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BLACKSBURG — For more than two decades, ballerina Carol Crawford Smith danced in some of the largest and most prestigious theaters in the world and has taught hundreds of students in her Blacksburg studio.

Now millions of viewers of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” will follow the world-class dancer and mother of two young sons from her modest Blacksburg home to a resort vacation in La Jolla, Calif., and back to her home on Ardmore Street in seven days.

At the end of that journey, Smith, who was stricken with multiple sclerosis about five years ago, will move into a brand-new house.

“This will lift her spirits amazingly. Although she was never down about the MS, as a friend you always knew she had a hole in heart because she could no longer dance,” said neighbor Pam Stolte.

Despite the illness, Smith has continued to teach ballet at her downtown studio, called the Center for Dance.

Dance student Lucy Britt, 13, said Sunday that Smith still climbs the 21 steps to the dance space and teaches from a chair with the help of assistants.

But no longer will Smith have to trudge up and down steps using walking canes to get to the front door of her house or navigate a staircase to the basement to do her laundry.

Even Smith didn’t know Sunday morning that she had been chosen to get a new house until the show’s star Ty Pennington and a crew knocked on her door at 9 a.m. to begin filming.

She waved and smiled through her front window to friends from Asbury United Methodist Church who came to visit the site after church, where the happy news had been announced.

Over its two years on the air, the show, which travels around the country building new houses for families in distress, has grown to be one of the 10 most popular shows in the nation.

And it got one new fan Sunday in Barbara Pendergrass, who has been a friend of Smith’s since 1991 and has seen the dancer and artist struggle with the design of the 1950s-era house.

A new, more handicapped-accessible house “will be a tremendous help to her, and she’s someone who will really appreciate it,” Pendergrass said.

Robin Gibbs, a friend of Smith’s and a fan of the show, said Sunday that she thought for months that Smith would be a good candidate for a home makeover.

So Gibbs and another friend, Jane Weiseman, helped Smith apply this summer.

The show gets thousands of applications each week, according to coordinating producer Diane Korman.

Most of the work on the project will be done by local companies, led by Building Specialists, a general contracting firm based in Roanoke.

All labor and materials were donated by local or national companies. Students and faculty at Virginia Tech did much of the design work for free.

Newcomb Electric, another Roanoke contractor, is donating $75,000 worth of materials, equipment and labor to the project.

Company President Richard Newcomb said Sunday that it was wonderful to help someone in need and “showcase what the whole region can do.”

About 1,000 people, both building professionals and simple volunteers, will work 24 hours a day from Tuesday through Saturday to demolish the 1,250-square-foot house and build a new, fully furnished three-bedroom home — more than double the size of the old one — on the same site, said Bob Fetzer, president of Building Specialists.

“We’re really honored to be chosen,” Fetzer said.

Town building inspectors and engineers, even Blacksburg Fire Chief Keith Bolte, was in on the secret as officials scoped out the property and worked with the show’s producers and contractors to get building permits and attend to other technical details.

Parts of Grissom Lane and all of Ardmore Street will be closed to traffic until the show wraps up filming sometime next Sunday. Smith was busy filming Sunday and couldn’t be interviewed. But on Tuesday, ABC will fly her and her sons, Hunter and Garland, to a California resort for a weeklong vacation while the rebuilding is taking place.

Friends, neighbors and the curious gathered on sidewalks Sunday to watch as crews set up for the weeklong construction marathon, which will likely have to contend with snow and cold temperatures.

The episode featuring Smith will likely run late this winter.