If the idea of renovating an entire home in 12 hours sounds impossible and, well, honestly kind of insane, you’re absolutely right. Instant Dream Home creator Tom Forman is the first one to admit it. After he pitched the new series, out now, to Netflix, the executives asked him a very important question: “Can you really do that?” 

“I gave a very confident ‘yes,’ then walked out and turned to my colleagues and said, ‘Oh my god, what have we just done?’ ” Forman told We Have the Receipts podcast hosts Lauren Speed-Hamilton and Chris Burns.

But Forman, a home renovation reality TV expert — he’s the man behind massively popular broadcast hit Extreme Makeover: Home Edition — gathered a talented crew, including host and Orange Is the New Black actor Danielle Brooks, and spent more than a year planning exactly how they’d tackle each Atlanta-based project. “It was Ocean’s 11, but for home renovation,” he joked.

In reality, that meant multiple practice runs with stopwatches over the course of that year and recruiting teams of 250 to 300 tradespeople to work simultaneously in each house. “We planned this thing like a heist,” Forman said. “And for more than a year, we were in a warehouse in Marietta, Georgia, rehearsing these renovations like it was a SWAT-team raid.”

Want to learn more about how each renovation came together? Watch Chris and Lauren interview Tom Forman in the video above, or listen to it on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.