1201 Kearney Street, “From Rags to Riches”

The Woodhead Nutting home had been built as a single family home in 1911 but suffered years of trauma.  It was converted into a two family, then a boarding house.  At one time there was even a church in the basement.  By the time the Woodhead/Nutting family moved into the house in 1991, it had become an abandoned wreck.  The heat did not work; the stove (which still had a pilot for warmth) was home to a family of mice.  The house had become a warren of small rooms each with a deadbolt and the walls were sprayed with graffiti.  A small porch was falling of the back of the house and the yard was an overgrown tangle.

The house and garden have  been gradually renovated to what the family imagines it might have been when it was built. Theirs is not a literal restoration, but rather a reinterpretation undertaken with humor and love.  Highlights include before and after plans, ‘grandmother’ finishes from the early 1900s inside, and an evolving garden plan outside.