Everything, and a kitchen sink

Team Depot renovates for military spouse

MOSES LAKE — While Victoria Prentice's husband was away, she crowded into the kitchen with a bunch of strong men in orange.

Don't worry; it's nowhere near as scandalous as that sentence sounds.

In fact, the situation is downright wholesome. Patriotic, to boot.

Victoria, you see, is married to Sgt. Christopher Prentice, currently in Iraq with the National Guard 1-161st Infantry, Charlie Company. He's been away for 18 months, and hopefully will be home by the end of March.

While he was away, though, his wife discovered a leak underneath the sink in the kitchen of their Moses Lake home.

"It was starting to just rot, and whatnot," Victoria said. "I didn't know how to stop it, I fixed what I could, and I had heard about this through Family Support."

"This" is a program at the Home Depot where employees and volunteers take the time and money to renovate homes for those in need.

For 12 months, right after U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, The Home Depot offered Homefront, a program designed to help military families when a sibling, husband or wife was deployed, and therefore unable to finish projects around the house.

"We as a company went in and we started helping finish projects off," said Mike Schwartz, Home Depot assistant manager. "That's what we tried to do here, but our Homefront budget went away in November, so now we're just doing it through the Moses Lake here."

The store is donating all the materials and volunteers to do the remodel.

"Team Depot is actually an organization within the company that we go out and we'll do Habitat for Humanity, Youth at Risk, things like that, for the community," Schwartz said. "We'll go out and build playgrounds … Anything that Home Depot does in the community, we do as a Team Depot."

Team Depot members volunteered to take a day off or time off work to help out with the remodel, which, Home Depot Pro Account Sales Associate Juan Ibarra said, would be done within a day.

"It recognizes that Home Depot is out here to help the community," Ibarra said of the reasons for helping out. Team Depot numbers are determined by how many people show up during the day. Six employees and one community volunteer turned up to help the Prentices with the kitchen Wednesday morning.

Assistant store manager Rick Fleming said the undertaking is part of what Home Depot is all about.

"A lot of people are upset that we aren't giving them something for their baseball team to buy shirts and stuff," he said. "This is the kind of cause that we really want to do — something that really helps somebody."

"Being a military spouse, it's wonderful," Victoria proclaimed. "I can't do it with my husband gone, and it's just wonderful. It's a blessing."

Team Depot put in new cabinets, a new counter top and a new kitchen sink.

"Juan showed me what they could do," Victoria said. "And then I went from there. He let me pick out the color of my counter top and so he made sure I liked it before they did it."

The Prentices were married Sept. 6, 2003. While Christopher is aware of the remodel, Victoria said, he doesn't exactly know the scope of the project.

"He knows, but he doesn't know exactly what they're doing, so it's going to be kind of a surprise for him too," she said. "He thinks it's wonderful that people in our community (are) more than willing to give a big hand like this. He knows what I'm limited to and if he was home, not a problem, but he does know that they are here today doing this for me."