I noticed a neat house recently with a rare feature - almost completely intact 1920s kitchen. The house isn't a Sunset style house (it's actually not even a house; it's a building with two flats, one on each floor with a huge garage as the ground floor) but the floorplan and exterior and interior have similarity with Sunset style houses. It's actually not even built in the 1920s; technically it was built in 1930 but the interior has much more in common with 1920s than 1930s houses.
Here's the listing:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/3691-3693-17th-St-94114/home/709528
Check out the kitchen:
Why this is a rare feature is when house remodels happen, the first room to get remodeled majorly tends to be the kitchen. So it's quite rare to see a kitchen with original tiling, and even rarer to see a kitchen with original cabinets (it also comes with a very old stove):
I'm confident the cabinets are original because the few other 1920s houses I've seen with original kitchens also had similar looking cabinets with latches. When I opened and closed the cabinets, some of them didn't quite close properly, probably because they've been warped over time. Here's another view of the kitchen, from the adjoining breakfast room:
The third floor comes with a second cleaning area next to the kitchen:
The house also comes with a lot of other fascinating "original" features. I'm just afraid whoever will be buying this house will want to gut the interior (indeed, I heard at least two potential buyers at the open house talking about doing exactly that) without preserving most of the original features. Certainly it's possible to make this house modern and beautiful while preserving and fixing timeless features which are now showing wear due to age and lack of maintenance - the wood windows and original kitchen cabinets, for example. And indeed, given the rarity of some of the house's features, preserving them will only increase the house's value in the future.
The rest of the house is pretty neat as well. It's got an old fashioned split bath (toilet in one room, shower / bath / faucet in another) with nice tiling:
Both floors come with typical 1920s living room with sandstone brick fireplace, rounded ceiling with molding, wood windows, and built in cabinets. The second floor has elaborate diamond patterned wood flooring:
A close up of the wood windows overlooking 17th Street and Church Street (an amazing location right next to Dolores Park):
Here's a view from the third floor looking down at the roof of the sunroom on the second floor (only the second floor comes with a sunroom, which is only accessible from one of the bedrooms). It's got a tar and gravel roof, very similar to most houses in San Francisco with flat roofs. The back room also overlooks Mission High School.
In the hallway, there is a little telephone niche. The lighting looks old but not original (only one of the floors has it). It's funny to me that in today's age of portable cell phones, there was a past time period when someone thought it so important to be able to use the phone on a niche at night that they had a light installed.
The house has a huge garage. The entrance is tandem, but inside it you can fit two cars side by side, which makes this house very attractive than most houses in San Francisco which feature a fully tandem garage.
The house looks like it hasn't been updated in awhile. One thing I noticed is even though it is a
soft-story building (aka the bottom floor is empty), it didn't look like there were any shear walls installed to help it withstand earthquakes. From my non-civil engineer set of eyes, the frame may not be securely fastened to the foundation (which according to the Association of Bay Area Governments would require certain sized bolts drilled into the frame into the foundation with certain sized square washers on top). More can be found
here. What it currently looks like:
Finally, the exterior of the house seems very nice. It's the pink one with brick on the bottom floor:
It's got a nice entry and diamond patterned wood floors:
Nice living room with barrel ceiling, decorated fireplace, and two cute little original lights. The lights in the house are all original! Nice wooden doors separate the living and dining rooms.
The dining room has cool detailing and chandeliers and a window that looks into a light well. Very unusually, the light well is not a side patio; rather, it is a second set of stairs that goes downstairs.
There is a breakfast nook with original built-ins:
The kitchen is all original (backsplash, sink, countertop, cabinets) except for appliances and flooring:
The hallway to the bathrooms has a cute telephone kiosk:
The bathroom is all original- old tiling, bath, sink. The toilet is in a separate room from the rest of the bathroom which is nice, used to be a standard feature of 20's houses. The bathroom also feels unusually roomy for a Sunset style house. Finally, the bathroom leads into a make-up style room with closet space which leads directly into the master bathroom. Really nice floor plan.
There are two bedroom, both with original little cute chandeliers, both with unusually large closets for that era, one of them has a laundry chute in the floor. The windows in the back all have views of the Pacific ocean. Finally, both bedrooms have entry into a sunroom in the back. The sunroom is best used as a recreation room or a shared office, might be awkward to use as a third bedroom as you have to go through one of the bedrooms to get to the sunroom. Nice little backyard.
