NATCHEZ &045; Paul Benoist remembers walking through his aunt’s yard on Union Street when he was a child, finding &uot;things you could explore&uot; &045; plum and fig trees, different kinds of flowers.

Now Paul and his wife, Baton Rouge native Ginny Benoist, are restoring the house in a painstaking process.

That backyard alone took about five months to clean up, and now the couple is gutting the inside of the house. Piles of plaster sit on the hardwood floors, while the studs left behind expose the skeleton of the house.

The Benoists, who have been married for 26 years, have spent much of their time in Baton Rouge &045; until Paul opened a law practice in Vidalia, La., across the river from his hometown.

He planned to buy or build a lake house until his cousin, Jack Benoist, offered to let him use the family house on Union Street. After a few months, Paul began to think he could restore the house &045; and then there was no looking back.

&uot;That’s when I got sucked in,&uot; he said. &uot;I went from having a home in Baton Rouge with the idea of having a lake house to restoring a Queen Anne Victorian.&uot;

The Benoists &045; with their daughter &045; are the fourth and fifth generations of the family to own the house.

&uot;Our daughter is a junior at Tulane,&uot; Ginny said, &uot;and I think she wonders what we’re doing.&uot;

Paul and Ginny have done almost all of the work themselves so far, improvising a few tasks along the way. Because the house sits on a hill, it’s difficult to get equipment there. They have carried piles of plaster away piecemeal, in colorful buckets that line the front entryway.

Ginny, who works in the Louisiana attorney general’s office, lives most of the week in Baton Rouge, while Paul is camped out in two rooms at the back of the Union Street house.

But weekends find them together, as they were Sunday evening, cooking out with cousin Jack on the front steps of the Natchez house.

&uot;Aunt Kay used to hold court here on the porch,&uot; Paul said, noting that anyone who wanted to know the gossip in town would just stop by to see her.

&uot;But she didn’t let anybody go in the house,&uot; Jack said with a laugh. Years of accumulated belongings were piled up throughout the house, he said.

The Benoists found some of those treasures when they were cleaning out the house, including bits of the original wallpaper and even a stack of letters to Santa that Jack’s father wrote in about 1906, Ginny said.