The 23-year-old was a longtime devoted fan of renovation shows, on occasion travelling to Melbourne in the early hours of the morning for open house inspections of properties shown on the television program The Block.

It was her love of such shows – plus a fortuitous encounter – that led to the facelift her family’s home recently received on the television show Reno Rumble.

Tragically, Beccky didn’t get to see her dream unfold.

She passed away late last November, just two days after her birthday and nine weeks after she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system.

Beccky was born with infantile polycystic kidney disease, a condition that had claimed the life of her older brother Brett when he was just six months old.

As a result Beccky had two kidney transplants in her life, one organ donated by her dad Paul and the other by her mum Sue, and it was the anti-rejection medication she had been taking from the age of 12 for these transplants that caused the cancer.

It was while Beccky was undergoing cancer treatment in Melbourne that she had a fateful meeting with The Block winners Dean and Shay Paine.

The family had gone for a walk and were passing by a cafe underneath the apartment building renovated in the most recent series of the program when a waiter stopped them to say hello.

He asked Beccky if she was a fan of the show and then went inside, soon reappearing with Dean and Shay, who quickly became friends with Beccky and her family.

“They were just beautiful, like they’d known her for years,” Mr Johns said.

They dedicated their Block win to Beccky and nominated her family’s home for Reno Rumble.

The Johns family’s new-look home will be unveiled on television on Tuesday, April 26, but people will be able see it with their own eyes when the family opens their home for a fundraising inspection day on May 7.

Entrance will be by gold coin donation to the Beccky Johns Kidney Research Discovery Trust, to fund research into non cancer-inducing anti-rejection drugs for transplant patients.

“We knew if it was happening in Bendigo and Becck was here, she would be the first person to want to go round and have a look,” Mrs Johns said.

“She loved The Block and she loved those things, and we knew for Bendigo it was a big thing because they don’t normally do anything outside of Melbourne.”

Mr and Mrs Johns said the day was an opportunity to say thank you to all the local people who were involved in renovating their house, as well as recognise the good work of the television crew.

At the time Beccky fell ill, she was working for Kidney Health Australia in Melbourne.

As children she and sister Tara had attended the various camps and events the organisation hosts for kids, and once she turned 18, Beccky started volunteering for the organisation.

Upon returning from a camp one year, Beccky wrote a letter to the chief executive officer of Kidney Health Australia, describing her dream job within the organisation.

“She literally said in that email ‘You have to employ me’,” Mr Johns said.

Within a short time a position had been created for her and she was working in administration for the organisation, as well as helping with the co-ordination of events and giving speeches on her experiences.

The Johns family said she had ambitions to achieve big things.

“Oh, she saw herself as being the CEO of Kidney Health Australia, that it was going to keep growing from there,” Mrs Johns said.

Ms Johns said once her sister started working there, she blossomed and could not see herself doing anything else with her life.

“She was very healthy, and had her dream job, and she’d just been on her dream trip to America,” Mrs Johns said.

“She’d only just fairly recently moved apartments, she’d been living in St Kilda and she’d moved into the Docklands… She was having the time of her life.”

Her family said that despite the battles Beccky had with her health at times, she never let them get her down.

“One of the stupid things that people kept saying to us was ‘Oh you know, she was sick all her life’ and we just went, she never ever lived her life as someone that was sick,” Mrs Johns said.

“She never, ever, ever let having some medical issues with her kidneys define or determine how she was going to live, at all.

“She just went out and lived it to the fullest.”

Kidney Health Australia established the research trust in Beccky’s honour immediately after her passing.

“It’s a bit of a credit to her work ethic and everything like that, for them to set it up so quickly and make it such an important thing for their company to run,” Ms Johns said.

“It’s just a credit to the person she was.”

The Johns family will be introduced in the Reno Rumble episode airing at 8.50pm on WIN on Monday, April 25, and the final – including the big reveal – will go to air at 9pm on Tuesday, April 26.

The open house fundraiser will be held on May 7 from 10am to 2pm at 2 Tomlins Street, Bendigo.

To donate to the Beccky Johns Kidney Discovery Trust visit the Kidney Health Australia website or phone 1800 454 363.