Extreme Home Makeover....

This past weekend a family in Bergenfield got an extreme home makeover courtesy of ABC. For a little over a week leading up to the day, there were "Emergency No Parking" signs lining a span of New Bridge Road (only a few blocks from our house) and two big signs saying that begining on May 4th, that section of road would be closed to traffic. Jennie and I wondered what was going on and on Thursday a guy I used to work with (who lives in Bergenfield also) send me an IM telling me about the extreme home makeover going on. He send me the link for the site of the company in charge of the build and suggested we both sign up for volunteer work. Which I did. I then got an email the following day letting me know that my work shift would be on Sunday morning from 12:00am to 6:00am. Hit the sack at 5:30pm Saturday and set the alarm for 11:15pm.

10:00pm, Saturday: Woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

11:20pm: Got dressed and walked down to the job site and headed for the volunteer sign in tent.

My first impression was not a good one. For a show that's been on the air for three seasons, I would have thought that they would have every aspect nailed down and running smoothly. I came to learn later on that ABC really doesn't have much to do with the build at all. Their role is to select the deserving family and work with designers to design a house to fit their needs. After that, they hire a local contractor in the area of the family and that contractor takes over from there. Without doing projects like this very often, it's very understandable (now) why things weren't as smooth running as I had anticipated. But I digress....

After signing a consent form, we volunteers were sent to hang out in/near the food tent to await instructions. A few volunteers cleaned up the tent and surrounding areas while myself and one other guy volunteered to haul all the garbage bags down the road to the dumpsters. After that work was done, there was more standing around. There were mostly residents of Bergenfield in the volunteer workforce, but a few others from out of town. There was a husband and wife groupie pair. This was their second extreme home makeover volunteer gig. They had been down in Irvington the week before to help out there.

Every now and then, they'd ask for one or two volunteers to tackle a task, but overall we just had to stand around and wait. Around 2:00, we were all told to get ready to head up the block to the house because they were going to start framing and would need all of our help. We were all given hardhats and tshirts and were led up to the house. There was a crew of about 20 carpenters there who were doing the framing. They had a great system and plan of attack of building the house and we volunteers were just there to help out whichever way they asked. We didn't get to hammer a nail or use a saw, but helped out in other aspects. They would bring over pieces to the house in bundles and we'd carry the joists, 2x4's, etc... to where ever they asked us to. We also helped out by keeping the work area free of debris so the workers could work smoothly without having to worry about tripping over scraps of wood and other stuff.

6:00. Our volunteer shift ended and we headed back to the volunteer tent to return our hardhats and I headed for home. When I left, they had gotten the basement complete framed and the first floor exterior and interior walls completely done. They were getting prepared to bring over the floor joists for the second floor.

It was a pretty neat experience. I would have, of course, loved to have helped out a little more and done some actual framing, but they had the right plan of action and their crew was well prepared and worked extremely quickly and efficiently. Giving volunteers hammers and nailguns would have only slowed things down. So while I might not have accomplished anything tangible, I like to think I helped out a little anyway and made the carpenters' jobs a little easier. And - I've got a cool little story to tell my kids and grandkids down the road of life....

Contractor's website here.

Photos the contractor has taken and put on line here. (Click to view all images)

Picture with me in it here. Try to guess which one is me.