When Kyle and Tara Davis heard from Heidi Gardner about renovating her Kansas City area home, the husband and wife team behind the design build firm Cicada didn’t know how to feel.
“I saw the blue checkmark (a marker of a celebrity or influential account on Instagram) and we had just finished something for another blue checkmark person, and we almost just said not interested,” Tara Davis said. “It wasn't that great of an experience, but we heard her out. We met with her a couple of days later, and she was just such a lovely person and so kind.”
The Saturday Night Live star had just purchased a mid-century modern home in the area and hired the Davises to completely renovate it in the winter of 2021. The team took the house, which was recently featured in Architectural Digest, down to the studs and remodeled it to look original to its 1970s design.
Gardner spends her summers in Kansas City in between seasons of SNL, and her love for the city has become more public in recent years. She’s joined other hometown stars as a host of the Big Slick and frequently brings her friends to the area to show it off.
She continued that love of her hometown by using Kansas City artists and designers to build and furnish her house. In addition to Cicada, Gardner worked with The Object Enthusiast to create a custom bar for her living room.
“This house is both a Kansas City labor of love and a New York labor of love, which is kind of like me,” Gardner said in the video of the tour. “My two favorite places in the world.”
The house tour has drawn a lot of attention to the local businesses. Emily Reinhardt, the ceramicist behind The Object Enthusiast, said the custom bar cart has made her fall in love with tile work again. After constructing Gardner’s 10-panel cabinet, Reinhardt has moved on to backsplashes and other, more intimidating projects.
“I can't stop making tiles,” Reinhardt said. Once I did it, I was like, ‘Oh, I can do a lot of hard things.’ So now I'm wanting to tile a lot of surfaces. It's been a fun thing that has come out of that project.”
Gardner’s mention of her has also made sales on Reinhardt’s website skyrocket. Over the past two days, much of her inventory has sold out.
“Heidi had such a generous mention of me,” Reinhardt said. “Not just my name, but also my business name, and it's really snowballed in a way that's been so nice. I'm kind of overwhelmed by having so many things on my website that are out of stock right now.”
Beyond the bar cabinet, Gardner’s interior designer, New York-based Madelynn Hudson, brought in decor pieces from Urban Mining and the Glenwood Antique Mall.
In all, it took Tara and Kyle Davis more than two years to finish work on the house. Ultimately, they said the plan gradually expanded to include an entire remodel to make the home feel “original” again after a “jumbled mess of random renovations.”
Their team replaced an exterior wall heading into the backyard with windows to create a more seamless connection to the pool. The wood paneling on the walls, as well as the counters and cabinetry, are brand new.
Tara said Gardner was heavily involved with the design of the house, and even helped pick the pebbles for her custom terrazzo floor when she was in town. The SAG-AFTRA writer’s strike gave Gardner more time in Kansas City to weigh in on the project.
“It might not have been the best situation, but we had about three months where we made major decisions and progress in the scope of the project, which is great,” Tara Davis said.
Though the Davises may have been wary at first of accepting a celebrity client back in 2021 when Gardner approached them, they’re open to more clients like her in the future.
They say Gardner was an ideal client — nice, easygoing and with a flair for the creative. The Davises hope any possible future celebrity clientele will be the same.
“I think now that we have more years of business under our belts, more people would be interested in us as a complete design build company that can do multiple executions of different design styles,” Tara Davis said. “As long as somebody is willing to get extremely personal and do something out of the box, we're interested in anything.”
