Many prospective home buyers prioritize purchasing old houses over newer models. People love the attractive vintage look that is mostly associated with great taste and quality. While old houses are a good choice, you should be conscious of the different plumbing problems quite common in such houses.

Check out our list of the common plumbing issues you will likely encounter in your old house. Find out essential tips on ways to solve them.

1. Outdated Fixtures and Connections

There’s nothing that lasts forever. If you think of it- older homes usually have fixtures, supply line connections, and fixtures that are bound to fail eventually. As time passes, there’s a lot of wear and tear resulting in broken knobs, restricted water flow, and leakages that give you the worst experience when using the water at home. Eventually, these minor issues translate into costly problems. It’s our nature to assume what we consider to be minor problems and only act when more significant damage happens. However, you do not want to come home one day only to find your home flooded with gushing water from a failed water line valve.

How to Solve the Problem with Outdated Fixtures and Connections

They say prevention will take you a long way. Preventive maintenance helps prevent the wear and tear that would otherwise result in expensive repairs tomorrow. It’s essential to have your local professional plumber inspect your property’s plumbing every year when you cannot do your plumbing inspection by yourself. Expert cheap plumbers have the necessary tools to detect potential problems you may miss.

2. Outdated piping

The plumbing system has different products made from other materials. That means that each of the products has a specified lifespan. Knowing the lifespan of your product is vital as you’ll see whether you should upgrade. Metals like brass, galvanized steel, and cast iron may be between 80 and 100 years old. PVC piping’s lifespan is anywhere between 24 and 45 years, while copper has a lifespan of anywhere between 70 and 80 years.

How to Solve the Problem of Outdated Piping

Doing pipe repairs and replacements is not an easy task that you can do by yourself. That’s why you want to contact a professional plumber. Considering the expenses, you are sure to incur with DIY errors, expert advice is a life-saver, not to mention a time-saver.

3. Pipe Bellies

The pipes that plumbers installed underneath your home were either buried by the contracted plumbing company or covered in a concrete slab. However, the lines are affected when gradual ground movements and shifting happen over time. Shifting downwards causes a “belly” or negative slope. The result of the slope is a restricted water flow and accumulated pools of water, sediment, or water. When you leave the situation to sit for a long time, the bellies will cause leaks or stoppages.

How to Solve the Problem with Pipe Bellies

Based on your situation, trenchless pipe bursting repair is the best solution for pipe bellies. Therefore, you should contact a plumber near you. The plumber conducts an assessment with the help of a snake camera to determine the extent of the damage.

4. Root Intrusion/Faulty Sewer Lines

Sewer lines are not always in a position where you can see them. That makes it hard for homeowners to think about their condition. However, sewer lines can face risks like root intrusion. The moisture coming from the sewer lines is a natural fertilizer for the trees and shrubs which grow into the sewer lines. The sewer line damage causes clogs and leaks, costing you your comfort, health, and money.

How to Fix the Problem of Root Intrusion

The best solution for root intrusion problems is a drain relining procedure or complete trenchless sewer line replacement. Depending on the extent of damage, a trenchless repair could take a day or more- usually, it takes a day with an expert. The method is cost-effective, and you don’t have to disrupt your schedule during the repair.

5. Bad repairs

Many homeowners take care of their plumbing repairs themselves, whether they do it themselves or hire a handyperson. These issues may be highly frustrating, from the seemingly little, like unsecured lines or backward sink traps, to significant and costly mistakes, including hazardous heating systems or poorly sloped showers.

How to Fix the Bad Repairs Problems

While some of these fixes are humorous, others are potentially dangerous and should be corrected immediately by a skilled plumber.

When moving into an older property, you should have a professional plumber evaluate your lines, drains, and fittings. Minor fixes today will save you cash by avoiding future emergencies.

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R.Ichard Segovia’s house is as loud as the Latin rock music he teaches kids in his basement studio. With colors ranging from jungle green and royal blue on the sidewalk to a red and yellow sunburst on the ridge, the otherwise humble Spanish-style house is essentially a giant mural, a crowded portrait of long deceased musicians, Segovia’s family members, social activists, various psychedelics and one or the other jungle animal.

Segovia has lived in the Mission District of San Francisco since 1963 and sees itself as the guardian of the district’s culture, especially as the birthplace of Latin rock. (Carlos Santana, a family friend, grew up nearby.) But increasingly, the 68-year-old “Mayor of the Mission” is faced with a stark display of all the colors that have been bled from the city in successive waves of technology-driven ones Gentrification.

“I walk through the neighborhood every day and see all these gray houses,” says Segovia. “It’s like a cemetery.”

From the International Orange of the Golden Gate Bridge to the intricately carved and painted facades of the Painted Ladies in Alamo Square, vivid colors have long been the grammar of San Francisco’s native architecture.

Richard Segovia stands in front of his brightly painted house in San Francisco. The house next to his is painted gray. Photo: Talia Herman / The Guardian

But between the pastel tones and the gold leaf decorations you can see more and more a conspicuous juxtaposition: 125-year-old houses painted in the tones of a nuclear warhead from the Cold War or a dormant cinder cone. In neighborhoods like Mission and Haight, this phenomenon reads for some residents as the eradication of the Latino community or the ongoing counterculture. Gentrification gray houses have become a totem of wealthy intruders. The rush of wealth to central cities is global in scope, but its impact has been particularly pronounced in San Francisco – all the more as the city is known to value its own uniqueness.

Some of these homes have accents of black or darker gray. Some are just the color of a stranded humpback whale. Many have the crispy oxidized planters full of succulents or geometrically austere horsetail plants straight from a dwell magazine page, while others feature brightly painted doors in the same off-neon palette as athleisure clothing.

To their proponents, they’re sleek and contemporary, with paintwork that can take a punch without ever looking dirty. To their critics, they’re unimaginative, historically inaccurate deviations that a wealthy biotech CEO who wears a gray Patagonia fleece vest every day will appreciate – or worse, real estate agents are pushing to add some appeal to a potential investment property in the country nobody is allowed to live.

“I had some concerns about painting our house gray, even though it’s a symbol of gentrification in the Mission,” says Kate Shaw, who lives with partner Dav Rausch in a Mission Victorian they bought in 2012. But the couple, a professional designer and a designer by Hobby, say gray was a “jumping off point” in “reinventing” the “shape” of their pre-1900 home.

A calendar shows a home with a color scheme on historic buildings in the Bay Area designed by Bob Buckter, an independent color consultant. Photo: Talia Herman / The Guardian

“Going towards monochrome might be interpreted as lazy, but getting those colors right is his own business. It’s an art in itself, ”she said of Facetime during a tour. “Color emphasizes the shape and not the other way around.”

“We hired a Latino crew led by a Latino who was laid off from my company,” added Shaw. “People said, ‘Hire him! He’s great and we want to make sure he’s looked after and cared for. ‘ His crew said, ‘We’re used to so much more color and we love that!’ They placed it at the top of their website as what they were most proud of. “

The notion that Victorian houses were traditionally polychromatic is as much a myth as is our contemporary notion of ancient Roman cities like Bone White. As a form of civic improvement, Roman buildings were brashly – garishly decorated by most modern standards – while San Francisco’s Victorians were likely relatively drab when first built.

