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TUCSON - We see lots of extreme makeovers on TV. In December a big one happened right here in Tucson at a home for low income men.

Local construction companies and their employees volunteered to do the job. And residents say, boy, did they make a difference.

Charlie Hall lives at the Marshall Home for Men. He likes the newly planted grass.

Hall says, "I used to mow yards back in my hometown. So I like to smell the grass when it's mowed."

Resident Thomas Coleman likes the new paint on all of the walls.

Before, he says, "Oh, it was crumby, very old and crumby."

In December, members of the Arizona Builders' Alliance gave the decades old home a makeover, inside and out, top to bottom.

Now, Coleman says, "It's cleaner, neater and I just enjoy it, I really do."

Once a year Southern Arizona's trade association of commercial construction companies chooses a charity to renovate.

Paul Mueller, who works at Groundskeeper landscaping, oversaw the job at the Marshall Home for Men.

He says the biggest improvement was to the bathrooms. Mueller says, "As a result of so much use and poor ventilation those bathrooms were just really, they had a terrible smell to them. We completely gutted both bathrooms down to the sheetrock and put it all back together again brand new. And it didn't cost the Marshall Home a dime because everybody donated their materials."

Mueller says commercial construction companies donated $125,000 in materials and labor in spite of the down economy.

Joe Cimino, the home's executive director, says the renovation not only changed the building, but the 52 men who live there.

Cimino says, "The spirit of the men have changed considerably, going from being forgotten and no one knowing that they even existed, to having 200 volunteers come in on December 5th."

Cimino says the makeover "instilled the dignity back in the men."

Now the Builder's Alliance wants to do it again for the 16th year for another charity.

Angie Ziegler says, "It's really simply just writing a letter of request. Then we go out and we look through those requests and we try to narrow it down and do tours and then we go from there and make our selection."

The deadline for charities to apply is February 19. For more information you can call the Builders' Alliance at 881-7930.