In recent weeks, drivers along Fort Wayne’s West Main Street may have been tempted to stop the car to get a better look at one of the city’s latest restoration projects.

A long-dilapidated house dating from the early 20th century has been undergoing a transformation that has reminded some of watching a house being stripped down to its underwear.

But, says owner Bob Michel, the result at 1753 W. Main St. in Fort Wayne’s Nebraska neighborhood will be a building that will look just as it did in its heyday, as well as a new business catering to neighborhood lovers of the past.

A veteran of several West Central restoration projects, Michel says his latest restoration poses a challenge he hasn’t faced before.

“We’re basically taking the house apart piece by piece and putting it back together,” he says of the project, which received $17,500 from Mayor Tom Henry’s facade grant program. “We’re sort of taking it down to the bones.”

Michel is in the process of having the roof torn off and replaced, and during the past few weeks, the house was stripped of its worn siding so that much of the original wood paneling is now visible.

Workers are replacing the siding with insulation and a fiber cement product that will duplicate the look of the original wood. The siding was too damaged to save, but other wood trim will be duplicated whenever possible, Michel says.

A distance runner at 62, Michel says he got interested in his new project because it was on his regular running route.

He pondered for months during his runs what had happened to the boarded-up house and whether it could be fixed. Then, last October, he and his wife, Pam, bought the property from the list of houses that hadn’t sold at public tax sales.

Michel knew the house had a long way to go – the roof was leaking in several places, and the siding was left from when the structure was turned into a duplex with a separate entrance for an upstairs apartment in the 1950s. But he also knew the building has a bit of a pedigree – it stands directly across from the historical marker noting the ceremonial groundbreaking of the Erie-Wabash Canal in 1832. The canal ran just a couple of blocks to the north.

The structure, for its time, wasn’t particularly noteworthy, architecturally speaking, Michel says. But what he liked about it was potential.

“I think this neighborhood is just starting. This neighborhood to me is like West Central in the ’80s,” he says, pointing to a restored Victorian painted lady house a few blocks east and Paula’s on Main as examples.

The original owner of the house remains unclear, Michel says.

The 1927 city directory, the first to list by address, lists as residents Edward Chavanne and his wife, Anna Parker Chavanne. The directory lists Edward as an engineer for the Nickel Plate Railroad.

Already, workers from Ed Guitard Siding of Fort Wayne have found fish-scale shingles under the northwest side of the front roof line and rectangular decorative siding on the northeast side. Michel is hoping to make another discovery when knocking down a wooden box-style front porch post – a turned-wood post underneath that could be used to replicate the rest of the railings.

Inside the house, Michel found – besides a toilet plunked in the space under the front steps – fallen plaster and daylight streaming through seams in the paneling in the back wall downstairs.

But he was rewarded by some untouched woodwork and a nifty Mission-style built-in cabinet in what was the dining room.

And he found what he believes to be original paint on the second floor. It’s a reddish burgundy, and the walls are trimmed with gold-colored stenciling at the ceiling line.

“We’re going to restore that,” Michel says of the decor, adding that he also plans to use “ghost lines” found on walls as guides to restoring railings on the second-floor landing.

Michel says he and his wife plan to use the structure as an antiques store. They hope to have it basically finished by next year. Pam, 60, is known locally for restoring antique lighting, recently for the Bass Mansion at the University of Saint Francis, and she occupies a spot in the Antiques on Broadway shop at 1115 Broadway.

The couple are known for restoring a stately brick mansion at 1702 W. Washington Blvd. known by some as the MOM house for the unusual wooden trim in the shape of those letters under the roof line.

Before working on that home for about a decade beginning in the late 1980s, the couple, individually and together, fixed up 1326 and 1310 W. Jefferson Blvd. in West Central.

The Michels also have rejuvenated their current 1940s-vintage home in Wildwood Park.

When Michel and his wife bought 1753 W. Main St., they also bought the property just to its east. An interior restoration of that property is planned.

Michel, who retired a few months ago from GTE/Verizon in Fort Wayne, says he thought he had redoing old houses out of his system. But he acknowledges he hasn’t shaken the bug, and maybe never will.

“I just got bored,” he says. “I have grown children, and now I’m teaching my daughters how to do this. I have one who lives in California, but the two in Fort Wayne are being taught sweat equity and how to rip out old plaster and old floors.

“They like old homes like I do, and if you like old homes then you’d better learn how to work on them.”

rsalter@jg.net