No, 83 Isn’t Too Old to Renovate. Just Ask San Francisco Resident Roberta Gordon

Roberta Gordon, 83 and widowed, realized during her early 20s that the ranch-style hillside home built by her father, an electrical contractor, was not accessible. She watched her aging parents struggle with the steep location and the home’s many stairs. Even though "they had added weird ramps," Roberta recalls, "I saw how difficult it was for them get older there."

Like many homes in San Francisco’s Westwood Highlands neighborhood, the shed-roofed 1960s house was built on a slope. Its two-car garage sat at the end of a steep driveway and, several steps down, the single-story, 2,000 square-foot residence sat atop a barely finished basement that had more stairs going down to it. There was no elevator.

In 2015, Roberta inherited the house and decided to fix those problems so that she could enjoy it for the years to come. Retired from teaching, she sold her house in another part of the city where she raised her two boys before turning her attention to her parents’ property. It had a south-facing garden and views of the Golden Gate Bridge to the north. And it was beloved by family. Her younger son, Aaron Gordon, a general contractor, has fond memories of his grandparents’ workshop in the basement, where he’d play Ping-Pong and they’d host great parties. For a couple of years, Aaron used it as his office.