San Francisco, CA Soft Story

A “Soft Story” renovation to a six unit apartment building in the Sutro Heights district of San Francisco.

The construction work included demolishing and removing existing plaster walls, adding new plywood shear walls along with their associated hold-downs and anchor bolts, plus new shear transfer clips and straps, and then replacing the walls with new, painted gypsum board to maintain the fire rating of the garages.

Despite a number of unexpected conditions –the kinds of things that happen when remodeling an old building – all of the work was completed on time, within a tight budget, and with a minimum of disruption to the existing tenants. Even the basement laundry room was up and running throughout the entire construction process.