Inside restoration of historical home

ELKHART Walk down Strong Avenue in Elkhart and its hard to miss the beautiful Strong-Conn mansion.

The historical fixture built in 1884 has been home to Samuel Strong and later C.G. Conn. It was Conn who commissioned architect A.H. Ellwood, after he bought the mansion in 1890, to update it from its Italianate origins to its current Neoclassical design with large 26-foot fluted columns, hand-turned balustrade and a two-story wraparound porch.

We use to live on Riverside Drive and when we took walks we would always admire this house, current owner Tim Shelly said.

In 1992, he and his wife, Meg, turned their dream of owning the home into a reality.

The first thing you notice walking into the entrance on the east side of the house is a narrow walnut staircase that spirals to the second floor.

Light streams in from tall, narrow windows onto a small space under the stairs with a bench seat. Bright-colored paper in purples, greens, pinks and golds decorates the walls and ceilings of the parlor and library on either side of the foyer. Its a drastic difference from the dark burgundy that had covered the rooms when they moved in.

There was a lot of old paper on the walls, old carpets, Shelly said. The first year here was a lot of cleaning things up. The couple worked on the upstairs bedrooms first so they could move in with their two sons, 4-year-old Michael and 9-month-old Andrew.

Then the real work began.

Five of the 4-foot capitals above the columns were missing when they moved in and had to be replaced. A new roof was put on. Several trees were removed from the surrounding yard. One side of the large house needed some foundation work.

And that was just the outside.

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Inside restoration of historical home