Project Description
The original “Painted Lady” Queen Anne Victorian on Postcard Row in San Francisco is one of America’s most iconic homes. The homeowners wanted to maintain its historic integrity. In fact, as a city-designated historic home, nothing that faced the street could be structurally altered. On the inside, the owners wanted to accentuate the home’s Victorian details, such as its chandeliers, crown moldings and baseboards. Still, it had to have everything from cat 5 cables to security cameras. The homeowners also needed more space for the kitchen with easy access to the deck for outdoor entertaining. A free-flowing floor plan added kitchen cabinetry, yet added more light to compensate for the removal of old windows. Increasing kitchen space meant removing a wall which contained a chimney to the roof, and meeting modern seismic requirements for San Francisco. The header was a 14-foot-long, eight-by-eight steel I-beam, which we had to crane in through the window. A scissor jack lifted the beam to the ceiling. The header rested atop 25-foot-tall posts which needed to be inserted between the walls. A 14-foot shear wall went straight down to the foundation, which was drilled and filled with epoxy resin to secure it. Each concrete pour required its own testing and inspection. The concrete itself was sent to a lab where it was pressure tested to 3,000 psi. The original chimney on the roof was dismantled, since a functional one was no longer needed. But a nonfunctional replica was built in its place, to maintain the historical integrity of curbside views. The most puzzling hidden treasure appeared to be one-inch plumbing pipes inside the walls, which didn’t run to any plumbing fixtures. As it turns out, they were part of a primitive intercom system: voice-activated “speaking tubes,” which were preserved in a shadow-box frame.