186 Atherton Avenue

A. S. I. D. Designer Showcase Home

186 Atherton Avenue was a discrete rundown 1924 built house on a narrow lot with a failing foundation. Our goal was to add more space to the floor plan, create a stronger presence for the home while keeping its Mediterranean feel and 1924 detail and style..

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The narrow lot put limitations on design. The house had a garage behind it dividing the house from the backyard, breaking the lot into two segmented sections giving it little fluidity and convention. We wanted to add space to the house without covering more of the land. We also wanted to keep the original roof tiles from 1924 for their authentic flare.
These would have been very hard to match had we needed to branch out in additions.
In an effort to overcome these building dilemmas we decided to lift the house, move the garage subterranean under the house and utilize the roof tiles from the existing garage for any additions, pop-outs, etc. that we might need tiles for. We were the first team to put a full size garage under ground and raise a house to do so in Atherton.

We wanted to give the house a grand presence to take the attention away from the narrow lot. We added bump outs in the front of the house with gables and corbels. There had been several additions to the house because of the nine children it had once housed creating a very broken random floor plan. We came in and cleaned it up by eliminating some walls opening up the house. We put a lot of detail into keeping the 1924 feel and charm of the house with stucco, tile, wood windows, and structure. There was an original hand done barrel volt ceiling with 2 x 12-inch hand cut beams. We extracted it and integrated it with the new ceiling in the master bedroom.

186 Atherton was a collaboration of design, craftsmanship and cutting edge building techniques.

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