The Papasan in me is laughing, and the OCD in me is crying.
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check out the charlie-brown-“high-art”-ripoff in the kitchen…
aint it beautiful? this is what you get in these days for a million bucks.
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It’s not like they converted an industrial building into apartments. This is purpose built to be apartments. Obviously nobody gave a hoot about the end product from the developer, architect, imbicilic structual engineer, contractor, broker or even the eventual buyer who will probably never live there but hopes to flip it to the next person so he can buy a bigger piece of crap and repeat. It’s the real estate bubble in built form. I live in Brooklyn. Same thing.
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It’s a structural character feature.
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My guess is that there was a load-bearing wall there, which some previous owner wanted to remove to expand the kitchen. They might not have discovered it was load-bearing until the remodel was underway, and this might have been the most cost-effective modification of the original plan. As funny as it looks, it really isn’t all that bad, though I would have used the triangular the space under the beam differently.
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According to the floorplan the front door opens right into the kitchen, meaning you have to walk around that beam everytime you leave and come home. How annoying.
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More outside the box, please.
This is SF after all. Wasn’t there an article here just a couple weeks ago about the abject lack of housing at prices that might be in reach for normal folk like restaurant workers and the like? Obviously what any self-respecting million-dollar condo owner needs is a “robot” kitchen.
How do we do that, you ask? Well, between you, me, and this Ted audience, the technology isn’t quite there yet. Our prototypes can make a passable pizza, but their Sauce Robert simply isn’t fit for human consumption (which is why we’re running trials only in states with enlightened, libertarian attitudes toward food safety and unapproved human testing). However, the CTO assures me we should have most of those teething problems worked out with just another round or two of VC and couple more converted waterfront warehouses full of engineers, segway scooters and nerf darts.
In the mean time, we’ve got an interim solution we’ve been implementing with great success: we keep the existing kitchen, in this case, beam brace and all, but wall it off – and here’s the genius part – with a cook or two on the inside*.
See, the cooks are happy to find both a job and affordable housing somewhere within a 297-minute bus ride of the city. The overpaid techbro living in the condo gets some much needed expert assistance cooking up his poptarts and protein shakes (without having to stumble himself over a weird metal strut in the middle of the kitchen). And, bonus: nobody (important) will ever have to see that painting again. It’s a win-win-win-win. Back in the '80s we business dudes would have called that synergy.
* California workplace safety law still isn’t quite as, umm, enlightened as it should be, so I suppose some pesky business-hating regulator might insist on some sort of “exit” for the menials. I’m sure we can rig some kind of “transfer tube” out of a slightly larger diameter pipe alongside the existing brace. I can’t see how that won’t work out great.
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What is the corollary of Poe’s Law that references Silicon Valley?
“Loft” here appears to mean “three-story house, but with several other three-story houses attached to it.”
Gosh, the layout is weird, though. It’s got one bedroom, but two full bathrooms. Also, that kitchen with the giant beam is the entrance. You’ll have to walk around it every time you go out.
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I’d amend that to suggest let them eat urinal cakes.
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I’d expect some hardware on those cabinets and drawers for $1 million.
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I like it. It’s like the architect or the int designer (or both) said “screw you, beam, we’ll put this cabinet here anyway.”
Impractical, obnoxious, but strangely and satisfyingly hip.
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I’ve just put TWO in my kitchen.
I didn’t need to get to the dishwasher anyhow.
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Could be San Frans new motto.
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and you have to schlep down and up two flights of stirs - and through the bedroom - every time you want another beer when you’re out on the deck. And you have to schlep them up two flights of stairs and guide them through the bedroom every time you have folks over for a bbq on the deck.
Holy fucksocks … it’s like the beam in the kitchen is the least offensive thing about that apartment.
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a 1 BR with two bathrooms? Someone plans to have a lot of guests?
this is currently less feng shui - more dung shling
I was kind of jumping to the “cookie cutter floor plan” explanation before, but now, having put way to much thought and research into this situation, I have discovered that there are other listings.
They all look equally bland, but, importantly, in very different blandly-flavored ways. None of them really have similar enough floor plans for a cookie cutter hypothesis to make sense. Plus the building does look like it’s been there awhile, new facade notwithstanding.
So, yeah, there are probably some layers of renovation going on.
I doubt anyone deliberately knocked down any walls to get the current result, but if the building has been around a while, that might be retrofitted earthquake bracing. It’s possible there was once a perfectly normal brace-free kitchen there, which got penetrated at some point by that big old thick structural member. Maybe the owner at the time just kept on going with their former layout – either out of inertia or lack of resources to change things around much.
But those cupboards, while cheap as shit, look new. And custom fitted to the beam situation. Somebody clearly renovated more recently, if only to flip it. Pretty lazy not to at least attempt some kind of actual fix.
I assume the new owner, if they’re not also newly house-poor, will just remodel though. Maybe to a generic beige open-plan kitchen on the other side, like #204. Then they can throw some bean bag chairs around the newly opened up entry/brace area and call it an idea generation space or something.
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I guess the sitting room could be used as a second bedroom.
…Although the resident would have to walk through the master bedroom to get to the bathroom, so that could be awkward.
If you removed the first-floor bathroom and turned the little hallway with the washer/dryer and the…“P”?..into a half-bath, you could run the kitchen through the vacated bathroom space and turn the brace back into a wall.
There’s a tiny door next to the flight of stairs in the bedroom closet, opening onto a blank space in the floor plan. I think it probably leads to Narnia.
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you put your weeeeed in it
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