Crystal Lake veteran and single dad, gets kitchen upgrade from 30 Days, 30 Vets

When the renovation to Craig Taylor’s kitchen is done, his 15-year-old daughter will finally have the space she needs to do what she loves – baking with her friends.

That work, an estimated $13,000’s worth, is being paid for and completed by The Home Depot in McHenry, as part of 30 Days for 30 Vets.

The program, in its inaugural year, was created by Dawn Bremer and Michael Adams at McHenry-based Bremer Team-Keller Williams Success Realty. They invited friends and family of McHenry County veterans to nominate those in need at 30daysfor30vets.com. Almost $300,000 in in-kind donations of services and materials were pledged for the program.

[ PHOTOS: Crystal Lake veterans gets a kitchen update ]

Adams, a Bremer agent and U.S. Marines veteran, started making calls on Nov. 1, letting veterans know they were awarded a repair or other work on their home.

Taylor, a U.S. Navy veteran who served in Iraq, had no idea his mother, Sherry Brunton, had nominated him for a home improvement.

“When I got a call from Michael, I thought it was a scam,” he said.

Taylor has been in the home since late 2019. He had rented for years and was facing yet another move when he found the house on Timberhill Drive in Crystal Lake for him and his daughter to live in. The house, bought through a Veterans Administration loan, had been a rental home for years and needed work.

Taylor did much of the work himself, and got the house livable for the two of them. But there were issues - like minimal counter space in the kitchen, no working dishwasher and a bad layout.

When Taylor was selected for the 30 Days for the 30 Vets program, Sarah Stigler was on it. She is the store manager at the McHenry Home Depot, and was a kitchen designer there too. She laid out the plans for the upgraded kitchen.

Knowing the work was coming, she also sent a Christmas present just for Taylor’s baker daughter – a Kitchenaid stand mixer.

Out of the 30 projects, which range from Taylor’s kitchen to a wheelchair-accessible ramp, Home Depot and the Home Depot Foundation is handling 18 of them, Stigler said. The new cabinets, flooring and appliances are being paid for by the company and installed by employees volunteering their time.

“When it comes to vets, Home Depot is always very happy to help,” Stigler said.

The family also is getting a new kitchen sink and a gooseneck style faucet – one of the new design choices he may be the most excited for, Taylor said. Volunteers made a run back to the store on Thursday, when they started the installation work, to get a new light fixture to replace the one that hangs too low in the middle of the kitchen.

Taylor did a majority of the demolition work before Stigler’s crew arrived. He’d also done a lot of the work getting ready to move into the house five years ago, from jackhammering out a section of the foundation to jack up the house to pulling out and replacing the rotting bathroom subfloor.

There are still parts of the house that are not finished, like the bathroom that still has only new sub-flooring. But the 30 Days for 30 Vets work means that as funds come in, he can focus on those other projects and not an expensive kitchen redo.

“This makes it so much easier to live here,” he said.