Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 4, 1992 TAG: 9201040039
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TERESA ANNAS
DATELINE: ELAM LENGTH: Long
LOG CABIN FEVER/ COUPLE FINDS THE RESTORATION OF AN OLD FARMHOUSE A PEACERFUL
Layers of wet loblolly pine straw cushioned a woodsy path behind Jim Kincaid's country spread, making for a nearly silent stroll.It was a moist and moody Saturday at Elam.
A favorite pipe tipped to his mouth, Kincaid stood for a moment and gazed around the land he's called his own since 1977. "There's a kind of sound that comes from these pines that we find very comforting," he said.
Like the gentle tapping of rain on their hand-crimped tin roof, "it's a white noise, very restful. It's a little like the sound of the sea."
One of the family's three dogs, Beau Riggins, scurried around anxiously. But Kincaid - the folksy co-anchor of the evening news on Norfolk's WVEC-TV - was still wrapped in reverie.
Elam refers to both the tiny rural community and the 50-acre homestead there just off U.S. Route 460, between Appomattox and Farmville.
For the Kincaids, Elam has been more than a weekend getaway. The peaceful spot, where even wrapped pipes have been known to freeze and the dogs scuffle skunks, has provided Kincaid with a hay wagon full of fodder for the brief notes he shares as shirt tails for the nightly news.
You see, Kincaid and his wife, Catherine, didn't buy just any farmhouse. And they're just now fully discovering what they bought - a 1742 double log cabin with several separate structures, including a cookhouse and smokehouse.
With the aid of friends, the Kincaids are restoring and remodeling the whole shebang. Finally, they are laying eyes on bare logs long hidden beneath sheet rock, wainscoting (waist-high paneling) and 150 years of paint.
So far, they're 10 months into the restoration, with probably eight months to go.
The Kincaids knew they had bought an old log cabin, but they couldn't be sure - as they now are - that nearly all the chestnut oak logs were in great shape or that they were used on all walls in the original two-story structure.
Kincaid has mastered the fine art of down-scaling - that is, thinking smaller as a means toward a better quality of life.
That attitude spurred him to escape a hectic career as a foreign correspondent for ABC News - and buy Elam. The Kincaids lived there for a year. Then he took the job in Norfolk, where the family continues to live during the week.
It'll be a while yet before the couple heads to Elam for good. In the next week or so, Kincaid, who is 58, plans to sign another long-term contract with WVEC-TV. Meanwhile, he'll continue the weekend visits.
Elam, Kincaid said, means "a youthful, rejuvenating place."
Investment in a dream
From his patch of pines, Kincaid could see - or at least hear - the work in progress.
Inside the cookhouse - which his father-in-law, artist Theo Wildanger, used as a studio until his death two years ago - Russ Cupp and Paul Paluszka were boring holes in the middle of 250-year-old logs so they could embed new electrical wiring before "chinking" the walls again with old-time mortar.
Just 10 feet away, in the main house kitchen, Catherine was whipping up some Swedish pancakes. In half an hour, they'd be served along with cranberries, cheese, sausage and pies for what could be described as a European farm-style midday supper.
Before digging into lunch, everyone all bowed their heads for a prayer led by Paluszka, who leaves his wife and five children in Chesapeake every other weekend to help spruce up Elam.
For both Paluszka and Cupp, it's an investment in a dream.
"I told Jim it wouldn't be worth it to me to go out there on weekends and work for a year and a half - except for land," said Cupp, who lives in Norfolk. "We just fell in love with the place."
For their labors, Cupp and Paluszka get eight acres each of property adjacent to the Kincaids.
Cupp's face lights up when he talks about it. "I'm going to buy a prefab log cabin and put it up myself."
Elam is shaping up a little like an artist's enclave. A neighbor, Marge Swayne, is a journalist and author. Paluszka has an art degree, and Cupp has a theater degree and has worked in local plays productions.
Paluszka, Cupp and his wife stay with the Kincaids in fairly close quarters. "We all got along right off the bat," Cupp said. "All these months, and we've never had a disagreement."
The boss-and-laborer idea doesn't wash at Elam. It's just people helping people.
"Russ and Paul are able to realize a dream of theirs by helping us realize a dream of ours," Kincaid said. "So, it's affordable all around."
Kincaid first met Cupp, whose company - Aapex Inc. in Norfolk - is geared to the restoration of old homes. And Cupp knew Paluszka; the two of them like unraveling the mysteries of an old home.
They successfully completed the scariest part in October: jacking up the cookhouse, so they could replace rotted lower logs, without knocking over the 250-year-old stone chimney. They found replacement logs of a similar age and wood at an abandoned tobacco barn on nearby property.
In the main house, much of the work entailed clearing the log walls, finally knocking out the ancient mud-and-bricks chinking. They went to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for advice on the appropriate mortar mix and were told: eight shovels sand, two shovels lime, one shovel white cement.
Instead of modern ceilings, now the first-floor bedroom and living room have something more authentic: whitewashed ridge poles and the bottom side of the upstairs flooring.
One of the stairways was knocked out, replaced by a ladder hand-carved on the property in September. To brace part of the ceiling left unsteady with the loss of the stairway, a brace pole was installed. It was Kincaid's idea to leave some of the extending limbs intact - as a hatrack.
Attached to the rear of the house is an L-shaped addition, probably dating to the turn of the century. It will be razed in a few months to make way for a new wing that will square off the structure.
Kincaid stood at the threshold where the new wing will be added. "It will be a time warp. Out here," he said, indicating where the airy, light-filled kitchen, dining and living rooms will soon stand. "It'll be the 20th century. Walk in there, and you go back in time to the 18th century."
`Incredibly peaceful'
Yet another artist has ideas about Elam. Sculptor Lindsey Jones of Portsmouth is working out a purchase/-barter deal with the Kincaids for a few acres up the hill.
Jones sculpted a memorial to Catherine's father, Theo. It is set in the midst of the loblolly pine forest, where Theo's ashes were scattered. The informal likeness shows Theo, pipe in hand, musing over the woods.
Now the Kincaids have commissioned Jones to create a memorial to Catherine's mother, who died in 1959.
The Elam atmosphere, Jones said, "is like dropping back two centuries. It's incredibly peaceful, and a lot of that is Jim and Catherine."