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: