Project Spotlight

Entire House Remodel

The Project involved extensive remodeling, structural upgrade, and conversion of the downstairs basement into a separate apartment. The home was originally built in 1900 and had been in the Owner’s family since 1955. The home is a typical San Francisco Queen Ann style row house, but the original decorative wooden front had been replaced with stucco. The house had been through multiple remodels, both before and after purchase by the Owner’s family. The objective of the design was to open up the floor plan to incorporate a larger Kitchen and improve the flow of the house to accommodate social gatherings and entertaining.
The Main floor reflects an eclectic blend of traditional Victorian details and the Owner’s contemporary stylistic taste. A wall separating the dining room and an adjacent room was removed to create an enlarged Dining Room-Library area with a built-in bookcase that reaches from the floor to the coved ceilings and a formal staircase to the third level was added to replace a narrow set of stairs from the old kitchen. At the same time, the staircase was extended to the garage floor. Previously, to reach the garage, the Owner had to go outside and take the front or back steps.

To make maximum use of the space within the existing frame of the building, pocket doors, many with semi-translucent glass panels, were used wherever practical. By closing pocket doors, the downstairs media room can be turned into an on-suite guest bedroom without impacting access to the rest of the floor or the upstairs.
In the original house, the upstairs was reached via steep, narrow stairs off the kitchen and had no plumbing. It was redesigned to create functional rooms with greater storage. A Bathroom was added as well as a large dressing area with under the counter washer and dryer.
In addition to major structural upgrading, a significant amount of excavation was performed in order to convert the rear part of the Basement into a separate apartment with 9 foot ceilings. The City required a 2 car garage for a 2 unit building which involved widening the existing garage door opening with a steel moment frame.
The rear of the house, which faces north, was designed to capture as much light as possible. A new deck was built with colored concrete pavers and galvanized iron railing. The rear garden area was designed to become a private outdoor extension of the house. Tall (8’ above grade) stucco walls were constructed on 3 sides of the downward sloping lot and around a level concrete patio, including 15’ deep piers drilled to provide structural strength. Extensive landscaping around the perimeter of the central patio includes bamboo on the north wall for added privacy from uphill neighbors.
In the Kitchen, custom cherry cabinets by Huggy Bear were installed which included fluted glass doors on the upper cabinets. Counter surfaces, including a large 4’ x 9’ central island, are white Carrara marble with backsplash in 2” x 8” Carrara subway tile. An additional work table was custom built to match the design of the Kitchen cabinets and counters, including Carrara marble top.
The Main Floor Bathroom also features Carrara subway tiles, a large 6’ air jet tub mounted under a Carrara slab, and a separate curb less shower. The room benefits from natural light from an original skylight and an added shaft light for an evening glow.
The upstairs Bathroom includes an open curb less shower and glass tile on all wall surfaces. In order to achieve a curb less shower, the floor framing had to be raised. Large (8’ high) bypass doors with semi-translucent Shoji pattern glass provide privacy and easy access to either end of the room. Multiple venting skylights were installed upstairs to capture as much natural light as possible and provide additional headroom in the shower area. The roof lines create interesting skylight shafts.

When my partner inherited his mother’s 100+ year old house in San Francisco, we wanted to preserve the flow and feel of a classic Queen Anne style house, while also bringing it up to 21st century standards. Hiring an architect who genuinely listened to our ideas and desires was the first step, but we needed a contractor who could truly render those plans in wood, steel, and stucco. Fortunately, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle led us to Podesta Construction. A visit to a similar whole house project just a couple of blocks from our house landed them on our short list.
We chose Podesta as our contractor based on testimonials from other satisfied clients, their detailed project cost analysis, their reputation for keeping to schedules, their continued good relations with clients long after the end of the project, and their reputation for maintaining a clean and well kept site. It was very important to us that our neighbors not be subjected to more inconvenience, noise, and mess than absolutely necessary.
Weekly, and then every other week meetings with the architect and Podesta ensured that plans were interpreted correctly and issues resolved promptly. Perhaps more important, ideas for improving the overall design were debated and incorporated into the project with a minimum of disruption to the schedule.
We are thrilled with our totally renovated house and thankful that we found the right architect and contractor to help us realize our dreams. In so many ways, a home renovation, especially one as extensive as ours, is a more difficult project than building from scratch. It takes an experienced contractor to work though all the potential glitches. We would not hesitate to recommend Podesta to anyone in need of such an experienced contractor. - Inestroza