Ballard resident John Barker has a thing for projects, especially fixing up old houses. He has restored Magnolia homes from 1906 and 1928, a 1900s farmhouse, and a number of old homes in Bellevue.

Barker has now set his sights on a the large 1909 house on the corner of Northwest 68th Street and 30th Avenue Northwest, which he purchased in December.

Barker said decided on the house because he wanted to be near Ballard High School for his 16-year-old daughter and his offices at Barker Landscape Architects, which recently worked on Ballard Corners Park.

The site has a nice view, good sunlight and is a blank slate in terms of landscaping, plus it is a buyer's market, he said.

"It was the right location and the right project," he said.

Barker said he hasn't been able to locate the original building permit with the architect and first owner yet, but the house was part of the Jennings Addition to Ballard in the early 1900s.

He said be believes a welder lived in the house in the 1960s, which may have resulted in a lot of the metal work on the interior.

Judy Swanson owned the house for the past decade or so. She restored much of the interior to how it looked prior to being converted into a duplex in the 1960s, Barker said.

Thanks to Swanson's work, the interior feels more like the original house, he said.

"My job is to restore the outside so that it's better than it once was," he said.

That restoration will be welcomed by many neighbors, some of whom remember it as always being a bit derelict.

Georgia Selfridge, president of the Ballard Historical Society, said that at a Feb. 4 open house at the property, a number of residents in their 50s and 60s remembered walking by it when they were children and thinking it was spooky.

"Apparently, it's always been fairly rough and scary," she said.

The house had holes in the siding, missing shingles and was covered with blackberry bushes, Selfridge said.

In addition to a home for he and his daughter, Barker said he plans to turn the house, which is still a legal duplex, into a short-term vacation rental.

He said there is just way too much house for the two of them, so when vacationers want to rent the bottom half of the duplex, he and his daughter can retreat to the upstairs portion.

The house should be ready for vacation rentals sometime around April, he said.