Multiple generations now have grown up with Full House’s Tanner family, and let’s not pretend that we haven’t all thought about what it would be like to live in that iconic Victorian home on San Francisco’s slanted Steiner Street. Full House creator Jeff Franklin bought the house in 2016 and had visions of turning our dreams into a reality by renovating that famous property into a Full House vacation rental experience. Jodie Sweetin explained why it never came to be.
Of course, Full House and later Fuller House were not filmed in San Francisco. The set we know so well, with that wraparound staircase, was far too big for that little Victorian house, but the property became famous from the TV show’s opening credits, which showed the exterior of the famous “Painted Ladies.” Jodie Sweetin, aka Stephanie Tanner, said as much as she told Bob the Drag Queen on his Only Child podcast about what was once planned for the home, saying:
Jeff Franklin, the creator of the show, bought it and was gutting the inside. He wanted to make it into some sort of Airbnb Full House sort of thing. People would lose their minds for it. But the house is so small, like so small when you get in there, you’re like, ‘Oh there’s no way any of this could fit in there.’
I’m honestly trying to imagine what a scaled-back version of Danny Tanner’s family home would look like, and all I know is that it would be impeccably clean.
Jeff Franklin even apparently got the cast members to come in to make their mark on the property … before things turned sour. Jodie Sweetin continued:
He was redoing it. We actually did a whole thing where we did our hands in the cement in the back of the house. The neighbors, though, heard he was doing stuff and they just petitioned the city and he couldn’t do anything.
The actress said the house was actually a “nightmare” for it owners and their neighbors, due to how many tourists it attracts to San Francisco’s “Postcard Row.” Neighbors complained to the city about an endless stream of people traipsing around their neighborhood, taking photos of the famous house.
And in a super obnoxious (but kind of funny) move, some fans would apparently drive by the houses blasting the Full House theme song at full volume. It got so bad that, according to Jodie Sweetin:
They even had to take it off of the city bus tours. There were literally thousands of people going by in a day. You know what I mean? Like, every bus would stop.
Jeff Franklin’s Full House Airbnb would seemingly have only brought more attention to the area. Throw in a busted gas line that made the situation better for no one, and Franklin's vision was never fully realized. He ended up selling the house in 2020.
We may not ever get to spend the night in the Full House house, but at least we’ll always have the Tanners. All eight seasons of the beloved sitcom are available to stream with a Hulu subscription, while Fuller House can be found with a Netflix subscription.
