By Sarah Firshein

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A couple’s Parisian-chic aesthetic and the good graces of their neighbors breathe new life into a Cadwalader Heights, NJ, Georgian Colonial. If the two had the chance to meet, the speaker in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” and decorative painter and gilder Kelly Ingram would have clashed like oil and water. When the former declared, “Good fences make good neighbors,” the latter would laugh. “Wanna bet?” she’d ask.

Ingram and her husband, Ray, have lived in Trenton’s Cadwalader Heights neighborhood for more than two decades. They’re duly familiar with every bend of this historic neighborhood, designed in 1907 by famed landscaper Frederick Law Olmstead (the man behind Central Park in New York City). When they made their way to the community in 1987, they were drawn to its architectural diversity and idyllic, tree-lined character. “The houses brought us here — the style and design of them,” says Ingram, a Waltham, MA, native. “But the neighborhood, the community and the city are the reasons why we stayed. Why would I want to be anyplace else?”

Community defined
The Ingrams’ grand Georgian Colonial, set on one of the city’s prettiest streets, is their second house here; originally they moved into the one across the way but sought interiors that offered a fireplace and a more open flow. They also needed adequate space for a first-floor office they could share, as Ray Ingram runs his e-learning company, Dathil.com, from home.

To most homeowners — particularly ones like the Ingrams, whose lives are entrenched in art and design — a new house is a blank slate upon which to impose renovations and restorations of all scales. Ingram initially freshened the paint and introduced plastered wall finishes to give her home a much crisper look. But after part of the structure caught fire in 1992, burning the kitchen, mudroom and laundry room, reworking the interiors evolved into a community-wide project that ultimately yielded the razzle ‘em, dazzle ‘em space it is today.

“It was like an Amish barn-raising,” Ingram remembers. “Everyone came out, whether it was giving us clothes or helping with boxes. Our neighbors with carpentry experience helped board up the house that day.” One of their neighbors at the time, architect Frank Moya, helped with the redesign, expanding the charred remains into a single, more spacious kitchen with a central island and updated tile, granite and appliances throughout. Other neighbors provided a warm bed and hot meals for the couple and their two large German shepherds.

“We do watch out for one another. I would say I know every person in every house in our neighborhood,” Ingram says. “A couple moved in around the corner, and we reached out and said, ‘Come on over for a gathering, a happy hour.’ We all bring people in.”

Extensions of their lifestyle
The couple’s décor philosophy mirrors this sense of welcome. “It’s a style that’s inviting to come and sit and talk and enjoy,” Ingram says. “My vision is: old Parisian apartment. Soft and neutral and still a lot of color.” Here, even full-wall color that would ordinarily dominate a room manages to remain subtle and chic. And, much like their warm, come-as-you-are, have-some-wine-with-us disposition, the home’s resulting design scheme feels at once casual and cozy.

Enter through the black-paneled door on the side of the house, and one is immediately taken with the foyer, where gorgeous saffron-colored walls offset black-and-white checkerboard flooring. Hanging to one side of the space is a big mirror the couple stumbled across at the Doylestown Inn — “We bartered gilding services for that mirror!” Ingram says. “It’s just fun because it has history. Pieces with nice lines never go out of style.”

From here, a staircase ascends toward a second-floor guest room. Cheerily striped with grass-green and dove-white paint, the room shelters a collection of travel books and a Queen Anne chair that Kelly Ingram purchased for a dollar at a Hopewell, NJ, barn sale and later reupholstered in a flower-print fabric. “It’s got a very organic look and feel,” she says.

It’s clear the couple gravitates toward storied items — such as the old medicine cabinet that stores theirs CDs — or pieces treated to look vintage. The aesthetic quite clearly informs Ingram’s work for Kelly Ingram Finishes; to this effect, many surfaces throughout her home are richly layered. To spruce up 17-year-old kitchen cabinets that had “oranged” over time, she applied a creamy finish. Now, they resemble timeworn, distressed pine. The living room boasts textured elements, as well: a sofa upholstered in a blue striped dhurrie rug works as a nubby counterpoint to a once-white mantel that was recently refinished in a dark mahogany faux bois. And the walls in the dining room are covered with many coats of coral Venetian plaster — in summer light, this is Kelly Ingram’s favorite room.

A star is born
In late 2007, the Ingrams participated in Cadwalader Heights’ Centennial House Tour. Thousands of people flocked to town to commemorate this historic birthday, and the Ingrams saw 1,000 visitors pass through their door within four hours. Neighborhood residents collectively decided to donate half the profits from ticket sales to the Trenton chapter of Habitat for Humanity — a check totaling $10,000.

After the event, house tour chair Ann Christiano pitched the Ingrams’ home to HGTV. The network found the couple’s Parisian-chic style a perfect fit for their popular series “What You Get For The Money.” With three months before the shoot, readying the space was a production unto itself. “It was an amazing example of people coming together to help out,” Ingram says, who agreed to the project because she felt it would be good publicity for future community house tours, which in the past have benefited such local nonprofits as Ellarslie Museum, the New Visions Afterschool Program and the Trenton Animal Shelter. “Our neighbor, Sally Baxter, came and did the drapery and installed the hardware. Friends and neighbors helped with the landscape design. Pat Thompson did some painting and Randy Baum, some landscaping,” she says, rattling off names of people who have, under other circumstances, graced her dinner parties.

“We have a strong civic association that really bands together when needed,” Ingram says. “Our neighbors next door are very involved in the historical society. It’s not that you move here and you stay in your house and you mind your own business. The neighborhood compels you to get involved.”

This year’s house tour is slated for Sept. 26, and Ingram is already dabbling in an impressive list of artistic refreshers. She and her husband will apply a creamy wall finishes to two of the bathrooms and change up the master bedroom’s wall finish, as well. She’s working on some large-scale abstract color field canvases, including a tulip painting that will pop against the green stripes of the guest room. “I love how vibrant colors together boost one’s energy when you first look at them,” she says. A certified Marezzo Stone Artisan, she will proudly display the lightweight architectural material (which resembles marble) as the full fireplace surround in the dining room. And she plans on hanging still-life paintings of fruits and vegetables in the kitchen — a nice complement to the newly revived cabinets.

“Being on this painting journey you go onto all these different paths,” Ingram says, laughing. “The house is flexible that we can move things and reorder things, depending on our projects. Besides, we live in our house — we really live in it. So when there’s a couple of pieces of furniture that I want to complete and a couple canvases I want to hang up, I’m just staying in stride.”

In stride, indeed — the 2009 house tour, which will benefit HomeFront, is appropriately themed “In The Neighborhood of Philanthropy: Community and Service.” It’s particularly fitting for the Ingrams, who are both involved in the launch of the I Am Trenton Community Foundation, which aims to bestow grants onto community-based organizations in need of funding. “Our mission is to make Trenton even better by community giving and community engagement,” Ingram says.

For more information on Cadwalader Heights’ 2009 House Tour, visit www.cadwaladerheights.com.