Crow's Nest

You’ve seen it on television — an army of volunteers attack a structure and a week later a beautiful custom-built home stands in its place. It’s almost like magic.

There is no doubt something special goes on at an Extreme Makeover Home Edition location. Just ask Lisa (Sourbeer) Bower ’94. The interior decorator used her talents to help create window treatments for a Fayetteville (Pa.) family.

“Initially I did it as a great marketing tool,” Lisa recalled, “but ultimately it is so much more.”

The whole undertaking is huge in order to have a built and completely furnished custom home done in a week. The home is quality construction and the designers find time to personalize it to the needs of the family who will live there. Lisa recalls just one example as artists who painted a bedroom mural, took a sketch one of the children did and had a three-dimensional version created for the room.

Many crews work to complete Extreme Makeover homes in one week. There were five fabric crews. Here Lisa Bower ’94 (third from right) and her fabric crew are shown right after they arrived for their assignment. In the background, the soon-to-be-completed home is already under roof.

The time schedule is strictly enforced. Even when there are delays on the site. Lisa and the fabric crew were originally scheduled to be at the site on Monday, but because of delays, they were told to report Tuesday instead.

There was so much work going on inside and outside the house that a local field became a cutting table. It was in the field that the fabric was laid out, measured and cut. Lisa was amazed at the orchestrated chaos taking place all around. She returned home to her workroom and sewed. According to Lisa the fabric she worked with (a large geometric design) needed to have its pattern matched very carefully, a painstaking but necessary part of the job.

Less than 48 hours later, the fabric crew was back, this time to install the window treatments. Again, delays are experienced as other crews need to finish first. While working on the installations, designers decide more window treatments are needed so half of the fabric crew returns to the hotel to complete this last minute task. Those who stayed behind, including Lisa, volunteered to help the designers get the home ready for the family.

Hanging up new clothes, opening and storing toys, stocking pantries and refrigerators, clearing trash, and more is what Lisa did until the small hours of Friday morning. Knowing extra hands would be critical, the designers asked if the crew could return later that morning.

By saying yes, Lisa was at the house for the reveal.

“When you think about it, the impact goes far beyond that one family,” Lisa said. “The hours are incredible, there’s the stress of getting the job done on time, and through it all, the people, especially the designers I worked with, were so patient, so enthusiastic, so obviously enjoying what they were doing.

“There is so much love being gifted to people they don’t even know. It is something so much bigger than all of us. I found myself reevaluating decisions I had made.” She continued, “You don’t hear enough about the good and how fulfilling it is to give to others. There’s all that love for somebody you don’t know.”

On the day the show airs (January 17), Lisa plans to watch the show with her family and friends. “I hope I’ll be able to share some of my excitement and how fulfilling the experience was. It was just so amazing.”

Would she do it again, knowing more about the demands, the hours, and the sacrifices made by herself and her family, especially her husband? “Absolutely!”

Lisa Bower ’94 is an interior decorator (www.madelladecor.com) who lives in Maryland with her husband Doug and their two daughters.