In preparation for our group’s reconstruction trip to New Orleans, last night was spent at the Merrifield Home Depot learning how to hang drywall. We cut. We built. We mudded, taped, and re-mudded. Then we sanded, dropped drywall, accidentally cracked it, and had heaps of Home Depot employees getting a good comedy show.

That all said, by the end of the night I’d say we’re pretty far from being professionals, but have enough skills to go to work on some homes! Props to the Merrifield Home Depot, however, who took six punks and taught us elementary carpentry skills for free, and at a time when they had high customer-service needs. At the end our group all went to the worker glove display to buy our work gloves (which were all at least $10 per pair), in which Jeff, the department manager giving us our drywall lesson, promptly said that Home Depot would like to comp us the six pairs of gloves for our trip.

Awesome – now you don’t only need to support Mackey’s for being generous to our efforts, but also Home Depot!