Let’s go Behind The Scenes at Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
There are makeover shows. And then there’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Here’s what really happens on the jobsite at an Extreme Makeover project. I know, because I’ve worked as a project manager on the OG version and the new version that will air on ABC in 2025.
And, before I even start to tell you about the home building part of the show, I need to make it plain that the scale of what the Extreme Makeover Home Edition (EMHE) team puts together to bring these builds and stories to life is real. It’s also impossible to explain in any meaningful way. However, when have I let a little detail like that ever stop me?
So here goes: Behind the Scenes, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. “America on its best behavior.”
Does Extreme Makeover Build A House In 7 Days?
No. But, let me explain.
It takes 7 days to shoot each TV episode and finish decorating the house. Extreme Makeover Home Edition’s Build Team has it built, landscaped, powered-up, plumbed, and conditioned with a Certificate of Occupancy in 106 hours, which is about 4.5 days.
Yes, there are months of planning, materials staging, and other extremely detailed organization that we’ll touch on later. By the time the first wall panel is hooked to the crane and the first nail shot, 106 hours is the time to beat.
Typical Home Makeover Shows vs. Extreme Makeover Show
Let’s start with a point of comparison. About 25 to 30 people work on set on every home makeover show that Theresa and I have been involved with. And this includes the great and powerful This Old House, which is the one that started it all, all the way to Food Network’s “Save My Bakery.” This number includes what TV people call “talent” (i.e. the people you see “on-camera”).
There are a few camera people, a director, producers, an assistant or two, sound tech, a bunch of production assistants, a field producer or two, the behind-the-scenes designer and carpentry team, and maybe some other warm bodies. A few lights and a reflector. Maybe.
Extreme?
I’ve been on feature film sets and Extreme is in this category. The truck that the camera equipment comes in is about the size of my house.
Cranes, Nail Guns, Cameras.
Just at the framing stage there were 75 framers. Add in the EMHE Build Team of project managers like me and the TV crew, that’s easily another 50 people. Then there are volunteers, catering, “Locations” (I’ll talk about these conquerors later), a building inspector or two, and I’d ballpark the number of people at work—around the clock—at 250 or better.
Acreage.
All the shows we’ve been on operate mainly like a typical jobsite. If you’ve ever had your kitchen remodeled, just imagine a few other people there with cameras and whatnot. The crew parks nearby, trucks staged in the driveway, and maybe a dumpster and the TV stuff is nestled away in a trailer/RV or spare room. It’s busier than a normal kitchen reno for sure, but it’s not impossible to imagine. And then everybody goes home at night.
Extreme Makeover Home Edition builds?
Where a typical jobsite might have a 30-yard container that gets pulled from time to time, a dozen 20- and 30-yard dumpsters with drivers on-site are at Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Why? Because the team fills, pulls, and replace them in hours, not weeks.
An Extreme build, called “set” by the TV people, can easily devour 5 acres. Maybe more. We’ve seen them commandeer multiple neighboring properties with lines of trucks down the street.
Self-Contained Inventory.
Tool and material storage lands in two different spots. One is tractor trailers or shipping containers. There were 4 to 5 for a unit we built this year. All the stuff you see on camera comes from somewhere. Then we need to store everything somewhere.
We don’t run to The Container Store (sponsor) for a missing item. Items arrive by shipment and then are accessible by the equipment that moves them. We keep other items in a 50×50-ish tent city dubbed Art World.
Art World.
Art World is a fully operational woodworking shop where EM:HE Art World Team builds the “special projects.”
That all requires room to spread out.
They make space for everything like the skidsteer–that does everything from site work to getting delivery vehicles out of the sand or mud. There were 3-tele-handlers (aka Lull, high-reach, boom forklift) and then there are the side-by-sides we use to traverse all this ground. Design has a few, we have a few, Art World has a few and so on. I think there were a dozen in all wizzing around a closed set.
Production, locations, design, and talent fully occupied 4-houses on this build. Other groups of us occupied Class A motor homes parked on-site. At least six.
That’s just the stuff. In addition, this is all coordinated in secret, by the way.
Locations
The entire home building is baked into the show. The team builds, designs, and decorates the house. It’s obviously directed and produced and all that. Even though it’s briefly shown, nail guns, paint brushes, miter saws, and cameras are there. But—and I love this part—there needs to be a there there beforehand, otherwise, it’s all bubkus. This is where the unsungest heroes of the whole enterprise swing into action. The Locations Team.
They’re how we can get a building inspection at 2AM and 1,000-people have many places to go to the bathroom. The locations team manages traffic so it isn’t snarled by a hydra of tractor trailers snaking their way to set.
