The original house was constructed around 1890, however, its architectural character had been stripped and perma-stoned since before Eisenhower took the oath of office. It was already in woeful disrepair when the our clients bought it in 2001 with the intent of remodeling and enlarging it to conform with their needs and the existign neighborhood pattern. Our project was to add a new story with 3 bedrooms, create additional living space in the front yard setback, and generally upgrade everything else. It remains a two-unit building with a small two-car garage.

The clients and the neighbors were sensitive to their generous back yards, and the site presented us with a fortunate and unusual opportunity to mass our addition in front of the existing house so that we could complete the street wall, meet the design program, and avoid any new foot print into the rear yard at all. The two adjacent neighbors are also a full three stories tall, which allowed an easy fit of our proposed additional story without breaking above the neighboring building heights at all. Following san Francisco's Residential Design Guidelines, the facade picks up on existing architectural elements on the street such as the adjacent bay windows, garage door proportions, and upper window rhythm and proportion without mimicking.