Restorations

If you give millions of seriously underwater homeowners a new equity position in their properties by reducing their principal mortgage debt, will they keep paying on their loans and avoid foreclosure? Call it a pipe dream or a significant model for other lenders and investors, but one company says it has found an important combination: Modify underwater borrowers' loans so that their payments are reduced to a manageable amount and cut their principal debt over time, but make the deal dependent on their scrupulous on-time monthly payments of the new amount plus sharing of a portion of any future profit they make on the house sale.

When historians of such things seek the moment the U.S. Olympic Committee found a way to forge the agreement Thursday that put the U.S. back in the game as a potential Olympic Games host, they need look no further than Oct. 7, 2009. It was five days after Chicago had suffered a humiliating first-round loss in the International Olympic Committee vote for host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. There quickly followed calls for heads in the USOC leadership to roll. It was the day USOC Chairman Larry Probst got so angry about being called out by some of his constituents, including athletes and the heads of the national sports federations, that he vowed to show them.

A Christmas card painting has arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art well ahead of the holiday season. "Holy Family With St. Francis in a Landscape" by 16th-Century painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari is a gift of the Ahmanson Foundation. Depicting an adoring mother and child in glowing light, with Joseph and St.

Actors Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson have sold the Los Feliz house they bought together in 2010. The 1969 Buff & Hensman-designed Wong House sold for $3.5 million. The restored post-and-beam house features walls of glass, a library, video security and solar and high-tech upgrades. There are two bedrooms, three bathrooms and 2,835 square feet of living space. The nearly half-acre site features a saltwater swimming pool. Reynolds, 35, and Johansson, 27, were divorced last year after three years of marriage.

WHEN Dave Tourje bought the decrepit 1907 farmhouse nearly 10 years ago, he didn't have a clue it would become South Pasadena Cultural Landmark No. 44. Rescuing the structure from certain teardown status was more about math. "It was twice the amount of money I wanted to pay and five times the amount of work I wanted to do," he says. "But in that neighborhood, houses that were half the size were way more expensive."

A decade ago, Gary Wales' 1947 Franay-bodied Bentley was a "dilapidated pile of dog breath." In pieces, parts of the body rusted through, the original chrome long gone, it was a major comedown from 1948, when the car with the sexy French curves swept two major auto shows in a week. Now, after 10 years of delicate restoration work, the Gargantuan luxury car with a frog-skin interior has a finish of liquid depths.

A circa 1850s stagecoach, turned black from layers of varnish and embedded dirt, has been returned to its original light green brilliance after two years of painstaking work. Operated by California Stage Co. during Gold Rush days, the coach will be on permanent display beginning today in the Spirit of Conquest Gallery at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. "It was quite shocking to see it, since when it left, it was black.

Eleven storm drains empty into Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach, and its only outlet to the sea -- a 900-foot underground culvert -- is choked with mussels, clams, sand and barnacles. So it's no surprise that one of Southern California's only lagoons -- shallow saltwater bodies sheltered from the ocean -- is among the dirtiest around. Last year, Colorado Lagoon was ranked as the state's fourth most-polluted beach in Heal the Bay's "Beach Bummers" list. Yet the Y-shaped basin is one of the most popular swimming spots in the city, packed with sunbathers and swimmers on hot summer afternoons.

Several new restorations are either completed or in the works: * "The Guns of Navarone," the 1961 World War II adventure starring Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and David Niven. Columbia has been funding the restoration for more than two years. As supervised by UCLA Archives preservation chief Bob Gitt, the work has proceeded slowly and has focused on sound and image restoration. "Navarone" will be the opening-night attraction for UCLA's annual Festival of Restoration, to be held in April.

INA BROSSEAU MARX speaks painstakingly about furniture restoration. Make the mistake of using the word "refinishing" instead, and her retort is quick: "In this country I don't know why we have the problem with the word 'restoration.' It is not the same as refinishing." The exacting way she talks about restoration is reflected in the compendium on the subject that she and husband Allen Marx wrote based on their 30 years practicing the craft.

