Winston-Salem Journal Photo by David Rolfe
LEWISVILLE
When Jack and Lillian Kroustalis needed an iconic image to put on their first Westbend wine labels more than 20 years ago, they looked across the road to an old farm house.
The house, which overlooks gently sloping farmland that backs up to the Yadkin River, reflected the couple's love of the Yadkin Valley.
"It is a symbol of where we are," said Lillian Kroustalis. "It goes along with where the vineyards are."
It also projects a pioneer image, which Kroustalis said fits in well with her late husband's trailblazing work as a Yadkin Valley grape grower.
The Kroustalises started Westbend Vineyards on 17 acres on Williams Road in 1972. Buoyed by their success, they started buying more land along the road, including a plot that included the empty farm house and a few outbuildings.
For many years, the house sat vacant. That's about to change. The house has been completely renovated and, in some places, restored to how it originally looked when it was built in 1850.
The house will soon serve as a gathering spot for special events at the vineyard as well as private events, such as bridal receptions and parties.
It still needs to meet some requirements in the Americans with Disabilities Act, but for the most part, the renovation is complete. Kroustalis said she hopes the house will be open by the fall.
Joel Benjamin Hauser built the house in 1850, according to a survey of historic homes in Forsyth County that was supervised by the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office.
Hauser was a farmer who eventually owned up to 600 acres in the area, and the house was built with massive heart-pine logs that were most likely harvested from trees on his property. In 1947, the house was sold to A.C. Stuart, a Winston-Salem businessman who used it as a summertime retreat for his family.
Kroustalis said she isn't sure how long the house had been empty when she and her husband bought it in the mid-1980s.
The original structure was little more than a few rooms with wide-planked heart-pine floors and a small fireplace. Later, a second floor with two bedrooms, a living room and a screened-in porch were added.
As the years passed and tastes changed, the logs were covered over. Weatherboarding covered them on the exterior and plaster and whitewash on the interior.
Those coverings protected the logs, said Buddy Glasscoe, who remodeled the house for Kroustalis. Glasscoe owns Timberwolf Designs in Winston-Salem.
Glasscoe has an interest in historic homes and renovated a similar cabin off Williams Road several years ago. Kroustalis was familiar with his restoration work and thought he could interpret her vision for the house.
"She has been in love with that old house for a long time," Glasscoe said. "What I did was a design that was an extension of her vision."
More than a year ago, Glasscoe started working on the house. He was pleasantly surprised to see how well it aged.
"It was in incredibly immaculate shape," Glasscoe said. "That house was preserved very well."
Water, the bane of many empty homes, was kept off the house thanks to a tin roof, he said. "A lot of times with uninhabited homes, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. It starts leaking and someone doesn't pay attention to it. Water gets in and that's what destroys homes like this," Glasscoe said.
Glasscoe and his workers stripped the weatherboarding and plaster to expose the old logs. The wood floors were in good shape as well, and needed just two or three coats of finish to make them shine.
The addition, which was built around the 1940s, had a tacked-on look and was torn down. It was replaced with an open dining room with exposed beams and a kitchen that will be used for food preparation by caterers and not for cooking.
The dining room leads to an expansive porch that overlooks a vineyard of Seyval Blanc grapes and the rolling countryside.
Local touches abound throughout the house. The beams used in the addition came from an old livestock barn in Horneytown between Kernersville and High Point.
Glasscoe used local craftsmen to help with the renovations. Frank Naples, a blacksmith who lives down the road from the house, made long, curving handles for a set of custom-made doors with stained glass that was made by Salem Stained Glass in nearby East Bend.
Part of Glasscoe's challenge was to make sure that the 3,000 square feet he added did not overpower the front of the house.
"The old home is Westbend's signature," he said. "That was a very important part of it, for all of it to blend."
Lisa O'Donnell can be reached at 727-7420 or at lo'donnell@wsjournal.com
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