Richmond District, from a cleaner's point of view
Depth is the defining feature out here. A house can run a hundred feet from the front bay to the rear kitchen, bedrooms strung along one side of a hall with a light well cut into the middle to feed the interior rooms. That means a lot of hallway, a lot of doors, and interior windows onto the well that nobody has washed in years. Time on site tracks the length of the hall more closely than the bedroom count.
Weather arrives off the ocean and works inland. Past 30th Avenue the marine layer hangs most mornings and salt reaches the window frames; nearer Clement Street and Mountain Lake Park it burns off earlier and the problem becomes street dust from Geary Boulevard instead. Both ends want interior glass and tracks done regularly for different reasons, so the recurring plan is built around whichever end you live on.
The building stock here
Two building types cover most of the district. Edwardian flats from 1905 to 1915 stack two or three units with high ceilings, redwood trim, a wide front bay and a shared stair. Detached and semi-detached houses from the twenties and thirties put living space over a garage behind a Mediterranean or barrel-front facade. Both are narrow and deep with a light well. Floors are oak or fir, kitchens sit at the rear, bathrooms often keep original tile, and lower levels are finished about half the time.