Cherisse Moe

If you are among the many peo­ple check­ing so­cial me­dia for up­dates on a gin­ger­bread house on Ana Street, this sto­ry is for you.

The restora­tion videos have al­ready gar­nered over 2,400 likes and hun­dreds of com­ments, as a dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ty fol­lows close­ly to see if this piece of Wood­brook his­to­ry can ac­tu­al­ly be saved.

At the helm of the project is 28-year-old in­te­ri­or de­sign­er Ash­ley Stauble. When she and her team be­gan work in De­cem­ber, they found the struc­ture aban­doned for years and in ex­treme de­cay. The over­haul re­quired a com­plete re­build­ing of the home’s core el­e­ments to pre­vent the ar­chi­tec­ture from be­ing lost en­tire­ly.

The build­ing’s icon­ic “gin­ger­bread” style is de­fined by the in­tri­cate fret­work and tim­ber or­na­men­ta­tion that gives it a dec­o­ra­tive, “frost­ed” ap­pear­ance.

De­signed specif­i­cal­ly for the lo­cal cli­mate, these struc­tures of a by­gone era utilise ma­te­ri­als like tim­ber and river­stone to keep the in­te­ri­or cool nat­u­ral­ly.

“The method we try to fol­low at the Ana Street house is for every piece that is rot­ten and needs to be re­moved, it is re­placed with the same ma­te­r­i­al,” Ash­ley ex­plains. It’s the small de­tails that take the most time. Every piece of orig­i­nal, in­tri­cate fret­work has to be care­ful­ly as­sessed for sal­vage, and the crum­bling river­stone walls must be hand-packed with tra­di­tion­al lime mor­tar. This is a slow-set­ting ma­te­r­i­al that al­lows the old stones to “breathe” in a way mod­ern ce­ment can­not.

“The house tells you ex­act­ly what it needs and how it’s built.”

This ren­o­va­tion, apt­ly dubbed “the gin­ger­bread project,” even caught the at­ten­tion of a for­mer oc­cu­pant. A man in his 80s, who lived there from the 1950s to the 1970s, con­tact­ed Ash­ley via her In­sta­gram page to share sto­ries of his child­hood. His fam­i­ly lived in the main house to the front, while an old­er cou­ple lived in the small house in the back. He re­called that the hus­band was a work­er at the Port of Port-of-Spain and kept a small gym in the yard to stay fit for his labour-in­ten­sive job. The two fam­i­lies shared a com­mu­nal kitchen in the yard, and the chil­dren spent lots of time with the wife, who kept an eye on them when their par­ents were away. “He said his fa­ther made re­pairs, added the bur­glar-proof­ing af­ter a break-in and main­tained the house dur­ing their time there. These are re­pairs that we have found dur­ing our ex­am­i­na­tion!” Ash­ley’s team even found orig­i­nal ca­lyp­so sheet mu­sic and records left be­hind by a pre­vi­ous fam­i­ly of mu­si­cians. “This was the won­der­ful thing about this whole so­cial me­dia process,” she gush­es, “con­nect­ing to the peo­ple of the his­to­ry of the house.”

The out­pour­ing of sup­port from to­tal strangers was un­ex­pect­ed. But it birthed the idea of an open house where Ash­ley hopes to in­vite cit­i­zens to help with the paint­ing and fin­ish­ing touch­es to com­plete the gin­ger­bread project. “I feel so strong­ly that these hous­es be­long to our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty and should be ex­pe­ri­enced by the pub­lic. So this is part of the out­reach and ad­vo­ca­cy that we wish to share.”

Ash­ley’s ca­reer choice isn’t a sur­prise to those who know her well. Her grand­fa­ther, Hugh Adams, was a car­pen­ter who would of­ten take her and her broth­ers to play in his work­shop while he worked. To keep them from be­ing idle, he would make toys like rock­ing hors­es, minia­ture farms, and tiny hous­es for them to play with. Her fa­ther, Nicholas, is al­so a car­pen­ter and built their child­hood home. Ash­ley fond­ly re­mem­bers watch­ing him con­struct a minia­ture scaled mod­el of their house, com­plete with shin­gled roofs and de­tailed win­dows.

Now a pro­fes­sion­al in her field, Ash­ley, who holds a Bach­e­lor’s de­gree in In­te­ri­or De­sign and a Mas­ter’s de­gree in His­toric Preser­va­tion, notes that in­te­ri­or de­sign is of­ten re­duced to choos­ing pil­lows or paint­ing colours. Truth is, de­sign­ers of­ten work in­de­pen­dent­ly or in tan­dem with ar­chi­tects to com­plete­ly trans­form a space, de­sign­ing every­thing from the walls and ceil­ings to the join­ery and win­dows. “What I be­lieve is so unique specif­i­cal­ly is that it is an en­tire­ly hu­man-based prac­tice, where you de­sign for peo­ple and their ex­pe­ri­ences in the space,” she points out.

Ash­ley’s hands are full these days as she’s al­so work­ing on her sec­ond ma­jor project: the restora­tion of the Pres­bytery build­ing at Our La­dy of Lour­des Church in Mar­aval. She be­lieves a coun­try’s ar­chi­tec­ture tells the colour­ful sto­ry of the gen­er­a­tions who came be­fore us.

“This is why it is so im­por­tant for us to pre­serve and main­tain these hous­es. They are the phys­i­cal relics of our hu­man and per­son­al his­to­ry,” she con­cludes.