Twenty-one doors. Three colorful baths. One house worth keeping.

There are houses where the first question is what to replace. At 1239 Geneva Street, I kept coming back to what we could save. The original doors, textured plaster, wood floors and colorful bathrooms gave this 1930 Spanish Revival home its character.

The trustee needed to prepare the home for sale. I organized the restoration and marketing, working with specialist craftspeople and co-listing agent Woody McCaleb. This was a Glendale property; the preparation lessons travel with me into my East Bay work.

I wanted the rooms to feel cared for without losing their age. We stripped 21 original interior doors back to raw wood. Tony Morales refinished the hardwood floors with a satin clear coat, keeping the grain and warmth visible.

For the baths, Adam Esparza of Ale Tile used traditional mud-bed methods and custom color-matched material from B&W Tile. The green, mint and lavender stayed. Those colors were part of what made the house memorable.

The paint choices were just as deliberate. Greek Villa in a flat finish went on the main living-area walls; satin made sense in the kitchen and bathrooms. Creamy in semi-gloss defined the trim. The windows shifted from Clove on the inside to Really Teal outside.

I considered the little things alongside the larger work: window hardware, vintage wall plates, polished fixtures and flat-slotted hinge screws. I also worked through bulb color and brightness room by room so the plaster, wood and tile looked right in the evening.

The house needed systems work as well as restoration. The project included an outdoor tankless water heater and electric heat-pump HVAC. I kept the specialist work, access and schedule coordinated with the finishes.

Odin + Friday staged the rooms with enough space for the architecture to hold your attention. I brought in architectural photographer Christian Klugmann to capture the house in daylight and at dusk. The courtyard and the way the rooms opened toward it were central to the presentation.

The listing launched on February 17, 2026, at $1,995,000. The New York Times included it in its March 9 feature, $1.9 Million Homes in California. We continued the showings, questions and negotiations through the accepted offer on March 13.