I know enough about construction to know that a foundation needs at least 2 weeks to cure enough to be built on, yet in the show, they manage to tear down and rebuild an entire house in 7 days? How did they do this? Most of the framing would be modular/prefab so that would be easy to build inside of a wee,.but how do they overcome the obvious issues such as the concrete needing at least two weeks to cure, plus having the city/county/state inspectors inspect each aspect of the build? Or is it more likely that the house takes a month or two to build and with the magic of editing they make it appear that it only took one week.
In: Engineering
The core concept that you have to keep in mind is that “reality TV” *is not reality*. It is directed, scripted, and edited just like any other show.
Treat those shows as just entertainment and suddenly the “how did they do that” is the same answer as “how is Superman flying through the sky”: it’s just a television show.
The house they built by us was on a pre-poured slab. All others in the area are on basements. And like the others mentioned, a lot of pre-fabrication was involved. They actually finished a day early. There was a scene with Ty and the contractor sitting in yard chairs on the last day.
Contrary to what you see on the show, everything has been decided upon *months* in advance. The building plan, the contractors, the materials, the permits, and the inspectors are all arranged *well* before a camera crew is even thought about being scheduled, and the homeowners are involved in the process quite a bit. The workers don’t just show up on site and start ripping shit apart.
Fun fact: The show has the name it does because there was a significantly less popular “Extreme Makeover” show about getting plastic surgery done that started on ABC that lasted 4 seasons, and EMHE was named to capitalize on the branding
So, how much more expensive building like the show would be? Can I hire an outfit that will do this?
If it takes you longer than 4 hours to build a house, you’re doing something wrong
When you have all the materials in hand and an abundance of labor, it’s really easy to build a house quickly.
House down the road from me was on it. It took several weeks and there were 200-300 volunteers helping. They shut down the entire road.
It’s not quite the same thing, but I know with automotive “build” related shows like Monster Garage or Pimp My Ride, the vehicles aren’t actually built or modified over the short period of time as presented in the show, but over a time span of months. In the case of Pimp My Ride, this was detrimental because for many contestants, they only have one vehicle for a mode of transportation and this meant they were without a vehicle for months.
Most of the answers for these “Home” build shows seem to say most of the setup was completed before hand so all time consuming stuff was already done, but I can’t help but to think that they also stretch the build process and the timeline is much longer than what is presented on these shows. After all, most of these are not aired live so there is no real-time constraint at work.
Like others have said, EVERYTHING is planned, scheduled, and mostly pre-fabbed far in advance of the groundbreaking. The rest is just throwing several months’ worth of man-hours at it during that week. I know it’s reality TV, and made to look a certain way, but I can believe that it gets done in time. At least usually, but I haven’t seen them all.
I once sent (donated) materials to a project a couple weeks before a project started and then volunteered on the house for a few days. I was there at all different hours, and there were dozens of people working even at 3 AM. Most of the work quality was actually better than whoever the hell built our house because all of the project leads seemed to be top professionals who want to show off their work.
The first day I was there, people were doing plumbing, electrical, drywall, stone and tile work, siding, etc. It was well-orchestrated chaos. Second day, a lot of that was still going on while appliances were installed, painting, roofing, cabinets and countertops going in.
My third day was the last of the project, and tons of us were putting some the owner’s/kids’ personal stuff into closets and tidying up, while some construction (mostly painting, touch-ups and trim work) was still happening.
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