Pandora man part of an extreme project

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Pandora man part of an extreme project

By Nancy Kline

nkline@putnamvoice.com

419-615-4152

PANDORA - On Sunday, November 16, a Pandora man, will be watching Extreme Makeover, Home Edition, on NBC, to see production of a home that was built for a Toledo firefighter and his wife in mid-September.

John Schlumbohm, co-owner of Allco Interiors Limited, has a special interest in the home. His company was one of over 50 businesses who donated labor to assist in the construction of the home.

"We were asked if we would be interested in doing work on the home early last August," Schlumbohm said. His company does work for Rheme Schneider in Toledo, who does work for Buckeye Real Estate Group. This was the company who was in charge of building a new home for Jackie and Aaron Frisch.  The couple had been chosen as the finalist by the Extreme Makeover, Home Edison group to receive a new home.

Schlumbohm said building a house like this in less than a week requires many pre-construction meetings.

"There were a lot of pre-meetings in late August and early September," he said. "Many of those meetings were to go over schedules and to make sure each contractor had their ducks in a row before they went to the job site." All of the labor and materials for the house were donated.

Allco Interiors LTD was responsible for tiling two bathrooms and putting in a custom shower in one bathroom in the home

"There is a lot of logistics to doing a house for Extreme Makeover, Home Edition," Schlumbohm acknowledged. "They built this house in 100 hours."

Since so many contractors were working on the house at one time, the trucks and trailers with their tools had to be parked off site. Schlumbohm said his company had five employees plus him and co-owner Terry Siefer at the site.

"We had to wait at a nearby church until they were ready for us to go in to do our part," he said. They had been scheduled to go in around 3 p.m. on a Thursday, but the house was not ready for their work until midnight. The crew then worked all through the night until 2 p.m. the next day.

"That's 14 hours straight working," Schlumbohm said. "That is tiring."  He said only a few stars of the show were present while his crew did their tiling work. "But they were filming the entire time." Ty Pennington was in St. Louis finishing another show and did not arrive in Toledo until they were ready to move the bus and show the family their new home.

Schlumbohm said there were at least 150 people working in the house at any given time.

"To go outside to get a piece of equipment you constantly had to go around people working."

The house was also constantly being pumped with hot air to dry the paint and dry wall mud quicker.

"It was 100 degrees and 85 percent humidity the entire time we were working in the house,' Schlumbohm said.

Each day meals for the workers were donated by local restaurants. "We had a lot of good food," Schlumbohm said. "There were scheduled times to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Volunteers also were constantly bringing around snacks and drinks for the workers.

On the opposite side of the street stood a three foot high gate had been erected, to allow spectators to watch the work without hindering the progress.

"Sometimes when we would walk down the street for food or a tool someone would ask for an autograph or to have their picture taken with us," Schlumbohm said. "That was kind of unusual.

"The overall mindset of everyone working there was they were glad to be there and helping out. Everyone was very courteous."

Allco Interiors was started in 1990 by John Schlumbohm and Terry Siefer, strictly as painting contractors. In 1992, the company got into ceramic tile work. "Now we do almost no painting and all ceramic work in northwest Ohio," Schlumbohm said. "Custom showers are our niche.  We probably do 25 to 30 jobs including showers, floor tiling and wall tiling each year.