Leawood mom may get her own home renovation reality show

Blow curfew? You’re hanging Sheetrock. That was the deal with Tamara Day’s dad when she was growing up on the family farm in Salina, Kan.

“I don’t know why he had so much Sheetrock to hang, but he did,” Day says. “Manual labor was Dad’s favorite punishment.”

Little did anyone know that the skills Day garnered by way of youthful indiscretions would have her poised to become a do-it-yourself TV star.

Day stars Wednesday night in two back-to-back 30-minute pilot episodes of the DIY Network’s “Little Money Mansions” that showcase her homegrown remodeling skills.

If the pilots are popular, “Little Money Mansions” could fill a hole in the DIY Network schedule left by “Rehab Addict,” starring Nicole Curtis, who, like Day, defies construction stereotypes: Both are pretty blond mothers who get dirty restoring old homes in the Midwest. “Rehab Addict” began airing on the DIY Network in 2010 but moved to HGTV in 2014.

In the pilots, Day renovates the kitchen and master bedroom suite of a 4,600-square- foot bungalow built in 1896 near 27th and Charlotte streets just south of downtown.

Reality Road Entertainment, the TV casting arm of Hint, a video production services company in the Crossroads Arts District, followed her efforts for 10 weeks.

Matt Antrim, executive producer at Reality Road, gets suggestions all the time from people who think they know someone who’d make a great reality show star. One of them suggested Day’s brother, Caleb Schraeder, a woodworker. He wasn’t a good fit, but he mentioned that his sister was practically a one-woman show when it came to remodeling and decorating homes.

“We immediately did a three-minute sizzle reel to take to the network, and they gave us money to shoot an eight-minute video,” Antrim says. “Her dad, Ward (Schraeder), would show up on the days we were taping to see what Tamara was doing, and DIY loved him and asked us to include him in the pilot episodes.

“He’s like John Wayne.”

Day agrees: “He’s really funny. His catchphrase is, ‘I’m glad I thought of that,’ and it’s usually when I’ve thought of it and he disagreed with me. I’m having a shirt printed with that.”

Day and her husband, Bill Day, a financial planner, began fixing up homes 16 years ago after buying a dilapidated home near St. Louis. They moved to Overland Park in 2003, and over the next three years remodeled a dozen homes.

In 2008, the Days bought a 5,000-square-foot house in Leawood that was in foreclosure and had been trashed. They were going to hire out most of the work because three boys under age 4 were keeping Tamara busy. (They’ve since added a girl to their brood.) But then the economy imploded, and Tamara decided she’d have to do a lot of the manual labor herself.

“We love the transformation process, taking something old and beat up and turning it into something beautiful,” Day says. “I also love the physicality — the getting dirty and playing in the mud.”

Pretty soon, other people began asking her to help renovate and decorate their homes, and so was born Tamara Day Designs.

In the “Little Money Mansions” pilots, Day does a lot of the work herself, including designing floor plans, knocking down walls, painting walls, stripping, rebuilding and refinishing floors and woodwork, sanding a cast iron tub so it can be re-enameled, restoring tile work and repurposing architectural salvage.

Not only was Day’s skill set appealing, so was Kansas City and its abundance of affordable housing, Antrim says.

“Most shows you see like this are so over-the-top and unattainable,” Antrim says. “The homes on the coasts are so expensive that most people in America can’t afford them. You get a 900-square-foot bungalow for $1 million. Here, we’re working with houses that cost $70,000. A middle-class working family, you can get that house.”

Antrim, a Kansas City native who lived in L.A. the past 16 years, also produced a Discovery Life network show that explored transgender identity in Kansas City called “New Girls on the Block.” And he produced a Lifetime TV home makeover show called “Merge,” which starred Lisa Rinna and revolved around young couples with different decorating styles combining households.

If Wednesday night’s pilots are successful, Antrim will get the go-ahead to produce 12 more episodes of Day renovating three Kansas City homes.

Day, who will watch the pilots with family, friends and Antrim, is eager to see what happens.

“What is my summer going to be? Will I be at the pool with my kids, or will I be knocking down walls?”

This story was originally published June 13, 2016 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Leawood mom may get her own home renovation reality show."