Having met at college in Boston in the nineties, Yuki Bowman and Georgia Young have been friends for half their lives. “We’ve been through a lot of life milestones together,” says Bowman—from moving across the country and living together in Seattle, to being there for each other’s elopements at San Francisco City Hall, children’s births, and career changes. “We’ve seen each other through a lot of highs and lows and personal evolutions.”

Most recently, the friends worked together to transform the San Francisco home Georgia shares with husband, Peter Duyan, and their two children. Georgia, an environmental fundraiser, and Peter, a product designer, met as teenagers in Portland, Oregon, where Bowman now lives, and they had lived in San Francisco for years before they bought a 1948 midcentury home in the Golden Gate Heights neighborhood.

“I think this is the tenth place we’ve lived in San Francisco,” says Georgia. They were sold on the incredible panoramic views, which overlook the city, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the distant Marin Hills, where they’ve logged a lot of miles trail running.

Still, the house needed updates—especially in the kitchen and main bathroom. The couple had progressed pretty far with a designer on plans, before they realized that they didn’t actually like the design that was emerging. By that point they had asked Bowman, an architect at Waechter Architecture, for so much after-hours advice, that they decided to formalize their conversations.

For starters, Bowman understood the couple’s aesthetic. “When I met them decades ago, they were both fine artists (Georgia a painter, Peter a photographer) with a keen eye for color, light, and atmosphere,” says Bowman.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

On the first walkthrough, Bowman thought of a painting by Georgia that hangs on her dining room wall in Portland. “I’ve had it for 15 or 20 years, so I look at it every day,” says Bowman.

“The painting is this field of color and paint strokes, and there are these discernible moments in the canvas where you can detect an intensity or something that’s alluding to a form, but it’s not so hard-edged and disruptive that the whole canvas loses its cohesion, or the sense of being in a cloud,” she explains. “I think that’s an aura that pervades the home as well. You have the sense of being immersed in light and this larger environment that’s San Francisco and the Bay.”

The design team, including architects Ben Waechter and Reihaneh Noori, sought to express this sense of immersion by evoking the moods of the city in the different rooms targeted for the remodel. These include a sturdy, utilitarian kitchen, a dreamy bathroom enveloped in soft color, and a playful downstairs gym/media room. To keep costs down and avoid excessive waste, the couple opted not to pursue a complete overhaul—they kept fixtures in place, avoided structural changes, and opted to preserve things like the existing floors, which were refinished, and the doors.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

“The kitchen had a lot of frill going on that felt unnecessary,” says Bowman, so the plan was to streamline both the material palette and circulation through the room, which was last remodeled in the aughts. They removed a wall of cabinets to open up a doorway to the dining room, which had the added benefit of creating better sight lines to the views.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

“Yuki just knows us really well, especially Georgia, and she came back with concepts to connect the updates to the Bay Area, and have it be a frame within which we could live,” says Peter, noting how the couple relish seeing the city from multiple viewpoints. “It’s just really relaxing and interesting to look out; it’s like an ever-evolving portrait.”

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

Simplified surfaces, such as the Appleply plywood cabinetry and brushed stainless-steel counters with a meticulous eighth-of-an-inch overhang, are meant to support the couple’s love of cooking. “Our family spends a lot of time in the kitchen,” says Georgia. Adds Peter: “I worked in restaurants when I lived in Portland and New York, and a lot of the kitchen functions like a restaurant.”

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

In the bathroom, the architects suggested every plane be covered in one-inch, matte blue-green tile to evoke the San Francisco fog. “The size of the tile creates both a textural and layered effect,” says Noori, which was made all the more successful by her painstaking layout and the tile contractor's talent for installation.

Before: Bathroom

After: Bathroom

“There are very few cut tiles in that room,” says Bowman. “The natural geometry of the room does have some jogs in it with the tub niche—and we didn’t want to rebuild, or add a second geometric ordering system. So, the one-inch tile is a unifying element.”

Before: Bathroom

After: Bathroom

Downstairs, the design team turned an unused space into a gym/media room by whitewashing the ceiling, enlarging the windows, and painting the structural element that divides the room a bright, playful green.

Before: Lower Level

After: Gym/Media Room

Just as the initial design was inspired by a painting passed between the two friends, the final element in the remodel was a gift between them: Bowman drove around reclaimed wood yards until she found a piece that would be perfect for the mantel slab on the fireplace. “It was an underwater bumper on one of the Bay Bridge’s original piers before the bridge rebuild,” says Bowman. “Given Georgia’s career in conservation and her appreciation for patina, I knew this would be a meaningful housewarming gift for my dear friend.”

The completed remodel is not just an ode to the city and the family’s life inside the home, but a testament to Georgia and Yuki’s friendship. “For me, watching two friends go through this project together felt like this amazing thing,” says Peter. “It was special to witness.”

More Before & After stories:

It Started as a Remodel. Now Their Rebuilt Home “Feels Like You’re in a Terrarium”

They Made a Worn-Down L.A. Midcentury “Feel Like a Tree House”

With $240K, a Design Duo Returned Their Florida Midcentury to Its Former Glory

Project Credits:

Architecture: Waechter Architecture / @waechter_architecture

Builder: Sage Construction

Structural Engineer: Bluejay Structures

Lighting Design: Waechter Architecture

Cabinet Installer: Millwright Construction

Tile Installer: Coastal Tile & Construction Inc

Stainless Steel Installer: Standard Sheet Metal