Brick by brick: Elwick’s restoration is a labor of love

Located on a historic brick street in the heart of Vinton, sitting far back on a large lot is a stately brick home.

Built sometime around 1870 (back then, abstracts did not specify the date of the home's completion), the home has been in the Elwick family since 1973.

That's when Cindy and Mike Elwick purchased it, site unseen, when moving their family back to the Vinton area from Louisiana where Mike had been working as an engineer.

'We had three kids under the age of six and we were homesick,' said Mike of their move back to his hometown of Vinton.

The Elwick's kids are now grown — with children of their own — but Cindy and Mike still live in the big brick house they've been caring for and renovating for more than four decades.

Upon entering, Mike points out a 1910 postcard that pays homage to the home's early years and illustrates the Elwick's sense of pride in their historic home.

The home's grand front room is a living room/ dining room combination that shines with exquisite detail. It's furnished impeccably with the Elwick's collection of antiques — an old library desk, lovely area rugs from Kamal's in Cedar Rapids, a vintage sofa and other furniture most of which belonged to Cindy's mother and grandmother. Cindy said the front room is the location of many book club meetings and card games with friends.

'This is the formal entrance to the home so it is more ornate,' said Mike. 'The windows in here are just wonderful. This room has one more layer of ornate-ness than the rest of the house.'

Another room in what the Elwicks call the 'East Wing' of the house is a small parlor room which presented a particular interior design challenge given the number of doorways and windows in the room.

'All those doorways can cause problems when you are trying to arrange furniture,' said Cindy.

The sun porch is a particular favorite of Cindy's as a cozy get away for reading a book. 'We both really love this room,' said Cindy. Formerly an outdoor porch, the Elwicks turned it into a three seasons room before fully enclosing it this past winter to become a four seasons room. The sun beaming in through the floor to ceiling windows adds an ambience of warmth and welcome.

They are also just finishing up the adjoining mudroom that will serve as a sunny home for Cindy's many plants — namely her fig tree, banana tree, hibiscus tree and her orchids. As owner of Nature's Corner — a flower shop just a few blocks from their home — Cindy is an avid horticulturalist. The built in storage in the new mudroom also allows the Elwicks to tuck away cleaning supplies, card tables and the like.

Up a steep staircase — thanks to the grand, high ceilings on the first floor in the East Wing — in the middle of the home are the home's five bedrooms, all with original hardwood floors and larger windows.

If you get talking about the house long enough with Cindy, she'll casually bring up the ghost stories as well.

'Several family members have seen it,' she said of the ghost, while Mike keeps quiet across the room. 'She is a woman with a long turn of the century dress and long hair who has only been seen in the older part of the house.' Cindy said that through research the family learned that a young girl died of an aneurysm in the home many years ago. 'The kids and grandkids truly believe it.'

Ghost stories aside, Mike said the home's brick exterior — which can make the upstairs rooms a bit chilly during the winter — has been their inspiration in completing so many renovation and restoration projects, noting that they have sandblasted it three different times to restore the façade.

'The fact that the home is built from brick has helped it withstand the decades,' Mike said. 'That gave us the incentive to maintain it and do it right.'

The Elwicks, who have been married 50 years, now delight in having the kids and their grandchildren home for holidays.

'We love it when all 17 of us can get together for Easter and Christmas,' Cindy said.

The kitchen, located at the back of the house, was something the Elwicks remodeled some 20 years ago.

'We've toyed with the idea of redoing it again. You don't know where to quit,' Mike said of their improvement projects. 'It's a lot of fun if you have the time and resources.'

The original footprint of the home wasn't exceptionally large, Mike noted. In 1975, not long after moving in, the Elwicks put an addition on that doubled the size of the home. Now the west part of the house is where Cindy and Mike do most of their every day living.

Perhaps their most favorite space in the house is the family room addition.

'I laid the bricks myself for that family room,' said Mike. 'My dad and my brother showed me how and 17,000 bricks later I got pretty good.' The long front walk and patio are also hand laid bricks and while Mike said it was all time consuming work, the end result is so worth it.

Just last summer and fall the Elwicks focused on remodeling their family room, to update it. 'There was no family room when we moved in, so we had done all of this 40 years ago,' said Mike, a proud do-it-yourselfer who made sure to work with a professional in completing the work. 'We had the opportunity to do it right this time and we didn't cut any corners.'

The family room now features hardwood floors and upgraded trim work to resemble the decorative woodwork throughout the original part of the home.

'The woodwork is just beautiful, but it took us months to do it all,' said Mike. 'We designed it as we went.'

One wall of the family room is lined with built in book shelves and the vaulted ceilings and massive stone fireplace make the room feel a bit like a cabin get away. 'I like to sit in front of that fireplace from the first cool night until the early spring,' said Mike. 'We really do have a fire in it every night and because it's just the two of us, sometimes we'll eat dinner in front of the fire.'

The Elwicks master bedroom is in a lofted space above the cozy family room.

'It's really neat up here, especially when you have the fireplace going,' added Mike.

The family room now has entrances from both the kitchen and the main stairwell. 'We did that so I don't have 17 people going through the kitchen all the time,' Cindy said. There is also a small outdoor porch off the front of the family room which they refinished this past fall, utilizing original arches and trim work from another part of the home.

The Elwick's home sits all the way back on the lot, making for a large and lovely front lawn but no backyard.

'The front yard was the neighborhood baseball and football field for many years,' Mike said. 'Or the kids would host the Olympics,' Cindy added. 'There were a lot of imaginations running around that yard.'

The years haven't been as kind to the trees in the Elwick's yard, which used to be home to several gorgeous maple trees.

'One by one, all the trees left,' he said. 'But this house has survived a lot,' said Mike noting that the three layers of solid brick have helped.

'Now we are in our twilight years, our kids are grown and gone,' Mike said. 'We love this neighborhood and this town. Vinton is a fantastic community. And this house is a comfortable place to live, even though there's always a project. This house is set to last another 100 years.'