TodayCumberland-Perry students build $500,000 home for exhibition
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Cumberland-Perry Area Vocational Technical School students built an entire home inside the Farm Show Complex for the Home Builders Show. Jason Malmont/The Sentinel
Somebody tell Robin Leach, whose famous voice narrates “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” to visit the Farm Show complex today.
A group of Cumberland-Perry Area Vocational Technical School students have built a house worthy of a movie star there.
Well, maybe not a “house.”
“It’s like a ski lodge,” said Jody Snider, the carpentry instructor overseeing the construction.
The students, whose weeklong, all-night construction efforts are scheduled to end today, will sell the house on March 2 to help fund their school.
The house covers 3,600 square feet, with three bedrooms, a kitchen, two and one-half bathrooms, a sun room and great room — all hidden behind the house’s stone-front exterior. A two-car garage comes attached.
Not to mention, it’s fully stocked with the most modern appliances, including a roughly 40-inch big-screen TV.
Estimated worth: $500,000, according to Snider.
The knowledge gained by the students while building it, however, might be more valuable.
“It really prepares them to go out to work for someone,” he said.
The one-week deadline is tighter than even those imposed in the construction business, Snider said.
He added the students might never build a home with such expensive features ever again.
Some students even spent the night Thursday to get an early start on building the next morning.
Anthony Hasten, a junior at Big Spring High School, wasn’t one of them. but he said he’ll probably sleep there Friday night.
The project has been difficult but rewarding, he said.
“It tells me how hard it is to build houses,” Hasten said. “It take a long, long time.”
But would he want to live in the home he built?
“No,” he said. “Too much maintenance.”
Hasten and his peers will take the home apart after today to prepare it for the auction.
The money raised will help fund the school programs like this one.
“It all goes right back to the kids,” Snider said.
The project also received the support of an array of donations, he said, without which it wouldn’t have been possible.
This is the third year Cumberland-Perry AVTS students have built a feature home at the complex.
