Dan Cash, owner of The Home Services Companies in Peoria, was called upon by the producers of the show to finish the Giddenses' home improvement project they began seven years ago.

After 30 hours of non-stop work, Jackie and Curt Giddens' master bathroom was transformed from a seven-year work in progress into a European-style spa.

Lights...Camera...Remodel -- Bartonville family receives generous help from television icon.

Peoria Journal Star

By: John O'Connell

April 27, 2003

BARTONVILLE - Curt and Jackie Giddens of Bartonville have a bathroom fit for a queen, or at least the queen of television. The Giddenses' bathroom makeover can be seen airing at 4 p.m. Tuesday on Channel 25. It all started more than two months ago when the show asked its viewers: ''Do you know someone who is a procrastinator?''

The couple's daughter, Traci Davis, sent the show's producers a video of the many projects her mother had started but never finished. Among them was a bathroom remodel that her mother began seven years ago.

The video shows a gutted bathroom with wallpaper peeling off, bad linoleum and a hole in the wall where a shower head should have been. The video also showed a Jacuzzi tub with no apron around its base and only a galvanized pipe poking out of it to supply water. A pair of pliers was used to turn on the tub's hot and cold water.

"I'm good at starting something, but not very good at finishing," Jackie Giddens confessed.

The shows producers thought Jackie Giddens was the perfect subject and set out to surprise her with a shiny new bathroom.

"It all happened so fast," said Curt Giddens, who recently retired from Caterpillar Inc. "One day my daughter is making the videotape of our bathroom and the next day the show's producers are telling me they want to do it on the weekend. And everything had to be a surprise for my wife."

Curt had to quickly find a way to get his wife out of the home for 30 hours or so. He enlisted the help of his wife's friend Judi Russell, who took Jackie for a weekend swim with their grandchildren at the Holiday Inn Express in Galesburg. Meanwhile, the shows producers busy contacting Expo in Chicago, owned by Home Depot, to provide the materials, and Dan Cash, owner of The Home Services Companies in Peoria, to do the construction. The companies provided their services for free for a mention of their names on the show.

''I got a call on Thursday from one of the show's producers telling me about the bathroom and that they wanted me to do the work,'' Cash recalled. ''They told me I had one day to put this all together and that they wanted to start on Saturday. I kept saying to the producer, 'I can do it, I can do it.' When I got off the phone, I said to myself, "Can I do this?''

At 7 a.m. on March 1, Cash and seven of his Home Services vehicles pulled up like a military convoy in the driveway of the Giddens home at 2701 S. Cameron Lane. Cash and six of his employees would work for 27 straight hours. ''We worked all that time in a tiny bathroom (8 feet long by 7 feet wide) with a film crew in our face,'' Cash said. ''It was very difficult. We had to maneuver around the cameras, lights and film crew. They were constantly filming. And the show's producer kept telling me it had to end up looking like a bathroom the Queen of daytime television would want to have in her home.''

Only the best materials were used. The floor and tub surround are Italian marble. The marble work includes an intricate pattern on the tub/shower wall. The hand-painted vanity has a black Corian countertop with brush-nickel fixtures. There is also a chandelier, large brush-nickel mirror and European-style designer toilet with a button in the center of the tank to flush it. It is definitely a throne fit for royalty. The bathroom was complete with scented candles, a couple of wicker candle holders and even a towel warmer.

''There was so much marble,'' Cash said. ''At 4 in the morning we were still cutting marble. I was starting to worry we wouldn't make the deadline.'' As the Home Services crew worked, Jackie Giddens was relaxing in Galesburg. ''I was clueless what was going on in my house,'' Jackie Giddens recalled. ''I was just enjoying being with my granddaughter.''

Cash and his crew finished the job at 10 Sunday morning, about two hours before Jackie Giddens returned home. ''I got back home with my hair wet and wearing scroungy clothes,'' Giddens recalled. ''My daughter came up to me in the driveway, put a blindfold on me and we walked inside.

''When I saw the bathroom, I was in shock. I don't know if I said anything. But I remember the producer telling me to show a little more enthusiasm.''

Jackie couldn't have been more delighted. ''I really loved what they had done,'' she said. ''It's so luxurious. It's like it doesn't belong in our house. Here we are, just country folks with a European bathroom.''

On Tuesday of that week, Cash and his crew and the homeowners were sitting in the studio in Chicago for the taping of the show.

''We weren't on stage,'' Jackie Gidden recalled. ''We were sitting in the front row. She just talked to us like it was a regular conversation. It was a lot of fun. She seems so down to earth. After taping the show, we took pictures with everyone.''

The bathroom is now Jackie Giddens' favorite room in the house. And it has motivated her to finish her kitchen project, which she started some years ago. ''I've put it off long enough,'' she said with a laugh. ''I don't think we'll get help for the kitchen. We'll just have to do it ourselves.''