1930s Sunset Home

Here's an example of a normal 1930's Sunset home on sale now: http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1543-38th-Ave-94122/home/1333452#main

There's a lot of houses like this built in the Sunset in the late 1930s like this, style as an American colonial home:

A lot of these homes either have a center patio or have a tunnel entrance. This one has a tunnel entrance.

Living room with typical San Francisco 1930s fireplace in a corner.

Nice classic kitchen with eat-in dinette (pretty typical feature).

Finally, a look at the garage, with room for two cars in tandem.

Rousseau home

I saw a really nice Rousseau home last weekend.  Oliver Rousseau is known in San Francisco for building basically much nicer versions of your typical Sunset style house.  So these houses would more or less be similar size and on same lot size as your typical Sunset home, but with a lot detailed exterior and interior features, possibly a custom floor plan, and fancy features like a finished "social room" on the ground floor (most houses of this period had an open basement ground floor). 

See http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Brightening-the-Sunset-Oliver-Rousseau-a-2703046.php for more info.  There are houses designed by Rousseau and then other homes that are listed as "Rousseau style", as in the sellers consider the home to have some more interesting detailing than the typical mass produced house of the period. 

Here's the listing of the house that I saw - really marvelous:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1587-34th-Ave-94122/home/1839970

Very nice living room with painted patterns on the wood beams on the ceiling (the wood beams themselves would be a nice extra feature for a home built in the 30s in San Francisco).  The corner fireplace you see here looks similar to a lot of other houses' photos I've seen built from 1932 to the late 1930's and helps date this house to that period (and in fact this house was built in 1932). 

 



Nice dining room as well, really interesting inlaid oval that I haven't seen before in the houses I've seen in San Francisco, again, seems pretty custom.

Some photos that I took:

 

Looking at the house (blue one on the left):

 

 

It was typically for the 1930's to use outrageously brightly colored bathroom tiling, like bright green or purple.  Still, this tiling seems much more elaborate than in your typical Sunset home.  That makes this house extra special because most Sunset style homes' bathrooms have been remodeled since when they were built with the tiling removed.

 

Many nice Sunset homes came with a center patio which added sunlight to rooms in the house and provided a nice outdoor sanctuary.  In many houses ( like mine), they have become indoor patios with the addition of a skylight to cover the roof.  In this house, there are evidently very nice custom touches with the floor tiles, the big size of the patio, the red roof tiles, and the very pleasing oval shape of the patio itself.

 

This shows the downstairs social room.  This was the first time I've seen an original social room in a Sunset style home.  Again, a really nice bonus feature (and adds to the offical square footage).  On the right is a large room where you might use as a family room.  It comes with a cute fireplace.  To the left is the bar where you can store your drinks.  The room to the right leads out into the backyard.  Truly a nice place for social gatherings! 

 

All in all, a very very nice house.  Wish I could afford it! 

1920s house

Here's your typical (nicer example) 1920's San Francisco row house on sale:

http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/131-Ellsworth-St-94110/home/764220

Lots in San Francisco are very rectangular (much longer than wide). 

This house has bay windows in the front (typically 3 windows like this, or four or five windows with barrel front):

 

The living room is typically up front, with the bay windows out front, brick fireplace (typically sandstone, but in this case has been painted over) with built in shelving on both sides, moulding on the ceiling:



Older homes normally do not have open floor plans (at a time when central heating was not common/nascent) to preserve the heat.  Typically, behind the living room would be french doors leading to the dining room:

 

On the other side of the house would be a kitchen and bathroom, and in some cases a nook.  On the back the house would typically be two bedrooms side by side.  In bigger homes there might be a third home upstairs.

 

Unlike newer homes, the first floor for homes built up to the 1950's in San Francisco was typically originally built as a wide open unfinished basement, with tandem garage.  Some wealthier houses might have a finished "social room" in the first floor with fireplace and bar.  Nowadays, most San Francisco homes like this will have developed the first floor to add livable rooms.  For most of these houses, it should be possible to add one or two rooms plus bedroom and still retain the tandem garage.  In other cases, one or both spaces may have been developed into living space to make the living space even larger.  Personally, I like to live in a house with room to park two cars indoors. 

 

 

 

Sunset Style Homes

Hi there, this is my first blog post!  A few months ago, I started the challenging journey to buy a house in San Francisco.  As I went through the process, I became interested in a specific type of home in San Francisco.  I'm not sure if there's an official term for it, but basically, I find the historical nature of Sunset style row houses quite interesting.  As denoted by the name, these houses, built generally in the 1920's to 1940's (though there are houses in the Sunset built earlier in a Craftsman or Victorian style, and later in mid-century or later style) are dotted throughout the Sunset, and indeed in many parts of San Francisco.  In fact, while I wanted to stay in the Inner Sunset where I was living, ultimately I landed up in my very own Sunset style home, not in the Sunset, but in the Outer Mission! 

During my purchase process, I learned many new terms and facts about these terms, terms like "Full Five", "Center Patio", "Tunnel Entrance", "Doelger style", "Rousseau Style", etc. Even after my home purchase, I've continued to occasionally go to open houses just to check out some of these fine homes.  Since I am still spending some of my free time looking at homes, I figured I might as well share what I've learned with folks out there looking to buy their own Sunset style home, or just folks interested in these houses in general! 

First tidbit- what does Full Five mean?  http://saxerealestate.com/map/architecture.htm explains everything, with floor plans.  Basically, a Junior Five is a smaller home, a tunnel entrance home comes with, well, a tunnel entrance sometimes with plants on either side of the tunnel path (as opposed to a non-covered set of stairs going up to the main entrance upstairs), a Full Five is a big house with some extras (like a breakfast nook).  A home with a center patio has a cute patio smack in the middle of the home (originally was built un-covered, but a lot of homeowners have covered them with skylights). 

My house in the Outer Mission is (according to the site above) a Outer Center Square Full Five.  What's interesting is there is a patio, but it's called a side patio instead of a center patio since one wall of the patio is on the side of the house. 

Here's an interesting look from my house's roof at a few other houses across the street from mine that are also Outer Center Square Full Five's, all built in 1931: