"Extreme Makeover" turns tears into smiles

Since they moved into the big, new house that "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" built for them two months ago, the Dore family of Kingston has been living with self-imposed don'ts — as in "don't sit there" and "don't put that there" — afraid that a stray jacket or dirty dish would spoil the look of a place so perfect it didn't seem like home.

Then Roseanne Dore's friends came over the other day and found laundry piled on the couch. They knew the Dores were settling in.

Just what's inside the six-bedroom, seven-bath home has been kept secret since the home was revealed to the family Nov. 17. They had to sign a contract promising not to discuss its contents and to limit visitors until after the show featuring the family airs at 8 p.m. Sunday on KOMO-TV's Channel 4.

For thousands in the extended Kingston community who watched the project take shape — or helped make it happen — it's been a long-awaited event.

Roseanne Dore, a widow and mother of daughters Aariel,13; Sarah, 17; and Jessica, 22, had been living on the property on Kiwi Lane in a storage shed with no plumbing since the family's home burned down eight months earlier.

They learned on the morning of Nov. 10 that the popular reality-television show had selected them for a new home.

The show sent the family to Disney World while crews and volunteers cleared their property, built the new home, installed a raised garden area and planted fruit trees — all in a grueling week of 18-hour days involving hundreds of Northwest businesses that donated everything from labor to lumber to light bulbs. As the week wore on, more and more spectators arrived to watch.

"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" The Dore family's home in Kingston will be featured at 8 p.m. Sunday on KOMO-TV "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" on Channel 4, and again at 8 p.m. Monday, when a weekly companion show "How'd They Do That?" debuts. Beginning with the Dore family's home, it will provide a behind-the-scenes look at how each "Extreme Makeover" home came together, and the unique features of each — for the Dores, that includes a "secret room," a blown-glass chandelier and high-tech wiring and electronics.

The family has felt overwhelmed by the attention, Dore said. She and her daughters had no idea of the extent of their celebrity until a white limo carrying them home from the airport turned off the main highway and headed for the work site. The first hint of the hubbub was a group of people holding a sign, "Welcome Home Dore Family."

"We didn't even know them," Dore said, tears filling her eyes.

A school-cafeteria worker, Dore was serenaded by the school band when she returned to work, and now when she goes into downtown Kingston, strangers recognize her as "the one who got the house." One person thanked her for moving to Kingston and sparking the goodwill that has spread throughout the community.

"I've even had an invitation to go to a ladies' church group to be a speaker, to give others encouragement because I'm a single mother," she said. "This is a new thing to me."

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES The Dores' modest Kingston house caught fire last March. The insurance didn't pay enough to rebuild the house, so the family moved into a storage shed.

Although neighbors had worried that their rural peace would be violated by sightseers, the show put up a sign asking that the privacy of the locals be respected, and problems have been minimal, said neighbor Clinton Dudley. Most people turn around and leave, Dudley said.

Neighbors still talk about the week the house went up — when Kiwi Lane bustled with the sounds of backhoes, air compressors, hammers and calls by the producer for retakes; when celebrities carrying paper cups of coffee glided through the crowd signing autographs; when the show's carpenter-designer, Paige Hemmis, wearing her signature pink, held a power drill out a bedroom window in salute.

Since moving into the house, which she hopes someday to use as a bed and breakfast, Dore said youngest daughter Aariel has been able to fulfill her dream of having friends sleep over, "and the girls love their space" — bedrooms and bathrooms of their own.

But sometimes it still feels like she's living in someone else's home, and that's when she tells herself: "This is my key. This is my door. This is my house."

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com