Photography by Maria del Rio, courtesy of Mother Magazine (go here to see more images of Lena’s inspiring home).
One of our favorite house tours on Remodelista in recent years? Then, in 2013, the couple relocated to San Francisco, where Lena grew up, and bought and renovated a 1913 Craftsman-style house in the Outer Sunset.
“Leaving New York was hard. We agonized over the decision and worried for the first year that we had made a mistake. After buying our house, things clicked,” says Lena. In the living room, a simple day bed from The Futon Shop in San Francisco provides extra seating.
It took a full year to renovate We didn t intend to do a gut renovation but the house needed extensive earthquake upgrading so we ended up stripping...
...the entire house down to the studs We worked with architect Mason St. Peter. The wall to wall bookshelves are composed of custom wood planks on brackets from Home Depot
The interiors are painted Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace (on walls) and Sherwin-Williams Ghost Pines (on trim) throughout the home. The rug is a 100 percent wool remnant from California Carpet, cut to size and bound.
Lena wrangles her 4-year-old, Abe.
In the powder room, Lena plays with scale, opting to lean a petite mirror on a ledge instead of installing a full-sized one.
One of the couple’s priorities when it came to the renovation?
Abe perches on the island, which is topped with an off-white Corian.
“We had hoped to keep the existing doors [in the kitchen], but after raising the ceiling height in the kitchen, the scale of the old doors didn’t work. We splurged on larger doors with more glass and a thinner wood frame (Marvin’s Integrity series) and they’re one of my favorites parts of the house,” shares Lena.
Simple hooks under the open shelf provide hanging storage.
Their 10-plus-year-old Crate & Barrel bed moved with them from Brooklyn. To her point, the flooring in their bedroom is simply painted plywood.
A rocking chair from a family friend and a vintage dresser occupy a corner of the master bedroom.
The view into the master bath, which features a vanity also built by Liz Dunning.
The boys’ rooms both have wall-to-wall carpeting: “We decided on it because the ceilings are peaked in the kids’ rooms, and we thought carpet would encourage us to lie on the floor—and it does.”
The door on this side of Abe’s bedroom connects to Eli’s room.
Lena poses next to a peace towel that she designed and sells on her website; she donates a portion of the proceeds to nonprofits that work toward “peace, justice, and non-violence.”