Extreme Sunday Walk in The Neighborhood...

So having this Extreme Makeover build site so close to the house is kinda cool and kinda weird.  Yesterday I went over to the Fair Grounds Pavilion to see how the food drive is going... The whole thing is odd.  Did you know that the builder is in charge of the volunteer schedules and checking-in of volunteers and the shuttle runs to and from the build site?  They are.  And being an event planner, my insides were screaming to let me take charge, but I refrained.

I stayed around for a few hours and chatted with a past board member and also with one of the Extreme security guys.  Pretty neat guy.  He "lives" in California, works 2 weeks for the show then he's off for 10 days.  He said they always have two builds going on at the same time.  They are divided into two teams:  the Alpha Team and the Beta Team.  This week Tulsa is the Alpha and there is another build going on elsewhere in OK that is the Beta Build.  He said they do at least 4 builds a month.  This is totally crazy to me.  It's basically like a Fuller Center blitz build but for one house in one week instead of 10 houses in one week and the organization that builds it is making a ton of moulah instead of struggling along the way.  I wonder if ABC would ever televise some Fuller Center or Habitat building sites in the coming years?  Now that would be good TV...

So we decided to venture to the spectator area of the build today.  You know... where the lemmings go who don't wish to volunteer but have high hopes of running into Ty in the process... ummm I mean who love to watch blitz builds and construction workers.... Anyway, it was cool.  Kind of like a movie set and a build site combined... which is exactly what it is 24 hours a day.

This is on our way to the spectators area, which is the fenced in section on the left.

So this is the house... it's a 3,000 square foot, two story house.  I'm guessing it's at least twice the size of the original house.  Also yesterday at 3pm they were pouring the foundation.  Today at 2pm they were already finished with the back side of the roof and beginning this side.  The truckload of drywall had just arrived and they were about to start spraying insulation.  If anything, this process of building this house is FAST.  They put some kind of special additive in the foundation concrete to make it dry in 4 hours.  Crazy.

First I apologize for the ugly tent blocking the view... Second, I know you've all seen the humongous houses that Extreme Makeover has built for families in the past.  Do you see the little white peak to the left of the house they are building?  That is not a part of the new house, that is the new house's neighbor.  It looks like the freaking garage compared to this new house.  And this is what most of the houses in the neighborhood look like...

These houses are typically 1920's or 1930's brick or craftsman bungalows with 2-3 bedrooms and 1 bath.

 Hello higher property taxes!  lol  It will definitely be interesting to see how they try to blend it into the neighborhood once it's finished, which is supposed to be Wednesday.  Yes, that is in 3 days.