“When these Victorians started they didn’t have that many color options – usually white or gray, lead-colored. You didn’t pick out the moldings, ”says architect David Baker, who lives in a gray house himself. “I think we shouldn’t take it seriously – it’s just color.”

But for Bob Buckter, known as Dr. Color, it is anything but just color. He has worked as an independent color consultant on historic buildings in the Bay Area for more than 50 years – around 18,500 by his count.

“I talk to people, find out what their taste is, what they like, what they don’t like, whether they are wild or conservative, whether they like dark blue or dark gray or polychrome, how they are dressed, how they design their interiors” he says in his gray-purple office with aubergine-colored curtains and hand-painted ceiling medallions.

Many Buckter customers return for a second or third treatment – in some cases a fourth. He takes a straightforward approach of giving the customer what he wants and tries not to impose his own taste on people. But the usual result is a uniquely harmonious mixture of colors, so that a monochrome, matte exterior appears contradicting his practice. Is it simply a taste preference or the mutilation of an irreplaceable treasure from an old sequoia tree?

“All of that. I’ve spent my life taking care of the architectural details of historic houses and other architectural things, and I want to find out the purpose that they let me in and make color. Whether the market is selling the building or Proud of ownership, I have to take care of all of that in my design, “says Buckter, who thinks I’ve done something.”

After consulting with so many homes and getting enough attention that his work has resulted in copycat jobs, it’s likely that Buckter shifted collective tastes in a certain direction. Consequently, the rise of the gray Victorian could be a reaction against his aesthetic.

Bob Buckter, known as Dr. Color, has consulted on nearly 18,500 historic buildings in the Bay Area – including his own home in the Mission. Photo: Talia Herman / The Guardian

“That can be part of it,” says Buckter. “I think the main reason is a trend towards simplicity and modernity. They are fed up with the polychrome look, some of these people. This trend has been noticed by others and some people just ride the wave of this trend. “

The lack of color annoys some longtime residents whose love for the sedate San Francisco homes has never diminished.

“I wish they’d make me the color officer for San Francisco so that people would check with me what colors they were using,” says artist and photographer Liz Mamorsky. “Some people try to do something good and restore a Victorian style, but they don’t quite get the colors right. You want that retinal flash that you get by having two complements of the same shade. “

Fred Messbarger, a 15-year-old homeowner in Mission, calls the gray trend “heartbreaking,” saying that the “beauty of San Francisco resides in the Victorians and Edwardians, and the contrast of the houses and the curves and the details – and that too.” Neighbors”. . One house could have completely different colors than the others. “

Messbarger had his Italian house repainted in turquoise, navy blue and white around 1870, with gold details and a neon green door. Everyone in the family had input and the response was positive.

“When I work outside in the garden or even leave the house, I keep getting comments and compliments,” says Messbarger. “It’s nice to hear because it took us five years to decide what to paint.”

“I didn’t think we were brave,” he adds. “I just thought we were bringing back color. The door is bold, but that’s our son’s fault. “

But sometimes gray is what happens when a diverse group tries to make a decision.

Eric Carlson owns a condominium in a four-story building that is home to a Latino family, a Greco-American family, and another single man. When it came time to repaint the “deep pale pink with white moldings” on the exterior, these very different people found it difficult to come to an agreement. After six weeks of looking at Swatches, everyone made lists of their top 4 and their two “absolutely not”. The result? Homburg Gray, with parchment white trim.

“I would have been fine with a much more expressive color,” says Carlson. “I was also aware that this had to be a consensus and that these were acceptable colors. Do i love her No. But does it look a lot better than what we had before? By and large, life is about compromise. I knew that by the early 20s there would be no appetite for a historically accurate color. “

If nobody really loves it, then why does gray seem to dominate?

“I think we’re in a strange place where this slate gray looks like a popular color and so is self-reinforcing,” says Carlson. “We are used to this dull palette of modern architecture, and it is boring. We are not exactly in the Baroque era of architecture. “

For some brokers, a dull tungsten gray coat can do more than just dampen the look. When a luxury real estate company bought the house next to Segovia and painted it gray, Segovia tried to put down the real estate agent and tell him that whoever bought the house would have a rock musician as a neighbor.

Cousins ​​Maggie Guillen, 12, left, and Noe Zuleta, 14, sit on the front steps of their home in the Mission District. Photo: Talia Herman / The Guardian

“He wouldn’t pay any attention to me. So I said, ‘I’m going to take revenge on these fools.’ ”Segovia put his speaker system against the wall and slammed Metallica during the open house.

Eventually, the real estate company spent $ 40,000 to soundproof Segovia’s home studio so they could offload their property – to people who paid $ 750,000 and then four years later for $ 1.7 million to the current owner sold.

Segovia has been offered $ 2.5 million in cash for his home so many times that he threatened an aggressive agent with legal action.

“I’m not moving. I’m not going anywhere. I have my roots,” he says. “Working with kids, teaching kids music without asking for money. It’s about giving back to the community. Latin rock music is Made here in the mission district, so my aim is to keep that alive. “

As for the ongoing cruelty, “There should be a law,” says Segovia. “Enough is enough. For me they are prison colors.”

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If you walk past the nondescript, light brown building on 1336 Grove St., there isn’t much reason to stop. San Francisco is full of architectural gems and this facade is pretty simple. There are no bright colors, no Victorian flourishes, no splashy sign – just a small logo that was stuck on the glass doors for a construction company. But if you tilt your head back and take a look at the top of the center of the building, you will see a decorative horse head sticking out.

This emblem is a nod to what this ordinary commercial building once was – a horse stable, one of many former horse stables hidden in town. These buildings were an integral part of any neighborhood in San Francisco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the pre-auto era, local residents who wanted to get around in private but had no space to house their horses kept horses in community stables that were centralized in the neighborhoods.

For those who could not afford their own horses, horses, coachmen and wagons were rented in these historical paint schemes. These early versions of a taxi company flourished in San Francisco during the gold rush and, according to Bonnie Spindler, had the best business in the country, ahead of New York City. Spindler, a real estate agent and Victorian expert, said it might be because the city still owned farms and grasslands to build such a thriving business, but business in general was booming at the time.

1336 Hainstrasse

Screenshot / Google Maps

An 1876 article from the San Francisco Chronicle said the first livery stall in the city opened in 1851. The second was founded just a few years later and was located on the south side of California in Montgomery in what is now the financial district. Before long, “the supply matched demand across the city, and the stables shot up like mushrooms in the morning until we have at least three quarters of a hundred today,” the article says.

This reporter describes other stables such as the Dexter Stables on Bush Street near Sansome, which housed 90 horses and 15 carriages. 332 Bush St., Healy and Fagen’s livery, founded in 1862, owned 68 horses. At 408 Bush St., Mr. Martin’s stable contained 88 horses. Another was on Sutter Street, across Kearny Street. Another was at 126 Ellis St., which was reportedly charging $ 30 a month, or about $ 739 in today’s dollars.

The Chronicle reporter describes a particularly well-known paint job called The Fashion Stables on Sutter Street near Sansome that the owner declined to disclose because “we might have to pay too much tax if we got the height our full income, was the answer, accompanied by a knowing smile. “

Stable Cafe, 2126 Folsom St.

