MyrtleBeachOnline.com: Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Finishing touches, furniture put into new home

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:37 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - Thursday night will be the first night Renee Wilson and her four grandchildren spend in their new "Extreme Makeover" home: a house nearly eight times bigger than the trailer the family shared for more than two years.

Wilson, a school cafeteria worker, and her four grandchildren - Hakeem, 10, Timothy, 8, R.J., 7 and Erica, 5 - were chosen by the show to receive a new home after they were nominated by Gail Horton and Jayson Bendik, Hakeem and Timothy's teachers at North Myrtle Beach Elementary School. As a result of their good fortune, however, they will certainly see higher property taxes, insurance and utility bills, but builders say a sustainability fund set up last week will provide what's needed to operate and maintain the new house. As of Wednesday, the fund held about $60,000 with an ultimate goal of $100,000.

"We thought of that early on," said Clinch Heyward, a partner with Hall Custom Homes, who, with Classic Home Builders & Design, built the house and coordinated the volunteer labor. "We want them to be able to enjoy it."

Family's miracle unfolds

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:35 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - Renee Wilson, surrounded by her four grandchildren and other relatives and friends, wept, giggled and praised God on Sunday night from the sofa of her new home while watching "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

The ABC show, starring host Ty Pennington, spent a week in the Myrtle Beach area last month filming the construction of Wilson's five-bedroom home in the Popular community. Volunteer painters, carpenters and other laborers used donated materials, led by a team of local builders, to construct for Wilson and her grandchildren the 3,400-square-foot house.

The family was able to see for the first time the demolition of their cramped, mobile home, the rise of their new house in less than four days and the hundreds of volunteers who helped make what once was a dream of Wilson's come true. Wilson said she prayed for a new house while watching an episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" last year.

Community's gifts overwhelm family

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:29 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - It was a day of more gift-giving for the Wilson family, who spent Friday doing wrap-up interviews and shooting scenes inside their new home with the production crew of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

H. Neyle Wilson, president of Horry-Georgetown Technical College, and Ron Ingle, president of Coastal Carolina University, presented each of the children with a full-tuition scholarship to either college to be used after they graduate from high school. A framed certificate for each of them will serve as a reminder of the scholarship and will be hung in their bedrooms.

"Every time they look at them, they will know they have a college education waiting for them," Ingle said.

Welcome home at last

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:33 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - Overcome with emotion upon seeing her new house for the first time, Renee Wilson embraced Ty Pennington of "Extreme Makeover" and then bolted 15 feet down a rain-soaked dirt road before collapsing to her knees.

Wilson pumped her hands in the air, then crouched onto all fours as if praying, her spiraled curls bouncing madly and tears streaming down her face.

Moments earlier, with crowds chanting "Move that bus!" from the sidelines, Wilson and her four grandchildren spilled out of a limousine and into the waiting arms of Pennington and Gail Horton, one of the two teachers who nominated the family to receive a new house from "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Crews offer support to project's workers

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:07 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - A small white tent across the road from Renee Wilson's new house was the hot spot for tired, sore construction workers and volunteers Tuesday.

The tent offered heat and, more important, at least four massage therapists and two chiropractors who were ready to rub the stiff backs, aching shoulders and fatigued hands of construction workers and volunteers who have been working around the clock on Wilson's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" house.

As Wilson's new home took shape in the background, tents and buses around the site offered support for the hundreds of construction workers and volunteers building the five-bedroom house off S.C. 90. Planning for the home, which is being donated to the family by the ABC television show, began at least a month ago with county officials and other agencies.

Weather doesn't chill workers' enthusiasm

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:08 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - Neither bone-chilling wind gusts nor frigid temperatures Monday could keep spectators away or hamper work on Renee Wilson's house.

Roofers, painters and other volunteers continued to labor around the clock on the five-bedroom house in this rural neighborhood off S.C. 90 northwest of Myrtle Beach.

The house, a gift to the Wilson family from "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," quickly emerged as a gray, vinyl-sided, multigabled, single-story dwelling featuring a second-story bonus room above the attached garage.

Neighborhood embraces chaos

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:16 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - Seival Goings nearly has a front-row seat of the action unfolding on the set of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Goings - a 1977 graduate of North Myrtle Beach High with Renee Wilson, the Horry County woman receiving a new home courtesy of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and the hundreds of volunteer builders - has only to open her blinds to view progress of the five-bedroom house rising on an adjacent lot just across the dirt road.

"I couldn't sleep with all the banging and the commotion going on, and it's a lot of excitement, but I'm very happy for Renee," said Goings, a longtime friend and neighbor. "It's a blessing coming to her."

Crew takes swing to demolish home

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:29 EDT

Editor's note: This is the latest in a series that will chronicle each day's progress in the Wilsons' home makeover.

POPULAR COMMUNITY - Germaine Hill fought back tears as a track hoe, gripping a giant fabricated golf club made of a telephone pole and metal head, ripped through her sister's mobile home, flattening it and nearby storage sheds in less than 10 minutes.

Community, crew dig in

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:17 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY | The sharp smell of freshly cut wild onions and the aroma of turned earth permeated the air around the set of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" on Friday as workers smoothed the land for new construction.

Bulldozers and tractors whirred and bumped over what once was a bean field just behind an exhausted-looking trailer Renee Wilson and her four young grandchildren called home.

The Wilsons won a free home makeover from the ABC TV show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." The show rewards families experiencing hard times with a new home built by volunteers in less than a week using donated materials. The Wilsons will move into their new dwelling on Thursday.

Extremely Blessed: Family to get new home

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:19 EDT

POPULAR COMMUNITY - Renee Wilson never believed "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and the show's star, Ty Pennington, would one day show up on her doorstep.

Seeing him on TV visiting other families across the country and building new houses seemed an impossible reality for her.

And even after the spiky-haired Pennington did appear at the door of the mobile home she shares with her four grandchildren on Thursday morning to announce he was building them a new house, Wilson still had trouble digesting it all.