Tours of historic homes often focus on mansions with sparkling interiors, immaculately pointed brick and manicured hedges. This year’s West Central Neighborhood Association’s House and Garden Tour and Arts Fest has all that, of course.

But it also has Paul Musson’s house at 1103 W. Berry St. He says his home is on the tour – which is Saturday and Sept. 12 – more as a work in progress.

And, he says, it’s a somewhat better reflection of what restoring a historic home is really about.

Musson knows it’s about having scaffolding on the sidewalk, being roused in the morning by people walking around on your roof, sweeping plaster dust off the front steps and enduring marathon weekend-painting sessions.

Oh, and living with three patterns of outdated wallpaper on your bathroom walls. For four years.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with this,” Musson, 28, a Northrop-Grumman software engineer, says while pointing out the home’s single full bath. It has wallpaper with maroon and white stripes, a tiny floral print, and some mod 1970s flowers peeping through spots where the top layer was removed.

But Musson also knows what he’s already done to the house.

For one thing, he has replaced the wiring, which was still of the antique knob-and-tube variety – after he found out he couldn’t get insurance for the house shortly after he bought it.

He fixed the plumbing and put in a new furnace. He got new gutters. Redid the kitchen. Ripped out the pink carpet runner on the front steps.

And he got the roof repaired – no simple task when it’s made of French tile. Lately, it has been exterior stucco repairs and painting that have been dominating the agenda.

And all in a quest to make the house worthy of Spanish-style architecture that makes the place look as if it was just plucked out of Palm Springs, minus a palm tree or two.

Built in 1912, the home is one of a handful in the city of its vintage to pay homage to the Mission style, with an arched entry door and third-story dormer window, historic preservationists say.

But the house also has the strong horizontal lines of the Prairie- or Craftsman-style and is packed with natural dark woodwork, pocket doors to the dining room, a beveled glass window and a grand front staircase with a curved banister.

The home’s first owners were a West Main Street saloon owner, Daniel Hutzell, and his wife, Theresa. They were both deceased by 1926, but Hutzell children continued to live in the house until the 1950s.

Sometime after that, Musson says, the house became a rental property.

Musson says he had looked for a place close to downtown in his price range for a year and a half before the house, on a prominent corner lot, came on the market. It stayed on the market only three days, and Musson says he was the third bidder.

The house was bigger than he anticipated buying and what he got for his money was clearly questionable, Musson acknowledges.

“It wasn’t livable,” he says. “Nothing had been done to this place. … I mean, you could live here and stay dry, but there was plaster falling off the ceilings.”

The good thing about the house, Musson says, was that it hadn’t been split up into apartments. That meant he didn’t have to cope with ripping out walls or multiple kitchens.

Instead, he could concentrate on turning the kitchen he had in the back of the house into a sunny, contemporary place that took advantage of abundant natural light from south- and west-facing windows.

He did the kitchen walls in light-blue paint, installed a center island and mottled blue ceramic countertops and a sleek, pewter-finished ceiling light fixture.

He also turned a spot under the stairway into what he calls “the world’s smallest bathroom” – a first-floor powder room that features a teensy corner sink like one he used in a Cuban restaurant in New York.

“Seriously, I saw it was American Standard and looked for the model number and ordered one just like it,” he says.

Additions have been a small deck area built with the help of his father on the east side of the house, outdoor landscaping, some new upstairs carpeting and plenty of fresh paint.

The upstairs bath has been waiting because he can’t decide on the best layout. Should he break down a wall – or two – and push back into the fourth bedroom to create a master suite? Or should he leave things – and expensive plumbing lines – as they are?

The presence of an odd laundry chute over the toilet hasn’t made the decision any easier, he says.

But Musson is confident he has made a solid investment.

“It’s been a very unique experience. It’s a great neighborhood, in that we get this big, diverse mix of artists, musicians, college students, all the way up to lawyers and doctors,” Musson says.

“And if you want to fix up an old house, you have all these people who seem willing to help you, or at least were willing to help me.”

He says he has been doing upgrades as time and budget allow, even after four years of residence, including a couple of shivering-cold winters endured without well-functioning heat. His girlfriend, Michele Faroh, 26, though, would like him to do more faster.

“She likes the decorating aspect of an old house. I’m focusing on keeping the house up. … I still have one more leak to find,” he says with a laugh.

“She wants to pretty up the house. I’m trying to keep it standing.”

rsalter@jg.net