When Blake VanderWert walked into her newly remodeled New Prague house for the first time Friday, she had more smiles than words.

"They fixed our house!" she whispered to her children as television cameras and reporters pressed around her. But 7-year-old Tatyna Hootman, decked out in matching pink shirt, purse and lip gloss, had plenty to say. The old house felt as cold as outside, the bathtub was pretty scary and the kitchen needed so much work that cooking just didn't happen much. "Now we don't have to get fast food!" she said.

When Blake's husband, Sgt. Jonathan VanderWert, headed to Iraq in August, he left a blended family of nine children and a 120-year-old house with unfinished walls, one working toilet and a kitchen so cold Blake sometimes woke in the morning to find water frozen in glasses.

But volunteers picked up where VanderWert had to leave off, descending on the house last fall as part of a national program that helps military families by remodeling their homes.

The result looks nothing like the old home: An oriental rug and flat-screen television in the living room. A new fridge and dishwasher in the kitchen. Refinished wood floors, freshly painted walls, two bathrooms.

The VanderWerts are the first Minnesotans to benefit from Heroes at Home, a partnership between Sears and Rebuilding Together, a nonprofit home-rehab agency based in Washington.

"When we walked in here last year, the house literally looked like it had been through a flood," said Todd Polifka, coordinator of the remodel.

Actually, it kind of had been. The couple bought the house planning to spend three years fixing it up, and VanderWert had started major repairs last summer when a storm blew a tarp off the roof, flooded the inside and ruined much of the plaster and woodwork.

On the first day of the makeover in November, "The house went from Z to A," Polifka said. Fifty volunteers gutted the interior, filling seven dumpsters and unearthing the evidence of mice and -- incongruously -- a bowling ball in the walls.

More than 200 volunteers and 50 companies donated at least $300,000 in labor and materials in the last three months, and the citizens of New Prague held a fundraising drive to furnish the house.

"I'm very eager to see it," said VanderWert, still on active duty with the Minnesota National Guard. He joined the family by video Friday. "It sounds wonderful."

Blake and five of the children, including 5-month-old Vincent, have been living nearby in a house a local family lent, rent-free. The rest of the kids are living with relatives.

The temptation to peek inside during the renovation was strong, she said. "People who know me, know how hard that was for me, because I have the patience of a 2-year-old."

With their new-old house finished, the family slept there once again Friday night.

"They gave us our family back," said Blake of the volunteers who made it happen. "They saved us."