Home improvement — Dream project by LDS youths stuns North Ogden family

NORTH OGDEN — At the call "Move that bus," the motor home rolled out of the way to reveal what looked like a brand-new home on 1700 North in North Ogden.

Hours-old sod in the front and back, a new trampoline, new wallpaper, new paint, new floors, new carpet, new furniture, new cabinets, new beds and new housewares transformed a 1940s-era prefabricated house into what now looks like a new home.

Talking about it later, Earl McKinley, who lives in the home with his wife and three grandchildren, was overcome.

"You sure know how to bring tears to an old man's eyes," he said.

It sounds exactly like the ABC show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

This was an extreme makeover, just not the name brand.

It was the first-ever Mountain Ward Makeover.

This summer, many of the youths in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will take trips with their respective wards to bond and learn from one another and their church leaders at youth conferences.

The 40 or so youths of the Mountain Ward in North Ogden's Coldwater Stake were content to stay right at home and sleep in their own beds.

But they rolled out of those beds before 7 a.m. every day for the past week to make over the 63-year-old McKinley home in their neighborhood.

The youths, ages 12 to 18, spent the past two months learning construction trades, such as pouring concrete, setting stone veneer and installing vinyl siding, as well as power tool safety and some demolition, to fix up Earl and Lynda McKinley's home.

The home was built in South Ogden in 1945 by the U.S. Department of Defense and moved to North Ogden shortly after.

The McKinleys added a second story and carport to the home but had never managed to finish it.

It had been known as the "half-blue house" for its sky blue wooden siding that only covered the exterior of the first floor.

The upper floor was covered in bare plywood, the driveway had sunk, and water damage had rotted away the subfloor in the kitchen.

Brian Glass, one of three grandchildren who live in the home with the McKinleys, had one word for it: "crappy."

"It was falling apart," Glass says.

Both of Glass's grandparents work full time — Earl at night and Lynda during the day — but they hadn't had the time or the resources to fix up the house.

Once the youths learned of the church's theme for its youth programs — "Be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works" — the youths decided they wanted to do a construction project.

Reed Mackley, the Ty Pennington of the project, persuaded the McKinleys to let the youths learn some construction skills while working on their house.