FoodThink small for

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CleaningHere’s a guide

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O.C. HomeExotic pools can turnyour back yard into a

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COMING NEXT SATURDAYA tiny cottage turnsinto a retirement

remodeling project.

HOME GARDEN S A T U R D AY , M A R C H 2 0 , 2 0 0 4&

If you’re not much of a plant feeder, for-get to feed or never get around to it, con-sider using Osmocote by Scotts. The tinyround pellets of this balanced plant foodfeed your plants for up to four months.

“Constant feeding is the best way to go,”said Scott Lathrop, general manager ofFlowerdale Nurseries. “Growth is main-tained when a plant has a continual sourceof nutrients rather than a quick-hit,willy-nilly-like, when and if the gardenerremembers.”

Osmocote is a slow-release fertilizerthat provides plant food every time youwater. Plants that really want to get upand grow strong while the weather is goodare your vegetables and herbs, fruits treesand potted plants. Just a sprinkle will dofor the balance of spring, followed by an-other feed in summer. Rake under for bestresults.

What: Osmocote Plant Food, a slow-re-lease pellet that feeds your plants for up tofour months.

Where: Flowerdale Nursery, 2800 N.Tustin Ave., Santa Ana; (714) 633-9200.

YOUR GARDEN NOTES

Try a ‘spread itand forget it’

plant foodBy CINDY McNATT

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Have you heard noises recently aroundyour home’s chimney? Many of us get vis-itors this time of year, because chimneysare appealing homes for a mother raccoonand her new babies.

“I do get quite a few calls about rac-coons in chimneys,” said Orange County

Humane Society spokes-man Jennifer Motsch-man. “Most of the callsseem to come from New-port Beach and CostaMesa, but I’ve heard ofthis problem all overOrange County.”

It’s spring, and thenewborn of all species areplentiful. To keep her ba-bies safe from predators,a mother raccoon may

seek the shelter of yourhome’s chimney.

The best advice is to take action beforea raccoon comes calling.

“The most important thing for home-owners to know about raccoons in chim-neys is that a secure chimney cap will keepthem out before they settle in,” said JohnHadidian, director of urban wildlife pro-grams at the Humane Society of theUnited States (no relation to the countyorganization).

(A chimney cap is sort of a cage atopyour chimney. Usually made of a combina-tion of metal mesh and solid metal, it pre-vents burning embers from escaping yourchimney and prohibits animals and birdsfrom entering it.)

This sort of problem – critters in chim-neys – happens frequently in areas such asours in which there are relatively few hol-low trees (which critters like to hide in)but lots of tall chimneys. It’s dangerous forthe raccoons and to homeowners.

Kristi Fink of Red Hot Chimney Sweeps

SEE HARDER ● PAGE 1 5

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T H E O R A N G E C O U N T Y R E G I S T E R

NICK HARDER

REGISTERCOLUMNIST

What is it like to be acontractor on anextreme home ma-keover? To face sixmonths’ worth of

strenuous and complicatedwork, and have only sevendays to do it?

To find out, The OrangeCounty Register spent a dayinside during the remake ofthe Costa Mesa home of Tomand Deirdre McCrory. Wetagged along with local con-tractor Andrew Shore of SeaPointe Construction as hetackled the unrelentingstresses, unthinkable timeta-ble and unpredictable chal-lenges of ramrodding ABCtelevision’s “Extreme Make-over: Home Edition.”

We also talked with Shoreand other contractors aboutthe extraordinary weeklongexperience. You can see the re-sults of their work yourselfSunday night, when the epi-sode airs on KABC/7 at 8 p.m.

● ● ●

It is 4 a.m. on a Sunday, andmost of Costa Mesa is sleepingpeacefully. But on RosemaryPlace a small army of workershas started painting the exte-rior of the McCrory home,which is being expanded by 50percent, adding 500 squarefeet.

By 9 a.m. just one exteriorwall remains unpainted andthings are looking good for the

crew, which has only threedays until the McCrorys re-turn from a week’s vacation atan Arizona resort, courtesy ofABC.

Well, maybe not so good, toa designer’s eye.

“One of the five designersstrolls up to the house to helpout and realizes we had thewrong color paint,” saysShore, whose Irvine companywas chosen as the general con-tractor for the project. “ABC

and the production companysupplied the paint to us. Theyhad a swatch and asked thepaint company to match thatcolor. I guess the paint com-pany couldn’t match it exactlyand said, ‘This is close.’ ”

It isn’t close at all. The home looks like a giant

avocado green refrigeratorfrom the ’70s. Yuck! The cor-rect color, a mix of slate andgreen, is found and the paint-ing starts all over again.

