Ellsworth company ready for ‘Super Bowl of building’

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ELLSWORTH – After building a playground at his daughter’s school two years ago, Mike Wight said he felt what it truly means to give.

“It just warmed your heart,” Wight, owner of Broughman Builders Inc. in Ellsworth, said Friday.

Now, he’s ready to help out again. Only this time, the project’s a little more extreme.

Describing his daughter’s school, Wight, 37, explained that “Sally went to a Montessori School with a wooden playground. I went there one morning and they literally had caution tape up around the playground.”

It wasn’t a safe place for the children to play. Wanting to make a difference, Wight pulled together some of his crew and they went to work.

“We built them a brand new playground over the weekend,” he said.

Wight and his wife, Daisy, 36, decided then that if a feasible time came, they were going to use their building experience to help others.

Now’s the time.

“I’ll never get a chance like this again,” the third-generation carpenter said.

Wight was contacted by ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and given eight hours to decide if Broughman Builders was up for the task of building a home for the Ray-Smith family of Milbridge.

The owner immediately began calling companies he uses frequently at job sites, such as Ellsworth Builders Supply, R.F. Jordan and Sons Construction Inc., and Atlantic Landscape Construction Inc.

They didn’t bat an eye, and four hours later Wight was back on the phone with “Extreme Makeover” producers saying he was up for the challenge.

Gearing up for the show and the build hasn’t been easy.

Wight has put most of his own business on hold, which is difficult with Maine’s short construction season.

“If my clients weren’t on board, we wouldn’t be able to do this,” Wight said.

Broughman Builders has eight foundations in the ground and ready for houses to go up, and eight more foundations are waiting to go in.

Wight said the support from his wife, who is vice president of Broughman Builders, and from his three small children also has been important.

The Wights have had to nearly halt construction on their own home in Ellsworth, and the “Extreme Makeover” project has taken Mike Wight away from home for long hours.

He’s up at 4:30 a.m. and doesn’t get home until 8:30 p.m., only to crawl into bed a short time later.

Although he said he’s nervous about “everything,” Wight has been able to get some advice along the way.

He visited and studied a recent “Extreme Makeover” build in Minnesota, and a few conversations with David Gordon of Katahdin Cedar Log Homes also have helped.

Gordon was the builder when ABC brought the show to southern Maine two years ago.

“There’s a lot of information that he shared that’s been very helpful,” Wight said.

At the site, Wight is responsible for the entire build and making sure everything stays on schedule.

“I’m right there the whole time,” he said.

Some might say Wight is only in it for the exposure, “but that’s not why we did it,” Daisy Wight pitched in Friday as she sat beside her husband at the Broughman Builders showroom.

The opportunity does get the Broughman Builders name out there, but it’s not about advertising, it’s about helping a family and their children, Wight said.

“It’s an honor. A complete honor,” he said. “This is the Super Bowl of building.”