For Kitty Morgan and Charles Desmarais, finding their Joseph Eichler–built condo in San Francisco was a stroke of serendipity, not unlike the couple’s experiences with discovering midcentury gems at garage sales.

She’s a former editor in chief at Sunset Magazine and most recently a features editor at San Francisco Chronicle, where he’s an art critic. In 2016, they were planning a build with an architect, the plans already in hand. “But we realized we had bitten off more than we could chew,” says Kitty. “Then, our friend and realtor said, ‘You know, there are now a couple of places available in this building.’”

Kitty and Charles bought a unit on the uppermost floor of the co-op building, drawn by its 10-foot ceilings, large windows, and views over the Fillmore District. “When we first walked in and saw that we could look out, see the city, see the sun go down, and see the drama of fog and weather come in from the coast, that was great,” says Kitty.

Less enticing was the existing kitchen. Having been remodeled in the decade before, nothing about the room remotely aligned with a midcentury aesthetic. The couple had visited neighbors whose apartments had the original kitchens intact—some with the Philippine mahogany paneling, called luan, and plywood cabinets still in place—and knew what the room should look like. “But what we had was a Home Depot special,” says Kitty.

Before: Kitchen

Kitty and Charles lived with the existing kitchen for two years before reaching out to Christine Lin of Form + Field, whose blog Kitty stumbled upon. “She had a great voice and practical [approach]. And then a lot of her designs had a real creative edge,” says Kitty. “I really wanted someone who was sensitive to Eichler, but we didn’t want to replicate that. We wanted something that was original and very much contemporary.”

After: Kitchen

The first order of business was taking a detailed inventory of the couple’s belongings, and surveying how they like to use the kitchen. “We cataloged everything that they had in their cabinets and on the shelves, and made sure we had a place for everything in the new design,” says Lin.

The new kitchen maintains the existing layout—all the better when remodeling in a multi-unit building—but that’s where the similarities end. Lin’s design starts with a base of custom walnut cabinetry, complete with pops of white and chartreuse on the fronts, then extends the walnut onto wall paneling in the adjacent dining area in a nod to the luan paneling that Eichler would have employed. Terrazzo floors throughout feel more appropriate to the home’s era, while quartz counters and a simple tile backsplash bring it all together.

Before: Storage Wall

After: Storage Wall

“One key part of the design is how we integrated the String system shelving,” says Lin. “We took an affordable shelving system, and elevated it.” Lin nestled sections of the modular shelf system in with the closed cabinets, and mounted it on the panel wall to display the couple’s collections. Doing so balances the open and closed storage, and connects the kitchen and dining room more fluidly. Lin then suggested restoring a favorite Paul McCobb credenza belonging to the couple and included it as a focal point on the storage wall.

Before: Dining Area

After: Dining Area

Since the project completed in 2020, there’s so much improved storage that Kitty is able to pull out family heirlooms now that there’s a place for them. They mix with the rest of their belongings, from the Monkeypod salad bowls the couple received as gifts at their wedding, to the Nocino liquor, made by friends, that sits atop the Paul McCobb bar. “Everything has some meaning from our life in some way,” says Kitty, who wanted a kitchen that felt equally meaningful and collected: “I wanted something that felt like it had accreted over time.”

More Before & After:

A Rustic Austin Home Gets a Dose of California Cool

A Chicago Architect Straightens Out Her Victorian Cottage’s Unwieldy Floor Plan

Project Credits:

Builder: LY Green Construction

Interior Design: Form + Field / @formandfield

Cabinetry: Gamma Cabinetry

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Before & After: An Eichler Apartment’s Kitchen Returns to Its Midcentury Roots