The next day the crewspends the whole day paintingthe interior the wrong color.

● ● ●

On any major remodelingjob, trouble can creep into theprocess. For Shore, most ofthe headaches came not fromhis large crew, but from work-ers brought in by the show’sproduction company.

The window company in-stalled some of the windowsupside down and backward.That is an easy fix on anyother construction site, butnot when time is ticking away.With crews working 24 hoursa day, each small delay addspressure to the next steps.

Once the repairs are made,Steve Suer’s siding crew cantake over.

His team from Laguna Con-struction and Builders has justeight hours to install the sid-ing and battens, which areused to attach the siding to thehome. In a typical situation,

EXTREME

By NICK BRENNAN

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Take a look inside the ‘organized chaos’ as local contractors remakea Costa Mesa home for a reality TV show.

MAKEOVER AN

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CHAS METIVIER, THE REGISTER

ANDY TEMPLETON, FOR THE REGISTER

SEE EXTREME ● PAGE 6

SHOWTIME: Workers swarm over the house, below. The pro-ject was overseen by Irvine contractor Andrew Shore, above.

MAKING PLANS: Designers sketch drawings for a child’sroom at the Costa Mesa home of Deirdre and Tom McCrory.

Home & Garden 6 | Saturday, March 20, 2004 The Orange County Register

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the install would take four orfive days with a four- orfive-member crew for a housethis size, he said. Today he hasfour guys installing just thesiding’s battens.

One siding crew works onthe home’s back wall while twoothers install siding on eachside of the house.

Meanwhile, Shore is un-happy with the work of a tileinstaller who was also hired bythe show’s production com-pany.

“The tile company was notproperly waterproofing thetile for the bath,” Shore says.“I finally told the productioncompany I refused to take re-sponsibility for their work if(the tile company) remainedon the job. So I brought myguys in and got the job donecorrectly.”

● ● ●

Surprisingly, there are fewcomplications as Shore andhis crew, the designers and theTV crew race through theseven-day circus.

In fact, things are going toosmoothly.

Drama, chaos and conflict-ing personalities are what sellreality TV. The producerspray for it. They even stoke itin hopes an argument willerupt.

But on a Saturday morning,as dozens of workers scramblefrom rooftop to foundation,there is only a frenzy of activ-ity as construction crews worksimultaneously on the house.

“I have never seen 30 guysstepping on each other andstill getting the job done,” saysGary Hooks, the city buildinginspector. “It is total organizedchaos.’’ He is on duty 24 hours,making sure permittingdoesn’t hold up progress.

If anything, the TV produc-tion crew seems to be morestressed than the workers.Cameramen hurry around the

site hoping to catch an argu-ment.

When asked about the crav-ing for conflict, Shore justlaughs.

“We have heard about thisover and over,” he says with asmile as he and one of his fore-men stand in what will be thenew kitchen. “There has beenno drama so far. They (ABCand the production crew) toldus to save all of our arguments

for the camera. But we don’twork that way.’’

Besides, he says, therewasn’t much that went awry.“There was very little conflictbetween the designers and thecontractors, which is toughwhen we were working 16hours a day back-to-back.”

At one point Shore and hisforeman, Len Jay, hatch a planto start a fake fistfight by theend of the project as a joke forthe TV cameras.

“I went to talk to one of theguys about some paint and afew other questions I had,”says Jay. “And all of a suddenthis camera guy runs over to

us thinking he is going to getsomething good on tape, likean argument or problem aboutthe paint. But I just had a sim-ple question. The camera guywas pretty bummed.”

● ● ●

Just how do you have yourentire home remodeled on na-tional television courtesy ofABC? In the McCrorys’ case itwas a matter of a growingfamily in a tiny space. Their1,077-square-foot home was al-ready tight on room with twotoddler boys. In December,Deirdre found out she waspregnant with triplets.

The show spices home im-provement with emotional ex-tremes, showcasing goodworks for deserving familiesand the conflicts that arisefrom an insane constructionschedule.

The key to the remodel’ssuccess was planning, Shoreknew. He and his team onlyhad three weeks to concep-tualize, design and have thecity of Costa Mesa approve theremodel’s plans.

Sea Pointe hired more than100 workers for this project. Iteven had timelines designedfor each trade. For instance,once the siding was completed(within the eight hours sched-uled for it), the painters werescheduled to immediatelycome in behind them and get

to work. Not even a minutewas spared.

