TV mounting and furniture assembly in San Francisco

Earthquake-minded mounting for San Francisco homes

San Francisco's Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit Ordinance required owners of at-risk buildings with five or more units to evaluate and retrofit them; soft-story failure caused nearly half of the homes left uninhabitable by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. USGS gives the Bay region a 72 percent chance of at least one magnitude 6.7 or larger quake between 2014 and 2043. Inside, the part you control is what can fall.

On plaster over lath, we find the studs behind it and use anchors made for plaster so the wall doesn't crack, and every bracket's weight rating gets checked. Bookcases, dressers and cabinets get anti-tip anchors, and grab bars go into framing or rated anchors. Adding an outlet behind the screen is electrical work, priced separately through our licensed partner Bay Builder Inc.

Worth knowing about San Francisco

• Sunset tract houses of the 1920s to 1940s often had colorful polychromatic ceramic tile in bathrooms and kitchens, and wood or parquet floors.
• About 76.5% of San Francisco's 414,602 housing units were built before 1980, and 45.2% date from 1939 or earlier.
• Most Sunset District construction dates from 1925 to 1950. The standard house is stucco, with living space over a ground-floor garage, on a 25-foot-wide lot.