Making a house a beautiful home

Jim Wendt, left, works with a rake to smooth out the area around freshly-planted ground cover on March 28 at the specially built home for Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Brian Meyer. Adam Williams, center and Allison Thompson were also working with the crew. Ken Seals photo.

Dan Tyre dumps a wheelbarrow of wood chips to help complete the landscaping of the Meyer home on March 28

A sweaty and soiled Matthew Kendall pauses with his shovel between loading wheelbarrows with wood chips during the March 28 volunteer landscaping project for the Meyer home.

Shane Rees, left, and many other volunteers shovel topsoil into wheel barrows at the volunteer landscaping project for Brian Meyer’s new home on March 28.

Candy Schoenheit positions pots of vegetables in newly-built, elevated beds at the new home for Meyer on March 28. The elevated beds are one of the many accessibility features of the specially-designed home.

: Marine Corps veteran and double amputee, Gunnery Sergeant Brian Meyer, second from left; stands with Youngren Construction managers, Garrett Kramer, left; Scott Youngren, second from right, and Andy Husovsky as volunteers work in the background to finish a landscaping project at Meyer’s new home on March 28. Youngren Construction was chosen by the Homes for our Troops organization as the lead contractor for the project.

Happy with the work they did in helping landscape Brian Meyer’s new home, Robert Gutierrez, left, Trysten McElroy, center, and Garrett Bertz take "selfies" on the newly-installed sod. The men were part of a group of more than 100 volunteers who worked on the project.

Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Brian Meyer speaks at the groundbreaking of his new home on Green Acres Road in Fallbrook August 2, 2014.

More than 100 volunteers assemble on the newly-laid sod in front of the almost-completed home built for Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Brian Meyer in Fallbrook on March 28. The volunteer workers started with an area of bare soil around the home and in two hours completely installed the landscaping. The new home for Meyer is a project of Homes for our Troops.