Piedmont midcentury beauty asks $1.2 million

Buyers looking for a new angle on a home in Piedmont will find plenty at 2 Littlewood Drive, a circa 1955 house that offers an Escher-like experience for anyone trying to take in the angles of its ceilings, which verge on the remarkable—at a number of different points.

This three-bed, one-bath affair last sold in 2008 for $886,000, almost two thirds of the present asking price. A lot of that markup has to do with the evocation of the dreaded R-word over the last five years: renovation.

But despite knee-jerk fears, it looks like the owners at least employed a savvy eye deciding what to keep.

The old brick walls in the living room and the home’s facade stayed, for example, as did the jagged carnival tilt of the roof and ceilings, which splay out overhead in unexpected divots, protrusions, and angles, like the beautiful broken edges of a glacier.

The renovation delved deep into the kitchen and bathroom, but realtor Julie Gardner says the rest of the house remains original. “The floor plan is still the same, they just opened up the kitchen and opened the bathroom,” Gardner tells Curbed SF.

She adds, “The gentleman who owns it was a project manager at UC Davis and he oversaw it all himself. In fact that’s been a stumbling block, because he didn’t bother to get any permits. He figured he could do the whole thing himself with his own workers. And he did, with no permits.”

Whoops.

The new look on the single bathroom sports slick, black, contemporary looking surfaces. But notice the folded walls and crenelated ceilings in the shower, as if the entire room had hinges midway through the process of folding up.

And the newly renovated asking price on the whole place: $1.2 million.

• 2 Littelwood Drive [Julie Gardner]