Susan Deane, owner of Sweet Surroundings LLC, a custom home decorating business in Middlefield recently got a first hand look behind the scenes of the hit ABC TV show, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”.
In early September, Deane joined five other window treatment professionals from Connecticut and headed up to the television job site in Springfield, MA to offer her professional services at the future new home for the Walker family. The show is scheduled to be aired Friday, Dec. 2 on ABC at 8 p.m.
Deane learned of the opportunity from the Window Covering Association of America (WCAA), of which she's a member. The show's producers coordinate with various local companies in the building trades for a home makeover. They demolish the original house and build a new house, including all its furnishings and landscaping in a week’s time using donated materials and the help of hundreds of skilled and unskilled volunteers.
The show surprised the Walker family of the news with a “door knock” on Friday, Sept. 11. The work tearing down the house began when the family was sent off on a California vacation.
Deane and other professional seamstresses from the WCAA attended their first onsite meeting with the designers the following Tuesday.
“We expected to be measuring windows that day but when we arrived we found there was no house. There was only a dirt lot and a pile of lumber," Deane says.
"We had to look over the blueprints to get our measurements. This was a heavily fabricated house. They needed 40 drapery panels, lots of bedding, slipcovers, cushions and pillows. We divided the work up amongst ourselves."
Deane wondered how all of the work would be done in time.
"The area was bustling with volunteers all over the place in their blue shirts and white hard hats. We signed in and walked over to a small park filled with trailers, fiesta tents and food trucks. There was lots of free food," she says.
Over the course of the next three days, the women anxiously awaited for the fabric to be delivered so they could get started. Given the amount of work to be done, every hour counted. The fabric finally arrived late Thursday and the ladies took off running.
Deane says they each worked around the clock for three nights, working individually and as a group.
By Sunday, the group loaded two vans full of all the drapery, pillows and bedding and drove together to the newly built house where volunteers helped unload and haul everything into the house.
“We were in awe as we entered the house and walked from room to room. It came out beautiful," Deane says.
"Volunteers were busy installing lighting, painting doorways, assembling beds, arranging flowers and hanging pictures. We watched as celebrity designer Michael Moloney arranged furniture in the living room. Someone still had to install all our window treatments and bedding. It was pretty chaotic scene."
Deane says the group had just a few hours to get everything done before the big reveal, initiated by the famous words "move that bus!"
"The house was far from being 'T-V ready'," explains Deane who said the group was invited back for a private tour of the home after all of the television cameras had left.
"When we returned on Tuesday it was great because we got to see the house decorated with all our custom-made soft furnishings. We were so pleased with the results. The family moved in later that day. I can’t wait to watch the show. I’ll be pointing and shouting at the T-V, 'I made that!'
Deane says being part of the show was a fun and creatively inspiring adventure.
"I really enjoyed the experience of working as part of a team for such a good cause. If it can bring a little peace and joy to a family who suffered the heartbreaking loss of a child, then it was all worthwhile.” Deane says.
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