Inside A Famous San Francisco Home That's Been Abandoned | Hidden Gems | Architectural Digest

it's amazing what you can find in these old homes here we found a photo of this happy couple that is totally in love and an angry student loan letter from the bank some things just never change we're in San Francisco standing outside an iconic row of Queen Anne Victorian homes we're going inside one of these properties that is in the market for three and a half million dollars and it's in total disrepair the home has five bedrooms and three and a half bathrooms we're gonna look at how I would approach restoring it and renovating it to bring it back to its original Glory my name is Anna karp I'm a general contractor and CEO of a design and build company in New York City called bolster this stretch of seven Queen Anne Victorian houses is known as the Painted Ladies because of the distinctive coloring of their facades I found out that these homes were painted in white originally because people like to make them look like they were made from Stone the people that moved into this District started experimenting with painting their homes with many different colors this led to what is known as the colorist movement in the late 1960s and basically created a wave of expressionism which can still be seen throughout the entire city in order to understand the colors that are a key part of this painted lady I brought a color wheel color theory can be understood in very simple terms you either have complementary colors split complementary colors or you have contrasting colors so if we look at this facade we will see that we have this Yellow base color in different Hues the exact opposite complementary color is found in some of the doors and in some of the trim which is actually quite fun to discover the very interesting part is the facade of this property which is very very queen and the bay window is protruding which is very typical of the queen and style you will also see that the windows are flanked by this column net that give it a very symmetrical feel are also complemented by the column here at the main entrance we also have some recessed panels that are flanked by two little squares of the side and we have some accent colors that make the whole thing pop out the following floor has a little balcony with Balu straight and it also has brackets in the shape of a fan that mirror the fans in the double pane window at the entrance as we go up we will be moving towards the gabled roof the gable roof has the finials and decorative swag that gave the property that cherry filling and the dental gives it the feeling of a gingerbread home if one were to build a facade like this from scratch one would start from the inside out first work on the insulation and the protection of the envelope of the property and then you would build out the structural elements this can be done by adding details that are also in plaster but interestingly they can also be carved from Timber the timber would need to be a very hard quality maybe a second growth seedarf but definitely you would not want to skimp in the creation of the facade the person that buys this house cannot be faint of heart has to have a true commitment for the preservation of this Landmark property if you were to clean this facade the last thing that you would do is power wash it according to landmarks you need to get really big sponges and very mild soap and you need to gently give it a wash their specialist companies that are able to do this and you would actually have to hire them the approximate cost of the maintenance of this facade every year would be about north of five thousand dollars the actual restoration of the facade would involve all the exterior Millwork so you would have to look at it as a complete package with the exterior door the sash windows just restoring the facade would be north of 1.2 million dollars [Music] all right so the house does need a lot of work what I can see at first glance is the owner has already done some exploratory work on probing I am absolutely honored to be inside it's one of the epitome's examples of California and Victorian architecture it's basically got an influence of its environment it is built with red wood Timber that comes from the forest nearby and that kind of Timber would be basically impossible to get nowadays it's very sturdy and it's allowed the home to remain intact over the years and I see a lot of the original details there are absolutely wonderful at the back there's an area that is boarded up that would have been a steamed glass window and the purpose would have been embellishment but also bringing light into the property it's super important for anybody that purchases this property to be able to either recreate or restore a stained glass window that would like fulfill the function of color and the function of bringing lights into the property notably we have the queen and staircase with the beautiful balustrad which is still intact there's a playfulness that is found throughout we don't see curves we don't see columns we actually see a geometric game this interior detail notably is mirrored in the outside of the home in the facade even though these homes were modest in nature they still retain a lot of beautiful features that make them very livable what I would do if I was thinking of a continuation of the design would be a repair of all the walls for sure since this is a restoration but let's be real it's a good renovation so we're having to do a lot of structural work mechanic electrical as such we have free reign in deciding what we would do with the interior Millwork package and importantly for me I would look for that visual continuation of the exterior into the interior I am always super amused and super excited to walk through the property I just want to go to every single room at every opportunity let's see here we have the 80s and usually a walk through on a property that needs a restoration it's a walk through the eras we have seen the Victorian entrance but now we can see that here we have a mishmash of styles I would definitely get rid of the mirror details but I would look to keep that top if I wasn't able to reuse it I could repurpose it and put it in the garden as I make my way through the first floor my instinct is to go to see this beautiful bay window a queen and bay window is overhang but also interestingly is hexagonal so here I'm standing in uh I would say a third of a hexagon and if you can see the