Could you build a high-quality custom house for a deserving family you've never met in under a week—with barely two months for planning and design? Could you draw on your trade partnerships to get all the building materials, products, and round-the-clock labor for the job donated?

That's what the volunteer builders for the hit ABC television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition have been able to achieve. The idea of building a custom house in less than a week might seem implausible. You might believe that some Hollywood trickery or time-manipulation is used to make it appear as though an Extreme Makeover home is built in seven days (the time-span of each show) when the actual timeframe is longer.

The truth is that these custom houses are built in even fewer days than you probably guessed. Each house is completed in just four days, from foundation to furniture, with hundreds of bells and whistles in between.

This dual-octagonal structure was built by Atreus Homes for the Yazzie family on the Navajo Reservation near Pinon, Ariz., in April 2007 for Extreme Makeover. Photo Courtesy of Atreus Homes & Communities.

Community Contributions

Volunteering to build a house in a handful of days is an incredibly rigorous, time- and resource-consuming way to give back to the community, particularly at a time when the entire industry is hurting from a painful housing downturn. Extreme Makeover builders cite several reasons for taking on such a daunting challenge. First among them is the chance to help a family in distress who has earned the respect of their community and deserve assistance.

President and owner of Elite Homes in Louisville, Ky., Joe Pusateri provides the perfect example. The show's producers contacted him about doing a local Extreme build last year. Pusateri relates that when he found out it was Hughes family, whose 19-year-old son plays in the university marching band and is a gifted pianist despite being blind and wheelchair-bound, who would be helped, "I kind of got emotional ... because I knew they're a very deserving family."

Others help because they know their company offers ideal solutions to unique project challenges. Custom round-house prefabricator Deltec Homes of Asheville, N.C., participated in a recent Extreme Makeover project in New Orleans, collaborating with a coalition of past Extreme builders from around the country. "It called for a home that could withstand high wind—and we're known for building a very hurricane-resistant home," says Joseph Schlenk, sales and marketing director for Deltec. "We've never lost a home to high winds in 40 years."

Some builders volunteer multiple times. Also involved in the New Orleans build were past Extreme builders Sterling Homes of South Carolina, Simmons Homes of Oklahoma, Jeff Junkert Construction of Montana, Heritage Homes of North Dakota, Shoemaker Homes of Mississippi, Alure Home Improvement of New York, Capitol Homes of Tennessee, and Atreus Homes & Communities of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Two versions of Elite Homes' Extreme Makeover house in Raleigh, built for the Hughes family. At top is the first concept for the home; the bottom drawing is the final concept by designer Henry Gonzales of The Design Standard in Bonita Bay, Fla. Courtesy of Elite Homes. The New Orleans build marks Atreus' fourth Extreme Makeover project. Atreus made the first move in its relationship with Extreme Makeover. "Initially we contacted them because we liked the show. We've always been a company that liked to give back to the community," says Darren Drevik, Atreus' director of marketing. Drevik sent the producers a letter offering to help build in any of the cities where it has operations. Eight months later, the producers called about helping a family in Raleigh, N.C., which became Atreus' first Extreme build. The Raleigh project was followed by a build in Pinon, Ariz., and then by a job in Albuquerque, N.M..

"Each time we do one of these, the producers ask if we're ready for the next one," Drevik says. "We always think: yeah...never again. But when they call again and tell us about the families we say 'of course.'"

Building More Than Homes

The show has been called the Super Bowl of home building, but in the end the builders receive much more than a title and a ring. Aside from the obvious good feelings that come from helping someone in need, volunteer builders also gain some insights into their businesses, their trade partners, and their own employees.

"It's probably the best team-building exercise I can think of as a builder," confirms Drevik. "You can either spend $50,000 going to some ropes course out in the woods, or you can try and build a house in four days." Drevik believes that the Atreus staff who participated in its four Extreme Makeover projects have a greater understanding of each other and of the company's values.

Elite Homes' experience was very similar, according to Pusateri. "When you have your whole company working together on an important project it draws you closer, and there's a tremendous sense of pride and accomplishment when it's done," he says. "There are people I hardly knew who stepped up and were really heroes, and went above and beyond what was expected of them."

Though Atreus will not be attempting to build their own houses in a week or less, the company has taken away from the Extreme Makeover experience lessons on how to streamline its process. "We have learned that we can do work faster, we can build houses faster without sacrificing quality by using the concept of vertical building," Drevik adds. "We've tightened our schedules so that we've cut our build time by 10 days on average."

Pusateri says his company has better insight into what is possible. "It changes your perspective on what you can get done if you set your mind to it," he says.

Deltec's leadership learned some valuable lessons about its building system and received direct feedback about the experience its customers have building one of its homes. "We walked away with a lot of opportunities for improvement for everything from the sales end to the design end to the production end," Schlenk says. "As well as we think we do something, there's always room for improvement."