This Is the House That Urbandale Students Built

Every once and a while, a young man will knock on Jeff and Catherine Huggins' door and ask to come inside to see their house.

The Hugginses are used to it by now. It's always a former student who helped build the house.

The couple are among a select group of Urbandale homeowners whose homes were built by a bunch of high-school kids.

Now, before you start making assumptions about that, you might want to note that the last home built by Urbandale High's building trades program sold for $470,000.

In fact, Wayne Fleishman, the tech ed teacher and supervisor for the program, said the school district rarely has a problem selling the houses the students build. The program pretty much pays for itself through profits generated from the home sales.

The house the students are building this year was sold before construction ever started. 

Monday night, the Urbandale school board approved the acquisition of three more lots in the Timberline Village area just west of , where students have been building houses for the past few years. One of the lots was donated to the school district by Bankers Trust.

Fleishman said many Urbandale businesses sell building materials to the program at discounted rates.

"We're actually able to make the homes a little more nice than they normally would be because people have discounted stuff for us," he said.

Jeff Huggins can attest to that. Showing off several built-in shelves in his home's basement and an impressive glass and wood entryway with glass doors, he said these extras are rare in most spec homes.

He also noted that his basement has two half bathrooms. One is off a downstairs bedroom and one of the students on the construction crew realized that if a guest decided to go to bed while the homeowners were having a party, other guests would not have a downstairs bathroom to use.

"It's good that he was looking out for our party life for us," joked Huggins. 

Fleishman said the students — there are six in the program this year — start building a home when they come to school in August and finish it by the time school ends in May.

Contractors normally would build a home in two to four months, he said, but the students, who work on the home for just two hours a day, need a full school year.

"We try to let them touch everything" involved in building a house. The students were cutting and nailing siding on the home on Tuesday afternoon.

The class works two hours every school day on the house. Fleishman, a long-time educator who also has operated his own construction company, works part time as the program supervisor for Urbandale.

He teaches work ethic and life skills with the young men as much construction skills.

The students must take two or three tech ed classes before they can sign up for the homebuilding course and Fleishman said once the year is over, most can get a basic construction job with that experience.

He doesn't advise that though. 

"I don't ever want them to stop here," he said. "I really would like them to have more than a laborer's position."

Fleishman encourages the students to take business courses at Des Moines Area Community College or pursue an apprentice program in a specific trade to increase their earning power. 

But even if they don't, "they can't go wrong with the skills they're going to learn," he said. "They're pretty basic skills for any homeowner."