NARI National and Region VII 2006 Contractor of the year (CotY) Award Residential Addition over $250,000

Architect: Andrew Skurman
Designer: Susan Dossetter

This grand home in San Francisco's old Presidio Terrace neighborhood was originally built in 1905 and designed by Frank Van Trees, a prominent architect from San Francisco's pre-earthquake days. The home had large, formal rooms, but the kitchen was very dated and as was typical of early century homes, there was no family room.

In 2001 a local architectural firm was engaged by the current homeowners to design a new kitchen, family room and master bathroom. We, the general contractors, started the project by demolishing the existing garage and kitchen structure that was attached to the main house, then reconstructing a new two story addition over a basement. To make room for this new structure, the rear yard was lowered approximately 10 feet and the existing property line retaining wall was underpinned, resulting in a 24 foot high rear retaining wall. Due to strict seismic requirements in California, the new addition was constructed with oversized concrete retaining walls in the basement and two story steel moment frames for the above ground structure.

The entire addition was constructed with great attention to detail and exacting finishes. The family room features a beautiful custom built stone fireplace with herring bone brick interior and hearth. The fireplace has a smoke øscrubberÓ that heats the smoke to such a high temperature that virtually all wood burning emissions are eliminated. The addition has very interesting features such as a decorative plaster ceiling, cabinets with furniture-like detailing, and hand planed hardwood floors. The master bath has a mosaic tile heated floor and a beautiful little oval window over a gas fireplace. The new master bath, family room and kitchen were designed with the rest of the home in mind and constructed to the same level of detail and ornamentation found elsewhere in the building. The exterior was clad in yellow brick to match the rest of the home.