1930 House in Miraloma With a Sunroom

Saw a beautiful 1930 house in Old Miraloma Park today, on Rockdale Dr. atop Stanford Heights Reservoir. I've seen a few houses in that vicinity over time, and they all seem to be beautifully built from about 1930, superbly maintained, a really nice neighborhood overall.

The house listing: http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/751-Rockdale-Dr-94127/home/1175180

It's a Sunset style home but is completely detached. All the houses on this street seem to have beautiful front yards (as opposed to being paved over). The stairs are on the front. The front of the living room has nice windows that stick out so that you can get a better panorama of the surrounding area; in addition, there is a small breakfast nook that also faces the front.


It's got a nice typical flow in the front, with the living room flowing into the dining room.


The dining room has nice rounded ceiling and moldings:


The kitchen is a bit odd. It retains what looks to be the original 1930 kitchen subway tile (what a timeless look), pretty old cabinets (possibly from the 1930s) but has a marble countertop that while nice, doesn't seem to match with the rest of the décor:


The bathroom is also very classic - the floor tile may be original, and the wall subway tile is nice, though the color of the violet accents makes me think it might be more 1940s/50s than 30s.


The house does not have a center patio (which is a bit unusual actually for a house with this floor plan), but does have a sunroom in the back. The way this sunroom(a bonus feature) was built is typical for San Francisco in the 1920s/30s. In the back of the house are the two bedrooms, side by side. But instead of both bedrooms with windows that directly face the backyard, there is another room that both bedrooms can access, the sunroom. The sunroom, because it sticks out the back, has windows in three sides, hence the name. It can be used as a relaxation room or a study, but might be awkward as a third bedroom because whoever lives there would have to pass through one of the two bedrooms to get to the sunroom. Here's a photo of the sunroom from one of the bedrooms:

A close-up of the sunroom:


You can walk from the sunroom straight into the backyard, since the house is on a slope. The backyard feels like a real sanctuary or secret garden:

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!

The Joys of Seeing Old House Interiors

I went to see two open houses this weekend. Neither of them were the Sunset-style homes that I typically write about, but I like touring old homes and looking at their unique features, so it was fun. For this post, I won't show a comprehensive set of photos; instead, I would like to highlight particular house features that I found particularly cool.

The first house I saw was in St. Francis Wood, at 110 Santa Clara Avenue, built in 1925:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/110-Santa-Clara-Ave-94127/home/1949827

Homes that need a lot of updating may be the bane of home buyers looking for a home ready to move in. On the other hand, if there are cool historic features in the home, fixing up the home while saving these unique features can be a joy. Hopefully, this home is one of those houses where they'll fix it up but keep the cool stuff.

The house from the outside:


The kitchen has a fascinating original feature (beyond just the beautiful countertop tiling) - if you notice the countertop's level compared to the subway tile backsplash, the countertop is actually slanted. At first I thought it looked like the counter had sunken down from age, but then I realized, what a handy feature! When you make a mess on the counter, the slope helps you easily get that mess into the sink!


I liked the old floor tiling too:


Gorgeous staircase and arched doors:


Beautiful original bathroom with cool subway tiles and floor tiling:



Last little neat thing I noticed was that in the well-ordered garage, there was a page from a magazine from 1969 just lying on the table, talking about the miracle of Singapore's transformation under then young prime minister Lee Kuan Yew:


The other house that I saw was an old Victorian home at 169 Beulah Street, in Cole Valley.

http://www.redfin.com/CA/SAN-FRANCISCO/1690-BEULAH-ST-94117/home/902797

It was built in 1897. Cole Valley is actually home to a lot of grand, gorgeous Victorian houses. The realtor, Bonnie Spindler, wrote this about the house, "In 1894, when Charles H. Smitten hired David Emerson, a talented carpenter, to build his Victorian home, he could never imagine what his house would witness over the next 120 years. On the edge of Golden Gate Park & Kezar Stadium, it watched the rise & fall of Chutes Amusement Park, early years of the storied 49ers NFL team, concerts Led Zeppelin, Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, Santana, Neil Young & so many more."

