Spray Foaming Mansions with Tamara Day

SUMMER ISSUE 2019 (Spray Foam Magazine) – Tamara Day grew up on a farm in the Midwestern plains of Salina, Kansas, and she now lives with her husband and four children in Kansas City, Missouri. Her father was an entrepreneur and spent many hours working and building a business in construction and development.

“I grew up helping my Dad, and I was basically his free labor,” Tamara says with a laugh. “When I was young, I never thought about it as a career path, it was just how I was living my life.”

Tamara was surrounded by construction from a very young age, which proved handy when she left home to become a student. Studying for a degree in communications, which she says is rarely used, she often had to move from apartment to apartment and enjoyed fixing them up. The DIY her Dad taught her became very useful, and she began to appreciate the art of painting and decorating in addition to creating a living space in her own unique, glamourous, and comfortable style. 

Tamara finished her studies and met her husband, Bill, who was in the business of real estate. “My husband bought his first property at 16. During college, he managed 12 rental properties. He really had lots of experience in property management at such a young age.”

The pair spent their spare time together fixing up old houses that had been left to rot, and soon realized they had the skills to renovate them while decorating them tastefully.

Before long, Tamara and Bill had reconditioned several of their neighbor’s old homes with their passion soon expanding into a business. Tamara’s unquestionable skill of being able to mix old architecture with modern conveniences and luxuries helped give these big buildings a new lease on life and showed off their full potential of becoming great homes. Questioning Tamara on her favorite large homes to renovate, she declares, “I really love each project we undertake, but if I had to choose, I would go for the Tudor style homes; they’re so grand.”

In 2008, Tamara and Bill purchased their own house, which really was the dream house to launch her big career. She describes what the house was like before renovations started. 

“It’s a 5,000 square foot house which was in foreclosure and in a complete state of neglect. The economy was bad at the time so we gave ourselves a tight budget, which led us to do the work ourselves. I remembered a lot of the skills my dad had taught me, and I learned the skills I didn’t have, as I went along. I also fixed up old furniture we found at estate sales.”

Tamara documented the renovations resulting in an instant following and a demand for her decorating knowledge and advice. “We were having open houses to show people our work, and we even sold refurbished furniture out of our own house,” Tamara explains. Through word of mouth, social media, and even magazine features on their successful projects, Tamara and Bill were getting numerous calls to help with building and decorating projects in the Kansas City, Missouri area. Before the television network came knocking, they were already fixing up what are now known as “Bargain Mansions.”

Between fixing up old properties and her interior design business, Tamara and Bill had four children. She gives the impression she is a person who can juggle many scenarios but most importantly, her family will always come first. “When we renovated our own home in 2008, it was always with the mindset of how my family would live in the space and the memories we would make in the home. Making sure that the design and vision for our home fit our lifestyle was the first priority, and I bring that into every home I design because family is everything.”

The Day family business was growing, and it wasn’t only Tamara who had inherited the gene for construction enthusiast. Her brother was also remodeling houses in Kansas City. “My brother was renovating a house downtown and living in it too. During a short break, he met someone who was casting for a local commercial, and they exchanged numbers and nothing happened. Five years later, the same lady called and said she wanted to introduce a guy to my brother. This guy said, ‘You’re not really what we are looking for,’ to which my brother replied, ‘Well I don’t know what you are looking for but check out my sister’s social pages.’”

It turns out that Tamara’s renovation work and décor taste was exactly what the producers wanted. Tamara states, “We met up and the rest is history. People have said to me ‘you are lucky’ and they are right. There is an incredible amount of luck in getting an HGTV show. However there is also lots of hard work to get us to this point in the first place.”

Tamara and her crew still renovate big, old houses that she finds at bargain prices, but this time around the remodels are documented on a TV series called Bargain Mansions. There are numerous houses that fit the bill in Kansas City and according to Tamara many people are put off buying them because there are lots of projects to do within them.

Her father, Ward Schraeder, has always been a good advisor, particularly on the subject of construction. He often visits Tamara on a project site to offer his help and advice. The show becomes even more appealing when you watch a father advise his daughter on remodeling, installation, and décor, with Tamara having the final say on her projects. It is heart-warming to see the family banter and discussions that take place.

Old houses, especially those pre-1960’s may not have had much in terms of insulation, and the insulation that may have been originally installed is often found to be rotten. When investing in an old property, it is recommended to have an energy efficiency audit, which is carried out by a specialist. They look at previous energy bills, attic insulation, crawl spaces, and window frames. Upon report conclusion, they suggest their recommendations on how to insulate the house and eventually save money. Spray foam is often recommended for the attics, exterior walls, and crawl space.  

“The foam is great at getting into all the small nooks and crannies of these old buildings,” Tamara states. Spray foam is also used to fill the cavities of old walls because many of these big old houses lacked wall insulation. There is a simple method to judge if there is any insulation in these walls. If the inside surface of the building’s exterior walls feels cold to the touch during the winter months, there’s probably no insulation or the previous old insulation has fallen to the bottom of the void.

Tamara has used spray foam on numerous projects affirming, “I love spray foam. It does the job quickly and effectively. It’s my insulator of choice for sure. On a recent HGTV cottage project, which is actually my favorite house of the season, we transformed the garage and changed it into a living room. We needed to make sure the space was well insulated and spray foam did the job well. The garage had a concrete slab and we elevated the floor to bring it up to the rest of the house’s level. You can actually see us using the spray foam on camera. The crew were shooting fast and they wanted the contractor to take over and finish applying the foam, but I was enjoying it so much I told them I’m going to finish spraying this. I love the way it’s so instant. You can see it happening and how it works right away.”

The cottage was built in 1938 with an abundance of historical charm. Tamara and her crew wanted to ensure they kept some of the original features. One of the main conversions was changing the garage into a living room space. The job was specified by the contractor with a space measuring 230 square feet. They chose spray foam as the insulator because of its ease of application and its ability to air and vapor seal the concrete.

Tamara explains the condition of this old cottage, “There was even a giant hole in the floor and if you were in the basement and looked up, the hole was pretty big. My kids thought it would be really funny to scare my husband, so one of my boys, who’s not afraid of spiders, went into the basement and waited for my husband to come through the door above. He reached up and grabbed his foot. They thought it was hysterical, my husband got a big shock.”

Working and living in Kansas City, Missouri, Tamara and her crew have come up against the weather a number of times, from severe winds to storms and floods. Just before the installation of spray foam for a recent renovation project began, “We got delayed by four months because the roof was torn off and it was raining heavily,” she recalls. “We couldn’t get the roof back on in the allotted time. We had to wait until the weather had calmed down and the place was ready to start on work again.” The old buildings she converts have often been left abandoned with elements like strong sun or harsh rain seeping into many exposed areas of the rundown buildings.  

Whether the sun is shining or the winds are gusting, Tamara’s future days look bright. She documents many of her escapades, renovations and design ideas on her blog “Growing Days.” Her business is growing along with her creativity aided by the support of her family. A jack of all trades and a master of most, she states, “I am a really good mother, decorator, renovator and an entrepreneur, some of the time. If I can accomplish one or two of those things in a day and do them well, I’m doing alright.”