“Normally a trade wouldhave two to five days to com-plete its work,” Shore said of atypical remodel. “But us andthe other trades were asked todo the same amount of work ineight hours.”

They started with the ideaof adding 1,000 square feet tothe home, but about a weekbefore construction wasscheduled to start, the produc-tion company said they neededto slash the cost by 30 or 40percent.

“We literally had to come upwith a new design at the lastminute,” Shore said. “So myarchitect, one of our designersand I went back to the officeand brainstormed new ideas.We decided to cut the additionin half.”

Originally the small bunga-low had no real entry. Thefront door was next to a fire-place and the wall faced a littlecourtyard, not the street.When you opened the dooryou were immediately intro-duced to the living room. SeaPointe relocated the fireplaceto the wall that faces the streetand kept the two large viewwindows already there.

French doors replaced thefireplace and original frontdoor as the new entryway, andthey look onto the courtyard.

“The home was such a smallspace to begin with we kepteverything about where itwas,” Shore says as he toursthe home.

“We wanted to keep themidcentury modern and con-temporary look of the homebut give it a modern twist,”said Michael Moloney, de-signer in charge of the home’sinterior. “We wanted to keepthings clean and simple.”

A few things did expand,though. The master bedroomhad an attached bath, if youwould call it that. It measureda tiny 4 by 6 feet. Now there isenough room for dual sinksand a tub/shower with bodyspray jets like a spa. Thoseshould come in handy forDeirdre when she needs to es-cape from the kids. They alsoinstalled a doorway in themaster bathroom that leads tothe nursery.

“Everything was done forsmall kids,” Shore said. “Asurveillance system is beinginstalled so they can watch thekids from different rooms.”

In the nursery, the design-

ers thought of putting a closetand a sink with a smooth coun-tertop as a changing/cleaningarea for the triplets. Shoreand his crew thought of cut-ting a small hatch out of thenursery’s exterior wall thatleads straight to an outsidetrash can. Perfect for smelly,dirty diapers. The one down-side of the diaper dump – thecelebrity designers took creditfor it.

● ● ●

Doing such extensive re-modeling and design forcedShore to get extremely cre-ative – and be secretive.

Normally they would mea-sure the home at least sixtimes to make sure everythingwas exact.

However, when the homewas being measured theMcCrorys only knew theywere finalists for the remodel.Shore didn’t want to tip themoff.

“We were able to take mea-surements of the home twice.So, we had two people take in-dependent measurementseach time and made sure theymatched,” Shore said. “Weused those numbers to rede-sign the interior and plan theaddition.’’

To speed the constructionproject, Sea Pointe builtkitchen cabinets as a unit offsite beforehand, so they couldbe assembled quickly.

They also resorted to otherinnovations.

Usually concrete takesmore than a day to dry andcure before you can startbuilding on it. But Shore didn’thave that kind of time beforethey needed to start on the ad-dition. The answer?

They found a special con-crete usually used in freewayconstruction. Two hours afterit was poured, framing for theaddition started going up.

● ● ●

Shore and his crew finishbefore their deadline.

It is 3 p.m. on Feb. 18, and along black limousine pulls upin front of the remade home.Ty Pennington, host of theshow, gets the rain-soakedcrowd of more than 100 on-lookers poised for a big greet-ing.

Tom and Deirdre emergewith their two little boys andare overjoyed with the results.

Contractor Shore, a sticklerfor detail, is satisfied with theoutcome as well. His final in-spection had turned up fewlast-minute fixes.

“We had a total of 10 itemson the punch list,” he said.“Only four were from SeaPointe. To do a job that fastand have only 10 small items isamazing. It is a point of pridefor me.”

So would Shore and hiscrew do it all over if they wereasked?

“We’ll see,” he said. “Prob-ably, since we know it can bedone and what to expect.”

FROM PAG E 1

CONTACT THE WRITER:

(7 1 4) 796-6079 or

nbrennan@ocregister.com

‘Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’

● When: 8 p.m. Sunday● Channel: KABC/7

EXTREME HAPPINESS: Oneof the McCrory boys’ roomswas transformed into a wildjungle complete with Simbathe Lion King, above left. Thenew dining/living room offersa contemporary and open feelto an otherwise small space,above. The McCrorys see theirremodeled home for the firsttime, at left.

VIVIAN ZINK, ABC VIVIAN ZINK, ABC

BRUCE CHAMBERS, THE REGISTER

EXTREME: Success requirescreativity and secrecy