I went to see a $15.5 million house for sale last night in a fancy San Francisco neighborhood. The owner had taken a very nice house, bumped up the third floor roof, and redid the home in a very nice style. There is a wine cellar (natch!), and a lovely master bathroom with a closet to die for. The house had the usual things you’d expect for a house of that size.

Except for a couple of items: If I’m paying that much for a house, I’d want every bedroom to have its own bathroom. In this house, only the master bedroom has an attached bath. And, I’d want it to have the best view, which in this case, is a water view overlooking part of the bridge. The other two nicely-sized bedrooms on the floor (one which had a closet that was undone with water stains on the walls), shared one nice marble bath between them.

And they had the nice view, while the master bedroom looked the opposite way. I heard later that the renovation took just about 4 months. My guess is that it would take too much time and cost too much money to redo the layout on the second floor to give the master bedroom the better view and to give each bedroom an attached bath.

A tiny baby’s room (and I do mean tiny, as in a crib would fit and maybe a changing table but not a crib, table and rocking chair) without a closet (although there was a bookshelf) was next to the master bedroom. Of course, everyone who has had a child knows that babies have more stuff than grownups. So, perhaps the baby’s room could takeover the oversized linen closet next door as its closet. The walls were gorgeously painted in the baby’s room, by the way.

Back to the bathroom/bedroom situation. The third floor was lovely, with a great screening room and loads of space. But the two bedrooms up there again shared a bathroom. And in the unattached guest house (which I’d make an offer for on the spot), the bedroom and bathroom are on the second level, but not attached.

Maybe it’s just me, but I really like bedrooms that have attached bathrooms — especially for that price.

July 27, 2006.