Harvey Family

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
The Harvey Family
Recap By J.G. Bird
4-24-05

Strangely, I don’t feel the audience gets drawn into knowing this family very well during the Sunday Edition of Home Makeover. The formula of the show was too apparent for me. Instead, we are teased that How’d They Do That will highlight how portions of the entire neighborhood were also renovated. The producers seem to have drained all the human interest out of one episode to edit it into the other. Are they trying to build their Monday ratings this way?

Only a few times before have truly dire straits have been touched upon as it affects an entire community: the “homeless” episode in Denver and the struggles of small family farms in the farming community of Bakersfield, for example. Hastings, Florida is shown as a mix between ghost town and shantytown as the designers approach the converted army barracks that serve as the Harvey home.

The Harvey family is very glad to see the design team at their doorstep. Willie Harvey is a tall and gracious African-American man who has had to confront not being able to work and provide for his family. The Harvey’s are struggling to remain clothed and fed; there is barely a roof over their head. A family of four children, an older Aunt and the husband unemployable due to recent bouts of seizures are being supported by the efforts of the wife, Alecia, working two full-time jobs. One of those children, Derrick, is actually grown and returned from college to do what he can to help bring earnings into the household too. The family has remained upbeat in the day-to-day interactions within their community despite the odds. Willie, is particularly noted for his charity to others in the area. Hastings is traditionally a farming area, just off the Northeast coast, along the highway between Jacksonville and Gainesville, Florida.

The home inside is fairly stark. There are two bedrooms being shared by seven people, one for the children and the other for the parents and aunt. There’s one bath and a kitchen about the size of a standard bathroom. The dramatic disrepair of the ceiling is apparent. Multiple hurricanes have left the exterior of the roof torn and rusted.

Outside, Willie keeps busy with projects in a structure that barely rates the term “shack,” yet it is the home for his trusty tools, and where he often invites neighbors to bring vehicles in need of repair. He also drives a red 1965 Ford pickup, yet its undercarriage looks to be rusting out and the wooden boards of the bed are worn through a bit.

The family is quickly loaded up into the limo with a vacation itinerary for Niagara Falls. The family application video, a few shots of the family peering at the falls, and two hotel interiors with the group gathered about the laptop are the formula ingredients, including usual rundown of reveal reactions of the family. I’m beginning to feel like I could write out a shot list from memory. The producers have to be careful not to dilute the impact of the show with so much predictability.

Even the emphasis on the construction crew from Builders Care is put off until the How’d They Do That show. Otherwise, you just note that the demolition crew seems overly large (300+) and varied (quite a few women) for this project. Sure, the design team has decided that the old 900 square foot shack has nothing to salvage and they’ll build a totally new two-story with nice Southern Colonial and beach house style architectural features, but beside the pep talk shot and establishing shots identifying Builders Care banners, little is said about the gathered volunteers and crew of this Northeast Florida Builders Association.

The audience and the family are shown the demolition of the home as quite simple – a matter of tying some hefty ropes to key points and getting all the crew to pull in one concerted effort. Ed is soon on hand noting the progress with removing debris from the site. I have to note a cute “Edism” from this episode. Ed refers to the replacement home design as “Mahusive,” that would be “Massive” plus “Huge”: Mahusive.

Ed and Preston take a trip for inspiration out into the Florida waters to do some “crabbing.” The two are working together on the design of an outdoor kitchen, literally a second kitchen built in a breezeway of the new home. The Harvey family spends time together fishing and crabbing and the design team wants to accentuate the experience by giving them an ideal place to prepare and cook up the future catches. The live crabs have an almost Robin’s egg blue to parts of their armor and that color will become the backdrop for the lovely “Summer kitchen.”

Preston also seeks out some raw, indigenous wood products for the porch kitchen. From some slabs of oxidized driftwood and hefty chunks of Cypress root formations, Preston formulates their use into some unique outdoor furniture. He puts quite a project in Ed’s lap.

For once, Ty does not take on the master bedroom, opting instead for a small family room. It is Michael, instead that adds his own touch to the master bedroom and that of the 14 year old, Arlayceea (or “Laycee” as they call her throughout the episode). Her bedroom has an African theme, which she requested. It is the most bold of the few rooms Michael had a hand in. The colors are undiluted and solidly neutral; red on the walls, black and tan in most of the accents. The parent’s room and Aunt Mary’s room were feminine, with pastel palettes, but just as “decorator magazine” in their impact. It wasn’t specified if Michael or one of the other designers prepared the design for Mary’s or Derrick’s rooms, but they all seemed to have a very neat, “picture perfect” simplicity, so it may all have been his handiwork.

Paige worked exclusively on the youngest girl’s room it seems. Jasmine Harvey ends up with a replica of a kid size dollhouse that Paige herself had when she was six. Paige has the family video to prove it. The large windows in this room bring in a lot of outdoor light and all the areas of the room that are outside the seven-foot facing wall of this corner dollhouse are done up as “front yard.” Thus, the bed has a white picket fence along its wall edge, and the fence carries on as a painted element around the room’s perimeter.

Willie, Jr., an eleven year old, has stars in his eyes. Just as many of Southern California’s kids grow up aspiring to Hollywood, I imagine lots of kids living in Florida, particularly near the Cape, have no doubt they too can become astronauts. Despite their long-term circumstance of living in sub-standard housing, the Harvey children have dreams that their parents have listened to and supported. Ed goes into overdrive to provide a super impact with this space-themed room. Besides having a ton of accents direct from Kennedy Space Center, the ceiling is fitted with over 400 fiber optic filaments to create a twinkling starscape above the bed. This is the best, maybe the only fitting use of painting a pre-teen’s room almost entirely black! There is also a light box fixture overhead that has a nebula image that also can be turned on or off. Ty is introduced to the kid’s own lingo for “good job” when he exclaims, “Junk!” “Junk means good,” mom has to explain.

Derrick is given a nice room for a young adult, and he is excited to have a large salt-water aquarium stretching across his room. He’s full of laughter to see that that design element has been duplicated in the bathroom, where fresh water fish swim in a special sink basin enclosure.

The family’s reactions, all around, are mostly a mixture of awe and disbelief. Willie seems the most accepting, and next to his son, Derrick, shows the most giddiness. The design team started out with a focus on Willie’s long-term needs. In the design of the home, grab bars in the bathroom are incorporated. Wide walkways throughout the floor plan are also noted. Willie’s classic pickup was not junked nor sold away, it was renovated, and the 2005 F150 that hauls it back into the yard is also gifted to Willie. The garage is totally stocked with garage-style fixtures and tools in the hope that Willie can, under the best circumstances, work out of the home, or at least, be doing what he loves. Ty also caps the end of the show with the promise that the Harvey’s will no longer have to pay for any of their prescription medications. An unnamed group of pharmaceutical companies has offered to provide the medication, particularly the meds to control seizures which Willie would sometimes skip due to financial burden.