feet.  Managing the water runoff was a construction project all by itself.  A 40-foot retaining wall barricaded the back, uphill side, while a huge drain system diverted water to the left side.

Foundation Pour

     The new home was near 4,500 square feet with five bedrooms (the family has six children, the youngest with Downs).  It's on an unvented  split-level crawl with a four-pipe radon mitigation system (there's a challenge).  Plus, there's a four car garage and a gym in front on slabs, under metal roofs.

      Home inspectors pulled their oar as part of the build team -- in more than one way!  ServiceUSA owner and home inspector Ray Sandbek and  PLI Dean & home inspector Steve Keeney were enlisted to be on site from start to finish.  This was an extremely special use of home inspection skills and standards -- to pick up issues before a fix required costly, time-consuming repair.  Sandbek was the former chairman of the Kentucky Board of Home Inspectors and one of Kentucky's first home inspectors.

      West Point home inspector Gary Brewer and his bluegrass band entertained Wednesday.  The group, which includes Brewer's father and two sons, was thrilled to do the show after PLI put them together with the Makeover crew.  We were thrilled to listen, and always charged up to help PLI alums.

      The  climax was Thursday, Oct. 28 with the surprise "reveal" for the family.  We think it's fair to say they had their breath taken away!  As the saying goes, life is less about each breath you take than the moments that make you breathless.

        Millions remember the first Louisville Extreme Makeover in November, 2007 (actually, more like a billion saw it, if you count the 69 other countries where it aired).

        That build liberated a 19 year-old in a wheelchair named Patrick Henry Hughes.  (We don't know if the parents were thinking of the American patriot famous for "Give me liberty or give me death" in 1775 but we chose to believe it.)

        Patrick Hughes was born unable to straighten his arms and legs.  He was in a wheelchair for life.  Patrick also was born with no eyes.  Against the odds, Patrick became a crowd-pleasing musician and an inspiration to the UofL marching band, not to mention us.  But his home, like most, made it tough for someone in a wheelchair, or blind, to get around, especially on his own.  (One day, we think our SOPs will expand to include client-specific inspections, like wheelchair radius in bathrooms and kitchens for wounded vets and folks like Patrick.)

Joe Pusateri of Elite Homes

        Extreme Makeover changed all that for Patrick in 2007.  Joe and Rocky Pusateri led the drive.  The two brothers head Elite Homes in Louisville, a top-flight custom builder.  There's video at www.eliteextremedream.com.  It'll ring a bell.  It changed the lives of thousands of volunteers who worked 'round the clock on site.  And they've changed thousands more lives since.

        That was a little shorter build.  This was was about 110 hours straight to the "reveal."

        Patrick dropped by the Saturday volunteers rally with his family.  It's three years later now.  You should've heard that young man sing and play piano!  When you see and hear him play piano, you think it's a miracle.

        We like a lot about Extreme Makeover (Sundays 8 pm, right before "Desperate Housewives;" go figure).  We're fans of Joe and Rocky, of course, but we're just as big fans of the hundreds of Kentuckiana craftsmen and women who make it happen.

        We like the way citizenship and community and loving your neighbor plays out loud through the whole effort.  We like a wholesome TV show we can watch with our grandchildren without a second thought about bodycount, blood, naked bodies, or bad mouths that would put George Carlin's "Seven dirty Words" skit to shame.  Some clips are at www.abc.go.com/shows/extreme-makeover-home-edition. 

        We like the profoundly American spirit of the whole thing.  We like the reminder that if you leave Americans to their own devices, they can build great stuff and do the right thing.

        We were pretty inspired by the fireplace guy who showed up at the rally on his crutch to be sure he'd start at just the right time.  We liked the gusto of the Mexican crew that didn't even have an email address for scheduling but showed up to be sure they were on cue.  These framers were awesome.  And the guy with his ankle in Ace bandages and his foot in a brace was there to coordinate the ten workers he volunteered.

        In fact, we were psyched by the whole huge crowd at the start-up rally.  We liked the men and women on board, some with their kids.  (Here's news:  When we finished the build, there were nearly as many women working as men this year.)  The rally crowd watched videos of the 2007 build, and over 100 other builds around the country, on those giant screens.  They cheered and applauded.

