EXTREME MAKEOVER

Take a look inside the ‘organized chaos’ as local contractors remake a Costa Mesa home for a reality TV show.

 By NICK BRENNAN THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

   What is it like to be a contractor on an extreme home makeover? To face six months’ worth of strenuous and complicated work, and have only seven days to do it?
   To find out, The Orange County Register spent a day inside during the remake of the Costa Mesa home of Tom and Deirdre McCrory. We tagged along with local contractor Andrew Shore of Sea Pointe Construction as he tackled the unrelenting stresses, unthinkable timetable and unpredictable challenges of ramrodding ABC television’s "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."
   We also talked with Shore and other contractors about the extraordinary weeklong experience. You can see the results of their work yourself Sunday night, when the episode airs on KABC/7 at 8 p.m.
   It is 4 a.m. on a Sunday, and most of Costa Mesa is sleeping peacefully. But on Rosemary Place a small army of workers has started painting the exterior of the McCrory home, which is being expanded by 50 percent, adding 500 square feet.
   By 9 a.m. just one exterior wall remains unpainted and things are looking good for the crew, which has only three days until the McCrorys return from a week’s vacation at an Arizona resort, courtesy of ABC.
   Well, maybe not so good, to a designer’s eye.
   "One of the five designers strolls up to the house to help out and realizes we had the wrong color paint," says Shore, whose Irvine company was chosen as the general contractor for the project. "ABC and the production company supplied the paint to us. They had a swatch and asked the paint company to match that color. I guess the paint company couldn’t match it exactly and said, ‘This is close.’ "
   It isn’t close at all.
   The home looks like a giant avocado green refrigerator from the ’70s. Yuck! The correct color, a mix of slate and green, is found and the painting starts all over again.
   The next day the crew spends the whole day painting the interior the wrong color.
   On any major remodeling job, trouble can creep into the process. For Shore, most of the headaches came not from his large crew, but from workers brought in by the show’s production company.
   The window company installed some of the windows upside down and backward. That is an easy fix on any other construction site, but not when time is ticking away. With crews working 24 hours a day, each small delay adds pressure to the next steps.
   Once the repairs are made, Steve Suer’s siding crew can take over.
   His team from Laguna Construction and Builders has just eight hours to install the siding and battens, which are used to attach the siding to the home. In a typical situation, the install would take four or five days with a four- or five-member crew for a house this size, he said. Today he has four guys installing just the siding’s battens.
   One siding crew works on the home’s back wall while two others install siding on each side of the house.
   Meanwhile, Shore is unhappy with the work of a tile installer who was also hired by the show’s production company.
   "The tile company was not properly waterproofing the tile for the bath," Shore says. "I finally told the production company I refused to take responsibility for their work if (the tile company) remained on the job. So I brought my guys in and got the job done correctly."
   Surprisingly, there are few complications as Shore and his crew, the designers and the TV crew race through the seven-day circus.
   In fact, things are going too smoothly.
   Drama, chaos and conflicting personalities are what sell reality TV. The producers pray for it. They even stoke it in hopes an argument will erupt.
   But on a Saturday morning, as dozens of workers scramble from rooftop to foundation, there is only a frenzy of activity as construction crews work simultaneously on the house.
   "I have never seen 30 guys stepping on each other and still getting the job done," says Gary Hooks, the city building inspector. "It is total organized chaos.’’ He is on duty 24 hours, making sure permitting doesn’t hold up progress.
   If anything, the TV production crew seems to be more stressed than the workers. Cameramen hurry around the site hoping to catch an argument.
   When asked about the craving for conflict, Shore just laughs.
   "We have heard about this over and over," he says with a smile as he and one of his foremen stand in what will be the new kitchen. "There has been no drama so far. They (ABC and the production crew) told us to save all of our arguments
for the camera. But we don’t work that way.’’
   Besides, he says, there wasn’t much that went awry. "There was very little conflict between the designers and the contractors, which is tough when we were working 16 hours a day back-to-back."
   At one point Shore and his foreman, Len Jay, hatch a plan to start a fake fistfight by the end of the project as a joke for the TV cameras.
   "I went to talk to one of the guys about some paint and a few other questions I had," says Jay. "And all of a sudden this camera guy runs over to us thinking he is going to get something good on tape, like an argument or problem about the paint. But I just had a simple question. The camera guy was pretty bummed."