shape you will note that it mirrors along language of our balance trade and the light that we get truly as a material in this home light is also an architectural detail when I look at these windows they're beautiful but I'm trying to look at the horrible part of it is it rotting can you open it does see the line you're really looking to see whether there's viability and functionality unfortunately in this pink lady we can see that we absolutely have to ditch the windows and replace in kind what we're looking to preserve here and if this was my home would be the line of view we can see that we have the park at the front also at the back you have your private area you also have a light well that goes through and through therefore instead of having this like itsy bitsy little room in this case I would actually look to blow up as much as I can structurally in order to create like a fully truly open space that gives me that wow factor of a San Francisco View it is amazing to walk into the back of the room and I see these beautiful lights and the kitchen at the back I would definitely like to get rid of that sad little dark room at the back open up the space and use the entire area as a very nice living area to maximize enjoyment of that beautiful San Francisco view I am not afraid to say that a modern layout would be wonderful here because there's not much to preserve and we're preserving all of the exterior the medallions here are plaster work and in San Francisco there's companies and specifically a lady Lorna who replicates all the moldings from scratch now a cast mold is sort of like an art form in and of itself I think it's important that if you have medallions you respect them because there aren't many people that make them anymore because we're at the back of the prop property we could get rid of that ugly deck and replace it with a very nice modern deck and that will give us the flexibility of extending the kitchen area so having a modern interior doesn't mean that you fully erase the existing beautiful parts of the home rather it means that you're doing an integration of the details with a more modern layout so now that we have 100 decided that this is going to be our public area for entertainment we can go upstairs and explore the second floor and look to see whether that's going to be our beautiful private area where maybe we find a little bit more restraint foreign on to the second floor I can see something that is very common and distinctive of multi-family units we can see that the banister is ending here and there's a new wall that is apparently a new piece of sheetrock that creates the subdivision between the apartment below and the apartment upstairs the banister does not have the same continuation this is all part of the changes that the property suffered throughout the years as I walk into the second floor I'm immediately drawn again to the beautiful feature of the house the bay window doing a little bit of detective work I can immediately spot that this Glass is very very old you can identify old glass because it looks like it's dripping and this is just due to the way it was fabricated it would definitely be the keeper in a window or in some other part of the home one thing that you absolutely seeing the second floor is color you see the use of color coming through in the casings and you see the use of color in some of the ceiling that's an absolutely 100 San Francisco thing to do in this Victorian homes multi-family units are oftentimes self-divided in weird ways so it's important to try to establish which wall was actually an original wall because those walls may be structural or retaining walls the door casings which seem to be original we can see that we have one two three four five six door casings and that makes us understand how the space would have been used if I was doing a renovation right now of this property I would definitely look to subdivider and create the bedrooms here as an option A I would do a floor to floor bedroom depending on how I want to use the house as an option b you could opt for some of the vision where you have a beautiful space and a studio or a guest bedroom at the front of the house as we walk through this floor we can see there's a kitchen and a gas stove here there is absolutely no need to keep this this would make a super beautiful primary bathroom I can definitely see a freestanding tub we already have all the plumbing would be very easy to make it and of course you could bathe looking into the outdoors there's two bathrooms at the back of the house you could either keep one and keep it as a guest bathroom or you could keep this primary bathroom with the tub a space to shower and have your toilet outside separated from the primary bathroom so now we cover the second floor and we will go upstairs to the third floor which is also known as the Attic foreign [Applause] continues the staircase here is actually painted white the color makes it easier to see the relief and the intricate detail it's also missing this piece always kind of comes off so that would have to be redone there's this ugly box sitting here at the bottom the Box will be actually hiding the rest of the staircase that was kind of like tucked away in order to create the separation for the two units that is very common to see in very high-end properties and in normal properties with this layout it's absolutely perfect so if it ain't broken don't fix it this is the cutest ever little room again we see the use of color we see a beautiful symmetry with these two doors and we can see a cross section of the gable roof so we can see that the ceiling is sloped we can see the support system the original Redwood that was used to build it it's actually a very straightforward roof so this room is the twin of the other room and we still have those side to side doors the main difference between the other room and this room is this Historic Landmark window and you can see the details that mirror the balustrade and that remind us that we're indeed in a queen and historic home landmarks will make us restore and preserve this window likely to be replicating kind and it's interesting that when you encounter a window of this era oftentimes you can see the pulley mechanism you have weights that keep the window down or up in addition to this Triplex there's going to be a separate unit which is in the ground floor so now we're gonna walk downstairs and go and check it out foreign the ground floor of the property