There’s a newly painted llama on the wall of Ellie Mills’ bedroom, a llama lamp on her nightstand and llama pillows on her bed. On the day these llamas showed up, so did a real one.
Jester the Llama, of Bagby’s Critter Corral, went right into Ellie’s bedroom to have a look around, joining the crew of volunteers from Special Spaces Chattanooga admiring the eight-hour makeover that had transformed the once plain space into the room of Ellie’s dreams.
“She thought it was the coolest thing in the world,” says mom Nikki Mills of Ellie’s face-to-face encounter with her favorite animal.
As for the room? “She’s in bliss,” says Mills.
That’s exactly the goal for Special Spaces, a national nonprofit founded in 2004 that creates dream bedrooms for children with cancer. Each one-day makeover ends with an HGTV-style reveal.
Ellie, who turned 6 on November 1, spends a lot of time in her bedroom. She’s less than a year into what is expected to be a three-year battle against B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Her room is her refuge, her mom says.
Nikki and her husband, Shane, had moved their family of six into a new house in Middle Valley only a few months before Ellie was diagnosed, so her room still had the gray walls and gray curtains it came with.
For the Special Spaces crew, the blank slate was the ideal “before” for a dramatic “after,” though chapter director Pamela Moore says her core group of volunteers will do whatever it takes to complete these transformations for the children they serve.
“We go over and above — whatever we can do to make them happy,” she says. “The doctors at Erlanger say attitude makes a huge difference in their recovery. Especially cancers like leukemia — it’s treatable, but it’s a long process.
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Volunteers with Special Spaces Chattanooga create dream bedrooms for children with cancer
“When they get these rooms, their attitude changes,” Moore adds. “They’re so excited and happy to be in their space, where they can rest and recover.”
“It definitely brings her comfort,” Mills says of Ellie’s bedroom. “Most importantly, when she’s not feeling good, she has somewhere cozy to go and feel better.”
Special Spaces Chattanooga, founded in 2011, is one of 12 chapters in 10 states. Moore, a Cleveland, Tennessee, designer who had helped on some of the projects, took over as director in 2016. The local chapter, which serves 12 counties in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia, has completed about 70 rooms.
“Our age range is 2-19, and [the illness] has to be cancer. That’s our only criteria,” she says. “We don’t take into account financial need. If a child is sick with cancer, they’re going to get a room.”
The application process includes a family interview and medical verification. Sponsors and volunteers provide funding and manpower.
For each family they serve, Moore and mural artist Sharon Gallaher, also of Cleveland, meet with the child and the parents for an interview. They ask the child about likes and dislikes, whether there’s anything in the room that should definitely stay or anything that has to go. If the home is a rental, they find out what the landlord will allow to be changed. Before leaving, they take note of the room’s dimensions and the location of doors, windows and other features.
“We measure every detail of the room,” Gallaher says. “We get one shot. We have to know where every outlet is, where every air vent is, where every light switch is. We draw that out and know where everything is down to the half-inch.”
In about six weeks, they’ll be back with their crew of helpers to transform the space.
Ellie’s room got a pink and purple makeover, including a hazy mountain range behind her headboard in the same palette of soft pastels. The bed was new, so the chapter’s custom builder, Reed O’Daniel of Decatur, Tennessee, crafted a multi-use unit with shelves, drawers and a desk that fills one wall.
Previous projects by this master carpenter have included beds built to resemble a double-decker fire truck, a safari Jeep with real tires and working headlights, and a front-end loader with a toy box in the front bucket and a bookshelf in its roller tracks.
On makeover day, each family is gifted with tickets to an attraction to allow the team time to work.
“We start about 8:30 that morning,” Moore says. “We’ll paint, put in new light fixtures, change closet systems, redo the flooring if we have to. They’ll come back at 4:00 or 5:00. It’s a hard and crazy day, but it means so much.”