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Local builder builds fast in ‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’
By Carey King
It’s almost daily that Ed Knapp tests the bounds of geography. This past January marked the first time he’s pushed the limits of time.
Because the Barkers Creek-based builder owns Vintage Beams and Timbers, he regularly travels to his offices in Hawaii and China on missions to collect salvageable materials from old barns, warehouses, mills and bridges. He estimates he spends nearly half his time commuting around the world, rescuing antique building materials and working them into new building designs.
Ed Knapp of Barkers Creek checks one of the large timbers he and a team from his company, Vintage Beams and Timbers, installed in a Atlanta-area home that will be featured this Sunday, Feb. 20, on ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” The 51-year-old Knapp travels the world salvaging materials from old barns, warehouses and factories and recycles them into modern construction. Helping with the show was a “tremendous experience,” Knapp said.
Three weeks ago, however, he faced a different challenge: Along with a team of eight from Vintage Beams, Knapp was filmed for ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” a reality show that forces workers to construct a home that would normally take six months in only seven days.
The show will be aired this Sunday, Feb. 20, at 8 p.m.
“It’s hard to describe the energy and the feeling. It was like being inside an anthill or beehive. It’s something everybody should experience,” Knapp said.
Since its launch last year, “Extreme Makeover” has attracted an audience each week of nearly 35 million viewers who know the storyline by heart: A needy family is selected, then a local builder organizes a team of contractors and workers to rebuild their house in just one week. The show’s repeating characters are a cast of designers – almost all with some sort of acting background – that in addition to offering technical expertise create drama for the show.
“They’re real famous for doing design changes. People love conflicts,” he said.
Knapp and his team were just a small part of the 1,800 contractors that worked on the Clayton County, Ga., site after being recruited by Atlanta-based Beazer Homes to install a timber trellis with “big beams the length of the living room.”
Vintage Beams finished their part in about five hours, much less time than the month and a half the project would normally take.
“Our portion we planned and built ahead, and had it set to put in,” Knapp said. “In total, we watched a lot and had trouble getting others to get out of the way. We waited 20 hours just to get our install time.”
All the workers on the show volunteered their time for the Jan. 18-23 project, Knapp said.
“You think about building a house, how many people you need. And then the volunteers that drove the vans and shuttles and fed the workers,” he said. “I thought the concept of community was exceptional.”
Since he travels so much, Knapp’s first-ever viewing of “Extreme Makeover” was at Christmas.
“I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a cool show.’ Two days later, they called,” Knapp said. “I was honored. What a great privilege to jump in and do something for somebody.”
Now just a week before the show is set to air, Knapp said he stills knows little about the details of the situation. He knows the family’s name is Harper. He knows that volunteers demolished the Harpers’ old 1,400-square-foot, four-bedroom, ranch-style house, then built a 5,300-square-foot, English-style, five-bedroom country house in its place. He knows that workers dug a trench to connect the new home to a public sewer line.
“This is all top-secret stuff,” Knapp said. “We didn’t even know the location until the day before.”
According to ABC’s Web site, the Harpers are a couple with 8-, 15- and 17-year old boys who moved to Georgia to buy a home after escaping a rough situation in Brooklyn several years ago. They soon found out that the septic tank in their new space would flood whenever it rained hard, leaving them “knee-high in raw sewage.” With all their possessions destroyed and their home filled with bacteria, the family resorted to living in their minivan, a situation forced to end when the vehicle was in an accident.
The Harpers are one family in a long line of others helped by “Extreme Makeover”: Among others, there was the wheelchair-bound man whose house needed to be modified so he could get around, the couple hurting for more space after they found they were having triplets, and the entire community whose residences were flooded during a hailstorm.
“It was tremendous experience,” Knapp said of the Emmy Award-nominated show.
While the “Extreme Makeover” cast will get the king’s portion of airtime, Knapp said he may have made the final cut in a scene with spiky-haired team leader Ty Pennington.
“He got in my face and yelled with a megaphone. He said, ‘People, we’ve got to get done.’ That’s his job. Before that, he came up and said, ‘Man, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to yell in your face with this,’” Knapp said.
Pennington looked a little “puny,” Knapp said, because of appendix surgery he’d had when he first arrived in Atlanta – a medical drama hinted at during the trailer after this past week’s show.
Most of the cast wore makeup, but not the builders.
“You can’t do anything with me. I’m just too far gone,” Knapp explained, adding that he’s going to “look like Ed the Potato Man” since television cameras are known to add a few pounds to those onscreen.
Vintage Beams has added an “Extreme Makeover” page to its Web site (www.vintage beamsandtimbers.com) in expectation of increased hits after this weekend’s show, but for the most part, Knapp said he’s not too starstruck.
After all, his company’s done work for Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Michael Dell (“as in Dell Computers”), two Los Angeles producers and on Abraham Lincoln’s original log cabin.
Knapp’s also the author of “New Old House: Designing with Reclaimed Materials,” a book first published in 2002 and set to be re-released this August with an “Extreme Makeover” update.
At the moment, he’s working in Hawaii and has plans to be back in Atlanta, then Las Vegas, in coming weeks.
No matter his busy schedule, he has one recommendation for himself and others this Sunday.
“Watch the show,” Knapp said.
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