Leslie Davis and Lyndsay Lamb on 'Home Town Kickstart'

2022-05-28 14:36:16 By : Ms. Grace Li

On “Home Town,” Erin and Ben Napier turned Laurel, MS, into a hot destination—so it’s no surprise that their spinoff show “Home Town Kickstart” is helping other towns hop on the makeover bandwagon!

The Napiers have plenty of help on their new show from other HGTV stars. In the latest episode, “Twins Win in Winslow,” twin sisters Lyndsay Lamb and Leslie Davis head to Winslow, AZ, to help with a home renovation and a restaurant update. While this small town was immortalized in an Eagles song, the social scene is on life support. After a highway rerouted traffic around Winslow in the 1970s, tourism dropped to near nothing.

To help turn things around, Lamb and Davis renovate the home of a youth mentor and update an old restaurant. Read on to find out how these sisters create two great spaces where community members can gather. As always, you’ll be able to glean some smart lessons for your own home, too.

Lamb and Davis meet Chris and LeAnn Moss, who recently bought one of the town’s historic restaurants: Root Beer Stand. This place has been in Winslow for 63 years, and while the kitchen serves delicious root beer and chili fries, the exterior doesn’t have much to offer.

“My first thought when I drove up to the Root Beer Stand was ‘I almost missed it,'” Lamb says before renovations start.

“I was a little underwhelmed,” Davis adds.

They decide that this plain white building needs a new exterior color, so they paint it a brilliant blue.

“We want to use bright colors inspired by the 1950s,” Lamb says. “This will give that boring white box that fun retro vibe we’re going for.”

To finish the look, the sisters add new lights and planters and fix up the carport. This exterior upgrade makes the building stand out.

Watch: 7 DIY Home Improvement Projects That Promise Big-Time ROI

Inside the restaurant, Lamb and Davis find a lot of old white tile that has seen better days.

“We love our grandmothers, but we don’t want their tile,” quips LeAnn.

So Lamb and Davis rip out the tile and put two new features in its place. For the new floors, the sisters choose luxury vinyl plank, which they know will stand up to the restaurant’s foot traffic.

“They hated that there was tile everywhere, so we want to definitely clean that up and make it a little bit more modern,” Lamb says.

Then they stencil a fun, retro pattern onto the bar in a bold blue and orange.

This is “a super cost-effective way to update the counter and a total DIY project that anybody can do,” Davis says.

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Lamb and Davis also meet with Chris Garrett, a youth mentor and baseball coach. He and his wife, Mishayla, often welcome dozens of kids into their home for team meetings, homework help, and more. However, their dining room doesn’t have much space if anyone wants to stay for dinner.

They decide to take out the peninsula, add an island, and put a large table up against the island, creating the illusion of one large table.

“Did you know that they host, like, 30 people at a time on average?” Davis says. “So that’s why this was such a huge design for us. And now, we went from a four table to easily seven.”

The new setup shows how easily a family home can accommodate big groups without taking up too much room. The dining room is still the same size, but between the seven-person table and the large island, this space is big enough for a much larger group.

In addition to the youth they mentor, the Garretts have three young boys, so Lamb and Davis know they desperately need storage. So the twins build a multipurpose storage bench by the dining table with a stylish board and batten design and pegs for holding bags.

“We decided on this design so that Chris and Mishayla could decide how to use it themselves,” Lamb says. “If they want to put in extra pegs because there’s more kids coming over and more backpacks that need to be hung, or if they want to add less pegs so that their young boys can sit on the bench and put their shoes on, they can use it however they need to use it.”

It’s a great example of storage that works hard for a big family.

Lamb and Davis renovate the Garretts’ kitchen, but with the new island now taking up a lot of space, they want to make sure this kitchen still feels big.

One way they do that is with open shelves, which Lamb says will “give Mishayla and Chris easy access to dishes and give it that modern vibe.”

The wood shelves keep the kitchen feeling open, and they work great with the new quartzite counter and backsplash. This smart, simple update keeps this new kitchen from feeling crowded.

Jillian Pretzel is a Southern California writer who covers lifestyle, relationships, home, and money management.