The Angels Gate lighthouse, graced by its distinctive vertical black stripes, gleams brighter at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor today after an extensive restoration project. "Ain't she pretty?" asked Allan Johnson of the Cabrillo Beach Boosters Club, brushing his fingers across the octagonal base of the structure that has shined a reassuring beacon for coastal skippers entering the harbor for 99 years. On the eve of Thursday's unveiling forU.S. Coast Guardbrass and other dignitaries, San Pedro civic leaders made a final inspection of the cast-iron, wood and stucco tower that rears 73 feet into the air above the end of the breakwater, two miles offshore.

Dear Liz : I had credit scores over 800 with no late payments ever. Unfortunately, a medical issue required me to charge $24,500 to a credit card. That led to a bankruptcy, which was discharged in July 2011. My scores dropped to 672, and they're currently around 680. I'm paying two unsecured credit cards in full each month plus an auto loan that was reaffirmed in bankruptcy. I would like to continue rehabilitating my scores by applying for another loan. When a company requests my credit scores, does it also see my bankruptcy, and would that prevent me from getting credit?

The pace is picking up on the massive conservation project in process at the Southwest Museum in Mount Washington. The end is almost in sight: Only 36,000 objects to go! In 2003, when the poverty-stricken institution merged with the more affluent Museum of the American West under the umbrella of the Autry National Center in Griffith Park, the first priority was to save the Southwest's collection of about 250,000 Native American artworks and artifacts. Second only to the holdings of the National Museum of the American Indian inWashington, D.C., the collection had been inadequately housed for decades and further damaged by earthquakes, water and insects.

"Chinatown" writer Robert Towne has listed his estate on the Westside at $12.995 million. Built in 1926 and designed for grand entertaining, the restored English country-style mansion and guesthouse have seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms and 10,000 square feet of living space. The nearly three-quarter-acre property is wooded and includes a swimming pool, a rose garden and a spice garden. Towne, 77, won an Oscar for original screenplay in 1975 for the Jack Nicholson-starring film about land and water rights disputes.

WASHINGTON — Anxiety about the effect of a ban on political spending by federal contractors is prompting new caution by a company connected to such donations and a "super PAC" that accepted them. Restore Our Future — a super PAC that has spent more than $42 million on behalf of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney — had previously solicited money from federal contractors. Now it is warning the contractors to get legal advice before giving. Meanwhile, Oxbow Carbon, a major coal and petroleum supplier that gave Restore Our Future $750,000 last year, now says its contracts to sell fuel to the federal government are through a sister company that is a separate legal entity — an arrangement that allows it to skirt the prohibition on federal contractors making political expenditures.

Deep budget cuts to the Los Angeles park system in recent years have resulted in shortened park hours, fewer youth programs and closed pools. Now, as city lawmakers take up Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed budget for the coming year, a new coalition is lobbying for restoration of park funding. The consortium of conservationists, community leaders and unions, led by developer Steve Soboroff, earned a small victory Monday when two City Council members joined a news conference and signed a pledge to protect parks.

A cemetery that is considered the nation's most significant black burial ground is being restored a year after it was destroyed by vandals. The cemetery at Rossville African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church is in a community called Sandy Ground on Staten Island. Free black oystermen from Maryland established it in the early 1800s. The community, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad, is a symbol of strength for many blacks today.

A bronze horse, possibly the work of the Parthenon sculptor, went on display Friday at a Rome museum after a decades-long restoration. The horse was returned to the Capitoline Museums after a $680,000 restoration that began in the late 1970s, museum director Anna Mura Sommella said.

Film can be an unstable environment - and not just in the executive suites. Take for example the 1973 Oscar-winning best film "The Sting,"which had chemical stains over several frames in the original negative. Steven Spielberg's landmark 1975 shark thriller "Jaws" showed the ravages of time with nasty tears in the original negative, notably the scene in which Quint (Robert Shaw) arrives at the town meeting on Amity Island. These are some of the challenges facing technicians performing digital restorations of 13 classic movies as part of Universal Studios' 100th birthday celebration.

Actress Meg Ryan, known for her leading-lady roles in romantic films, has been having an on-again, off-again relationship with her Bel-Air home since she first listed it in 2008 for $19.5 million. Now it's on the market again, this time for $11.4 million. The listing describes the classic Spanish-style house, built in 1931, as having undergone a "museum-quality restoration. " The two-story home features such period details as stenciled beam ceilings, arched doorways and ironwork.