Before: A Not-So Modern Mediterranean (Pt.1)

Feb 6

What is San Francisco Architecture?

When most people think of San Francisco architecture, they think of rows of candy colored victorian houses. And they wouldn’t be wrong, there are plenty of these gems scattered across the city. But California’s most popular architectural style is Spanish Eclectic/Mediterranean and San Francisco is home to hundreds of buildings in this style. Built in the 1920s and 1930s by developers, they were designed to emulate more expensive mansions and to lure midwesterners to California with affordable, glamorous Spanish-style homes by the sea.

Most of these homes are located on the west and north side of the city, in the Sunset, Saint Francis Wood, and Marina district. There you can drive through blocks and blocks of homes reminiscent of something you’d find in a Spanish colony or coastal city, with terra cotta roofs and arches. On the east side of the city, where I live, the mediterranean houses tend to be more scattered, mixed in with other architectural styles. My house was built in 1935 and has been barely touched, but lovingly maintained, since then.

This is an awful “before” photo.

One thing I hate about before-and-after renovation photos is that generally the before photos tend to be badly lit and framed, making it hard to reasonably compare the two. It’s like using a drunk mugshot as a before and then being super impressed with the glow up.
In the loft, I didn’t take any decent “before” photos (or “after” photos for that matter), but for this renovation I’m committed to doing better. So, I spent hours cleaning my house to take “before” photos, and we’ll compare them properly when we’re done.

A confession…

I confess, I was going to clean the entire house and take all the photos in one day to do one huge “before” post. But I failed. I managed to do the upstairs, but the downstairs is a whole ‘nother beast and frankly I’m procrastinating hard. It’s not cute down there and very messy because there’s no storage. Plus, my husband is fixing the stairs and that project isn’t done yet. Excuses, excuses. So, we’re going to do this in two parts and I’ll eventually get to part two...I swear.

And a note…

I did not overly style my place, this is how it actually looks at its cleanest (but trust me, it doesn’t last long). So while I did move the overflowing laundry bag and pile of junk that normally sits on the kitchen counter, I wanted to showcase the house as we live in it. The appliances and seasonings are where they normally live and my dog has a bed in every room.

So, without further ado, the “before” of my house - part one: the upstairs!

Foyer

We’ve fallen in love with this little foyer. Our front door is original, with a charming little window to see outside. It adds a lot of character and although it’s a bit of a pain because the doorknob jams and the wood is warped, we hope to strip, refinish and keep it. We installed a digital doorbell and security system, but kept the original chime-like doorbell.

Living Room

The living room is my favorite room in the house. With its high ceilings and natural light, I find myself spending most of my time here. It has original beams, a fireplace that I love decorating, parquet floors, arched windows and arched doorways. I’m obsessed with the arched windows. I know they’re en vogue now, but they’re original to the house (and single paned and maybe have wood rot - oops!). When we moved in, the room had original candelabra-style lighting (they were the same as the ones in the dining room), but we decided we didn’t want to live a year with those in so we changed them immediately.

Dining Room

The idea of having separate rooms for things is so novel to us after coming from a loft where there were no walls. The dining room features original molding (painted gold) and two accent walls. We bought some limewash paint from Color Atelier to switch this up in the next week or so. The plan is to limewash paint the entire house, but figured this would be a good room to do a test run. The original dining room chandelier was here when we moved in, but we weren’t fans so we switched it. The wall sconces are going to be next to go.

Kitchen

Welcome to the kitchen, in all its original ugly tile glory. When we moved in, some of the walls were orange and there was fruit painted on the cabinets. As you can see, we haven’t gotten around to painting the fruit on the exhaust hood. This kitchen is the bane of my existence and it drives me crazy. Who ever thought tile would be a good countertop? WHO?! We did some quick updates for liveability, painting over the cabinet fruit and orange walls, and added shelving, but that’s about it.

Courtyard

This courtyard is one of my favorite things about this house. We hang out here often, and it’s a great place to hang in the evenings when it’s too cold to be in the yard but you still want to stay outdoors. When there’s music playing in the park we can hear it and enjoy it from here.
We added string lights, and the floor tile appears to have been an update from the last owner, rather than original. While in normal times, the blue frames might have been an immediate “no” from me, during covid their Santorini vibes have actually been refreshing.

Hallway

This quirky curved hallway runs alongside the courtyard and takes you from the front door straight to the bedrooms, bypassing the living room, dining room, and kitchen. It’s a little random, but kind of great, and we love it for the charm it adds to the house..

Bathroom

This bathroom clearly hasn’t been updated since 1935. The last owner had painted the wall above the tub neon orange (see the above “bad” before photo). I actually have a suspicion this house was REALLY colorful and the realtor forced the owners to paint it white before selling. I wanted to try going for a monochrome look and match the paint to the tile color and it’s not great, but shhh, don’t tell my husband because I made him paint it. There used to be original lighting in this room, but it broke quickly after we moved in and had some super sketchy wiring so we replaced it. This bathroom also has an absurd number of doors: one from the toilet room to the hallway, one from the main bathroom to the hallway, one from the toilet room into the main bathroom, and one from the main bathroom into the bedroom.

Bedrooms

The bedrooms are pretty straightforward. They’re not huge, but not tiny either. We updated the lighting, added some window shades, but didn’t touch anything else.