(Here is the final tryout post from Susie. You can check out her other two posts here and here. Enjoy the tour!)
Names: Bonnie, Bill, Nina, and Dora
Location: San Francisco (Portola District)
Size: 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home, about 1800 square feet
Years lived in: Since July 1999
When Bonnie and Bill went looking for a home almost ten years ago, their family was about to double in size. Expecting twin girls, and both PhD students at the time, they bought the house “on a prayer and a song,” hoping it would be big enough to contain their growing family. Nearly a decade later, every inch of their home has been lived in and loved. The rooms overflow with art and music and the evidence of its making: cans of neatly packed together marker pens and brushes; instruments and their cases propped in every room as comfortably as the furniture itself. And the style of that furniture is simple and clean—modern classics mixed with vintage finds—so that even with the abundance of joyful stuff, the house feels orderly and purposeful.
Their location in the Portola District is quiet, just blocks away from the vast and lovely McLaren Park, one of the city’s unsung treasures. And the family has its own little slice of outdoor space: a peaceful, meandering backyard garden shared with the neighbors. Both garden and house are great examples of creative use of space. Bonnie, an architect, has re-designed parts of the house to maximize functionality but minimize major renovation. A two-car garage now serves as a family office, with bookshelves and open storage towering artfully over the desks. (Bonnie insists there’s still room for one car, but Nina corrects her: “Only if we move everything.”) A lightwell outside the bathroom window has been converted into a mini-deck, perfect for the potted bonsai that inhabits it—or for a nine-year-old looking to curl up in a sunny spot.
AT Survey
Our Style: Funky but functional. Bill and I both have a lot of hobbies and strong aesthetic opinions, so our house is eclectic by default.
Inspiration: My (Bonnie’s) background is Swedish, so I’m inspired by Swedish simple pragmatism.
Favorite Element: With our southern exposure, light penetrates deep into the house. I love to sit in the living room in the sun and read the paper.
Biggest Challenge: Size is an issue, especially because we all play music, and the sound really travels.
What Friends Say: That there’s a lot of love in our kitchen.
Biggest Embarrassment: When you open up the front door, you look straight into the bathroom. I try to remember to keep it closed for parties.
Proudest DIY: We re-did the kitchen but kept its vintage look, opened up a wall to bring more light in but kept the original cabinets. The hardware was grimy, but we loved it, so we took it all off and polished it during the renovation.
Biggest Indulgence: The range and the flat-screen TV.
Best advice: Think about how you live before you start to change big things. See if you can find a simpler solution instead of ripping everything out. Oh, and don’t be stingy with lighting.
Dream source: Ligne Rosset and Limn for a range of modern furniture. I also love the antique mall in Sebastopol. And The Touch on Valencia, which has great deals on modern pieces. There really isn’t any one source—I don’t like to walk into a house where everything seems to have come from one place. That feels so static to me.
Resources
Furniture
The Starck tongue chairs in the dining room and kitchen are from Limn; those chairs are the greatest. You can stack them up, wipe them down, dress them up or down. The living room chairs are also from Limn. Dining room table was a housewarming present from my mom, from the Salvation Army in Sebastopol. Bill has had the kitchen table since 1982.
In the bedroom, the dressers are garage sale finds, and the nightstands were made by my grandfather, a high school teacher and amateur woodworker. The girls’ desks and chairs in our family office are from Ikea. For our desk, we had a maple top made and got the legs from Doug Mockett & Co. (Since it’s a garage, the floor is uneven, so we needed adjustable legs.)
Hardware
Kitchen hardware is original. Drapery hardware throughout the house is from Stroheim & Romann.
Flooring
Kitchen flooring is VCT (Vinyl Composition Tile), from a commercial flooring company. We had them cut it into a pattern.
Accessories
We’ve picked up a lot of things in our travels. The fish hanging from the girls’ ceiling came from Mexico, and the girls knitted that little scarf for him since it’s colder here.
