Before & After: A Gloomy San Francisco Garage Is Retooled as a Charming English Cottage

Jessica and Stig Olson’s home is a common enough sight in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood: a stucco-clad 1928 row house with living spaces stacked atop a two-car garage. The garage was also pretty typical, with exposed joists, pipes, and wires at the ceiling, a sloping concrete floor, and little natural light to infiltrate the gloom. The couple purchased the property in 2018, and rather than park the cars inside and call it a day, they decided to tap into the garage’s potential.

Before: Garage Interior 

The Olsons previously lived in a rented flat in a Hayes Valley Victorian, and while they were excited to have a place of their own, their previous home had much more connected living spaces. "This house was never remodeled, so it was really chopped up," says Jessica. "We said, ‘Oh no, we don’t have any of that big, open space we used to have—how are we going to create it?’ That was the seed of the idea for the downstairs."

After: Living Room 

In 2020, Jessica reached out to her friend, interior designer Hana Mattingly of Innen Studio, for help. In short order, Mattingly brought in another friend, architect Jack Hotho—and when the design meetings started, they felt more like dinner parties than work sessions. "Jess is an amazing cook—she would make this fresh bread, and then Stig always had a signature cocktail waiting for us upon arrival," says Mattingly. "It was definitely not your typical project in that regard."

In fact, the couple’s love of entertaining informed how they wanted to use the new downstairs space. "The primary goal really was hosting, because that’s such a big part of our lives," says Jessica. The first step for the design team would be to address the challenges of the existing space. "There was almost no light," says Hotho. "We knew from the very beginning that diffusing light throughout the garage was going to be our goal."

Before: Garage Center

After: Office

The team opened the garage up to the backyard by installing a bifold glass door and a new exterior concrete slab, for seamless indoor/outdoor flow. At this end of the space, they placed a comfortable lounge that can seat 12, and they painted the walls and ceiling white. "I like to do that in a lot of my projects—painting the ceiling the same color as the walls," says Mattingly. "It’s a bit more dramatic when you use a color, but with white it just makes the whole space feel bigger."

An adjacent kitchenette has its own trick for accessing the sun: A serving window runs along the counter, enabling it to serve as a bar with stools positioned outside. Open shelving lines one side of the living room, partitioning off an office space without blocking light. "We wanted to define different spaces within the one larger space, but we also needed light to pass through to each of them," says Hotho.

Before: Rear Garage 

After: Kitchen 

Hotho and Mattingly then strategized how to make the garage feel less like a garage, and more like a living space, while still incorporating key existing features. "I’ve always loved the process of keeping the good things that are old, like the patina and the history of the home," says Jessica.

To that end, the team retained the exposed joists and wood support columns while adding acoustic insulation to dampen sound from upstairs—which has the added bonus of hiding plumbing and wires. They repoured the concrete floors, creating a new base at a wood support post and flared steps at the bottom of the stairs. "We had this idea of dipping the whole floor plan into polished concrete," says Hotho.

Before: Stairs 

After: Stairs 

The new scheme had to be comfortable, inviting, and not skimp on the patina, so the team carefully mixed Jessica’s favorite vintage finds with functional new pieces, like the oversized sectional in the living room and Ikea shelving units.

"Hana was able to take all of my eclectic, wayward, crazy ideas—and all of my pieces, from random antique things to stuff that I had inherited from my mother—and then help us bring it all together and edit," says Jessica. "That simplifies the aesthetic so that it doesn’t get cluttered."

In the kitchen, the team opted for a suite of DeVol cabinets and accessories, paired with butcher-block counters Stig found at Home Depot and stained, as well as a large apothecary cabinet that’s now topped with a new counter to serve as a central island. 

In the bathroom, where no outdoor connection was possible, the team "embraced the dark and decided to go with a lot of different textures to make it feel really cozy," says Mattingly. Here, rich, dark tile meets a textural plaster finish on walls and ceiling, a vintage concrete sink, and brass faucets.

After: Bathroom 

The project wrapped in 2021, and the couple have used the new space for all sorts of gatherings with friends and neighbors—from children’s birthday parties, to movie nights, to casual dinners. "Ever since we’ve been done, we have a weekly, or biweekly, gathering with some families—we meet down there and do dinners together, and then sit around the couch and sort out our lives," says Jessica. "It has really turned into the space where we do a lot of our communal living."

More Before & After stories:

A Single Door Connects This San Francisco Bungalow’s Past With Its Future

This San Francisco Dwelling Feels Like a Japanese Ski Cabin

Project Credits:

Architecture: Jack Hotho Architecture + Design / @jackhotho

Builder: Cogent Construction & Consulting Inc.

Structural Engineer: 3DSE

Interior Design: Innen Studio / @innenstudio

Cabinetry: deVol

Photographer: Bess Friday / @bessfriday