Screenshot / Google Maps

For the wealthiest in society, they might have had a private carriage house built outside of their property. This was reportedly the case at 2126 Folsom St., currently the location of the Stable Cafe and Malcolm Davis Architecture’s office in the Mission. The clue is a wooden beam protruding from the roof of the building – workers would have used a pulley system to lift hay into the attic while the horses were stored below.

Davis, who has owned the building since 2006, bought it from owners who had looked after it since the 1970s. They shared stories of how the building used to be the private coach house of James Phelan, the Mayor of San Francisco from 1897 to 1902. While city records prior to the fire and earthquake of 1906 are nearly impossible to track down and verify, Davis was told that The building was constructed in the 1870s and only narrowly escaped the fire.

Seeing the unique building for sale, Davis couldn’t help but fulfill his dream of turning the hayloft into an office that he believed would be the perfect location for his architectural practice. “I loved the exposed half-timbering, the plank floors, the high ceilings. It just has a lot of character, ”he said.

He later expanded the lower area to include a large kitchen, which is now the café, and the adjacent parking lot is used as an event area. He said that cafe-goers and event guests are constantly asking about the history of the space.

The high ceilings and wide open spaces of a horse stable lend themselves well to a building conversion, and a feature story by Curbed in April 2018 shows the transformation of an old horse stable into a modern office building. The Jackson Square building at 915 Battery St. was reportedly “constructed of wood salvaged from the ships that clogged the bay when the enterprising 49ers stormed into town,” and although no one is sure when it was built its original use was as a horse stable. Since then, it has served as an antique shop and architecture firm and is now home to the Scenic Advisement investment bank.

220 Dolores Street

Screenshot / Google Maps

“The team worked really well together, and we all agreed that we wanted to keep the original purity of the building intact,” said interior designer Tineke Triggs, Principal at Artistic Designs for Living, Curbed 2018 of the renovation. “We kept most of the original details – including what appeared to be horse bites in some of the beams.”

There are also former horse stables alongside older houses on larger lots, often referred to as carriage houses, like the one we featured in Guess the Rent in June 2021. Some smart homeowners have chosen to convert this space into a loft apartment rather than a garage into a loft apartment, but kept the barn doors. According to historical research by the San Francisco Planning Department: “Many of these buildings have now been destroyed, but some still exist and are used as garages, ancillary apartments or small apartments. In some cases the original house may have been demolished and replaced, and a coach house or other outbuilding remains in the back yard of the residence built later on the parcel. “

The document also mentions that former residential stables were particularly vulnerable to redevelopment, with many being replaced by residential or commercial buildings, particularly along Franklin and Gough streets.

220 Dolores St. has this telltale sign – a wooden beam that likely once helped lift bales of hay to a second level – on his carriage house, which can be seen from Alert Alley. As one of the “Tanforan Cottages”, the house was built around 1853 and is one of the mission’s oldest residential buildings and is listed on the California Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

But most of the former horse stables and carriage houses are not protected and not that obvious. San Francisco is a city with a lot of old buildings. So the next time you look at an old building, look for clues.

915 battery St.

Screenshot / Google Maps

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HCountless San Franciscans lined the streets on Sunday – phones drawn and ready – to watch a unique procession slowly moving through the city. “Ladies and gentlemen, please stand on the sidewalk,” yelled a police spokesman. “There’s a house coming down the street.”

Known as the Englander House, the two-story, 5,170-square-foot green Victorian building had lived in the heart of San Francisco for more than a century. But for years it stood empty and fell into disrepair, wedged behind a gas station and towered over by new residential buildings. The city, suffering from housing shortages, was ready to erect a 48-unit building in its place.

But instead of tearing down the beautiful building, the teams lifted it from the foundation, put it on wheels, and heaved it into a new home six blocks away. Arborists, town workers, and excited onlookers joined the parade through sharp turns and tight gaps with balconies and light poles as the six-bedroom house advanced at a speed of no more than 1.5 km / h.

Englander House was relocated to a new location about six blocks away. Photo: Noah Berger / APCarla Schlemminger and Corrina Chow pose for a photo in front of the house. Photo: Brittany Hosea-Small / Reuters

The move, which cost owner Tim Brown around $ 400,000 (£ 280,000), was no easy task. According to the San Francisco Historical Society, it was the first time a Victorian had been relocated in around 50 years – but it is certainly not the first time at all. San Francisco has a long history of building relocation, often in similarly dramatic ways.

In the 1970s, 12 houses were relocated from the western addition of the city. Dave Glass documented the process. Photo: Dave Glass

As early as 1886, Samuel Clemens – better known by his pseudonym Mark Twain – mockingly reported about an unfortunate move for the local newspaper Daily Morning Call, as Andrew Chamings of SFGate noted in an article about the history of the house moving late last year. “An old house broke out of its berth last night and drifted down Sutter Street toward Montgomery,” the author wrote, adding that “the tramp’s two-story half-timbered house has been wandering listlessly on Commercial Street for several days.”

Back then, horses had to do the hauling. The crews used boards, ties, and oiled boards to slowly drag the houses over the hills of San Francisco. It seems like a difficult way to go, but Diane C. Donovan, who detailed the centuries of relocation in her book San Francisco Relocated, found it to be a fairly common practice. Some houses were even brought into town by ship before being transported across town.

The city’s most famous move – and probably the largest – took place in the 1970s when 12 Victorian homes were saved from demolition during the San Francisco Western Addition redevelopment plan. Two decades earlier, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency had set out to evacuate an entire community and build new homes that would attract wealthy residents. Western Addition’s neighborhoods, home to mostly black and immigrant families, were about to be demolished in what is now considered one of the most egregious acts of gentrification. In the end, more than 800 stores were closed and 4,729 households had to leave their homes. Around 2,500 Victorian houses were demolished.

Around 2,500 Victorian homes were demolished, but 12 were saved. Photo: Dave GlassA worker signals a truck driver pulling Englander House through San Francisco on Sunday. Photo: Noah Berger / AP

But 12 were spared. As public anger grew over the wiping out of the Victorians from the city, the redevelopment agency agreed to auction some of the homes and move them out of the area.

“It was like moving a herd of giant elephants – and about the same speed,” said Carlo Middione, a former redevelopment officer, in a video of the experience published by FoundSF, a local history organization. The project lasted almost a month.

“People who lived nearby opened their windows and saw a large Victorian house go by,” said Glass. Photo: Dave Glass

“It was a big spectacle,” says Dave Glass, a photographer whose parents emigrated from Poland and raised him in Western Addition. They moved to the Sunset District on the beach when his childhood home was demolished. Years later he documented the resettlement of the rescued houses. “People who lived nearby opened their windows and saw a large Victorian house go by. It was really something to see. “

The Englander House makes its way through San Francisco. Photo: Noah Berger / APThe process hasn’t changed much, Glass said. Photo: Dave Glass

Glass was out and about last weekend watching the Englander House move through town. The process, he said, hasn’t changed much. But he thinks has the feeling. He complained that the structures had not been valued in the past few decades. “People didn’t care about the Victorian houses,” he said, noting that while dozens have been preserved, thousands have been destroyed. “Now they are valued.”

Glass hopes it stays that way, so that the San Franciscans take enough pride in the city’s history and aesthetics to protect the Victorians – even if that takes great strides. “We have these tall, ornate redwood buildings,” he said. “Nobody else has that.”

The post ‘Like shifting a herd of elephants’: San Francisco’s historical past of homes on wheels | San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

“Life isn’t like in a movie. Life … is a lot harder.”

