Curtis Popp is a residential interior architectural designer. Over two decades, he established a reputation as a talented, creative and sought-after home design consultant.
Along the way, he found a side project, his family’s unconventional tri-level Land Park residence.
Popp grew up in Land Park. He and wife Sue, a nurse, were raising their two children there in a small, traditional house on Perkins Way.
But the interior designer couldn’t stop thinking about the nearby tri-level.
“One day, in the middle of the Great Recession, I saw a For Sale sign spring up on it,” Popp says. “The timing wasn’t good. And it took several visits to get Sue interested because the house at that time looked nothing like it does today.”
He adds, “I always thought this was an interesting house because it was different than anything else.”
Popp describes the home’s original condition as from another era. Shag carpets, lower-level ceilings barely 7 feet tall, covered with even lower soffits. The goal was to update yet preserve.
Today, the front entry offers two paths, one to the upper living room, the other down to a media and game room. The kitchen and dining area are on the lower level.
The living room level includes a bedroom and bath. Another half level includes two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Popp added a staircase to connect everything from the kitchen. Most of the other work involved improving the natural light.
“Most significantly, we changed out the location and size of many of the windows and doors, which opened up the light inside,” he says.
Improvements to the 2,900-square-foot home happened in three phases. First came the downstairs, with a new kitchen, dining area and living space, and new windows.
Next, they renovated the backyard, adding a pool, hot tub, patio and outdoor cooking areas. The design is stylish with boxy shrubs as dividers, expansive grass and a black granite fountain. Classic mid-century modern patio furniture completes the design.
The last phase began when a neighbor’s redwood tree crashed into the master bedroom on New Year’s Eve 2022.
“Our dog Fritz was on the bed, and Sue and I were standing and sitting in the room. It was just awful. Gratefully, we all survived without a scrape,” Popp says. “But the entire room was wiped out in an instant.”
The couple took the opportunity to turn an extra bedroom (they were empty nesters) into a full-size master bathroom suite. “We had a small bathroom previously and this gave us a chance to create a really spacious bathroom,” Popp says.
“I encourage my clients to consider remodeling in phases over time. It spreads the costs out so you can build things with quality. But the key is to make a long-term plan for what you ultimately want the home to be.”
How does the design professional work out decisions when a client is also his wife?
“Sue has a great eye and participates in the decorating aspects, but she’s grown to trust me completely on the space planning and interior design decisions,” Popp says. “The hardest part with this house was when she first saw it. She pushed back until I could help her understand the possibilities.”
The couple listed the home on the register of historic places. It was built in 1934 and called the Welch House. Its styles are Art Moderne and International.
Popp often allowed the house to inform his design decisions. “I took much of the modern design details of the era it was built and enhanced them,” he says.
One example are the round vertical wooden stairway poles.
“I used that design detail in other places where we changed levels with stairs,” he says. “My philosophy is to find the best part of the architecture and interior architecture and exploit that. And then let’s find things that aren’t working and eliminate those things. The key is to find the essence of the original design intention.”
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