Before & After: A Gloomy San Francisco Garage Is Retooled as a Charming English Cottage
Architect Jack Hotho and Innen Studio swap out sloping floors and exposed wires to create a bright and breezy living space.
Architect Jack Hotho and Innen Studio swap out sloping floors and exposed wires to create a bright and breezy living space.
Jessica and Stig Olson’s home is a common enough sight in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood: a stucco-clad 1928 row house with living spaces stacked atop a two-car garage. The garage was also pretty typical, with exposed joists, pipes, and wires at the ceiling, a sloping concrete floor, and little natural light to infiltrate the gloom. The couple purchased the property in 2018, and rather than park the cars inside and call it a day, they decided to tap into the garage’s potential.
Before: Garage Interior
Before: Jessica and Stig Olson bought their San Francisco home in 2018. The two-bedroom, one-bath home had about 1,300 square feet of living space above a large, unfinished garage, which has about the same square footage. In a 2020-2021 remodel, the couple kept one parking spot, and turned about 700 square feet of the garage into living space.
Courtesy of Jack Hotho
The Olsons previously lived in a rented flat in a Hayes Valley Victorian, and while they were excited to have a place of their own, their previous home had much more connected living spaces. "This house was never remodeled, so it was really chopped up," says Jessica. "We said, ‘Oh no, we don’t have any of that big, open space we used to have—how are we going to create it?’ That was the seed of the idea for the downstairs."
After: Living Room
Jack Hotho Architecture + Design and Innen Studio helped the couple convert the garage into livable space. The team excavated a portion of the floor to gain ceiling height, and the lounge now connects to the backyard via a glass bifold door. "On beautiful days, it becomes this indoor/outdoor room that can host twice as many people," says Hotho. A Timothy Oulton Haven sectional in Old Loom provides plenty of seating capacity, joined by a Chairish Rush House rug, vintage coffee table, and &Tradition Little Petra chair.
Bess Friday
Two iron sconces by Steven Handelman Studios flank original photography by Bess Friday. The design team furred out foundation walls in key places—such as behind the couch here—to create functional ledges, and straighten sloping walls.
Bess Friday
See the full story on Dwell.com: Before & After: A Gloomy San Francisco Garage Is Retooled as a Charming English Cottage
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