The story of 1558 Seventh Street began with a decrepit warehouse and the man naive enough to buy it. The building was a 1947 structure on an unremarkable block in Oakland, California, across from a public basketball court and a mile from gentrified Jack London Square. The man was David Clifford—a 26-year-old with a degree in metal arts and jewelry and a $165,000 inheritance that made him nervous. A starving artist at heart, he decided to blow the money on a space—as big as he could get—to convert into a DIY co-op and gallery that would galvanize the local arts community and provide enough square-footage for him to call home. 

Clifford and architect Scott Oliver, Clifford’s partner in the endeavor, moved into the building in 1997, curling up in sleeping bags and going without a working kitchen for close to two years. During El Niño, they had to sandbag the building and buy a Shop-Vac to suck up the flooding. Clifford’s cat, Hank, played a key role during this period: “Cats have a way of making anything domestic,” he says. But the duo’s idealism quickly gave way to the realities of building out a 9,200-square-foot space in a way that squared with their grand vision, tiny budget, and local building codes. 

“We thought it would cost $40,000 to renovate the space, but it was closer to $200,000,” says Clifford. “We really didn’t understand the scope of the project when we started.” Despite his scruffy appearance—he wears jeans and an old sweater, his hair hidden beneath a black knit “West Oakland” cap, and a penned reminder on his hand reads “screws”— Clifford, now 30, seems older than his years. He’s lived through the trials of a four-year construction project that would have cost at least $500,000 if done professionally. Now Clifford’s got more than a few tricks up his sleeve—and solutions to problems he never knew existed when he bought his first power tool. 

The first thing Clifford and Oliver did was tear down most of the 4,200-square-foot mezzanine, opening up the space and supplying close to $10,000 worth of lumber. They later used I-beams to form the base of Clifford’s bed and recycled the old yellow floorboards to build a staircase, wall, bookshelf, and coffee table (a simple wooden box, open-ended to hold magazines and other coffee table clutter). 

“I wanted people to be able to see what had been here,” Clifford says. This desire to let the building tell its own story permeates the space, from the scallop-patterned water stains left along the upper edge of an exposed-brick wall to a crusty old horseshoe unearthed when Clifford and Oliver tore up the concrete floor to lay new pipes (it now hangs above the door into the living space). The red flame decoration on the clawfoot bathtub— which stands open in the kitchen—is a reference to the hot-rod shop that once occupied the building. Details like these inspired Angelina DeAntonis, a clothing designer who works in the space, to dub the building “the House of Inside Jokes.” 

It could also be called the House of Leftovers. Ever resourceful, Clifford and Oliver rummaged salvage yards and builders’ outlets for windows and other supplies. They used a discarded inventory of plastic greenhouse sheeting to create a banister for the front stairs and mezzanine; Clifford doubled up the translucent striped panels—rotating the second layer 90 degrees to form a cross pattern—to build a shoji screen and a series of luminescent wall sconces (click here for instructions on how to make your own). Another series of ceiling lights are encircled by 10-inch segments of plastic tubing wrapped in teal-blue paper and affixed with screws. 

Then there are the doors. With the exception of two $1,000 metal fire-rated doozies that building codes require for bedrooms, Clifford and Oliver picked up most of them at local salvage yards for about $40 apiece. Rather than putting in standard hinges, Clifford installed them as sliding doors, using barn-door hardware, a caster (he recommends a Rollerblade wheel), and an angle iron placed on its side to create a channel for the caster to roll on. 

Clifford’s jewelry training is evident in the intimate details that offset the more impersonal features of the space (the chilly warehouse climate, the 21-foot arched metal roof, the concrete floor). The most striking example is the entryway separating the work area, which Clifford rents to an architect and to DeAntonis, from the domestic space where he lives with his wife, Alice. The doors—a sheet of steel covered in fluted Thermaclear (another greenhouse plastic)—are bordered by an acorn pattern designed by Oliver and cut from 20-gauge steel with a high-pressure water jet. 

Clifford is a true believer in learning as you go (he’s a proud subscriber to Martha Stewart Living), but he also stresses the importance of knowing your limits. Clifford paid $40,000 for the seismic upgrade—the single biggest expenditure. He also outsourced the plumbing, fire sprinklers, and electrical systems—things that have to be by-thebook. “Building inspectors won’t give you any wiggle room,” he says. “You gotta know the code.” He recommends buying a few key how-to books (Code Check: A Field Guide to Building a Safe House was his bible) and cajoling inspectors into working with you. “We were lucky,” says Clifford. “Our guy told us what was wrong and how to fix it. Lots of inspectors will just fail you without explaining why.” 

Four years after he bought the place, 1558 Seventh Street finally passed inspection. Clifford isn’t just being dramatic when he says the project changed his life. He’d never even held an acetylene torch when he began; now he teaches welding and machining at a high school in San Francisco. And he’s traded in his sleeping bag for a down comforter, a wood-burning stove, and the satisfaction of knowing that he’ll never have to do something like this again.