Extreme Makeover—

Reality Show A Reality For Some Newtowners

By Nancy K. Crevier

Okay, God may have made the world in seven days, but He did not have dozens of tradespeople and volunteers to coordinate, supplies to secure, red tape to navigate, or cameras and microphones to trip over. On the other hand, the Newtown residents who have put their stamp on the Extreme Makeover Home Edition episode filmed in Bridgeport the week of July 25 to August 2 have seen how filmmakers, builders, suppliers, and laborers hurdled all of those obstacles to raise the roof on a new home for Gloria Brown and her family in just seven days.

Local residents John Tucci, Bill Webb, and others had an Extreme Work Week through their involvement with the popular ABC reality show hosted by Ty Pennington that selected Ms Brown as the recipient of the incredible top to bottom reconstruction of her home.

Extreme Makeover Home Edition features designers, contractors, and workers who devote just one week to completely rebuilding an entire house — interior, exterior, and landscaping. Families who have been hit with a series of unfortunate events that has compromised their living conditions, such as the Brown family from Bridgeport who will be featured in one of the 2007-2008 episodes, are chosen to receive the aid that they deserve. The Browns’ home was devastated by flooding, fire, and robbery, leaving the family, who has founded a number of outreach programs in Bridgeport, down on their luck.

Extreme Makeover could not promise to rebuild their world in seven days, but they did promise to rebuild their home in just one week.

Mr Tucci is the director of marketing for Haynes Materials in Seymour/Oxford, the one-source building supply company selected by Extreme Makeover Home Edition and Gulick Associates, LLC builders to provide the exterior supplies for the building of the new home.

Building an entire home from the foundation up in only seven days offers some unusual challenges. For Haynes Materials, said Mr Tucci, it meant developing a special concrete that could dry and harden in a fraction of the time normally required.

“The concrete had to dry exceptionally fast,” explained Mr Tucci, “but not so fast that it would harden in the cement trucks. All of the cement was mixed on site to prevent that from happening.”

The company was up for the challenge, though, and Friday night, July 27, cement trucks and employees from the firm rolled onto Hollister Avenue in Bridgeport to begin pouring footings and walls for the Extreme Makeover crew under the direction of Gulick Associates out of New Canaan. Haynes Material also donated all of the other exterior building materials, landscaping materials, and nursery items for the production.

For Mr Tucci, Friday kicked off a 50-hour stint assisting the video company hired by Gulick Associates to document the behind-the-scenes building scene from start to finish. Mr Tucci, who is also a photographer, and other volunteers from Haynes Materials were on hand to fill in filming gaps when video crew members were unable to film. Going home Sunday afternoon did not mean that his involvement was over. He was on site to offer continued assistance to the video crew the remaining days, as well.

Bill Webb is the principal of Pegasys, Inc and is involved in commercial and residential real estate development. He has worked on development deals in the past with Gulick Associates, he said, but never a deal that had to be signed, sealed, and delivered in four weeks from start to finish. Mr Webb was key in the recruitment of architect Leigh Overland of Danbury, because unlike The Creator, the city and builders needed a blueprint for this one-week project to go forward.

“There were definitely challenges with this project,” said Mr Webb, who has been on the scene practically around the clock. “The pouring of the foundation was key. If you mistime that, it’s a huge mess.” Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, and every other tradesperson imaginable in a building project had to be carefully coordinated in order to meet the seven-day deadline. “It was a huge task,” said Mr Webb.

His main role in this event was that of fundraiser and coordinator of the donations. “People don’t always know that with this show the builder usually does something big, something really special for the family. Gulick Associates decided to do fundraising to help the family with mortgage costs, college funds, and other expenses,” he said. Not all fundraising comes in the form of a check, though. As a result of fast and hard work on the part of Mr Webb, Barnum Financial Group, an office of MetLife in Shelton, agreed to pay off the mortgage Gloria Brown still had on her old home. “That was a very big thing,” said Mr Webb.

Other Newtowners that Mr Webb drew into the fray include Steve Rosentel, the president of Leahy’s Fuels, Inc; Mark Principi of Caldwell-Walsh Building; Valerie Principi of Chicks That Can Shop, a home interior design business; and contractor Jerry Cole and his daughter, Liz, and son, Matt; all of whom offered various degrees of expertise, support, materials, and hard labor.

“Anybody who wants to donate can do so from the website gulickassociates.com,” said Mr Webb. “Select ‘donate’ on the list, and then you can donate through PayPal or download a form to mail in a donation,” he said. Donations to the family fund can also be made at any People’s Bank branch, said Mr Webb.

Maybe God can build a world in a week, but it takes saints and angels in the forms of builders, suppliers, and volunteers to build a piece of heaven on earth in that same amount of time.

And on the eighth day, they rested.