Before & After: Moody Blues for an Elegant Victorian in San Francisco

If anyone other than my friend Amy Lindburg wanted to buy a Victorian two-flat in San Francisco in “almost original condition” with knob-and-tube electrical wiring and no central heat, I would have pointed out that the situation could easily become the sort of costly nightmare not seen since Mr. Blandings built his dream house.

But anyone who knows Amy knows she is extremely effective. And daring. She was a hardware engineer at Apple at a time when there were practically no female engineers anywhere. She’ll take her family on a two-week trip to eastern Europe without booking a hotel room until the day she arrives (and has never had any problems). When she says she is going to do anything—from playing the French horn in the local orchestra to shipping virtual computer environments ahead of schedule—you can consider it done.

So when Amy said she was going to buy a house in extreme vintage condition, remodel it, and live on the top floor with her three children, I had no doubt the project would be a huge success. (Wait until you see the kitchen on Remodelista next week.) Painting the facade the deepest, darkest shade of blue was a risk. Here’s how it turned out.

Photography by Daniel Dent for Gardenista, except where noted.

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It seems obvious now, this elegant paint palette. But when Amy bought the house a little more than a year ago, the facade’s future was less clear…

Before

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The conventional wisdom is that if you want something to appear bigger, paint it a light color. But in this case, the off-white, two-story house looks diminished, almost as if it’s shrugging in defeat between its two taller neighbors.

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Amy knew from the beginning that she wanted to paint the house dark—and blue is one of her favorite colors. But which blue was the right blue?