In the last two years, Baker's small, all-volunteer group has completed more than 60 makeovers free of charge. She has done bedrooms in princess and Winnie the Pooh themes for young girls, and splashed those for boys with primary colors. She has picked out the perfect picture, the prettiest bedspread, the nicest throw pillows for the children's mothers.
"We try to do our best to make it as homey" as possible, Baker, 55, said.
With no budget, she nonetheless has amassed a trove of furniture, lamps, pictures, mirrors, bedding, and other household goods - all donated through word of mouth.
She keeps it in four storage units, likewise donated. That is where she goes when a call comes from the Bucks County Housing Group, a nonprofit that provides transitional apartments for low-income residents.
Baker concentrates her efforts in Doylestown, Bensalem, and Penndel. As soon as an apartment is vacated, she and several volunteers not only thoroughly clean it, but learn as much as they can about the incoming tenant.
Almost always, Baker said, it's a single woman with children emerging from a crisis situation. Some are just coming out of A Woman's Place, the county shelter for domestic-abuse victims.
"They literally have nothing," she said. "Especially in a domestic-violence situation, they have to get out in a hurry. They just have their clothing and maybe a few toys for the kids."
Others have lost their houses to foreclosure, she said, recalling a woman whose young daughter had cancer and who, with mounting medical bills, had to give up her home.
Baker "shops" for them at her storage units and loads up her pickup truck "like the Beverly Hillbillies."
"It all somehow comes together," she said.
