Well Preserved But Tastefully Remodeled Edwardian Home

I recently have been too busy to go to open homes, but this morning spotted on Redfin a really nice old Dutch Colonial style Edwardian home built in 1908 in Noe Valley:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/3776-25th-St-94110/home/1981902

When I see a more worksmanlike Edwardian home like this one on the eastern side of the city, most of the time the inside's gotten majorly messed up already due to the home's age and neglect or ill-advised remodeling efforts from decades ago (though in other places in the city like the Inner Sunset or the Richmond, there are some really beautifully built and well preserved three-story Edwardian homes). But not here, the really beautiful original interior features have been nicely preserved, while some other spaces that likely needed upgrading or had already gotten messed up were very tastefully remodeled in a modern yet classy way. The traditional Dutch Colonial exterior:


Living room with original rounded ceiling, you can see the stairs and stained glass window in the right:


Dining room with old box beam ceiling (repainted in white):


Really nice modern kitchen that opens up into the yard with lots of natural light:


Original detailing - molding on the rounded ceilings and stained glass window:


Upstairs hallway with a glimpse of the nice and colorfully cheery modernized bathroom to the left:


More of the remodeled modern but classy bathroom - the colors evoke the 1950s for me:


One of the bedrooms - traditional with original rounded ceiling, but cheerfully painted:


Nice backyard:

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:

The original center patio home?

I was lucky enough to be able to be in Pompeii a few months ago, saw several ancient Roman homes with courtyards of various sizes in the middle.  The ones with smaller courtyards reminded me of the center patio homes of San Francisco.  Here's a photo I took at the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii: </br>

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?