CVS also donated medical supplies.

Bloomberg News / Dennis Brack

The nation will get to see the giving side of about two dozen CVS Caremark Corp. workers tomorrow night on television during the next episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

On a rainy day in September, the CVS employees traveled by bus from the company’s Woonsocket headquarters to Athens, Vt., about 25 miles north of Brattleboro. Once there, they joined a local builder and hundreds of other volunteers in rebuilding a mountainside home for a family of four.

“This home was three or four miles into the mountains,” said Heidi Devlin, one of the CVS volunteers. “It was just a mud bowl.

“Nobody could care less that we were caked in mud and getting rained on.”

The work came near the end of a week when the television producers oversaw construction of a new home for Sarah and Lou Vitale and their two toddler sons: Kane and Louie Angelo Jr.

Louie Angelo has multiple birth defects, including club feet, crooking joints caused by weak muscles and skeletal dysplasia, or abnormally developed bones.

The Vitale’s house, built on a foundation of blocks, tree trunks and bare earth, was used as a hunting lodge at one time and unsuitable for a child with such physical limitations. It’s unclear how the television people became aware of the Vitales’ situation.

The TV show, now in its fifth season, has won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Reality Program, plus the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Reality Show/Makeover and the Family Television Award for Best Alternative/Reality Program.

Each episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is self-contained and features a project that would ordinarily take at least four months to achieve, involving a team of designers, contractors and workers who have just seven days to rebuild an entire house and redo its landscaping.

CVS joined in the Vermont effort after discussions with Hill Holliday, its Boston advertising agency, Devlin said. CVS advertises on the show as part of a $25-million, national TV advertising campaign to re-brand its CVS/pharmacy. The “For All the Ways You Care” spots air during programming that targets women ages 35 and up.

“Generally, we’re very committed to helping women,” said Devlin, vice president of advertising for CVS.

Last year, the charitable arm of CVS committed to donating $25 million over five years to programs that aid children with disabilities.

The drugstore chain created “CVS All Kids Can” — a partnership program that includes Meeting Street School, Easter Seals and the National Center for Boundless Playgrounds. The program directs financial support to three areas: inclusive learning activities, barrier-free playgrounds and medical rehabilitation and therapy.

The company’s donation to the Vermont project came from its pharmacy division, said Devlin.

CVS donated $100,000 to buy medical supplies for the young Louie Vitale and to build a playground in the family’s backyard accessible to him and his older brother.

Devlin and the other CVS workers arrived in Athens, a town of fewer than 400 people, near the end of the week-long project to transform the Vitale home. As other volunteers hung gutters, painted walls and hammered away at last-minute details on the house, the CVS workers spent one to two days each carting in furniture and filling closets and shelves with household supplies.

The house now has a handicapped-accessible bathroom and other features suitable for someone with disabilities.

“We donated quite a bit of medical equipment and medical supplies,” Devlin said, including a water-distilling machine.

“This was just absolutely the most perfect, rich environment to get involved in,” said Devlin. “The perfect collision of work interests and personal interests was a very special thing.”

Devlin and some of the others stayed on-site for the filming of the episode’s signature moment, when a tour bus is moved away to give a family the first glimpse at its new home.

“It was an unbelievable delight to observe firsthand their reaction when the bus was moved,” Devlin said. “It was quite a beautiful thing to witness.”

The episode chronicling the project airs tomorrow at 8 p.m. on ABC.

pgrimald@projo.com