Cottage / Bungalow in Westwood Park

Saw this adorable cottage / bungalow in Westwood Park today. Generally speaking, in San Francisco, when the square footage is under 1000 square feet, they start calling that a cottage. Typically, with these smaller homes, the price can be more attractive given the smaller square footage, but typically it may also not be easy to expand the home without tearing the home apart, as these houses are typically one-story on a limited parcel. These homes are typically one bedroom with a small office or two small bedrooms. Personally, these type of homes are a bit small for my needs, but one like this one might be a nice starter home for some folks.

http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1358-Plymouth-Ave-94112/home/1938972

In this house's case, it stands exactly at 1000 square feet, and was built in 1918. Property in Westwood Park does seem to be more expensive generally. Specifically, Westwood Park homes tend to be more expensive than neighborhoods to the south and east of it (the neighorhood itself is very nice and residential) like Ingleside Terrace and the Outer Mission and Excelsior, but less expensive than the large, really nice homes in St. Francis Wood to the northwest of it, so from an investment perspective it's a good place to be.

Beautiful Crafstman-esque exterior (note the 1920s house to the left which is more of a full size Sunset style home):


It's got a beautiful but small living room:


Nice (also small) dining room with beautiful built in cabinets, probably original:


It's got a small bathroom with an old claw tub, which is quite cool to see (though not sure how cool it is to use):


There are two reasonably sized bedrooms in the back.

The parking situation is a bit weird. A lot of homes in Ingleside Terraces / Westwood Park are fully non-attached structures, with a private path on the side for the car to drive through to get to a garage near the back. In this house's case, the path has been partially dug up and obstructed with plants grown in the ground. In the back of the house is the garage, which is really a shed that fits one car. So the garage could be used as a storage space, renovated to become living space, or you can pave over the plants and turn the garage back into a garage. There is still a parking space on the property though.


Finally, the best or most interesting part is the backyard. Definitely my favorite part. Because this house backs up on City College property, beyond the chain link fence of the backyard, is a completely undeveloped field with a tree and other natural plants. So the backyard feels so very bucolic, unusual for San Francisco.

Outer Center Square Full Five, with bonus room!

I saw an interesting house at 1942 18th Ave today:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/1942-18th-Ave-94116/home/1500688

The reason I decided to see it for myself is it has almost exactly the same floor plan as my house and was built in the same year, 1931. It is an Outer Center Square Full Five. Very nice exterior:


The exterior as a whole is somewhat atypical for a Sunset house, but the individual components are more typical. In the front, there are three windows forming a Marina style semi-hexagonal facade (inside is the living room). The three bay windows forming a semi-hexagon was typical of houses built in San Francisco in the 1920's. In San Francisco, around 1930, Spanish style architecture became widespread in mass residential architecture, and so the "Spanish" component in this case are the few decorative red tiles on the top.

Very nice dining room with barrel ceiling, and also a "Spanish" style fireplace typical of San Francisco homes built in 1930 to 1931. Towards 1932, the builders got smart and realized the fireplace was awkwardly placed (making it hard to figure out where to place the sofa and tv/radio), and started placing the fireplace in the corner rather than on the side. In this configuration, the sofa and tv are squeezed to the right of the fireplace.


In my house, the sofa is next to, but faces 180 degrees away from the windows on the front, and the tv sits angled to the right of the fireplace.

The dining room is right behind the living room, with the side patio behind it. The difference between this home and a center patio are as follows: In a center patio home, the patio is bigger and in the center of the home, not on the side like this. A hallway and sometimes a bathroom sits on one side of the center patio, and the kitchen and breakfast room on the other side. In the side patio configuration, the dining room faces the side patio, while the breakfast room faces the front of the house instead of being on the side. If this sounds confusing, see http://saxerealestate.com/map/architecture.htm for more details.

Here's the dining room with rounded ceiling with the side patio behind it (similar to my house):


And here's the breakfast room (looks like it's been modernized) facing the front:


The bathroom is beautiful, with original green tiles and floor tiling:


One interesting thing is from the twenties and earlier, a lot of bathrooms had the bath and sink in one room, and the toilet was in a separate water closet room next door. This home still retains this older layout, the bathroom has no toilet. The water closet actually is across from the bathroom, with a window facing the side patio.