   Just how do you have your entire home remodeled on national television courtesy of ABC? In the McCrorys’ case it was a matter of a growing family in a tiny space. Their 1,077-square-foot home was already tight on room with two toddler boys. In December, Deirdre found out she was pregnant with triplets.
   The show spices home improvement with emotional extremes, showcasing good works for deserving families and the conflicts that arise from an insane construction schedule.
   The key to the remodel’s success was planning, Shore knew. He and his team only had three weeks to conceptualize, design and have the city of Costa Mesa approve the remodel’s plans.
   Sea Pointe hired more than 100 workers for this project. It even had timelines designed for each trade. For instance, once the siding was completed (within the eight hours scheduled for it), the painters were scheduled to immediately come in behind them and get to work. Not even a minute was spared.
   "Normally a trade would have two to five days to complete its work," Shore said of a typical remodel. "But us and the other trades were asked to do the same amount of work in eight hours."
   They started with the idea of adding 1,000 square feet to the home, but about a week before construction was scheduled to start, the production company said they needed to slash the cost by 30 or 40 percent.
   "We literally had to come up with a new design at the last minute," Shore said. "So my architect, one of our designers and I went back to the office and brainstormed new ideas. We decided to cut the addition in half."
   Originally the small bungalow had no real entry. The front door was next to a fireplace and the wall faced a little courtyard, not the street. When you opened the door you were immediately introduced to the living room. Sea Pointe relocated the fireplace to the wall that faces the street and kept the two large view windows already there. French doors replaced the fireplace and original front door as the new entryway, and they look onto the courtyard.
   "The home was such a small space to begin with we kept everything about where it was," Shore says as he tours the home.
   "We wanted to keep the midcentury modern and contemporary look of the home but give it a modern twist," said Michael Moloney, designer in charge of the home’s interior. "We wanted to keep things clean and simple."
   A few things did expand, though. The master bedroom had an attached bath, if you would call it that. It measured a tiny 4 by 6 feet. Now there is enough room for dual sinks and a tub/shower with body spray jets like a spa. Those should come in handy for Deirdre when she needs to escape from the kids. They also installed a doorway in the master bathroom that leads to the nursery.
   "Everything was done for small kids," Shore said. "A surveillance system is being installed so they can watch the kids from different rooms."
   In the nursery, the designers thought of putting a closet and a sink with a smooth countertop as a changing/cleaning area for the triplets. Shore and his crew thought of cutting a small hatch out of the nursery’s exterior wall that leads straight to an outside trash can. Perfect for smelly, dirty diapers. The one downside of the diaper dump – the celebrity designers took credit for it.
   Doing such extensive remodeling and design forced Shore to get extremely creative – and be secretive.
   Normally they would measure the home at least six times to make sure everything was exact.
   However, when the home was being measured the McCrorys only knew they were finalists for the remodel. Shore didn’t want to tip them off.
   "We were able to take measurements of the home twice. So, we had two people take independent measurements each time and made sure they matched," Shore said. "We used those numbers to redesign the interior and plan the addition.’’
   To speed the construction project, Sea Pointe built kitchen cabinets as a unit off site beforehand, so they could be assembled quickly.
   They also resorted to other innovations.
   Usually concrete takes more than a day to dry and cure before you can start building on it. But Shore didn’t have that kind of time before they needed to start on the addition. The answer?
   They found a special concrete usually used in freeway construction. Two hours after it was poured, framing for the addition started going up.
   Shore and his crew finish before their deadline.
   It is 3 p.m. on Feb. 18, and a long black limousine pulls up in front of the remade home. Ty Pennington, host of the show, gets the rain-soaked crowd of more than 100 onlookers poised for a big greeting.
   Tom and Deirdre emerge with their two little boys and are overjoyed with the results.
   Contractor Shore, a stickler for detail, is satisfied with the outcome as well. His final inspection had turned up few last-minute fixes.
   "We had a total of 10 items on the punch list," he said. "Only four were from Sea Pointe. To do a job that fast and have only 10 small items is amazing. It is a point of pride for me."
   So would Shore and his crew do it all over if they were asked?
   "We’ll see," he said. "Probably, since we know it can be done and what to expect."
   CONTACT THE WRITER:
   (7 1 4) 796-6079 or
   nbrennan@ocregister.com

SHOWTIME: Workers swarm over the house, below. The project was overseen by Irvine contractor Andrew Shore, above.