Upgraded Home in Ingleside Heights

With San Francisco real estate prices as high as they are, it is rare to find a nice home listed for under $700,000. The one I saw today is listed for $699,000, but it is in Ingleside Heights, just north of the Daly City border, and closer to Daly City BART station than any other San Francisco landmark. It's also clear that this house needs major maintenance. But the bones are great, it certainly looks like when the house was built in 1930, the interior received all the "upgrades".

The listing can be seen at: https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/70-Vernon-St-94132/home/1599685. And for an extra $300,000, you can have the lot next door too! I hope someone doesn't come in and buy these two properties and then tears this beautiful house down to build a brand new big house.

From the exterior it does not look like that nice:


But you can tell from the diamond patterned floors that this is nice on the inside (even if everything is in rough shape).


Views of the very nice looking fireplace in the living room and the dining room (with very nice molding):



Original kitchen:


Bedroom also has nice moldings:


Beautifully original tiled bathroom:


The house comes with an extra sun room that extends from one of the two bedrooms in the back, which was a real nice bonus feature back in the day. Unfortunately, since the backyard is already small, the sunroom does crimp it a bit:


Finally, the garage level is wide open and empty, ready for remodeling:

1930s House with Lots of Original Details

I saw an open house last weekend on Tingley St in Mission Terrace in San Francisco. The house looks like it is in terrible shape but tons of intact old details, probably whoever owned this house chose to update or maintain very little. Whoever buys this house can choose to restore the old details, or gut the interior. Sadly, the more common choice for a house in this shape is to gut the interior.

https://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/139-Tingley-St-94112/home/811997

The exterior of the house looks not well maintained:


Typical mid 1930's San Francisco fireplace; diamond patterning in the wood floor, needs re-finishing. Literally diamond in the rough! There's a stained glass window which is more inusual for a house of that era. There are also these little cute art deco lights.


Dining room has nice moldings, old chandelier, and again, beautiful flooring that just needs to be refinished:


Cute little breakfast room that leads into the side patio (again, not great condition, throughout the house):


Beautiful original 1935 kitchen with original cabinets, diamond pattern tiling, window facing the side patio, old coke bottle opener.


Bathroom also looks to have retained the old tiling:


Interesting old telephone niche with place for phone book:


Last photo shows a neat laundry chute right in the floor of the closet of one of the rooms:

Marina Style Barrel Front House

I saw a wonderful well-preserved Marina style barrel front house this weekend in Silver Terrace:

http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/167-Harvard-St-94134/home/2014468

It was built in 1933, at a time when traditional Marina style barrel front houses were already out of style (they were more prevalent in the 1920s), though this house does bear some of the hallmarks of such a house built during its "late period", with decorative tiling and "cat's ears" mini-eaves visible from the front. The tiling is a nod to the Spanish style which was very popular in San Francisco housing being built at the time.


Here's the view from the inside, from the living room:


The living room also features another relatively rare feature for a more "working class" home at the time- a very distinguished traditional French style fireplace that was placed along one wall of the living room, rather than along a corner to save space:


What makes this a French style fireplace you may ask? Just search for Chenonceau fireplace on Flickr and you can see - Chenonceau is a French pleasure castle built for the royalty in the Loire Valley that I saw two years ago.

Here's a look at the dining room that resides directly behind the living room- notice the ceiling molding and beautiful diamond pattern with trim wood inlay floors (also exists in the living room); looks like they have been refinished in a darker stain for the sale:


Next, check out the original kitchen, complete with original cabinets and backsplash tiles! The countertop actually looks pretty pretty dirty and rundown, might require some work post-sale to polish up. The flooring is cheaper newer linoleum.


Awesome purple tiled bathroom - not sure if the purple tiles are original, but from the patterning it's clear it's definitely no younger than 1950s vintage:


There's a nice telephone niche right outside the bathroom:


A view of one of the two bedrooms out back:


The views from the bedroom windows are nice; partial bay views:


There's a wide open two-car tandem garage, but does have a nice unwarranted bonus room in the back plus a quarter bathroom (aka a closet with just a toilet):


Finally, check out the backyard, notable for the gigantic trees at the back for complete privacy:

1930s House with Wild Wood Inlay Floors, Plus Fireplaces in San Francisco

I recently spotted a pretty cool Sunset style house in Glen Park on Redfin, built in 1931:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/46-Wilder-St-94131/home/898542

it's a corner house with a beautiful turret with a delicately flowery crenellation:


The wood floor patterns are pretty amazing. Some might say it's ostentatious, but since it is likely original to the house (1931), I'm going to stick with amazing. It's also got a very aesthetically pleasing rounded shaped fireplace on the corner of the living room that other than exceptions dates the house to 1931 to 1932:


I've noticed that most house fireplaces in San Francisco can be grouped like-for-like into: Victorian, 1910s to 1920s (sandstone brick fireplaces with built-in's on both sides on one side of the living room), 1930 to 1932, and 1932 to 1940. This type of stonework fireplace was popular in 1930 to 1931. But originally they were mostly placed on one entire side of the living room rather than a corner, like here. But in 1931/1932, it seems like the builders figured out that this wasn't necessarily a good use of space, and started moving the fireplaces to a corner of the living room so that furniture could be placed on 3 of the four sides of the living room (except for the side with the bay windows). After 1932, most of the fireplaces were French style, like in this house.

Even wilder wood inlay floors await in the dining room:


The kitchen is not original but not new either, kind of blah:


But the bathroom looks original with beautiful bright green tile:


Finally, since the house is built on a slope, because the bedrooms are on the same level as the backyard. You can see there is some inlay even in the bedrooms:


All in all, beautiful house, great location in quaint neighborhood-feely Glen Park, right on the BART line and conveniently near the freeway exit as well!

1920s House with Wood Inlay Floors

I went to an open house today in the Crocker-Amazon today for a 1928 barrel front house- very typical for the area and indeed all over San Francisco:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/297-Allison-St-94112/home/51691732



The exterior of the house is typical of houses built in the late 1920s in San Francisco. It still uses the barrel front Marina style architecture that was prevalent throughout San Francisco during that decade. But as "Meditteranean" style architecture became popular in San Francisco during this period, this house includes some token red clay roof tiling on the front façade.

The "defining" characteristic of this house are the beautiful wood inlay floors, with diamond and other shaped patterned borders around both the dining and living rooms. The floors look a bit faded, but it's relatively inexpensive to sand and refinish the floors.

Living room with nice 1920s brick fireplace and wood inlay floors:


Many of the original windows have been replaced, but here's a cute original window with muntins:


A close-up of the diamond patterning:


Looking from the dining room into the living room:


The house gets more light than typical row houses in the San Francisco because it sits on a corner. The rest of the house is less remarkable. There are partial brick walls in the garage floor, which can allow only one car because the space where the other tandem spot is has been built over with a stand-alone bonus room that was built roughly and not in great shape. The area around the house is also only okay; a lot of not well maintained houses in the area.