They’ll Make It Look Like the Same Old Place : * Construction: Specially trained craftsmen can help homeowners who want to restore their earthquake-damaged vintage homes.

Restoring vintage homes after an earthquake requires a crack crew of craftsmen.

Most of the homes that were hardest hit during the magnitude 5.8 Sierra Madre temblor were built in the early 1900s, a golden age of architecture in the San Gabriel Valley. As rebuilding begins, homeowners are looking for artisans who can fortify their homes against future earthquakes while not compromising the houses’ historic values.

“Twenty-five years ago it was next to impossible to find master craftsmen,” said Randell Makinson, curator and director of Pasadena’s Gamble House, a preeminent example of the Craftsman style of architecture that was built by Charles and Henry Greene in 1908. “But there are now craftsmen again, young people who care about working with their hands and who take pride in doing something artfully and well.”

After years of watching some of the area’s grandest homes sustain damage in earthquakes, Pasadena Heritage, the Monrovia Old House Preservation Group and Altadena Heritage have all compiled lists of craftsmen who are qualified to work on historic homes.

Pasadena Heritage, a nonprofit preservation society, maintains a list of about 300 masons, plasterers, architects, carpenters, seismic specialists, plumbers and electricians.

Elizabeth Neaves, associate director of the group’s preservation fund, said that since the June 28 Sierra Madre quake she has received dozens of calls from people looking for masons and plasterers to repair cracks and holes in walls, Batchelder tile fireplaces and arroyo stone, field stone and brick chimneys.

Joe Garcia, president of the 350-member Monrovia Old House Preservation Group, said his organization is planning to publish a catalogue this month with an extensive list of artisans. The catalogue will be available free to members of the group and for a small fee to non-members.

Finding the right craftsman to repair and strengthen an old home isn’t easy. “There are not that many people who want to work, or for that matter, who are capable of working with older homes,” said Chris Petersen, 28, a mason and the youngest member of Leif Petersen & Sons Inc. of Pasadena. “It’s 100% harder and it takes a certain amount of skill.”

Petersen and his two older brothers learned their handiwork from their retired 71-year-old father, who began his own apprenticeship in Denmark.

Plasterers and masons agreed that the trick to their trade is making their repairs blend with the architectural style of the older homes. “You have to know what the old-timers did,” said David Middleton of Middleton & Co. in Claremont. “You want to make it look like it was never touched.”

Michael Pionke of Michael & Sons in Claremont said the plasterer he apprenticed with had been doing the trade for 60 years. “I already knew how to plaster when he took me under his wing,” Pionke said. “But he taught me the fine points of working in the older, classic homes.”

Although fallen chimneys and cracked plaster were the biggest problems caused by the Sierra Madre quake, many homeowners suffered damage when their houses slipped slightly off their foundations.

“Pre-1940s homes are not anchored to the foundation,” said Bill Liebman of Cal-Seismics in Pasadena. “Everything here moved south because of the motion of the earthquake.”

Ed Sylvis of Seismic Safety is the third generation of his family to work on foundations. “The problem is that people like my grandfather didn’t put bolts in the foundations,” he said. “I can remember him arguing with the inspectors that bolts were expensive and that he wasn’t going to use them.”

Now Sylvis spends his days bolting down some of the very houses that his grandfather wouldn’t secure.

“I thought he was smarter than the inspectors,” said Sylvis who, at 62, now calls himself “the grandfather of seismic safety.”

“It’s an interesting turn of events.”