This is what the wise projectionist said in Giuseppe Tornatore’s film “Cinema Paradiso” from 1988. In March 2020, movie theaters around the world closed as the COVID-19 pandemic spread seriously.

To adapt, many independent theaters switched to a virtual demonstration model.

“Although our theater was closed for most of 2020, surprisingly it was still an extremely busy year for The Roxie,” said Lex Sloan, general manager of the historic, non-profit Roxie Theater, which is more than 100 years old. “Within two weeks of closing, we opened Roxie Virtual Cinema and began programming a dynamic series of films to keep engaging with our audiences.”

By the end of 2020, The Roxie had shown more than 200 virtual titles and engaged 30 artists and filmmakers. “Virtual cinema wasn’t lucrative,” says Sloan, “but it was a great way to keep our members and patrons busy!”

The Roxie has also partnered with the Sundance Film Festival to host screenings at Fort Mason Flix, a series of drive-in films hosted by the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

Meanwhile, giants battled – Cineworld suffered a $ 3 billion loss in 2020 – and sparked skepticism about whether the cinema industry could revive itself, already at risk from the rise of streaming services.

Beloved theaters went dark. The streets grew silent. Fear and sadness stained the air.

Hope was not lost, however.

“STAY HEALTHY AND SAFE”, read the marquee of the Castro Theater. “WE WILL BE BACK SOON.” As promised, The Castro reopened on June 26th and 27th to screen a range of films for the 45th annual Frameline Festival known as “the Bay Area’s most prominent and well-attended LGBTQ + arts program”. The Roxie also hosted multiple frameline functions, as it has been doing every year for over four decades.

When Bay Area favorites like the Balboa Theater and The Vogue reopened in early June, there was good news. Previously in financial freefall, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema emerged from bankruptcy under the new leadership of Altamont Capital Partners, an acquisition managed by Fortress Investment Group LLC and Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League. The dine-in-cinema chain, which used to face a string of layoffs and cuts due to the pandemic, has now announced that it will open five new theaters within the next year. (Mission Street Alamo is scheduled to reopen August 13th.)

Additionally, the COVID-19 closings were not entirely destructive. Traditional theaters like The Roxie took the opportunity to undertake several renovations.

“The lobby has new carpets and tiles, a fresh paint job, and much-needed [Americans with Disabilities Act] Improvements, “says Sloan.” Thanks to a generous grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, we now have air conditioning and improved air filtration. “

The Roxie also brought its “Take A Seat on 16th St.” on the market. Campaign to replace the used seating (originally from the Coronet Theater) with state-of-art seating from the Irwin Seating Company.

“I believe The Roxie not only survived the pandemic, but found new ways to thrive,” Sloan says.

On May 21st, The Roxie reopened with a screening of “Cinema Paradiso”, the winner of an audience poll. This showing was followed by David Lynch’s “Eraserhead,” which was shown frequently as a Roxie midnight film in the 1970s and 1980s. On May 22nd, “Eraserhead” was presented in all its surreal, eerie glory in 35mm. The first showing opened with a media meltdown drag show, which Sloan described as “jaw trapping”.

On July 17th, Lynch will return to The Roxie with a 35mm screening of “Mulholland Drive”. Further screenings in mid-July include Barbet Schroeder’s “Barfly” and “Linda and The Mockingbirds”, presented by the Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy and the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts.

In early August, The Roxie will show Beth B’s “Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over”, with a personal visit from Lunch himself. David Lowery’s “The Green Knight,” a 4K restoration of Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Castle of Cagilostro” and Pablo Larrain’s “Ema” will also be shown this summer.

The Roxie is currently 50 percent full with limited show times. Masks remain required for entry but can be removed while eating and drinking in the theater. In the meantime, the Roxie Virtual Cinema will continue to offer streaming options.

“The doors of the Roxie were closed for 434 days, and despite the difficulties, I never doubted we would open again,” says Sloan.

“The patrons told me that it feels so good to finally be home.”

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During the 2018 holiday season, Chef Anthony Strong longed for a weekend getaway to Lake Tahoe but couldn’t justify the time – his restaurant in Mission District, Prairie, was just 2 months old at the time. “So I decided to build a winter ski hut out of gingerbread instead,” says Strong, 35.

Strong fell into the gingerbread house, which was partly inspired by his background in construction, between jobs, and it has since become an annual tradition. In the past two years, he’s moved from traditionally decorated gingerbread shapes to the slimmer style of mid-century modern architecture, and he’s sharing his enthusiasm in a series of gingerbread ski lodge workshops in Prairie this month.

In 2018, Strong drew on the retro-futurism of the space colonies by Bay Area illustrator Rick Guidice, which were shiny, optimistic visions of cosmic suburbs commissioned by the NASA Art Program in 1975. Strong’s original ski cabin had an unmistakable butterfly roof, a carport, surrounded by a “breeze block” wall made of peppermint-colored lifesavers and large panes of caramelized sugar glass – after all, an intimate connection with the outside world is a guiding principle of the mid-century modern design movement.

The house had an amber glow, as if there was a crackling fireplace inside, and was warm and inviting in a winter wonderland of finely ground coconut snow, candy-coated chocolate stones, and a forest of cut evergreen gingerbread trees.

In addition to its modern silhouette, the hut has also moved away from the traditional deluge of sweets and icing flourishes that go back to the beginnings of gingerbread making in Germany in the 16th century.

“Gaudy is not an option,” says the chef, who recently upgraded the foot-long, 9-inch-high cabin with more sophistication than last year’s model – entire walls are now made of sugar glass, and the snowy evergreens are brilliantly represented by sprigs of rosemary, an ingenuity of Strong’s girlfriend Katherine Altonaga, 31. “Doing something beautiful is first and foremost.”

When Strong hosts his gingerbread ski lodge workshops in Prairie this month, there are bottomless dragees, gummy candies, and candy canes for those prone to unbridled jewelry. The different parts of the structure are pre-baked and pre-cut for the students; Strong achieves crisp lines by using an Exacto knife on sugar slices and homemade gingerbread that are still warm.

Chef Anthony Strong shows off his modern mid-century Tahoe vacation lodge in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, November 20, 2019.Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

While some homemade gingerbread houses are known to sag or slim over time, the chef uses an overly sticky, heavily overworked batter that, despite its rich golden color and seductive aroma of molasses, ginger, and cinnamon, he calls “bombproof”. Likewise the “cement-strong” glaze, which is filled into piping bags for the workshops. The glue made from finely sifted powdered sugar and egg white is used to glue the gingerbread seams together.

“The house is probably not meant to be eaten,” says Strong. “At least not without a liter of milk on the side.”

The Noe Valley resident built his first gingerbread house in 2016 after leaving his veteran post as head chef at Delfina Restaurant Group. For the first time in 11 years, Strong was free over the holidays. The result of all that free time was a two story suburban style home, heavy on the decorative frosting swirls and surrounded by a picket fence.

“I had so much fun doing it that I couldn’t help it. I preserved it with hairspray and then put it in my closet, ”says the Minnesota native, who grew up helping his father build furniture, porches, and additions to houses. Strong was even the general contractor for Prairie, overseeing the skimpy design and construction, which features indigo-colored plywood walls instead of expensive tile or wallpaper, as well as some of Rick Guidice’s cosmic prints. Modern gingerbread houses seemed like a natural intersection between Strong’s culinary know-how and design talent.

