See how Tamara Day of ‘Bargain Mansions’ is helping sick children in Kansas City
Dressed in jeans, brown ankle boots and a COVID-19 mask, Leawood mom and HGTV home remodeling star Tamara Day once again picked up a sledgehammer and sent it crashing into a wall.
This time, though, it wasn’t for her hit show, “Bargain Mansions,” which recently finished its third season. It was for charity: Kansas City’s Ronald McDonald House.
“As a mom of four, when I was asked if we could do this project, it was an immediate yes,” Day said Thursday morning, kicking off a remodel of the 1,200-square-foot common area in one of the three houses the Kansas City Ronald McDonald House Charities runs just south of Children’s Mercy Hospital. “This is such a great community builder, but also it helps so many families. And I can just imagine, as a mom, if we needed someplace like this, that having it feel like a home, and not an institution, would mean so much more. …
“I feel like us getting to bring that homeyness feeling into a place that is sacred and important to families is a great honor.”
The remodel was needed, said Tami Greenberg, chief executive officer of the local branch of the charity, which, for free, regardless of income — rich or poor — has 87 rooms to offer to families of seriously ill children under hospital treatment.
“We’re a place where families stay while their children are undergoing really serious medical procedures,” Greenberg said. “We’re not for families whose kiddos have the flu. It’s not for kids who have a broken leg or tonsillectomy. We’re talking about serving families whose children have cancer, for families that have had a baby at 27 weeks, families whose child needs a transplant. Families come to us during their most vulnerable, important times in their lives.
Families stay for days, weeks, even months. One area family recently left after spending more than 500 days in one of their rooms.
“It is critically important that when families step inside our house, they feel like they have come home,” Greenberg said, “that they feel safe, they feel loved and cared for. Because when the pediatrician says, ‘Leave my office and go right now to Children’s Mercy,’ the bottom has dropped out from under your feet, right? You’re standing on a trap door and everything is upside down in your world.
“So when Day and her team offered her talents, we were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’re all in.’ We absolutely need what she is doing.”
The project, with furnishings donated by Ethan Allen and construction done by MW Builders, is expected to take about three weeks. The timing works, as Day’s show just finished filming.
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended normal life, both at the Ronald McDonald House and for Day and her show.
“I have been tested and tested and tested, in and out, every day practically … so that I can be in an environment with contractors, with film crews and being able to be safe.”
Day did not contract COVID-19, she said. Nor did her father, Ward Schraeder, who works on the show with her. But her brother got it, although he did he experience serious symptoms, she said.
“We have had a lot of people who were affected by it,” Day said. “And we’ve shut down filming several times because some tile person or crew member all of a sudden is sick. It definitely put a delay on a lot of things.”
“We’ve had times when we’ve had production crews on iPads from their cars, outside. I’m inside with a minimal number of people. Everyone else is in a mask besides me because of the cameras. Then, as soon as we’re finished, I’m back in my car, mask on, to keep safe. It’s been really isolating.”
Because of COVID-19, the Ronald McDonald House cut in half the number of families living in its houses. It operates on a $5 million annual budget, and in normal years, relies on some 17,000 volunteers annually to serve some 8,000 families.
Prior to COVID-19, volunteers frequently cooked meals for families on site. Now they prepare and send pre-packaged food or donate restaurant meals.
“Starting in March of last year,” Greenberg said, “we asked volunteers not to come back. We couldn’t risk that.
Families eat in their rooms.
“It’s not a communal experience right now, because nothing about life is communal right now.”
Because of the risk of contagion, the charity also began to pay for hotel rooms for families to stay for two weeks prior to moving into one of the Ronald McDonald homes. Last year, they footed the bill for some 6,000 nights at two nearby hotels.
“In the future, once we’re full to bursting again,” Greenberg said, “we intend to use these hotel partnerships to keep serving families, so that we’re not turning people away.”
Before COVID-19, the charity was forced to turn away up to 1,000 families a year.
Of its homes, the oldest, opened in 1988, is the Bernstein House with 19 rooms and is named after Bob Bernstein, the local co-founder of the Bernstein-Rein advertising agency and who, in 1977, developed the packaging for the McDonald’s Happy Meal.
There is also the Longfellow House, which opened 15 years ago, with 41 rooms. The Wylie House, which has 20 rooms, is six years old. Children’s Mercy has seven additional rooms.
The renovation is taking place at the Longfellow House. The common area’s playful Gulliver-sized rocking chair has been removed to make way for the new decor. The room is being designed by Denise Cadenas, who has three children and works for Day’s company, Growing Days Design.
An artist’s rendering shows a gray, black and white motif with a living room-style seating area, large dining table and a natural wood counter with computer monitors.
Also because of COVID-19, the common spaces in the homes have been closed off to families, leaving an opportunity for one to be redone
“COVID has changed everything for us,” Greenberg said, “except the most important thing, which is keeping families close to their kids.”
