A Scandi-Style Facelift Brings This Craftsman Into the Modern Era

This historic craftsman house built in 1910 in Harvard Heights, Los Angeles, was originally set up like a duplex and then converted into a single-family home. When contractors Erick Zumwalt and Phil Ruhl bought this house — and the one next door — to redesign and flip it, they completely reimagined the home’s footprint without changing the façade, which is protected for historic reasons. “Anything we wanted to do to the house, first we had to pass it through the Los Angeles design review board,” Erick says. So, they did their best to revitalize and “keep the craftsman spirit alive,” Phil adds.

Phil and Erick have been working together over the last year and a half as a "one-stop shop" to develop and redesign properties. For this one, they tried to save as many of the home’s historic touches as they could, renewing old elements instead of replacing them where possible. “It comes down to what’s salvageable and what’s worth saving,” Erick says. These windows, for example, are over 100 years old, and were in rough shape when they bought the house, but with a fresh coat of paint on the panes and a good cleaning, the front of the home looks much more attractive.

This front door is a historic part of the home, and so is its hardware. To maintain the protected historic exterior of the home, Phil and Erick took it off its hinges, sanded it down, stained it and left the original copper hardware as it was.

The chimney of the home’s original fireplace was damaged, but instead of removing it entirely, they saw an interesting design opportunity. Erick’s sister and brother-in-law came up with this design and turned it into “the centerpiece of the home,” Erick says. “In California, it doesn’t really get too cool. So, instead of spending a lot of money on something people wouldn't use, we decided to make it a really cool design feature of the home.”