I Woke up early this morning with a slight headache, one too many peanut butter Whiskies. We went to the most fabulous birthday party last night for one of our dear friends Stephanie, her home was actually also featured on Home Town. We met Stephanie at the loblolly festival this past summer and became fast friends. The Party theme was “retro”, everyone was encouraged to wear a retro outfit, anything from the 1950s up until the 1980s. There were some pretty fabulous outfits and some pretty fabulously fun people. Every detail was thought out, if you know Stephanie, she's a bit of a perfectionist, I once referred to her as the Martha Stewart of Laurel. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, and carrots were served in an aluminum foil tv tray. A bar was set up with mini glass bottles of sprite and coke and a selection of alcoholic beverages for your consumption. For dessert, there was an assortment of cupcakes made to look like mashed potatoes and fried chicken drum sticks. We brought peanut butter pie with chocolate ganache, as you can see I have a bit of a thing for peanut butter. There was a station set up with a cardboard cutout of a retro television set for guests to take photos, but the best part was the white elephant gift exchange. Each guest brought a wrapped gift but not just any gift, the gifts were to be purchased from the “As Seen on T.V.” section of your local shopping center. Guests were each given a slip of paper with a funny slogan, phrase, or retro title, as each slip of paper was called guests would go up and select a gift. As you can imagine there were some pretty strange items. When your name was called you had the option of taking an unwrapped gift or taking someone else's already opened gift. Some may say Laurel is a sleepy little town but truth is, we are more social here than we have ever been, our calendar here is always full.

Now that my headache is subsiding let's continue where we left off last week. We promised to show you the rest of the house, the part that Home Town did not renovate, as you know they only do 4 main rooms, plus the exterior. Our budget included the dining room, kitchen, living room, and master suite.

Right away we decided that we just couldn't live with the back of the house unfinished. We were tired of tracking muck in from the back of the house into the newly refinished part and also we just couldn't bear to look at the ugly mess. We started with the back bedroom and took on the demolition ourselves tearing out the drop ceiling and paneling to reveal some beautiful original tongue in groove board that was partly covered in cloth, now tattered and mostly turned to dust. We ended up covering the ceiling and 3 of the walls with drywall with some help from our friend Chris who actually works construction for Home Town. After pulling up the old stained carpet we discovered linoleum tyle which someone had painted and stapled to the wooden floor beneath. We spent hours meticulously removing every staple with a pair of plyers.

Back bedroom in progress, removing drop ceilings

back bedroom in progress, tongue and groove exposed, we wanted to leave all 4 walls exposed but 3 of them were not in the best condition. We ended up painting the whole room

The hallway was our next challenge, on one side was a closet that someone had just added on with access from the bedroom, we decided to rip it out to add more space to the end of the hall. Our vision was to make a beautiful built-in using some old wooden closet doors we found in the garage and hang them like barn doors so that we could create a hidden office space concealing Ramon's computer and office mess. We salvaged old wood we found in the garage to make the built-in, we even found some old moldings to finish things off. We decided to use the same color of teal Home Town used in our living room because we liked it so much and I spent hours stenciling the design, I had no idea how much work it was going to be or I probably would have just painted it and been done with it, but in the end, I think it was worth the hard work.

Hallway, Jon ripping out the corner closet

Hallway, work in progress, added built-in and stenciled walls. In the back corner where the closet used to be there was old siding from when the house was added onto sometime in the past, we decided to leave it as is because it added texture and interest.

The doors we found in the garage, love the color

After: Hallway, love the way the stencil turned out, looks like wallpaper

The next room was the bathroom which was really kind of an odd one, it has a partial wall in the middle with a cutout with a sink and toilet on one side and a tub on the other. My idea was to create something more elegant and to make the cutout wall seem more purposeful. After spending hours cutting my own stencil by the hand of a giant octopus and stenciling 2 of the walls I decided that It was not right and scrapped the idea and started over, the color scheme was all wrong and the scale was all wrong. One might say that I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times. After all the changes it ended up being one of our favorite rooms.

After: Cabinet we found at The Remnant warehouse sale and refinished it to look like old metal, and the cool mirror came from The Rusty Chandelier.

Who doesn’t love a claw foot tub. We had the tub re-enameled, it looks like new

couldn’t resist this cool latter from Tuesday Morning

The Laundry room didn’t need much just a new coat of fresh paint “shoji White” another Home Town color and a built-in cabinet to hide the water heater. The floors were refinished by the floor guy Jason another Home Town expert, he did a beautiful job.

Laundry room. It’s a work in progress, still a lot we would like to do

Made the corner cabinet to conceal the water heater and added storage

Our final project was the back porch. At some time someone had made it Into a screened porch, something that one can appreciate if you have spent any time outside during the summer in Laurel, but this one had seen its better days. It was dingy and felt closed in so we decided to rip it out and put up new posts and railings, we had no idea what we were doing but just like the hallway built-in we figured it out. With a little elbow grease and ingenuity we turned it into a little tropical oasis.

Before: Back Porch, Ramon tearing out the old screens

After: Our little oasis for airbnb guests

Sometime during our renovation, Ramon brought up the idea of Turing it into an Airbnb, it sounded like a great idea but then where was my studio to be or Ramon's office space? We had almost given up on the idea of converting the garage into a studio, due to the fact that we couldn't find anyone who was interested in doing the work. (We can talk about that in a future post)

We decided on the name Gingerbird, not to be confused with Bird Dog. It's a name we have used for quite a few years. Back in Jersey City Ramon used to run an underground supper club, hosting dinner parties in unusual places like art galleries, etc. we also used to sell homemade granola and baked goods Under the name Gingerbird Store. The name came about due to the fact that Ramon is crazy about ginger in fact he used to eat at least a pound of the stuff a week, he still would if it was easier to find here in Laurel and bird because well I'm kind of obsessed with birds, all kinds of birds, always have been. Owls were one of my favorite birds as a child, I like to say that the owl is my spirit animal, up there somewhere with deer. I love all animals, big and small. So we married ginger with bird and Gingerbird art boutique was born. We thought it would be a fun space to showcase my art and also some local artists, guests can purchase work if they want or just enjoy the quirky decor. We love hosting and soon our guests will be able to visit my newly renovated studio in what was once a two-car garage.

What’s in a Name

Curiosities

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