Here it is from the outside:


The wallpaper covering the parlors (just as today some homes have both a living room and a family room, Victorian homes had "double parlors", where there was a formal front parlor for guests, and another parlor behind it that served as a family room) is not original to the house, though maybe they did use authentic historic wallpaper patterns? I love the idea of restoring old homes to their original grandeur, but this wallpaper might be a bit intense for some, including myself:


I have no idea if this is original or restored, but that is one ornate wood staircase and tin wallpaper:


One of my favorite parts of the tour was the view of the backyard and of other backyards from the back of the house. Because Cole Valley is a relatively affluent area of the City, all the backyards look so lushly green and well-tended. Compare that with where I used to live in the Inner Sunset, where all the backyards looked overgrown with weeds since most of the houses were rented out.

Another Historic House Interior Destroyed

Thesecitystreets sent me this today: http://lvukovic.wordpress.com/2013/11/05/from-rags-to-riches-in-noe-valley-1632-dolores-is-back-on-the-market-one-year-later-for-2875000/. 1632 Dolores Street.



Nothing wrong with the newly remodeled home- it is modern, new, even beautiful. But did they have to completely destroy all the old details that made this once-historic home a classic? The rounded ceilings with moldings? The French doors in the living room? The stately old wood staircase? The intricate hardwood floors? The brightly colorful historic tiling in the bathroom?

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.

Landslide on Foerster Avenue!

Spotted this the other day- a photo hung on a wall at Miraloma Park Improvement Club. A Sunset-style house with the basement story lopped off due to a landslide on Foerster Avenue in 1942.

1930 Mediterranean/Spanish Style House

I saw an interesting 1930 Mediterranean/Spanish style house last weekend in the Ingleside. I mainly saw it because it has a very similar floor plan to my house and was built at nearly the same time (mine was built in 1931). The Ingleside neighborhood is an interesting, old working class neighborhood, with a lot of the development done in the 1920s. It borders the more affluent residential park neighborhood of Ingleside Terraces to the west (you can hear more about that neighborhood here; you can also buy an interesting recently published book on Ingleside Terraces here), and the even more affluent residential park neighborhood of Westwood Park to the north. In the other direction, it borders the historically economically challenged Ocean View neighborhood to the south. On the east is the Balboa Park BART station, the 280 freeway, and my neighborhood, the Outer Mission, further east. We being next to the Ingleside, we hope (and see from observation) that this is a neighborhood on the rise. There is the new Avalon Bay apartment complex and the new Whole Foods supermarket on the northern end of the Ingleside which will hopefully revitalize the very cute and historic but under-utilized commercial corridor that is Ocean Avenue.


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The listing: http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/259-Faxon-Ave-94112/home/821101

The floor plan is basically the "Outside Center Stair Full 5" described here.

Here's the exterior. The living room faces out via the main windows, while the cute little breakfast nook faces out via the smaller windows.


The living room fireplace is typical of a Spanish style home built in San Francisco around 1930 to 1931:


Here's a better view of the living room. It's got a nice barrel ceiling, and "modernized" with recessed lighting, fresh paint, and dark stained hardwood floors. Actually, I really wish they didn't stain the floors, because they have beautiful diamond patterning that is hard to see now that it's been stained. At least the windows are still wood.


The breakfast nook facing the front:


The dining room and side patio are kind of interesting. Normally, in a semi-attached house in this floor plan configuration, the dining room would not have windows other than facing the side patio to let natural light in. But because the house sits on a pretty steep sloping street, and the house next to it is much lower than this one, they were able to build a big side window facing the roof of the next house (but also with a view of the street) in the dining room to make it even more attractive. The muntins on the windows are also a nice touch.


The bathroom and kitchen have been thoroughly modernized, done in a reasonably classy way:


Because the house also slopes front to back, the two bedrooms in the back actually directly lead into the backyard, which is pleasant:


Finally, I thought it was cute there's still a rotary phone in the garage/basement: