BLACKSBURG -- Hundreds of Virginia Tech students, including about 100 members of the Marching Virginians band led a shivering procession of builders and volunteers to 400 Ardmore St., on Tuesday to officially begin the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" work on Carol Crawford Smith's house.

Then they all did the Hokey-Pokey a couple of times for the cameras.

By midmorning demolition began in freezing temperatures to the wild cheers of the crowd, which was made up mostly of Tech freshmen.

Rhiannon Weitzman, an agriculture major, said she was missing an exam to attend the taping. But don't think badly of her, she pleaded, because she'll be able to retake the test before the end of the semester.

She just had to come Tuesday because she's never missed an episode of Extreme Makeover, she said.

Within a few minutes two big yellow excavators with bucket scoops like dinosaur jaws had crunched through the roof of the 1950s-era building. The destruction elicited clapping and yelling from the crowd.

Meanwhile, Paul DiMeo, one of the show's star designers, threw himself into the melee and bodysurfed over the heads of the students while fighting to keep his shirt from riding up and exposing his stomach to the chilly air.

From the debris will rise a new home, twice as big and several times more handicapped accessible than the one it will replace.

A former owner of Smith's house, Betty Jo Gruber, was at the site Tuesday to see the demolition.

While it was a "good little house" in the 1980s, Gruber said she could understand why its many steps, both inside and outside, didn't work for a woman using a cane or a walker.

By 3 a.m. today, the foundation should have been finished and the walls of the house likely were erected. The roof should be on by midday today, builders said.

Smith, a world-class ballet dancer and teacher who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was chosen this fall from thousands of applicants to receive a new house through ABC's top-rated reality TV show.

Two friends, Robin Grubbs and Jane Weiseman, helped Smith apply to ABC. Many local contractors and companies, as well as Virginia Tech students and faculty, have collaborated on the custom design for the new house.

The show's star, the soul-patch-sporting Ty Pennington, spent some of Monday canvassing Tech's campus while yelling into his signature bullhorn to rally students to the home improvement cause.

A long list of VIPs, from local, state and national politicians to prominent Tech alumni have been invited to the building site, Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski said.

So, non-VIPs may get to rub shoulders with the upper crust later this week. A special heated tent was set up for them on the site, but none had arrived as of Tuesday morning.

Owczarski said he thought the ambiance of the construction site might come to resemble that of a Hokie football tailgate party later in the week.

The new house is scheduled for its final town inspection Saturday, Blacksburg Building Official Cathy Cook said.