In the primary closet, the custom Isla Porter built-ins are boldly colored with Portola Paints’ Kimono blue. The vintage runner is from Nickey Kehoe.
“We had been marinating on the idea of returning, so we were casually looking at houses. It was trepidatious, and a really slow process,” says Caillier, who admits to exhausting her real estate agent in the hunt for a place within their budget that had provenance, in a pocket of the city south of the Presidio. “We had put an offer in on another house and lost it. Then I flew down for work and saw this one, and I thought, We can do something good with it. It was old and very underwhelming, but it had the space that we needed, huge windows with insane light, and four bedrooms upstairs, which is so rare. I had to put an offer in right away. Justin came down and saw it a few months later and he absolutely hated it. But I said, ‘I have a vision, and you just have to trust me.’ ”
Caillier hired a contractor and completed the work without an architect, to avoid the long wait time associated with special building permits, in a delicate dance that preserved the character of the original structure while updating and expanding the rest. “We kept the three front bedrooms pretty much intact, and then the primary suite completely changed. We removed a back stairwell, which didn’t seem necessary,” she says. “From the dining room back, the house was totally updated. Then everything else was cosmetic.”
In the primary bedroom a Guy Goodfellow Collection floral covers the walls, windows, headboard, and a Jamb armchair. Upper walls and ceiling in Farrow & Ball’s French Gray; custom rug by Black Sheep unique.