How the Locations Team Works
The Locations team starts months before a TV camera battery charges or we put a shovel in the earth. At this point in the process, the TV side knows whom they’re building for and where. Important information, but pretty 30,000-foot stuff, too.
It is now that Locations can start making the mission of the show a reality. They start by calling the local government and saying, “Hi, this is so and so from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and we’d like to take over 10-acres of your town…”
What the Locations Team Does
Locations is the team that deals with city government, gets various permits, permissions, police and fire sign-off. They coordinate road closures and work-arounds and they manage traffic routes and make sure there is a medic there 24/7.
They coordinate what we sometimes call the “honey pot” on the job site: Porta-Potties. LOTs of ‘em. They coordinate the catering tent that’ll feed hundreds of people during an hour 5 times a day, round the clock. They coordinate the VIP tent and spectator area. And they manage parking for all this plus the subcontractors who will swarm the area.
And, they coordinate the “Check-in” process. You aren’t allowed on site unless you work there. Everybody checks in and receives a “blue shirt.” Then they can go to site for whatever they’re there to do.
Extreme Makeover Home Edition Build
This part is a little bit alphabet soup-y because there is a lot of overlap and I think each is not only integral, but the throw-and-catch between all parties is how the gears mesh and a home rises out of the ground.
The Builder.
The construction side of things—the conceit of the show, right…a new home in 7-days start-to-finish—needs an actual builder. On this season, the national builder is Taylor-Morrison. It’s their infrastructure the show uses. From ownership and business stuff to all the “trades” (subcontractors) to on-site project management.
Design.
The Builder and EMHE Design Team work together to create a one of a kind home. In some regards, this is the same as any custom home build. There is breathing room to go back and forth to finally settle on, “OK, we’re going to build this.”
However, “this” is something nobody has ever built before and this is where the “Build Team” comes in.
The Build Team.
The Build Team’s job is as unique as the enterprise itself. The system the Lead Builder (Bohler Builders Group in real life) has developed more than 20 years of accelerated building projects, further refined by the Senior Project Manager (Woodman Builders in real life) is mind-bending in its scope, completeness and depth of detail.
Put another way, once we yank the cord on this hot rod, “One hour of Extreme time is 8 days of real world time.”
As important as the story is, as life changing as the show is—good luck not choking up when “Move that bus!” reveals a new home to people whose lives have been turned upside down—the Build Team is the heartbeat. It’s the 10W-40 in the crank case. It’s the locus on the Venn Diagram. Without what they’re able to do, well, it’s been nice chatting.
Once the preliminary work is sussed out and it’s time to lace up boots, the Build Team’s focus changes from planning to deploying. Equipment is delivered, organized, and fueled up. Materials are staged and are made ready to “fly in” (TV talk for “deliver”).
Deliveries are organized. Art World goes from empty wedding tent to sawdust factory. We run all the 50-amp cords and “spider boxes” (they’re transformers to step current down to 110-amps and multi-plugs). Dumpsters get place just outside of the camera frame.
And, Extreme Makeover Home Edition Build…It’s ON.
Once the Builder starts building, The Build Team become facilitators. We work cheek-by-jowl with the Builder to make sure they have what and whom they need when they need it. We problem-solve and we manage the volunteers. As a build team, we live right now and 3 hours or 3 days in the future. Did the HVAC guy place that return correctly at 4AM or will the flange hit the molding detail he couldn’t possibly know about?
And we help build the show itself. We help facilitate shutting down (or not) an active job site so Talent and TV can come in there and produce the show itself safely and get the “beats” (scenes) they want. If something requires an explanation, we explain it. Does talent need help hanging that shelf? Or the tools required to film that scene. That’s us. Tools or materials needed? Who you gonna call?
As framing and tongue and groove wall paneling give way to paint, shelving and window treatments, we fill voids that need filling, helping Production get the “beats” (scenes) that’ll become the final elements of the episode.
And when it’s all said and done, when the bus has moved, when a family we’ll never meet (until we watch the episode like everyone else) has some Life restored, some order, sense, and safety they lost or had taken from them, we stow the tele-handlers, skidsteer, and side-by-sides.
And we try to remember what all just happened.
Some of us will build the whole season. Others, like me, go back to regular life, hopefully a little better for being shoulder-to-shoulder with the people, places and things the enterprise that is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition brings forth from everybody, a whole most notably greater than the sum of its parts.
If you’re lucky enough that an Extreme is somewhere near you, getting involved is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
Move.That. Bus.
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