Here's the master bedroom. Because the land the house is on is sloped, even though we're on the second story, the two bedrooms evenly face the backyard, which is nice. A really nice patio was built behind the two main bedrooms in the back leading into the backyard.


Going downstairs, there's a third room. Originally, most San Francisco homes built until the 1950's had all the livable rooms on the second floor, with an open ground floor, which was considered the basement. In fact, before the 1930's, most of these basements weren't even paved when built (though some more expensive houses starting in the 1930's started including an original social room with wet bar and fireplace downstairs). As a result, most homeowners in San Francisco who owned these homes eventually built finished living space downstairs. Because most of these homeowners did the work without a city building permit (which requires multiple building inspections, architectural plans, and conformance with the city building code which includes things like minimal height and windows and ventilation), on real estate sites these rooms are usually referred to as a "bonus room" or "unwarranted room". This means there is a finished room downstairs, but because it might have been illegally built (and frequently built without legal height, or enough windows to the outside), it cannot be counted in the official square footage or bedroom count of the home. Some homeowners may have built what is called an in-law unit downstairs, which may contain a separate bathroom and kitchen, and a separate entrance into the unit. "In-law unit" is a euphamism for illegally built unit, which means when it is rented out, it is illegally rented out. However, it is estimated that about 50,000 people in San Francisco live in such units (almost 10% of the population) so clearly this is a problem that needs to be sorted out.

I've seen houses where they've legally renovated the downstairs where the upstairs seamlessly connects to the finished spaces downstairs to where it looks very natural. I've heard that this is very expensive, but in my opinion, worth it if you want to live in a cozy home that maximizes the living space potential. Here's an example of a very nice legal downstairs renovation: http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/slideshow/sunset-district-renovation

In the case of the house that I saw today, there is still enough room in the garage to park two cars (tandem, like almost all Sunset style houses), with the unwarranted room in the back. It has a window facing the back (though not much of a view since the two rooms upstairs are above and over it; the window faces concrete. Nevertheless, it appears to be a relatively nicely built room that can be a guest room.

Nice Full Five Center Patio Home

Here's a nice Sunset home currently on sale in a more desirable location:
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/65-Stanyan-St-94118/home/1199543

It's a classic well kept Full Five Center Patio home. I find it slightly off-putting the floors are so highly "laminated" but otherwise beautiful.

Great exterior:


Beautiful classic mid to late 30's living room (you can tell from the fireplace). The diamond hardwood floor is really nice:


Several rooms including the kitchen, dining room, and breakfast room get more internal sunlight thanks to the open center patio in the middle of the second floor.

Dining room (center patio is to the right):


The center patio:


Nice classic bathroom with what looks like pretty old tiles and original shower stall:


Finally, the floor plan, which should give you a nice overhead view of what a Full Five Center Patio home is all about (on the second floor; looks like there are newer additions on the garage level):

How NOT to Add an Addition to Your Historic Home

Going slightly off-topic today, but saw a house on sale online today, that's a pretty good example of how NOT to add a 3rd story addition to your historic 1920s Marina style Sunset home. 3rd story additions aren't really a problem in general as they can add tremendous value to your property (provided your neighbors don't object too strenously, which can lead to lots of legal bills). But most 3rd story additions are built set back from the front of the house to give the addition a lower profile, or if it has to be set up front, then it's built with, shall we say, some aesthetics in mind.
http://www.redfin.com/CA/San-Francisco/2339-26th-Ave-94116/home/1307673

My wife described it best when she described this house as looking like a Cyclops.

Contrast that with this, an original 3 story Marina style house in the Richmond (~ 623 Funston St) built in the 1910's to 1920's (not saying this one looks hugely fantastic either, but definitely better):

https://maps.google.com/?ll=37.776461,-122.471485&spn=0.000136,0.120592&t=m&layer=c&cbll=37.776461,-122.471485&panoid=XX718jp_OLsx8PYxtoFDqw&cbp=12,82.1,,0,-11.72&z=14

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.