Winter House is painted blue, and on its facade is a snowflake medallion.

Winter House is painted blue, and on its facade is a snowflake medallion. Next to it is the cream-painted Spring House, which has a medallion depicting a vase with flowers. Summer House is painted pale blue, and its medallion shows fruit and vines. The cranberry-coloured Fall House has a medallion of a sheaf of wheat. The present owner of Winter House, David Keller, an 82-year-old retired aerospace engineer, bought the home in 1978 together with his late wife, Virginia Keller, also an aerospace engineer. Together, they decided to gut the house, preserving the exterior, woodwork, floors and ceilings, and return the three-unit apartment house it had become, to a single-family home. The couple hired Paul Duchscherer, a designer specialising in historic homes, and then the head designer of Bradbury & Bradbury, a wallpaper company that interprets historic patterns, to work with them, says Dawn Kidd, Keller’s daughter.

The Kellers chose ornate friezes to go around the tops of the ceilings. They framed other wallpaper patterns, and placed them as panels on the dining room walls. Not only did the Kellers put up the friezes, Ms Kidd says, “My father did the cabinetry, and re-carved some of the woodwork.” The property boasts views looking north to downtown San Francisco and of St Ignatius Church on the campus of the University of San Francisco. The three-storey house has five bedrooms, three full bathrooms and one partial bathroom. The house is in Alamo Square, a neighbourhood in the Western Addition. What is most significant about the neighbourhood is the large number of Victorian homes left untouched by urban renewal projects.

San Francisco, California. Price: $US2.75 million ($3.66m).

Agent: John Didomenico, Pacific Union International