Firm has starring role in TV's extreme makeover.

Tom Smiley, vice president of Harvard Cleaning Services, the New Jersey division of Harvard Maintenance, Inc., a leading New York-based independent building services provider, has always been a big fan of ABC Television's bit series "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," but he never thought he would be a part of the show.

"My family and I watch the show every Sunday, and we really enjoy how the communities and local businesses pull together to assist these deserving families," Smiley said. "So when I got a call from a colleague at Pinnacle Companies who was the general contractor for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition's latest project, all I said was 'What can we do?'"

Pinnacle was charged with assisting the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" designers build a technologically advanced dream house in just seven days for a disabled family in Bergenfield, NJ. The new home for the Llanes family would be twice as large as the 50-year-old, 1,300-square-foot original, according to Brian Stolar of the Pinnacle Companies, the Chatham, NJ-based builders.

Blind from a hereditary disease, Vicente Llanes, 42, came from the Philippines in 1997 seeking medical treatment. His mother, Isabel, is also blind. His wife, Maria, a physical therapist, is battling thyroid cancer. Daughters Guenivir and Carrie are going blind from the same disease their father has, and teenaged son Zeb is deaf because his mother contracted German measles during pregnancy.

The new home features a variety of technological advances that will make the Llanes' lives a little easier, such as smoke sensors that give spoken warnings, a Braille printer that can be controlled wirelessly by computers throughout the house, and software to convert speech into sign-language video clips. Home Automated Living provided software called HAL, to let the family program lighting, heating and security systems via microphones, telephones, the TV of the Web. And companies like Harvard Maintenance provided manpower, along with the family's neighbors and friends, to bring everything together in a week's time.

"Knocking down and building a new home from scratch in seven days is certainly a challenge, but not nearly as big of a challenge as this family deals with every day," said Smiley of Harvard. "The biggest obstacle is manpower, so when Pinnacle put out the call to their vendors for support, Harvard's employees were eager to do whatever they could."

Harvard employees worked around the construction workers, clearing debris and later cleaning and dusting as the new home took shape. Finally, Harvard's cleaning experts made sure the furnished home sparkled when the Llanes family returned from a Disney World vacation paid for by the show. The special two-hour episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" will air in July and feature actress Marlee Matlin as host. "It was a tremendous experience for all of us at Harvard," said Smiley. "To be part of something so special for such a deserving family is something we will never forget, and is reflects the devotion to community that is the foundation of our company."