      It felt good because it was good.  It was a good thing, a good place, filled with good people and a great heart.

        Many folks there didn't know each other.  What the heck.  Everyone was there to help a family they didn't know either.  What everyone did know was why everyone was there.  No ego trips here, just teamwork.  The purpose, the drive, and the dedication everyone shared was plenty.  Our cup runneth over.

        It reminded Steve of neighbors around his farm many years ago.  When a neighbor's bull got loose, a neighbor brought it back.  A neighbor shorthanded when it was time to bail hay knocked on a neighbor's door and got help.  When he was a kid near Pennsylvania Mennonite country, he saw not just the classic story of rebuilding a burned barn, he  saw neighbors from across the fields arrive in the same kind of cheerful crowd to built a new barn or a home.

        Somehow it bought to mind that heroic effort in Chile's collapsed mine.  No human ever survived being buried alive that long in all of mining history.  No one even knew they were alive, and none of them knew they still were being looked for, for 17 days.  The helmet lamps went dark down there after 3 days.  A half-mile down, none of the trapped miners tried to save himself at the expense of others.  The leader showed his mettle by choosing to be the last man lifted out.  Top side, riveting international teamwork dug impossible shafts that found a needle in the globe's haystack.  The whole country made it their job to leave no man behind.  The President could've disappeared, fearing the worst.  Nope, he was front and center.  And all the miners came out alive, an incredible 69 days later.  They never stood a chance alone.  That's the right stuff.

Just Home Building,

Not "Dancing With the Stars"

      "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here" as President Lincoln put it so well in his "Gettysburg Address."

       In its own way, this build is our community's resolution that we too are "for the people."  Maybe no one will dance with the stars for doing this build, and maybe no one down the street, or down the years, will remember.  Then again, that's what Abe Lincoln thought when he chose those words for his Address!  But that's not what it was about, for Lincoln or this church full of people rallying to build.

      It was about being part of something more than yourself, bigger than yourself, better than yourself.  

         The show will hit 200 builds sometime next year, in its eighth season.  Ty Pennington, the host of the show, was there to MC the videos.  The rest of the Extreme Makeover crew was a lot like the Louisville crowd (yes, he'd even picked up how to say "luavulle").  One crew member was an architect who volunteered, kept volunteering, and then went on the road with them.  They finally decided to put him on the payroll. Pennington started out on the crew too, handling local coordination.  "Uh, ma'm, we want you to know we're gonna bulldoze your neighbor's house and, if it's all right with you, we'd like to put 50 or 100 Porta-potties in your front yard, and maybe a caterer's tent out back.  Oh, and about parking....."

Neighbor's Yard

            Most of the people just wanted to know when we'd get started and how else they could help, Ty told us.

Patrick Henry Hughes Performs

        Patrick got on stage at the rally and sang Brooks & Dunn and Elvis Presley.  He topped it off with a credible Ray Charles standard, wearing sun glasses. 

         Most of all we love the feeling, the spirit, and the "can do" attitude of the volunteers all pulling together, helping each other, helping a total stranger.   It was a beautiful thing.

        First at the rally, then at the build, everybody was really happy to be there.  Nobody was dragging in, unhappy to be there, like you see at some state government meetings.  The whole thing really was more than the sum of the individual parts.

        We were going to build something.  Something special.  We were going to build it really well, in less time than it takes to get a mail order package.  And we were going to give it away.  We were going to doing it all because we believed in the idea and each other.

        This crowd really, truly, down to the bone believed they could do good for some unknown neighbor else and leave the world a little better place than they found it.

        It electrified the whole crowd.  It's not every day you get the chance to really throw some sunlight into someone else's life.  Early in the rally, Joe asked if everyone was ready to start to build tomorrow.  The crowd roared "Yes," instantly, no hesitation - even though that would have been a week ahead of schedule.

        This is what it's all about.

        We were reminded again how proud we were to be Americans, extremely proud.  With our lives built around our American homes.