This Los Angeles Love Story Begins Inside a Rundown Tudor Revival

“My sister was helping,” says Bradly Perry, 36. “She said that I had to meet Roger. I met him and he was lovely.”

Rebuilding the house, which had been damaged by a fire in 2010, ended up turning into a five-year family project. The Perrys spent some $2.2 million renovating and furnishing the house, where they now live with their two children. 

The property, which includes a roughly 11,300-square-foot main house and a carriage house, is located in the historic Windsor Square area of L.A.’s Hancock Park. When Roger Perry first saw it, he says, “the deferred maintenance was indescribable.” The 2010 fire had gutted the kitchen and an upstairs bedroom in the main house, while the lower level had drainage and water damage issues. 

“When I walked through the house, I realized it was quite an undertaking, but it didn’t phase me,” Roger Perry says. “I knew I could restore the integrity of this house.”

Part of the home’s allure was its grand bifurcated staircase, he says. “When I was a kid, my mom and I went to a lot of open houses,” says the 49-year-old, a real-estate agent at Rodeo Realty and head of the Roger Perry Group. “I also watched too much ‘Dynasty,’ so when I would draw houses, they would always have a dramatic staircase that went up and split.” 

He also liked the two stone lions out front, which reminded him of his mother, a Leo.

After he met Bradly Perry, the couple began “camping” in the seven-bedroom main house—no kitchen, no heat, no air conditioning—while a contractor renovated the guesthouse. The contractor didn’t work out, but he did introduce them to L.A.-based interior designer Alexandra Schwartz, founder of Alexandra Joy Interiors, who ended up helping them finish the project.

After 19 months, the two-bedroom, two-bathroom guesthouse was done. To renovate the main house, the couple decided that Bradly Perry would leave his job overseeing store build-outs for a retailer and take over the project—with an important family assist. “I grew up in Alaska, where my dad has been a contractor and builder for almost 50 years,” Bradly Perry says. “He was basically retired, so he moved down here with us and took over as G.C.” 

His father, Bernie Munyon, 67, moved into the guesthouse with the couple, and in 2018 their newborn daughter, Marianne, joined the troupe. “We missed the boat on having a reality show,” Bradly Perry says with a laugh. “It was traumatic, but it was also a fun time. We had this beautiful baby girl, my dad’s first grandchild, but there were days that I wasn’t sure if we were ever going to finish [the renovation].”

The door knocker is probably from the 1970s and was re-plated as part of the renovation. Marianne Perry takes weekly lessons on the grand piano.

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All exterior changes to the house required approvals, since the house is in the Windsor Square Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. Ms. Schwartz worked on the interior fixtures, finishes and furnishings. “I wanted to pay respect to this 100-plus-year-old house,” she says. “But I also wanted to make it a modern, workable home for a family.” 

In the entry, Ms. Schwartz replaced worn hardwood floors with a black-and-white checkerboard marble tile, which adds even more drama to the mahogany staircase that drew Roger Perry to the house in the first place. They saved all the original woodwork, which required sanding and bleaching the original wood to get the red tones out, and then using a custom stain to get an almost-black color, Bradly Perry says. “My dad told us that we couldn’t build this today,” he says. “Even if you could find a carpenter, it still wouldn’t have the age and charm this wood has.” With that mind-set, the team also restored the coffered ceiling in the living room and refinished the paneling in the dining room and library.

The Perrys said the project would have been far more expensive had Bradly Perry and his father not been in charge. Still, there were some items the couple splurged on, such as custom cabinetry and lighting in the primary bedroom closet. “Their closet is anyone’s dream closet,” Ms. Schwartz says.

Roger Perry says the inspiration for the closet came from the Giorgio Beverly Hills boutique on Rodeo Drive. “The clothes were in these glass cases and if you wanted to see something, they would take it out and present it,” he says. “I saw that and knew I wanted a closet like that one day.” 

The couple and their young daughter moved into the main house in 2019, just in time for their wedding in November of that year. After the pandemic restrictions eased, they brought Ms. Schwartz back to finish a few rooms—cabinetry for a wine room on the lower level, Schumacher wallpaper in the sunroom, wallpaper for a guest bedroom. They also asked her to decorate a bedroom for their daughter and to redecorate the nursery for a new addition: their son, Grant, who is now 15 months old.

“It was a long process, but we handled it with love and grace,” Bradly Perry says.

Now they’re preparing for Round Two: In February, Mr. Munyon will return to help renovate the family’s vacation home in Palm Springs.