Thomas and Jason Budzynski of TJB Homes built a home for the entire Swenson-Lee family featured on "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" in only 99 hours ... And they couldn't be happier about it.
During halftime of the Wolves Dec. 4th game against the Los Angeles Lakers, fans at Target Center got to see a touching presentation honoring the Swenson-Lee family. Shortly afterwards, we caught up Thomas and his son Jason, the two men responsible for building the new home.
Q: First of all Thomas, how did this process start in the first place?
Thomas: We actually got a call in the middle of the night, because "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" is in California, so by the time they called us the office was closed. Jason picked up the phone in the morning and there was a message on the recorder. It said to basically call back and that were going to issue us a challenge. They asked if we would be interested in building a house for a family that had a tragedy. The second question was, "Can you build it in less than 106 hours?" The third question was, "Can you do it for free?" It was an awful big challenge and it was very nerve racking. Jason spent a few hours talking with the producers and we just said that we've got to do this. It's a great thing.
Q: How did you come around to the decision?
Jason: We soul searched for about a day and a half with the family, because it's a family business. We were on a limited time schedule and only had a couple weeks notice. My uncle and I would be heading up the coordination of the project, and my father was there to make all the phone calls and get on his knees and beg (all the helpers we would need). After a day and a half of really thinking about it hard, we finally fell back and said we'd love to do it, but asked if we could get a little more time. They actually gave us another week. That was what made the final decision work.
Thomas: We had four weeks notice to design the house, create the house, find all these people that would go along and say, "I'm on the team and I will donate my labor, talent, time and materials to help you make this project work out." 98 percent of the building partners that we work with on a day-to-day basis said yes. From there we started receiving calls from all over asking if they could be a part of the project. We had to be very quiet because we couldn't tell them who the family was and we couldn't tell them where it was happening. We could only tell them that it was "Extreme Makeover" and that we had this opportunity, if they wanted to join us. It was surprising, there was a little hesitancy here and there but they all jumped in. They reached out to their suppliers, they reached out to their employees, a lot of the employees worked those hours and weren't paid. This was a beautiful thing to see how everybody was so willing to give. The really cool part was I watched these people descend on the site. Jason set up these times that they had to be there. These people worked hard ... and there was more people working in a room than you can ever imagine. In a normal situation they'd be all over each other and swearing to get out of my way. In this case they were enjoying what they were doing.
Q: People working with one another for a great cause...
Jason: Yes, because you'd never get a plumber, an electrician and a heating guy to work in the basement together otherwise. But we had 25 from each company working together, not just three. A really cool stat that we figured out is one hour of construction on this house is actually two and a half days in a normal situation.
Q: How long did it actually take to build?
Jason: It took 99 hours. From the time we demolished the old house, rebuilt and handed over the keys to the designers. The designers then had 18 hours to decorate it. It took 99 hours to build it and 18 hours to decorate it.
Q: How many people were actually working on the house itself?
Jason: Anywhere from 200 to 500 people were working on that house or that yard at any point in time. Not only that, but there are so many other things going on that had to get done. TJB had to be responsible for all of that.
Thomas: We also had to put together tents and feed up to 700 people a day, about six to eight times a day because they're working 24 hours a day. You have to bring them food every couple of hours, plus drinks and coffee and Gatorade and Red Bull. We had to collect all of this. We had meals from numerous places. Majors brought in lasagna, spaghetti and meatloaf, whole meals for these people. We had a chiropractor on site. We had people on site for coffee: Over 5,000 cups of coffee were delivered out of there; 18,000 bottles of water; 200 cases of Red Bull; six pallets of Coca-Cola; 5,600 meals from Majors and that's not including others that did things.
Q: How happy were you to have this opportunity to work on something that served such a great purpose?
Jason: It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I've been a fan of the show since it came on, and when I watch the show, I'm thinking, "How much time do we have to plan for this." It's a wonderful story that the Sweson-Lee's have, (especially) because of what they're doing now for domestic violence awareness. Domestic violence is a nationwide issue that has had tons and tons of problems, but it doesn't get any coverage. Yeah, there are a lot of foundations, 17,000 in Minnesota. We didn't know that until we did research on it. So, to be able to do something on this magnitude for a family was great.
Q: Were you surprised by what a huge deal all of this has become?
Jason: I'm not surprised, because I've watched the show and know what impact it has, but it blew my dad out of the water. He would have never thought that we'd have thousands of volunteers a day. He'd never think people would be calling us to volunteer their time. Minnesota is the state of giving. Especially after we had the floods down south, we had the bridge collapse about three weeks prior to this happening. Minnesota has been in some mourning, and they needed an uplift thing. I think this is something that really brought a community together. You can see it tonight by how people stuck in their chairs to watch the presentation, versus getting up and going to the bathroom or getting some food. The community does care and it's kind of nice to come together and do something.
Q: How did you feel about the halftime presentation?
Jason: It was awesome, what you guys did with the suite for us and the family and everything. Having the presentation and the family out on the middle of the court was fantastic.
Q: What can you say about the volunteers that helped build the house?
Thomas: What was interesting to watch was when they first decided to do it they did it because of me, the builder. They didn't know anything else. I convinced them to do it because of their long-standing relationship with us. They felt that, "Tom if you think this will help our business and we can look forward to things and plus help the good cause, that's what we're here for." But as they were working on the site I watched them, especially the leaders, who are the owners of the companies. As I watched them, they were sweating from head to toe. These guys were exhausted, the owners. It was at that point I saw that they found the real reason they were there. It wasn't for TJB, it was from their hearts. They did not really give on that project, when you think about it. They received. They received something that is very hard to describe. It was a feeling within themselves. I've seen a lot of these people want to get involved through some other things and they're going to do things for someone else again. That's the real interesting part of the story. We did a great job, we built a house, we helped a family, we did it in a record time, but so many people can change lives when they come together. That's the big thing. They can change lives.
