Ronald McDonald House

I belong to a local association for interior designers and a little over year ago we decided to adopt the Pasadena Ronald McDonald house as a charity to work with. It was a perfect fit. The home (actually there are two of them) is a couple of historic craftsman homes in Pasadena across from the Huntington Hospital.

The master suite was adopted by the local Pasadena Firefighters association where inspiration for the room came from. It is called Firehouse 35 in memory of their firehouse that was closed many years ago. In fact, when firetrucks pass by, they give a little honk (we witnessed this first hand).

I collaborated with a couple of other designers and we completed a design plan for the room. It was submitted about the time that the home ran into some administrative issues so it was put on hold for quite some time. In the past couple of months though, the project was revived and today we finally had the chance to complete the room install-with a modified budget and scaled back plans for the space. It's a large room with its own bathroom, and two smaller rooms attached (a nursery and mother-in-law's room).

So here are the results--we're quite happy with what we were able to accomplish with our meager budget and volunteer help.

I was excited that I was able to help, in a very small part, make this a more welcoming place for families with sick children who may be away from their homes for an extended period of time. I hope that I never have to stay at a place like this, but I am so grateful that they exist to support families faced with the horrible reality of a severely ill child.