Habitat for Humanity, Lowe's partnership provides mothers with homes while teaching them construction

Becca Wetz paints a door's trim during a Habitat for Humanity of Greater Chattanooga home build on Newell Avenue on Saturday, May 7, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn. The project, which is preparing a home for a mother, is part of the organization's National Women Build Week.
Becca Wetz paints a door's trim during a Habitat for Humanity of Greater Chattanooga home build on Newell Avenue on Saturday, May 7, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn. The project, which is preparing a home for a mother, is part of the organization's National Women Build Week.

When Torri Scott thinks of a home, she thinks of the outside.

That's been the case since she was a child, when family members would drive her around Chattanooga. She'd see some big homes - at least, big in the eyes of a girl her age - and she would peek into their backyards. She loved to see the sprawling grass, the flowers and the swing set.

Growing up in rental properties in Alton Park and the east side of town, that's what she's wanted more than anything: space to play. And space to leave behind.

So on Saturday morning, she was in east Chattanooga, on the corner of Newell Avenue and North Hawthorne Street, sliding a paintbrush against the wall of what will be a bedroom come June. She's been working here for about eight weeks, building a home with Habitat for Humanity. She thinks this is the seventh house she's helped build since she joined the organization in October 2014.

But unlike the others, this one will be her own.

She's taken the required classes on home maintenance, lawn maintenance and insurance polices. She's volunteered on other construction projects. She's saved the required $2,600 to cover the closing costs.

Now she's two months away from moving herself and 2-year-old Anthony out of her mother's house in Brainerd. Her child has torn that house up, she said. He needs room to play with his power wheels, his tricycle and his Flintstones car.

"Anything that moves," she said.

To her, a home represents success, and security - the knowledge she can leave something concrete behind for her family.

"You never know how you'll leave this Earth," she said. "But if I suddenly leave this Earth, I won't have to worry about Anthony, where he'll live."

On Saturday, about 20 women joined Scott to help paint and caulk her and Anthony's future bedrooms. Some volunteers came from Habitat, others from Lowe's, which has donated about $2 million to the organization as part of National Women Build Week.

Habitat and Lowe's worked together this week to emphasize how important it is for women to know how to do construction work.

Chanise Eubanks, the human resources manager at the Lowe's in Hixson, helped recruit female volunteers from as far away as Knoxville and Dalton. She said knowing how to fix things around the house is empowering.

A single mother of a 13-year-old daughter, Eubanks fixes the sink and toilet at her own home. Not the most dazzling feats, she said, but ones she grew up believing were reserved for the man of the house.

"A father will be throwing the ball while the mother is cooking," she said of the idealized home she grew up believing in. "I can't do that. I have to put the dinner on low and grab the ball myself."

Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at tjett@times freepress.com or at 423-757-6476.

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