Chef Anthony Strong and Katherine Altonaga work on the carport of their modern mid-century Tahoe vacation lodge in San Francisco, California on Wednesday, November 20, 2019.Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

In 2017, he tried a 2 foot tall, designed by Dr. Seuss-inspired fun house with a cantilevered colonnade that seemed to defy gravity. In its current mid-century modern phase, Strong has considered recreating the historic Kentucky Fried Chicken building in Palm Springs with its towering, wing-like roof, yet another retro-futuristic form of the era. Maybe next year.

The perfecting of the modern ski lodge from the middle of the century was a suitable holiday activity for the busy restaurateur and snow-hungry Midwesterner, which he is now doing with Altonaga. You’d think that building a gingerbread miniature wouldn’t have the restorative benefits that an actual retreat in a true Lake Tahoe cabin could offer, but Strong would contradict that.

“I’m really crazy about gingerbread,” he says. “I go down a rabbit hole and suddenly two days have passed.”

Leilani Marie Labong is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. Email: food@sfchronicle.com

Build your own gingerbread ski lodge workshops with Chef Anthony Strong. 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. December 7, 14, and 21 at Prairie, 3431 19th St., San Francisco. 415-483-1112 or http://prairiesf.com/about/. Reservations required. $ 150 for a house, two people.

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The post Prairie chef provides gingerbread homes a midcentury fashionable flip appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s storied Victorians are making a comeback.

For over a decade, young homeowners—fueled by tech money and the dominance of modern architecture—were heavily reworking the city’s cache of historic properties. Many century-old homes had their interiors gutted to create open-plan living spaces, their architectural details removed to make way for precise corners, their woodwork painted bright white and their exteriors washed in various shades of gray.

Amid the pandemic, the tide is finally starting to turn. A growing number of younger residents of San Francisco are choosing to purchase and restore historic properties—in particular the Victorians that are so synonymous with the city.

According to Realtor.com, views of Victorian and Edwardian properties in San Francisco have increased by 80% year-to-year, and the median price-per-square-foot for these homes reached $1,050 in January, up 8.7% from last year. Views per property of modern single-family homes, meanwhile, were down 5.7% over the same period, with a 1.8% increase in price-per-square-foot to $831. News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, also operates Realtor.com under license from the National Association of Realtors.

The front parlor of Tracy Labernik and Evan Sirc’s home features many original Victorian details, such as decorative moldings, cornices and a picture rail on the wall. Pocket doors separate rooms.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

“For the last 10-12 years during the massive economic boom here, houses were in such demand that you had people buying Victorians, painting them a solid dark gray and stripping out the interiors in an effort to modernize the appearance of a house that they obviously didn’t like that much,” says Lynne Rutter, a decorative painter who serves as the president of Artistic License, a coalition of local artisans dedicated to period revival work. “Recently, I have seen far more thoughtful restoration happening, and younger homeowners who are doing more considerate work. They are eager to know more about their homes and will ask a lot of questions,” she says.

More:These Luxury Markets Are Set to Get a Post-Vaccine Boost

The Covid-19 outbreak has accelerated this trend, according to Bonnie Spindler, a real-estate agent who specializes in Victorians. Although San Francisco, like many urban centers, experienced a slowdown in general market activity during the pandemic, single-family homes saw a significant spike in interest, as many residents who chose to stay within the city looked to move out of apartments in exchange for something with more personal space. Amid this shift, the appeal of Victorian homes with original floor plans has increased, as people have found that open-concept housing isn’t as conducive to stay-at-home-life.

“If you are on Zoom calls, you can’t have two office meetings going at the same time,” Ms. Spindler says. “Everyone was gutting the walls between the kitchen and dining room, but if you burned shallots and had to start over, the entire house would smell like burned shallots.”

San Francisco’s Four Seasons houses—a row of four Queen Anne-style residences in the Upper Haight district built in the 1890s. Aimée Leifer and Tjarko Leifer bought the Winter house (third from left) in October 2016.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

The Leifers wanted to preserve the history of their home while also updating it for modern life. They restored the original newel-post light in the entry, for example, but kept the main staircase painted a nontraditional white.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

Traditional Victorian homes (built during the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901) were designed with a specific area for every function of domestic life—dining room, drawing room, kitchen, parlor—often separated by pocket doors. “Living at home with no chance of entertaining has led some people to appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of San Francisco homes,” says Fiona Woods, a contractor with a focus on historic properties.

Victorian homes were devised with private chambers meant to allow for at-home doctor visits and births, and to protect against the deadly diseases that were so prevalent during the period, something that has become all the more timely in light of Covid-19. Toilets were kept separate from the rest of the bathroom, surfaces were finished in easy-to-clean porcelain and marble, and transom windows assured that sunlight and fresh air could circulate even when the doors were closed.

“Victorian architecture built in the era of disease and health paranoia has often been criticized for its overly sequestered and fragmented interior layouts that seemed outdated and fussy in previous decades,” Ms. Woods says. “Now it’s become surprisingly practical.”

More:A Mansion, Once San Francisco’s Most Expensive Listing, Sells for a $10 Million-Plus Discount

The interiors of Jennifer Tobits and Sarah Piepmeier’s Victorian feature an eclectic mix of new and antique furnishings. Shown here is the dining room, which is located in what would have originally been a parlor.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

In San Francisco, the result of this Victorian renaissance is a fusion of historic and modern design, modified for contemporary living—a notable departure from traditional movements of the past. “In the 1970s, when a lot of Victorians were being restored in earnest, many of the owners created time capsules inside of them, with all of the layers of window treatments and elaborate wallpaper and theme rooms full of 19th-century antiques,” Ms. Rutter says. “What is so different now are things like the use of space, or the eclectic mix of design from multiple eras.”

Simon Wistow and his partner, Stephanie Vacher, had been casually searching for a home to buy in San Francisco for about a year when the pandemic hit. The couple was living in a modest duplex, where sliding pocket doors enclosing the dining room created the only private area outside of the single bedroom. “With both of us working, we had to essentially negotiate who was going to get the dining room to go and take calls. That accelerates the process,” says Mr. Wistow, 43, co-founder and vice president of strategic initiatives for Fastly, a cloud-computing services provider.

As they looked, they realized they wanted something with a bit more history and charm. “We started developing a shorthand for what we call the ‘developer’s special,’ which was a house that had just been gutted and had all of the character sucked out of it,” says Mr. Wistow, who was born in England and raised in Germany.

More:A 1933 Babe Ruth Baseball Card Could Fetch a Record US$5.2 Million at Auction

The exterior of Simon Wistow and Stephanie Vacher’s Victorian (center), which they bought in July 2020 for $3.8 million.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

With the aid of their agent, Tania Toubba of Sotheby’s International Realty, the couple found a 1900 Victorian in Haight Ashbury that had been renovated but still retained many original features and most recently served as an artist residency and gallery space. They bought the six-bedroom, 4,049-square-foot home in July 2020 for $3.8 million, and immediately moved in and began planning restorations and updates, starting with preserving an elaborate but disintegrating stained-glass window at the front of the house. The four-month process, overseen by local specialist Nzilani Glass Conservation, cost approximately $25,000 and involved removing the panels and taking them apart, salvaging all of the original broken pieces and rebuilding the missing glass.

