HEBER CITY, Utah — The Career and Technical Education program at Wasatch High School is helping students gain hands-on experience.
Matthew Nichols is an 18-year-old senior at the school, who's going to Brigham Young University in the fall to study construction management.
He's getting to learn the tricks of his trade now.
"We just started from the foundation and worked our way up," said Nichols.
On Tuesday, Nichols was standing inside of a 4,300-square-foot home in Heber City alongside his teacher, Doug Kinsman.
"I've helped build this house," said Nichols.
Kinsman teaches Foundation of Construction and Homebuilding classes at the school.
He says 11 students, including Nichols, helped build the home with the assistance of subcontractors.
The two-story home has three bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a 1,000-square-foot unfinished basement.
"They actually come here every other day and work a three hour block in the morning, go to lunch, then go to school and take their core curriculum classes, and then I have another class that comes in in the afternoon and they'll do another three hours here," said Kinsman.
Kinsman says students learn a multitude of things.
"First of all, they take their blueprint reading and different use of saws that they learn in foundations and actually put it into use to framing walls and learning about different structures within the house," he said.
The home was not only built by Wasatch High School students, but designed by them as well.
FOX 13 News asked Kinsman how this is all funded.
"Whatever we have into it for the land and the price of material and the subs that we have to hire on to help us build the house. We're not making any money or any profit. We're just trying to get our money that we have back into the build," said Kinsman. "The district gets all that back with the sale of the house."
This is the second home they've built since the program started five years ago.
The first is now home to Porter Nay, his wife and three children.
"I've been there six months," said Nay.
Nay teaches seventh grade at Timpanogos Middle School in Heber City.
Until six months ago, he was driving two hours a day from his old home in Alpine to school and back.
"The current state of house prices is almost hopeless for a lot of people, and so we hadn't necessarily been looking yet until this opportunity kind of showed its head," said Nay.
He is paying around 60% of the market rate for rent on the home.
Just like Nay, another teacher will eventually get to call the latest student-built house their home.
"To think that a teacher will get this house for the cost that we put into it and no markup is super, super amazing," said Nichols.
Kinsman told FOX 13 News on Tuesday that the district has purchased two more lots and that their next home is already in the engineering phase.
