Week 2 - Excavation

As demolition of the main house continues, this week marks the arrival of the Excavator to the site. The front porch was removed and hole was formed in the side of the house to facilitate excavation of the concrete foundation to expand the apartment unit.

Week 1 - Off To The Races...

Demolition of the existing structure officially began last week.  The construction crew arrived, set up their office and are now making their way through the interior of the house demolishing the interior walls and prepping the site.  Below are a few pictures of the state of demolition of the main level of the house.

Dream Team Selected

Like a good play the construction of a house requires many actors - and as we get prepared to start construction on the house in the next couple weeks, we thought it would be a good idea to acknowledge all the people that have had - or will have - a hand in bringing the design to life.

Architecture:  
                              George Bradley
                              gb architecture + design
                              http://www.gabarch.com 

Contractors: 
                              Design Line Construction
                              http://www.dlccorp.com 

Architectural Renderings:  

                              Mark Dessert
                              Powder Haus Studios 

Structural Engineering:  

                              Erevan O'Neil
                              One Design, Inc.

Construction Financing:
                              California Bank & Trust
                              http://www.calbanktrust.com

Redwood Siding:

                              Michael King

                              KDM Forest Products

Landscape Design: 
                              Philip Vitale

Take Me To The Sanatorium...

One of the more interesting tid bits about or neighborhood is that the building across the street from our house played a role Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.  The movie was filmed in San Francisco and many local sites were used as backdrops to Hitchcock's story.


In the movie, after visiting Madeline's grave, Jimmy Stewart's character, Scottie, suffers a nightmare causing him to have a nervous breakdown requiring treatment at a sanatorium. He is taken to the St. Joseph's Hospital on Buena Vista East facing Buena Vista Park.  The below images show a screen shot from Vertigo (top) and the same view from just a few years ago (bottom).

The hospital is now the Park Hill Condominium and the back end of the building on Park Hill faces our house.

Blue Balls with History

While we are working diligently on the house and planing - we could not possibly overlook the landscaping and art - could we?

We found these really neat blue steel buoys at 14 Feet in Healdsburg and thought they would make a great addition to the front yard, which will be terraced with a series of concrete retaining walls.  

As it turns out these buoys have some really interesting history - they were used during World War II to net the San Francisco Bay against Japanese Submarines.  

San Francisco was a major port and naval base that was vital to the war in the Pacific.  It was well protected by mines, guns, and numerous coastal batteries mounting 40mm anti-aircraft guns all the way up to 16 inch naval guns at Fort Cronkite and Fort Funston. In addition to these defenses, on September 15, 1941, the War Department authorized a submarine net to be positioned across the Golden Gate to prevent access to the bay by Japanese submarines.  These buoys, along with about another 100 buoys, held the net in place during the War.  The net was made and serviced at the Tiburon Naval Net Depot and at Alcatraz prison.  Navy ships would open and close the net for friendly vessels.  The below picture shows the buoys with the net just before the net was installed in the bay.

After the war the nets were recovered and returned to Tiburon for storage in case of future need. Eventually, they were salvaged, the nets went to scrap dealers, the massive concrete anchors became bulkheads for shoreline protection at the depot and what is now Paradise Park, and many of the huge buoys became beehives around California. The gantries were removed, leaving only the tracks on which they ran and a concrete trestle down the center of the base.

As can be seen by the below map, the submarine net spanned from Fort Mason on the San Francisco side to Sausalito on the Marin side.

For additional information on the harbor defenses during World War II see http://www.nps.gov/goga/historyculture/world-war-ii-harbor-defenses.htm 

Final Renderings

Now that the Planing Department has granted us approval of our overall design, we can move forward with finalizing the details relating to cost and construction planning.

Below are the final renderings of the house.  The first image is a view of the house from Buena Vista Park on Park Hill Ave. towards Corona Heights.  The second image is a view of the house looking up from Roosevelt Way.  The third image is a view of the house from the intersection of Roosevelt Way and 15th Street at dusk.

Thanks to Mark Dessert of Powder Haus Studios for the fantastic renderings that bring the design from gb architecture + design to life.

Approved!

We have now received notice from the San Francisco Planning Department that the overall site plan and our variance have been approved!  The variance has been now recoded with our deed and we are moving forward with finalizing the building permits.

This is a substantial milestone in the process and now that it is complete the next steps in the process will move swiftly along.