“We love this city in all of its iterations and all of its eras, and being able to take care of wherever we live so that it can survive for another couple hundred years means a lot to us,” says Ms. Vacher, 36, who works as an artist and a website designer. Although the previous renovation added many contemporary elements, the couple plans to rehabilitate, highlight and add when suitable as many Victorian details as possible, including repurposing wood from elsewhere in the house into traditional-style cabinetry, installing period-specific wallpaper and restoring the main staircase, which is original to the house and “covered with more layers than an Everlasting Gobstopper,” Ms. Vacher says.

Aimée Leifer, a 41-year-old venture capitalist and interior designer, and her husband, Tjarko Leifer, 43, the co-founder of Wellio, a food-tech startup that was acquired by Kraft Heinz in 2018, have found a greater appreciation of their Victorian home over the past year.

More:A Bit of Paris in San Francisco Lists for $16.95 Million

“Friends with open-concept layouts have lamented their inability to separate out the different areas and activities,” says Ms. Leifer, who has two young boys, ages 3 and 5. “In a Victorian house, we can all be living, working, schooling, doing everything at the same time and not really know what anyone is up to.”

The couple purchased one of the well-known Four Seasons houses—a row of four lavish Queen Anne-style residences in the Upper Haight district built in the 1890s by shipwright John Whelan—for $2.625 million in October 2016. Known as the Winter house, the structure features an intricately painted blue facade that was still in relatively good condition, with a carved snowflake centerpiece on its second floor. The interiors, however, had not been updated in almost 50 years and were in need of a major renovation. “We wanted to strike a balance between preserving the beauty and history of the home while also making it comfortable and updating it for a modern family lifestyle,” Ms. Leifer says.

The Leifers with their sons, ages 3 and 5. During the pandemic, the dining room was often used as an art studio for the boys.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

With a budget of over $1 million, the 13-month project kept most of the original footprint intact while adding a new foundation, plumbing, heating and electrical, as well as an extensive remodel of the kitchen. Surgical renovations were needed to restore original details such as the fireplace surround in the living room and to rehabilitate pocket doors that had been sealed into the walls. They also built out the attic to contain a playroom, office and bathroom, automated the old carriage doors on the garage to house their Tesla and added contemporary touches throughout such as bold wallpaper and furnishings, as well as a backyard honey bear mural by their friend, the local street artist Fnnch.

Fnnch’s then-girlfriend and now wife, Leah Culver, a 38-year-old tech entrepreneur who currently works as a software engineer for Twitter, became one of the most prominent young Victorian homeowners when she purchased an iconic Painted Lady—one of the city’s most photographed Victorians built in the 1890s that sit in what is known as Postcard Row—in January of 2020.

In January 2020, 38-year-old tech entrepreneur Leah Culver purchased one of SanFrancisco’s iconic Painted Lady Victorians (middle) for $3.55 million. She is documenting the restoration process on an Instagram account.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

“I wanted something move-in ready, but the things I was seeing just weren’t the right fit. A lot of them were modern or redone to be modern, and some of them weren’t done particularly well,” Ms. Culver says of her year-and-a-half search. The yellow-and-pink-hued three-level Painted Lady was on the market for less than a month before Culver purchased it for $3.55 million, or $800,000 over asking price.

More:From Santa Cruz to California Wine Country, Luxury Home Sales Doubled During the Pandemic

The 2,588-square-foot property had been remodeled haphazardly in the 1960s or ‘70s and had fallen into disrepair. Ms. Culver is in the midst of planning an extensive restoration that will cost nearly as much as the purchase price. Although the layout of the bedrooms and some of the public areas will be reconfigured, she plans to restore as many historical details as possible based on old photographs and on touring her neighbors’ homes. As she awaits approvals from the city planning department, Ms. Culver has launched an Instagram account, @pinkpaintedlady, detailing the process, which currently has 16,600 followers.

In February 2021, the landmark Englander House was moved from its original location to a new spot seven blocks away. It was the first time in 40 years that a Victorian home had been relocated in San Francisco.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

An aerial view of the Englander House relocation. The carefully orchestratedproduction cost around $500,000 and took over three years to plan.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

Ms. Culver’s house isn’t the only Victorian that has gained attention on social media. In February, a crowd of mask-clad, iPhone-wielding onlookers filled the streets by Civic Center to watch the Englander House, a landmark Victorian residence built in 1880, move from its original location at 807 Franklin Street to a new spot seven blocks away, to make way for the construction of a 48-unit luxury rental facility. Videos of the house uploaded to Twitter and Instagram soon went viral.

It was the first time in 40 years that a Victorian home had been relocated in San Francisco, and the carefully orchestrated production, which involved lifting the 80-ton two-story Italianate-style structure and transporting it slowly by truck on large eight-wheel dollies, cost around $500,000 and took over three years to plan and get approved, according to Toby Morris, co-founder of Kerman Morris Architects, the firm in charge of the project.

In the new location, the house will be adjoined to a Victorian-era former mortuary and rehabilitated into 17 new apartments.

More:Bing Crosby’s Onetime Bay Area Home Hits the Market for $13.75 Million

For Jennifer Tobits, a 46-year-old art conservator, preservation was top of mind when she purchased a 1900 Victorian in the Lower Haight district with her wife, attorney Sarah Piepmeier, 47, for $2.995 million in May 2016. The home was previously owned by Mark Stoermer, the bassist for the rock band The Killers, who listed it for the exact price he paid after only a few months, according to the couple. “This house was a total fixer-upper. It was a mess,” Ms. Tobits says. “But it was charming and the bones were great.”

Over the past few years, the couple has embarked on a slow and deliberate restoration that has involved replacing the roof and reconfiguring the second floor while retaining and reusing original doors and hardware and restoring Lincrusta wall coverings via a company from the U.K. that has been in business since 1877. They even reclaimed their neighbor’s 1890s Minton tiles and used them for the floor of their front porch.

The interior décor is an eclectic mix of new and antique furnishings, while nearly all of the architectural elements are either original, repurposed or reproduced to be authentically Victorian.

More:5 Rooms, 5 Redesigns

During the pandemic, Ms. Tobits and Ms. Piepmeier turned their attention to the facade. Referencing a black-and-white photograph found at the California Historical Society, they replaced windows, cleaned stained glass and re-created and salvaged parts of the damaged redwood exterior. The house was also given a new paint job: deep navy trimmed with shades of ivory and gray and highlighted with copper and 23.75-karat gold leaf detailing that illuminates its ornamental elements.

The exterior color palette of Victorian houses is perhaps one of the most divisive subjects when it comes to their historic preservation. Although San Francisco Victorians were originally painted neutral tones, they are better known for a rainbow of exuberant hues, a trend that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.

Earlier this year, attorney Tracy Labernik and her husband, Evan Sirc, a radiologist, both 40 years old, spent over $35,000 transforming their recently purchased Italianate-style Victorian’s exterior from blue to bubble gum pink.

“I remember we were both standing on the sidewalk looking up at the house and grinning ear-to-ear,” says Ms. Labernik. “Whether it’s a way to find a small spark of joy in this pandemic, or something else, we aren’t sure. But it’s what we picture when we think of San Francisco Victorians.”

