"Extreme Makeover" demolishes house in Havelock
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By JEFF KORBELIK / Lincoln Journal Star
The walls of Kenneth Machacek’s house came tumbling down Sunday morning, but not before a bit of pomp and circumstance.
ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” officially tore into the house at 6825 Platte Ave. in Havelock at 11:04 a.m.
A bulldozer plowed into the porch one second after host Ty Pennington and his team of designers raced out the front door.
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The crash brought loud cheers from the hundreds of spectators and neighbors who had gathered at both ends of the block.
But the demolition began after:
* Pennington led the University of Nebraska Marching Band down Platte Avenue. The music awakened Shane Hoffman, whose house at 6742 Platte Ave. served as a spectator gathering place. “I woke up wondering ‘What’s going on?’” he said.
* A hundred or so workers and volunteers, each wearing a blue “Home Edition” T-shirt and white hard hat, filmed the show’s traditional opening. “A great experience,” said Julie Rotherham, whose husband, Len, will help with the trim work.
* And “Home Edition” designers rifled hockey pucks through the front windows with well-placed slapshots. “Since their greatest love is hockey, we thought we’d take out the windows with hockey pucks,” designer John Littlefield said.
The popular reality show picked Machacek and his fiancee, Teresa Fullerton, as its latest family.
Reminiscent of “The Brady Bunch,” Machacek and Fullerton want to unite their clans. He has two kids and she has three. But the condition of Machacek’s home has made it difficult.
With two bedrooms and one bathroom, it’s too small. Plus, the foundation is collapsing, making it tough to sell.
“Home Edition” will tear down and rebuild Machacek’s house big enough to accommodate seven by the end of this week and feature it on a future episode of the hit reality show. No air date has been set.
On Friday, “Home Edition” surprised the families and sent them to Paris for a week while construction is in progress. Furniture and belongings were removed Saturday as were four trees on the lot.
“It’s been crazy around here,” next-door neighbor Helen Tipton said, noting “Home Edition” crew members have been quite accommodating to her.
“You don’t know that it’s like until you live next door to it,” she added.
Especially on Sunday, with the curious making their way to the site as early as 6:30 a.m. to watch.
As spectators waited for the demolition to begin, they talked about Saturday night’s Husker loss, property tax assessments — everybody’s eager to know what the value of the new house will be — and, of course, Pennington.
“You sounded just like Ty,” a production manager said after 4-year-old Andrew Alder growled into his bullhorn.
The production manager had asked Andrew, sitting on his father Chris’ shoulders, to shout the show’s popular catch phrase, “Move the bus.”
A little while later, three eighth-grade girls — Chantel Hageman, Ashton Klimes and Emily Sanford — appeared with signs. The hot pink one said “Ty Pennington is sexy,” and the fluorescent green said “We love Ty Pennington.”
Sixteen-year-old Lexi Marquis, in town from Mason City, Iowa, visiting her mother, admitted she, too, was there to see Pennington, saying the house was a “close second.”
Marquis called her sister in Mason City to relay her news.
“Guess who I just saw?” she said into her cell phone. “Ty Pennington. In person.”
All morning, the handsome host drew cheers every time he became visible on the set.
At 11:11 a.m. — seven minutes after racing out of the house — decibel levels increased when he shed his coat and red sweatshirt in favor of a white T-shirt. At 11:13, he had a drink of water. (He drinks —just like the rest of us.)
The demolition finally swung into full gear at 11:28, with heavy equipment attacking the front and back of the house.
It takes just 11 minutes, by the way, to completely crush a house.
Nobody was happier to see the house go down than Duane Hartman of Hartland Homes, the house builder. Designers and workers will use 106 hours to build the new house from scratch.
“It’s a big challenge,” Hartman said. “We’re used to building houses in 90 to 120 days, not 106 hours.”
Reach Jeff Korbelik at 473-7213 or jkorbelik@journalstar.com. Reporter Brian Christopherson contributed to this story.
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