right now at the front we have the garage doors and at the back we have the doors that go out into the garden while this space may not look like much it will certainly become incredible once it's been renovated the plan at the moment is to extend this area by digging down underpinning and adding structural support in order to turn this into the second unit because we're in the underbelly of the pink lady we can see everything that is hidden everywhere else if we take a look at the structure of the ceiling we will see the crisscross that was used at the time in order to support in between the beams and we can also see the Redwood beams that are kind of keeping the property upright because this is a good renovation this will likely be replaced with other structural elements that support the load of the property the unit will have a a lot of flexibility it's really a blank slate my suggestion would be to use sliding doors in order to give the space a lot of flexibility this will be a very exciting project and it will actually make the home compliant with San Francisco's regulations the first thing I would do would be to protect the envelope of the house and secondly change the garage doors into a double panel door and quite possibly if I wasn't able to reuse the anti-glass upstairs I would certainly incorporate them into the doors down here I would also try to add more light into the box so that this truly becomes a very habitable space we're already digging down and we're already like playing with the foundation so making these changes to give the space more light is really not so onerous we also found a salvage door that strangely is pink this might have been one of the colors I gave this Painted Lady its name Pink painted lady and we also have found a lot of wallpaper now the wallpaper is like highly likely not original but it's also very old wallpaper and helps to tell the story of the evolution of the property I've been told by locals that prior to being a garage this area was used for the carriages for the horses that would certainly be a very interesting and cute fact foreign there's the opportunity to revitalize the garden and do a little bit of landscaping this is a project that I always recommend is done over time so that you can really enjoy getting it to the spot that you want to get it to we have a deck that extends over the three floors likely to be replaced it's old and rickery but it also provides access into the outside interestingly the back of the house is very very plain in contrast to the intricacy of the front facade the back of the houses if they're not in plain view are usually deregulated from landmarks so homeowners are able to do what they want with them we see that we have the overhanging bay window traditional for the era and specifically for Queen Anne with very restrained succinct details and brackets at the top and a flat roof at the top off we see the Gable rule from the attic on the ground floor there's a door that leads into the back of the house and we can see that strangely the knob is really far down it's very Alice in Wonderland and I wonder if there's a mystery here because the keyhole is actually the right way up so if any of you can decipher this mystery please let me know in conclusion the home is on the market for 3.5 million dollars the restoration of the facade and the doors and windows would be between 1.2 and 1.3 million dollars and I estimate that the entire renovation including mechanical electrical the underpinning and all the new structural work as well as the interior Millwork would be north of 2 million dollars therefore the renovation for this home the proper restoration that it requires would actually be north of 3.5 million dollars and probably up to 5 million dollars The Painted ladies are unique properties and this is a fantastic opportunity for someone that wants to continue with the life of the Victorian tradition the homeowner that is putting this home for sale went through a process to really identify the aspects of the whole home that would be preserved or that would be restored for the right family this is an excellent opportunity to live in a fantastic architecturally important home the first floor of the triplex is beautiful it can have end-to-end light and it can have a very modern interior the second floor can provide flexibility in the number of bedrooms for different types of families and the top floor the attic is absolutely perfect it's a jewel as it is and it can be a flexible space either for reflection or for guests and it's absolutely perfect in its proportions in a complementary way the units at the bottom can really be a beautiful space for the right person to live with a lot of flexibility let's remember that the property already has planning permission therefore whoever buys the property would either have to implement those plans or file for new plans that would be convenient for them the most important takeaway element for me is that there's a lot of makers in San Francisco that take a lot of civic pride in the work they do not only for themselves but for the people around them I met Fascinating People when doing research for this series Skeeter Jones who makes facades from scratch I met Bob Buckner and I spoke to Ina cell harm all of them are fascinated and dedicated to the preservation of Victorian homes Bob opened my eyes about color he has consulted in painting over 24 000 homes a lot of them have been in San Francisco or in the Bay Area his color designs have been copied three or four times over and what dawned on me is that there has been one single person that has been designing the colors of San Francisco so when we think about some Francisco and we think about color we're thinking about Bob because out of his creativity and Imagination we see a wealth of color schemes all around the city

Channel: Architectural Digest

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Keywords: abandoned home tour, abandoned painted lady, ad home tour, arch digest, arch digest hidden gems, arch digest home tour, architectural digest, famous homes, famous san francisco home, hidden gems, iconic home, painted ladies, painted lady, san francisco, san francisco painted ladies, san francisco painted ladies tour, san francisco real estate, san francisco victorian homes, the painted ladies, tourism in san francisco, victorian architecture

Id: OHR6bu4BmBw

Length: 23min 29sec (1409 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 20 2022