Lighting
Dining room fixture is the PH5 by Poulsen. The red lamp in the girls’ room is a garage sale find. We get a lot of our lamps at City Lights.
Window Treatments
Tung Luong, of TULU Design, who also made a lot of our throw pillows, did the curtains in the bedrooms. I like Pindler & Pindler and Schumacher for fabrics.
Artwork
The Jack Hanley gallery and the Southern Exposure annual art auction. We go every year. Some of our art is our own work, or by friends and family.
Framing
Sterling Art Services does a great job.
Thanks to Bonnie, Bill, Nina and Dora!
-Susie
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thanks for sharing. feels happy, lived in, chaotic, and filled with creative lives.
Your home, and it is clearly a home, has a soul.
Lovely art, beautiful furniture (especially like that white dresser/sideboard), and an enviable outdoor space. What a cosy, cheerful home.
Very lovely and totally unique. Do you happen to know what the paint color in the bedroom is?
Susie, thanks for bringing us this tour, and good luck in your try out! Like the other commenters, I was blown away by the love & family spirit which characterises this home. Wonderful!
The kitchen floor is very cool.
This is exactly the kind of post I adore to see, and would love to see more often--dwellers obsessed and passionate about living who just happen to have really good taste.
now that's a real nice family home
The kind of home that make you sigh with relief once you enter the door. Thanks for the sharing.
i really love the atmosphere of this place. wonderful.
the floor tiles in the kitchen are gorgeous. are the coloured pieces separate tiles?
thanks
just read the answer to my q...too impatient to read!
There is nothing here I haven't seen done elsewhere. A perfectly comfortable, conventional home. I just wonder why it's on the internet. I give you a C. Try to be more interesting next time!
since this home has so much going on in it, I would have like some more explanations of what i was seeing. I didnt see simple pragmatism but with an explanation maybe I would have.
thanks for sharing.
The writing is better edited this time!
Your kitchen is very cool.
You did wonderfully with growing children and lots of activities. Excellent lighting and colors. Your home looks well lived and loved. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for sharing your home! It is so nice to see a home that looks like it is actually lived in. This is a home I would love to visit in person...the kind of place you could sit down in the living room with a drink and feel like you belong.
A tour like this is a good reminder that most of us don't live in overly decorated, sterile homes that have been staged for photo shoots. Bravo!
I think we have lost sight of the point of architecture if we cannot applaud this home. Is it not meant to support human potential? What could be more lovely than children making music and art in an intelligent, casual, clean and attractive space - not to mention the LOVE - which takes it into another dimension completely.
To Bonnie, Bill, Nina and Dora: Thank you for taking my mind off Gaza . . . and thank you for building a better world.
I can't say this is not my style because its hard to pin point a style..but it looks like a loving, creative and warm home lived in by people you want to know.
Smart to have bought in Portola Hill area 10 years ago? Sitting pretty on that real estate.
It looks like Bonnie and Bill are trying to make a point -- that most other house tours appear to have had a set designer in to spruce things up. But I'm not interested in their clutter and disorderliness. Nice house. Looks lived in. So does mine, but I wouldn't submit it for a house tour.
Thanks for contributing your thoughts, everyone! I asked Bonnie and Bill if they would share their home because I agree with so many of your sentiments about how they have filled it with creativity and life.
sarah nin - I will find out the bedroom paint color from Bonnie or ask her to post it.
I aspire to their insouciance. I am now kinda despressed sitting in what feels like a very, very contrived apartment. But at least I have some inspiration.
Finally, a house that looks like REAL people live in it. I love the whole thing. good job
Great post. We have 16-month old twin boys, and it's interesting how many changes they've already put our 1700 sq. ft. rowhouse through already. It's really helpful & inspiring to see how another family has configured their space. I'd love to see more whole house tours of how people deal with kids in small(er) spaces -- Oh-Dee-Doh seems to focus much more on cute/clever kids rooms & kids stuff, and much less with how to integrate kids stuff/spaces into an overall household in a (somewhat) stylish & interesting way.
