KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Baseball fans outside Kauffman Stadium for this week’s MLB All-Star Game in Kansas City may have noticed two homes building built. Major League Baseball, ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”, and Habitat For Humanity, are working together on two homes, outside the stadium. Volunteers are building these homes for tornado survivors. Paul Dimeo, one of the stars of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” says one home will go to Joplin, and the other to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. “There are a couple things I think are super important, one is family, two is housing, making sure everyone has a roof over their head,” Dimeo says. “Certainly this is very familiar […]

If you’ve been a fan of ABC’s hit series, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” you’re familiar with the urge to reach into the screen and hug its co-star, Paul DiMeo, whose human compassion, emotion and sense of humor have endeared him to millions of fans for the past nine seasons as the show’s rugged carpenter with a tender heart of gold. Despite being one fo America’s most recognizable TV celebrities, DiMeo personifies the genuine, “regular guy” that resonates so clearly with his fans. During the hour we spent on the phone together, DiMeo spoke candidly about his family and his childhood as he did about his plans for the future, as […]

Hey all wish I could be in TX with you. Mr. Studebaker, how wonderful it is that you are there? If in the next couple of paragraphs if I say something that I said before please forgive me. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been asked more than once to share what this journey has been like and what it means that it’s coming to a end. So those that were in Knoxville, sorry. Over the last 9 years, we have traveled the country building homes for families that have for the most part, really needed them. And without me even knowing it, my own home was being […]

”Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” designer Paul DiMeo is philosphical about the ending of the two-time Emmy-winning reality show this week. “I certainly think that moving to Friday night gave us an indication of what was coming,” he says of their cancellation after nine years. “Trying to have some type of TV savvy and realizing that all good things come to an end, I think we were pretty prepared.” The show winds with a two-hour special finale episode tonight, with the team in tornado-devastated Joplin, Missouri, working with 21 builders to raise seven houses in seven days. “If it has to end, so be it, but I’m just grateful this is […]

You’d have to figure a show that features sawing and hammering and a wild man shouting through a bullhorn would not go quietly. “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” makes its farewell appearance after nine years Friday (1/13) with a special two-hour 200th episode. It’s an epic job the design team, led by Ty Pennington, is unlikely ever to forget: building seven new homes in seven days in tornado-ravaged Joplin, Missouri. Designer Paul DiMeo, known affectionately to fans of the show as the soft-hearted Paulie, tells me they got enough video in Joplin for a full season. “They’ve had a hard time editing it down to two hours. You know, I heard […]

This week’s story takes us to Fayetteville, N.C. where we met up with a woman by the name of Barbara Marshall. Barbara Marshall is a veteran of the Navy and she has seen a problem develop over the years with our women veterans coming back from deployment and then finding themselves homeless, without jobs and in really tough situations. Barbara has decided to take it upon herself to help these women and their children by bringing them into the Steps and Stages Jubilee House and give them a chance to get back on their feet. We had a chance to meet a few of those veterans who were staying with […]