Paul Zank's First Call from Extreme Makeover ...

In the spring of 2006, I checked the voicemail of my cell phone and found a message from Ty Pennington from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. “Hi Paul. This is Ty Pennington and I was wondering if you would ....” They had a pair of interior doors to his “SECRET PROJECT” which needed to be carved. Ty called because I have a PRT Alpha ShopBot. Ty also owns a ShopBot and it is run by his long time friend, Rob Williams in Atlanta. Rob did the door design but if he cut the doors, they would have to be shipped from Atlanta to New York on a very short schedule. Further, my PRT Alpha should be capable of cutting the pattern somewhat faster than Ty’s PRT. I agreed to make the doors from Rob’s cut file.

On a Friday, I drove to the Arena house in Somers, NY to pick up the doors. This was the same day the old house was being destroyed. When the doors arrived, Big D (the lead carpenter for the show) discovered that the doors which were delivered were not solid wood; instead, they were solid core. (They were veneer clad core and we didn’t know what the core was). Since this was Ty’s secret project, Big D had asked Ty to come over and discuss the problem. Ty is a highly accomplished carpenter in his own right and we discussed several options but the best option was for the show’s people to find solid wood doors and get them to me. If we used the doors that were delivered, the current design would completely remove the veneer and expose the unknown core material. I left the Arena house with the solid core doors just in case the design producers could not get solid wood doors in time.

Saturday, I received an email from the lead artist, Nancy Hadley, asking about a sample that I had left with the design producers on Friday. She asked if it would be possible to design and cut large appliqués from a picture she had attached. Since I was waiting for the solid doors, I agreed to make the appliqués. This was my first project with V-Carve Pro/PartWorks. The design producers soon discovered that businesses which would have solid wood doors were not open on weekends. Through multiple phone calls and emails with the producers, I could sense a growing panic and Sunday morning I started to redesign the pattern to keep almost all of the veneer on the solid core doors and still maintain the same overall look. This was my second project with V-Carve Pro/PartWorks. As I was designing, my bot was cutting the first set of Nancy’s appliqués. The effort had turned into a prime candidate for a disaster -- A new machine, new software, a novice operator (me!) and a three day deadline. Anything and everything could go wrong. There was no backup for anything.

By Monday morning it was apparent that we would not have solid wood doors. We would have to use my design for the solid core doors and hope the core was not scrap wood (which would show through in a few areas of the pattern). Each door would take more than 3 hours to cut. The pattern would show the slightest error; I had never made a multi hour cut; and we were completely out of alternatives and time. Both doors were finished by early Monday afternoon. The core of the door turned out to be a single piece of particle board … we were lucky. The second set of Nancy’s appliqués were done before midnight. I delivered the doors Tuesday about noon. At this time the exterior of the new house was completely done! When Big D stained the doors, the particle board core of the door sucked up much more of the stain than the veneer did. It made the doors look like they were stained with two different but coordinated stains and they looked great! Nancy used the appliqués on the backs of the doors and the walls in the Nursery (Ty’s “SECRET PROJECT”). Big D was happy, Nancy was happy, the producers were happy, Ty was happy, and I ... I was just incredibly relieved. The pressure was off, and my first major ShopBot project was a success.

I keep in touch with Nancy, Big D and Ty. By March of 2007 I had worked on my eighth Extreme Makeover house including two houses in one week. I have been asked why I volunteer so much time and effort. When I was small, we were very poor and many people helped us. I am simply paying it back.