If anyone has any links to similar kid-friendly-household posts/sites, I'd LOVE it if you'd post them!
Susie ~
This was not just a great, lived-in home but the way you delivered it pulled out the soul. Thanks for reminding us how real peoples lives actually ARE as beautiful as something a designer can dream up (especially when they include growing children), and thanks for writing it well. *Very Nice Work.* I hope you become a regular contributor.
What a cool home. A cool lifestyle. I draw inspiration B,B,N&D's home because it communicates life. Good stuff.
There is nothing impressive here. I come to these house tours to be inspired. It is lived in and colorful...but why is it being feature? I'm a little disappointed, guys - I expected better...
This is cute, but I'm wondering if there was a bit of an earthquake before the shoot?
I enjoy seeing other people's lifestyles, but I have to agree that tours like this aren't what a site called Apartment Therapy is about. Especially since Maxwell has made his bones on the "8-step cure," which this house could probably stand to undergo.
There's a lot of cool objets and objects here, but what is the point if they're buried under the detritus of everyday life? I dunno, I understand the beauty in the quotidian, but all this clutter just makes me frantic.
I really like the garage. Interestingly, the most "busy" room of the house.
I also thought this was a blog about design, not about the joys of living. There's nothing in those photos that evinced any kind of clever or unusual solution.
This is a fun tour! I love homes that look as though actual people live there -- and not homes that look like beautiful museums.
This home is lovely. As an artist myself I find it inspiring to see homes that reflect the visual stimulation and everyday creativity that other artists need around them every day. Some might say its cluttered, I say it's open to ideas and joy. To me, a perfectly decluttered home is about as warm and inspiring as a morgue drawer.
Absolutely awesome abode!!! Love it!
Mina
www.bohemianvintageonline.com
Bolder, you read my mind.
This is a great AP tour - of a busy family home accommodating children. Lots of fun and beautiful things to look at.
No doubt when the children have grown and flown the nest, and the real editing begins, this house will be a stunner. But for now, it's a lovely, lovely HOME.
Thanks for sharing!
Oh I don´t know. I still think it´s lovely.
Great tour! Thanks for sharing this beautiful home.
Seeing your home on AT is especially welcome because it's so different from the many over-curated house tours w/ all the stagey photos (one perfect green pear sitting on a kitchen sill alongside a perfect off-white vase/tiny ceramic deer, etc., etc.) After a while, all those "perfect" places start looking alike to me. This is refreshingly real.
Your home is so...amazing. I love how you've pulled together many different elements (with kids, too). It is warm and inviting and has personality AND looks great. It's nice to see so many books and signs of life everywhere. Maybe I will have to re-think Portola if ever I go house hunting...
While it's nice to see a house with kids, one of the things I like about AT is it's showing of small spaces and what I can take from those homes to incorporate them into my own home. This is what keeps me coming back. 1800 sq ft. for four people is not small and I don't think it would be that big of a challenge. My family of 6 lives in a space just under 1000 sq feet. This is a challenge!! I would love to see more homes, houses or apt., with children in small spaces. I would love to see where these parents keep their children's stuff, food, dishes, schoolwork, hobbies, etc... while still having room to move around. Design and functionality in a small space with children would be so helpful as well as encouraging people to pair down their lives and reducing their environmental foot print.
Nothing against this family, their home is great, just, not the sq. footage that I've come to expect from AT.
I think this is my favorite kitchen in the round-up AT just did. It's functional and lived in but neat looking. I think I'm going to try hanging my skillets over the stove like you did... if i can figure out how (tiled walls in a rental). Thanks for the inspiration.
where's that stainless sink from?
Love the kitchen floor. And love that you let there be evidence that you have stuff and it's beautifully visible. Having seen 2 awesome BOston AT post with a garage turned into a studio- I think a great AT re-post would be simple ( and maybe sometimes not so simple)- garage transformations- for low impact space recalamation ideas. Of course this is pure fantasy on my part- we don't even have a garage.
What is that unbelievable plant in the last photo?