The post San Francisco’s Victorian Homes Are Being Restored to Their Unique Glory appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

San Francisco’s storied Victorians are making a comeback.

For over a decade, young homeowners—fueled by tech money and the dominance of modern architecture—were heavily reworking the city’s cache of historic properties. Many century-old homes had their interiors gutted to create open-plan living spaces, their architectural details removed to make way for precise corners, their woodwork painted bright white and their exteriors washed in various shades of gray.

Amid the pandemic, the tide is finally starting to turn. A growing number of younger residents of San Francisco are choosing to purchase and restore historic properties—in particular the Victorians that are so synonymous with the city.

According to Realtor.com, views of Victorian and Edwardian properties in San Francisco have increased by 80% year-to-year, and the median price-per-square-foot for these homes reached $1,050 in January, up 8.7% from last year. Views per property of modern single-family homes, meanwhile, were down 5.7% over the same period, with a 1.8% increase in price-per-square-foot to $831. News Corp., owner of The Wall Street Journal, also operates Realtor.com under license from the National Association of Realtors.

The front parlor of Tracy Labernik and Evan Sirc’s home features many original Victorian details, such as decorative moldings, cornices and a picture rail on the wall. Pocket doors separate rooms.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

“For the last 10-12 years during the massive economic boom here, houses were in such demand that you had people buying Victorians, painting them a solid dark gray and stripping out the interiors in an effort to modernize the appearance of a house that they obviously didn’t like that much,” says Lynne Rutter, a decorative painter who serves as the president of Artistic License, a coalition of local artisans dedicated to period revival work. “Recently, I have seen far more thoughtful restoration happening, and younger homeowners who are doing more considerate work. They are eager to know more about their homes and will ask a lot of questions,” she says.

More:These Luxury Markets Are Set to Get a Post-Vaccine Boost

The Covid-19 outbreak has accelerated this trend, according to Bonnie Spindler, a real-estate agent who specializes in Victorians. Although San Francisco, like many urban centers, experienced a slowdown in general market activity during the pandemic, single-family homes saw a significant spike in interest, as many residents who chose to stay within the city looked to move out of apartments in exchange for something with more personal space. Amid this shift, the appeal of Victorian homes with original floor plans has increased, as people have found that open-concept housing isn’t as conducive to stay-at-home-life.

“If you are on Zoom calls, you can’t have two office meetings going at the same time,” Ms. Spindler says. “Everyone was gutting the walls between the kitchen and dining room, but if you burned shallots and had to start over, the entire house would smell like burned shallots.”

San Francisco’s Four Seasons houses—a row of four Queen Anne-style residences in the Upper Haight district built in the 1890s. Aimée Leifer and Tjarko Leifer bought the Winter house (third from left) in October 2016.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

The Leifers wanted to preserve the history of their home while also updating it for modern life. They restored the original newel-post light in the entry, for example, but kept the main staircase painted a nontraditional white.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

Traditional Victorian homes (built during the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901) were designed with a specific area for every function of domestic life—dining room, drawing room, kitchen, parlor—often separated by pocket doors. “Living at home with no chance of entertaining has led some people to appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of San Francisco homes,” says Fiona Woods, a contractor with a focus on historic properties.

Victorian homes were devised with private chambers meant to allow for at-home doctor visits and births, and to protect against the deadly diseases that were so prevalent during the period, something that has become all the more timely in light of Covid-19. Toilets were kept separate from the rest of the bathroom, surfaces were finished in easy-to-clean porcelain and marble, and transom windows assured that sunlight and fresh air could circulate even when the doors were closed.

“Victorian architecture built in the era of disease and health paranoia has often been criticized for its overly sequestered and fragmented interior layouts that seemed outdated and fussy in previous decades,” Ms. Woods says. “Now it’s become surprisingly practical.”

More:A Mansion, Once San Francisco’s Most Expensive Listing, Sells for a $10 Million-Plus Discount

The interiors of Jennifer Tobits and Sarah Piepmeier’s Victorian feature an eclectic mix of new and antique furnishings. Shown here is the dining room, which is located in what would have originally been a parlor.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

In San Francisco, the result of this Victorian renaissance is a fusion of historic and modern design, modified for contemporary living—a notable departure from traditional movements of the past. “In the 1970s, when a lot of Victorians were being restored in earnest, many of the owners created time capsules inside of them, with all of the layers of window treatments and elaborate wallpaper and theme rooms full of 19th-century antiques,” Ms. Rutter says. “What is so different now are things like the use of space, or the eclectic mix of design from multiple eras.”

Simon Wistow and his partner, Stephanie Vacher, had been casually searching for a home to buy in San Francisco for about a year when the pandemic hit. The couple was living in a modest duplex, where sliding pocket doors enclosing the dining room created the only private area outside of the single bedroom. “With both of us working, we had to essentially negotiate who was going to get the dining room to go and take calls. That accelerates the process,” says Mr. Wistow, 43, co-founder and vice president of strategic initiatives for Fastly, a cloud-computing services provider.

As they looked, they realized they wanted something with a bit more history and charm. “We started developing a shorthand for what we call the ‘developer’s special,’ which was a house that had just been gutted and had all of the character sucked out of it,” says Mr. Wistow, who was born in England and raised in Germany.

More:A 1933 Babe Ruth Baseball Card Could Fetch a Record US$5.2 Million at Auction

The exterior of Simon Wistow and Stephanie Vacher’s Victorian (center), which they bought in July 2020 for $3.8 million.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

With the aid of their agent, Tania Toubba of Sotheby’s International Realty, the couple found a 1900 Victorian in Haight Ashbury that had been renovated but still retained many original features and most recently served as an artist residency and gallery space. They bought the six-bedroom, 4,049-square-foot home in July 2020 for $3.8 million, and immediately moved in and began planning restorations and updates, starting with preserving an elaborate but disintegrating stained-glass window at the front of the house. The four-month process, overseen by local specialist Nzilani Glass Conservation, cost approximately $25,000 and involved removing the panels and taking them apart, salvaging all of the original broken pieces and rebuilding the missing glass.

“We love this city in all of its iterations and all of its eras, and being able to take care of wherever we live so that it can survive for another couple hundred years means a lot to us,” says Ms. Vacher, 36, who works as an artist and a website designer. Although the previous renovation added many contemporary elements, the couple plans to rehabilitate, highlight and add when suitable as many Victorian details as possible, including repurposing wood from elsewhere in the house into traditional-style cabinetry, installing period-specific wallpaper and restoring the main staircase, which is original to the house and “covered with more layers than an Everlasting Gobstopper,” Ms. Vacher says.

Aimée Leifer, a 41-year-old venture capitalist and interior designer, and her husband, Tjarko Leifer, 43, the co-founder of Wellio, a food-tech startup that was acquired by Kraft Heinz in 2018, have found a greater appreciation of their Victorian home over the past year.

More:A Bit of Paris in San Francisco Lists for $16.95 Million

“Friends with open-concept layouts have lamented their inability to separate out the different areas and activities,” says Ms. Leifer, who has two young boys, ages 3 and 5. “In a Victorian house, we can all be living, working, schooling, doing everything at the same time and not really know what anyone is up to.”

