Some years test us more than others, and 2020 was one of them for nearly everyone. But even in a difficult year, there are moments that remind us what people are capable of when they choose to show up for one another. This is the story of how one couple, a small army of volunteers, and dozens of generous businesses came together to transform a family’s home in just three weeks — and gave a family walking through unimaginable grief a place to heal.
Meeting the Augustines
The Augustines are a family of nine children. Their son Eli, twelve years old at the time, was living with terminal cancer. Like so many families during the pandemic, the Augustines were spending nearly all of their time at home — the kids were being homeschooled, and Adam, their father, was working remotely. With so many people sharing a small space day after day, the house had become cluttered, storage was limited, and problems like mold and worn-down flooring had built up over time.
For one couple who got to know the family, the state of the house felt like a quiet reflection of everything Elaine and Adam were carrying. They didn’t just want to help — they wanted to lighten the load in a tangible way. So they set out to do something bigger than a few repairs: a complete home makeover, done in time for Christmas.
An Ambitious Plan on an Impossible Timeline
The plan was simple to describe and enormously difficult to execute: move the family out, remodel the entire house, move them back in, and have gifts under the tree for Christmas — all within three weeks.
Demo day set the tone for what was ahead. Crews tore out pillars, ripped up tile and carpet, pulled baseboards throughout the house, and cleared the home down to its bones. From there, an extraordinary number of tradespeople, subcontractors, and volunteers began working in parallel to rebuild it.
Building Something New, Piece by Piece
A retired cabinet maker measured and redesigned an entirely new kitchen layout using cabinets donated from another home renovation, creating more storage and an island with seating for the large family. A skilled carpenter spent two full days setting those cabinets for free, with help from volunteers. A retired handyman built a new pantry three times the size of the old one. A crew led by a family member installed fresh baseboards and trim throughout the house, while a local filmmaker who also happened to be a skilled electrician rewired the kitchen.
Outside, a friend began framing an insulated backyard office shed for Adam — freeing up a bedroom so the family’s three girls no longer had to share one small space. Nearly everyone involved worked at cost or entirely for free, and as word spread about who the project was for, more people kept showing up to help.
A House Transformed
By day twelve and thirteen, painters arrived on schedule and gave the entire house a fresh coat of white paint, while another volunteer painter added new color to the bathroom cabinets. With just one week left before the family would return home, flooring installation began — the single largest task and donation of the entire project, with a local flooring company donating all the materials, carpet, and labor.
A team of volunteers came in to patch and repaint the kitchen cabinets once they were set. Amid all of it — heavy furniture that barely fit through doorways, ceilings that needed patching, moments that called for equal parts problem-solving and humor — the volunteers kept going.
Furnishing a Home With Love
With just days remaining before the big reveal, teams fanned out to source furniture, rugs, pillows, décor, and light fixtures, while others assembled and placed everything as it arrived at the house. Local businesses donated or discounted beautiful light fixtures, a kitchen table and bedroom furniture, new mattresses and bedding for every room, kitchen and bathroom hardware, pillows throughout the house, and even a piano — along with the labor to move the family’s old piano out and the new one in. A countertop company provided a discounted granite slab, and a tile company donated the materials and installation for a new kitchen backsplash and bathroom tiling.
As soon as the carpet was down, volunteers began moving furniture and the family’s belongings back in. Many stayed late into the night, night after night, to make it happen.
What This Story Is Really About
Behind the renovation was something deeper. When a child is seriously ill, it’s easy to focus entirely on that child’s suffering — but their siblings carry an emotional and spiritual weight of their own. One of the family’s other children once told his mother that he needed to know she would be okay, that he was going somewhere peaceful, and that his hope was for her to be happy. It’s a reminder that when someone is dying, looking after the family and siblings who will carry on afterward matters just as much as caring for the person who is sick.
That was the deeper hope behind this project — not just a beautiful home, but a peaceful place for a grieving family to heal, and a tangible reminder that their community loved them.
A Community Bigger Than Two People
What started as one couple wanting to do something special for a family in need became something neither of them could have accomplished alone. Hundreds of complete strangers took time off work, showed up, and gave their skills and labor because they wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves.
By the time the family walked back through their front door, the transformation went far beyond the house itself. There was a visible calm and lightness in the family that hadn’t been there before — a sense of peace that everyone involved could feel.
The Lasting Impact
For the volunteers and organizers, the project left a mark that outlasted the three weeks of work. Many described gaining lifelong friendships forged during long nights and shared purpose, along with an unexpected depth of love for a family they hadn’t known well beforehand.
It was, by every account, one of the most meaningful Christmases anyone involved had experienced — a reminder that even in the hardest years, and in the face of a family’s deepest grief, community and generosity can still show up in extraordinary ways.
