This was Plan B. Plan A was for Levi Velvick and his partner Lupe Cope to buy a home in San Francisco. But after being outbid on house after house in the city, Velvick remembered the 1885 former homestead he had spotted online a few months earlier.
The couple drove the hour and 15 minutes north to Glen Ellen to take a look.
Velvick had a hunch he could coax charm out of the place. He was right, though it took a year of weekends to strip away the dated finishes to reveal the cabin’s bones. “I really wanted to keep the integrity of the structure,” says Velvick, a product developer who moonlights as an interior designer. “I mean, I’m a scavenger. I want nothing to go to waste,” Velvick says.