The couple purchased one of the well-known Four Seasons houses—a row of four lavish Queen Anne-style residences in the Upper Haight district built in the 1890s by shipwright John Whelan—for $2.625 million in October 2016. Known as the Winter house, the structure features an intricately painted blue facade that was still in relatively good condition, with a carved snowflake centerpiece on its second floor. The interiors, however, had not been updated in almost 50 years and were in need of a major renovation. “We wanted to strike a balance between preserving the beauty and history of the home while also making it comfortable and updating it for a modern family lifestyle,” Ms. Leifer says.

The Leifers with their sons, ages 3 and 5. During the pandemic, the dining room was often used as an art studio for the boys.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

With a budget of over $1 million, the 13-month project kept most of the original footprint intact while adding a new foundation, plumbing, heating and electrical, as well as an extensive remodel of the kitchen. Surgical renovations were needed to restore original details such as the fireplace surround in the living room and to rehabilitate pocket doors that had been sealed into the walls. They also built out the attic to contain a playroom, office and bathroom, automated the old carriage doors on the garage to house their Tesla and added contemporary touches throughout such as bold wallpaper and furnishings, as well as a backyard honey bear mural by their friend, the local street artist Fnnch.

Fnnch’s then-girlfriend and now wife, Leah Culver, a 38-year-old tech entrepreneur who currently works as a software engineer for Twitter, became one of the most prominent young Victorian homeowners when she purchased an iconic Painted Lady—one of the city’s most photographed Victorians built in the 1890s that sit in what is known as Postcard Row—in January of 2020.

In January 2020, 38-year-old tech entrepreneur Leah Culver purchased one of SanFrancisco’s iconic Painted Lady Victorians (middle) for $3.55 million. She is documenting the restoration process on an Instagram account.

Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal

“I wanted something move-in ready, but the things I was seeing just weren’t the right fit. A lot of them were modern or redone to be modern, and some of them weren’t done particularly well,” Ms. Culver says of her year-and-a-half search. The yellow-and-pink-hued three-level Painted Lady was on the market for less than a month before Culver purchased it for $3.55 million, or $800,000 over asking price.

More:From Santa Cruz to California Wine Country, Luxury Home Sales Doubled During the Pandemic

The 2,588-square-foot property had been remodeled haphazardly in the 1960s or ‘70s and had fallen into disrepair. Ms. Culver is in the midst of planning an extensive restoration that will cost nearly as much as the purchase price. Although the layout of the bedrooms and some of the public areas will be reconfigured, she plans to restore as many historical details as possible based on old photographs and on touring her neighbors’ homes. As she awaits approvals from the city planning department, Ms. Culver has launched an Instagram account, @pinkpaintedlady, detailing the process, which currently has 16,600 followers.

In February 2021, the landmark Englander House was moved from its original location to a new spot seven blocks away. It was the first time in 40 years that a Victorian home had been relocated in San Francisco.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

An aerial view of the Englander House relocation. The carefully orchestratedproduction cost around $500,000 and took over three years to plan.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

Ms. Culver’s house isn’t the only Victorian that has gained attention on social media. In February, a crowd of mask-clad, iPhone-wielding onlookers filled the streets by Civic Center to watch the Englander House, a landmark Victorian residence built in 1880, move from its original location at 807 Franklin Street to a new spot seven blocks away, to make way for the construction of a 48-unit luxury rental facility. Videos of the house uploaded to Twitter and Instagram soon went viral.

It was the first time in 40 years that a Victorian home had been relocated in San Francisco, and the carefully orchestrated production, which involved lifting the 80-ton two-story Italianate-style structure and transporting it slowly by truck on large eight-wheel dollies, cost around $500,000 and took over three years to plan and get approved, according to Toby Morris, co-founder of Kerman Morris Architects, the firm in charge of the project.

In the new location, the house will be adjoined to a Victorian-era former mortuary and rehabilitated into 17 new apartments.

More:Bing Crosby’s Onetime Bay Area Home Hits the Market for $13.75 Million

For Jennifer Tobits, a 46-year-old art conservator, preservation was top of mind when she purchased a 1900 Victorian in the Lower Haight district with her wife, attorney Sarah Piepmeier, 47, for $2.995 million in May 2016. The home was previously owned by Mark Stoermer, the bassist for the rock band The Killers, who listed it for the exact price he paid after only a few months, according to the couple. “This house was a total fixer-upper. It was a mess,” Ms. Tobits says. “But it was charming and the bones were great.”

Over the past few years, the couple has embarked on a slow and deliberate restoration that has involved replacing the roof and reconfiguring the second floor while retaining and reusing original doors and hardware and restoring Lincrusta wall coverings via a company from the U.K. that has been in business since 1877. They even reclaimed their neighbor’s 1890s Minton tiles and used them for the floor of their front porch.

The interior décor is an eclectic mix of new and antique furnishings, while nearly all of the architectural elements are either original, repurposed or reproduced to be authentically Victorian.

More:5 Rooms, 5 Redesigns

During the pandemic, Ms. Tobits and Ms. Piepmeier turned their attention to the facade. Referencing a black-and-white photograph found at the California Historical Society, they replaced windows, cleaned stained glass and re-created and salvaged parts of the damaged redwood exterior. The house was also given a new paint job: deep navy trimmed with shades of ivory and gray and highlighted with copper and 23.75-karat gold leaf detailing that illuminates its ornamental elements.

The exterior color palette of Victorian houses is perhaps one of the most divisive subjects when it comes to their historic preservation. Although San Francisco Victorians were originally painted neutral tones, they are better known for a rainbow of exuberant hues, a trend that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.

Earlier this year, attorney Tracy Labernik and her husband, Evan Sirc, a radiologist, both 40 years old, spent over $35,000 transforming their recently purchased Italianate-style Victorian’s exterior from blue to bubble gum pink.

“I remember we were both standing on the sidewalk looking up at the house and grinning ear-to-ear,” says Ms. Labernik. “Whether it’s a way to find a small spark of joy in this pandemic, or something else, we aren’t sure. But it’s what we picture when we think of San Francisco Victorians.”

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San Francisco’s famous Victorians are making a comeback.

For over a decade, young homeowners – driven by tech money and the dominance of modern architecture – heavily revamped the city’s cache of historic real estate. Many centuries-old houses have had their interiors gutted to create open living spaces. The architectural details have been removed to make room for precise corners. The woodwork was painted bright white and the outside was kept in different shades of gray.

In the midst of the pandemic, the tide is finally starting to turn. A growing number of younger San Francisco residents are choosing to buy and restore historic properties – especially the Victorians who are so synonymous with the city.

According to Realtor.com, the number of Victorian and Edwardian homes in San Francisco has increased 80% year over year, and the average price per square foot for these homes reached $ 1,050 in January, up 8.7% year over year. Views per property of modern single family homes decreased 5.7% over the same period, with the price per square foot increasing 1.8% to $ 831. News Corp. , Owner of the Wall Street Journal, also operates Realtor.com under license from the National Association of Realtors.

“Over the past 10 to 12 years during the massive economic boom, homes were so in demand that people bought Victorians, painted them dark gray, and removed the interiors to update the look of a house that they obviously didn’t have that good fallen, ”says Lynne Rutter, a decorative painter who serves as president of Artistic License, a coalition of local artisans dedicated to revitalization. “Lately I’ve seen much more thoughtful restoration work and younger homeowners doing more considerate work. They really want to know more about their homes and will ask lots of questions, ”she says.

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