Volunteer team provides Alaska veteran with revamped home after major renovations

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – David Honeycutt expected one of his appliances to be repaired — not a complete home renovation.

Members of the Home Depot Foundation’s Operation Surprise campaign have spent days working to improve Honeycutt’s home.

Honeycutt said he sustained a spinal injury during his Army service, resulting in a permanent disability that prevented him from navigating his home safely for years. A friend and fellow veteran reached out and nominated Honeycutt for some outside help.

“I was in getting in a bad place and they realized that,” Honeycutt said. “And they’d given me hope.”

Visiting with the team before they began working in his home, it became clear Honeycutt’s house was inaccessible and inconvenient for its owner.

Eric Rangel, district captain for Team Depot — Home Depot’s volunteer force — said when they first met, they were mostly concerned about difficult-to-use appliances.

“Well, that very quickly grew, and we wanted to give him something a little bit more,” Rangel said.

Initial plans to deal with appliances then turned into a multiple-day project; team members built a 12-by-12 woodshed outside Honeycutt’s back door to give him access to firewood, repaired his deck to keep him safe getting in and out of his vehicle, added doggy doors for Honeycutt’s companion Misty, grab irons throughout the house, and installed new stairs for Honeycutt to exit his sunken living room without hurting himself.

Before the changes, Honeycutt said his life was heading in a dark direction. Even traversing the stairs in his home became impossible, preventing him from sleeping in his own bedroom for two years.

Honeycutt said he ruined his own couch by sleeping on it rather than trying to get to bed.

“It became my pit, kind of hard to get in and out,” he said. “Kind of, ‘Do I bother hurting myself getting out again?’ … The house got worse. I got worse.”

Following the repairs, Rangel believes they’ve turned some things around.

“He can navigate his home, and be the independent veteran that he’s been his whole life.”

The improvements to Honeycutt’s home were made by employees at the Home Depot in Kenai, who said they’re motivated by knowing they’re helping those who served the country.

“Just, like, ‘Wow, I helped this gentleman,’ I feel so happy,” one volunteer said as the large group huddled in the soon-to-be complete kitchen they were working on. “It makes me want to just keep driving forward and help out the community.”

The team installed an entirely new kitchen and accessible cabinets, which Rangel said will give Honeycutt the ability to cook for himself once again — a passion Honeycutt is looking to share once everything is complete.

“I won $1,000 for my chili in a chili cookoff in Oklahoma,” he said. “So I am gonna make them — the Home Depot Store — five gallons of my special chili.”

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