After months of work, the designers are just as curious to see how it all turns out.

As you read this, many still are waiting to bring in fabrics for window treatments, to gauge the effects of glazed walls in relation to hardwood flooring, and to haul in the first few pieces of furniture. On Wednesday, organizers pushed back by a week the home's opening date, citing construction delays caused by heavy winter rains.

"This is my fifth design house, and I can say that there is a point where you're just in a daze," said interior designer Brandi Smith, who along with Robin Aiello of Garrett Interiors is creating a kitchen that will look rustic even though it is packed with modern conveniences.

"It can be a real scramble at the end, when you visit the room every day thinking, 'I need to touch this up' or 'I think I'll add that.' It's an ongoing effort," Smith added.

Precisely two weeks before the original April 21 opening date of the design house -- a 6,000-square-foot residence so remodeled by the owners that it retains only one original wall -- the sound of electric saws cut across the lake, bouncing off docks lined with small boats and sending pairs of Canada geese flying.

All manner of pickup and other trucks were parked by the well-manicured side of the road leading to the house, past a sign that read "Welcome. Please Do Not Drive Faster Than Our Childrens (sic) Guardian Angels Can Fly."

Inside, lengths of narrow paper "rugs" protected the dark hardwood-plank flooring from the tromping back and forth of boot-clad feet. Electric cords snaked around corners and up staircases.

A 16-light chandelier dotted with Swarovski crystals and said to be worth $14,000 rested atop a cardboard box on the floor of what would, eventually, be the dining room. And the elevator shaft remained an empty, rectangular space plunging from the master bedroom landing to the basement two levels below.

There wasn't so much as a stick of furniture. But there were plans, the blueprints of the designers' -- and, by extension, the homeowners' -- dreams, yet to be shared with the public for the purposes of raising money. The beneficiary: the Wellness Community Valley/Ventura, which offers support programs to cancer patients and their friends and families.

It's all in the planning

Helping narrow the choices of those plans in the very beginning were members of a design committee who devised a color palette -- rich browns and golds, with greens and blues to mirror the lake visible just across the street -- that would play up the homeowners' desires for an Old-World European setting with modern touches.

Shimmering amid the dark woods and rustic, tumbled-limestone surfaces, they decided, should be touches of light-catching metallics.

Today, that decision is made visible in the opalescent sheen of the tiles paving the ceiling of the shower in the master bathroom designed by Thomas Achille of Thomas C. Achille & Associates; in the sparing use of shiny, half-inch bronze-finish tiles in the kitchen backsplash and in the gleam of the glazed walls of the dining room designed by Paula Corritori of Garrett Interiors.

There are touches of whimsy, too.

In the laundry room by Jamie Sorenson of Lynda Interiors, a handpainted mural depicts a brassiere flapping on a clothesline. And the walls of the "secret" stairway leading from the entry-level hallway next to the narrow wine cellar to the master bedroom closet have been painted with words such as "couture" and "panache." Muralist Jeff Raum of Muralcles also painted a fool-the-eye iron railing stretching the length of one wall to mirror the real railing on the other.

The glimmer of an idea

Three weeks before the home's opening to the public, the glimmering of do-it-yourself ideas already were emerging from the dust and tumult of construction.

In a demonstration of how one theme can be expressed in two different materials, the abstract-floral damask pattern stenciled on the deep yellow-gold walls of the living room and foyer gallery by Linda Hawk of Ventura Wall Designs is picked up by the beige silk damask fabric that, along with a little padding, has been used by FiFi Lippman of Interieurs by FiFi to upholster the walls of the powder room.

Hanging over the room's, ahem, facilities is a chandelier dripping with crystals, a light-reflecting theme echoed throughout the house. The Venetian mirror Lippman plans to hang between the powder-room sconces, meanwhile, could be seen as a reflection, so to speak, on the table selected by Corritori for the dining room: all of its surfaces, from the top to the legs, will be mirrored.

"In a house like this, when you have a formal dining room, the room should really glitter; it should just be alive," Corritori said.

Cause and effect

It should be noted that, along with the occasional snafu like the unexpected directive from a building inspector that this fixture or that sink be replaced, the race-the-clock atmosphere at the House for Hope Design Showcase is customary.

And even if it weren't, the on-deadline nerves would be worth it, Smith said.

Like many of the designers involved in the project, Smith's life has been touched by cancer: her aunt died of the disease several years ago. The mother of her kitchen-design partner, Aiello, died of breast cancer in 1988 at the age of 47.

A friend of powder-room designer Lippman has undergone a stem cell transplant as part of his treatment for cancer. Because of his Wellness Community experiences, she said, he has not only thrived emotionally but physically as well.

Inspired by the home's Lake Sherwood setting, Valerie Pugliese of Designs by Valerie has turned a bedroom into a girlish retreat with pink-on-pink walls and an enchanted-forest theme that extends into the adjoining bathroom.

But it is her mother's experiences as a breast-cancer survivor and the death of her mother-in-law from the disease that inspire Pugliese each year to participate in walks held to raise money for cancer research.