This is a story of a stomach bug, a house fire, and a couple of guinea pigs.

It was 2017, an unbearably hot August day, and homeowner Julie Phillips was having work done on her Roland Park home. The rubber roof had been leaking, and a crew—recommended by a friend—was there replacing it. Her daughter Chloe, 7 at the time, had a bad stomach bug, and the two escaped the noise of the work for a nearby friend’s house and pool. Her 4-year-old daughter, Ruby, was off with other friends. That’s when Phillips’ phone suddenly began vibrating with smoke notifications from her alarm company. She called the roofer to make sure everything was okay. He was off-site, and his truck had broken down. “Let me call my guys,” he told her.

Phillips, a counselor at Loyola University, was less than a mile away from home and getting in her car when the alarm company’s central monitoring called to say 911 had been dispatched. “I rounded the corner with Chloe, and there were three fire trucks in the front of the house and smoke billowing out of our third-floor window,” remembers Phillips. She was in shock. The firemen had already broken in through the side door and the left side of the house appeared to be engulfed. Julie suddenly remembered the guinea pigs that belonged to her girls. A firefighter successfully retrieved the cage but accidentally dropped it as he came outside, allowing its inhabitants, Sugar and Cream, to make their break for freedom. Chloe, shivering and feverish in the neighbor’s yard, watched her house burn and her mom run after the guinea pigs. (Both were caught and returned to the safety of their cage.)

After that, Phillips called her husband, David, vice provost for admissions and financial aid at The Johns Hopkins University. “I said, ‘The house is on fire. Please come home.’ And then I guess I just hung up,” she says. It was 3 p.m.

The next few hours were pretty terrible. “You’re in a state of shock,” says Phillips. What wasn’t destroyed by fire was damaged by water and smoke. It turned out the roofing company had been torch-sealing the roof, a standard but risky practice. A combination of a very hot day and 100-year old wood allowed a spark to quickly slither up and down the walls like a snake looking for prey. “Our neighbors said they saw them trying to put out the fire with water bottles.”

Insurance was called, and once the fire was out, Julie and David were led through the house by a firefighter. There was water everywhere. And there was the smell: It instantly burned their nostrils and eyes. From that point on, fire itself took on a new meaning: “We were in Wisconsin a week later for my cousin’s wedding,” recalls Phillips, “and my dad made a big bonfire. David and I were just like, ‘Oh, my god.’”

As the fire trucks pulled away, the restoration services showed up. “They are like ambulance chasers. Five companies trying to talk to you after your house was just destroyed,” she says. At the recommendation of their insurance company, they selected ServPro. “They came in and started suctioning the water. This was two hours after the fire and we already had a crew there, putting in fans and a generator. It’s pretty amazing how quickly people mobilize.” Phillips managed to pack up clothes for her, David, and the girls. She did 25 loads of laundry over the next several days. They stayed with friends while looking for temporary housing. Each day, Julie and David would return to the house and see what they could take out and salvage. Then insurance came in and inventoried everything that had been lost.

As luck would have it, a home had been sitting empty nearby and within walking distance of school and Julie’s work. It was for sale, but they reached out and pleaded their case for a rental. The owner told Phillips he had lived through a house fire when his kids were little and agreed to a year-long lease. “It was a godsend,” says Phillips. “I’m not a religious person, but the universe was absolutely on our side.” They moved in that weekend with a few items, but by Monday, both Julie and David had Chloe’s stomach bug.

Insurance had sent them a generous lump sum to buy temporary furniture, clothing, and bedding, but since Phillips couldn’t leave the house, a friend took her credit card, went to Target, and bought blankets, pillows, sheets, and towels. “And we were lucky the house had kitchen stuff. We had a place to stay. People brought us stuff, took the kids. But the logistics are just time-consuming.”

But then what? Phillips’ knee-jerk reaction was to sell the house. “I want nothing to do with it,” she thought. But she owed it to her family to at least go through the motions of a renovation. Part of the house would need to be completely rebuilt, so they needed an architect to design the space. But Julie and David also realized this was the time to renovate rooms they had been talking about upgrading since they bought the house five years earlier. Insurance would pay for the fire-damaged portions—including the living room and family room—while the Phillipses would pay for the kitchen and a new master bedroom. They hired Ziger/Snead Architects that fall, and they, in turn, recommended Smithouse Construction.

Work started that January—five months after the fire. Every Friday, they would meet in the dining room of the damaged house with a temporary table and a space heater. “It was breakfast with the Phillipses,” says Michael Westrate, a designer at Ziger/Snead. The weekly get-togethers meant they were able to make decisions quickly, but also to “check in on everyone’s mental health,” he says. That was as important as choosing the right fixture. “Julie was very distressed, as one might imagine,” says Doug Bothner, a partner at the architecture firm. The damage was beyond what just the eyes could see. The fire had crawled through the house and affected a lot of the house’s structure. The goal was twofold: Justifying the amount of work that needed to be done through their insurance company and “turning this tragedy and pain into a real opportunity for change,” says Bothner.

“David and I don’t know house design,” admits Phillips. “I knew nothing about what my style was.” Her research included following Instagram accounts of favorite designers. Her criteria: lots of white, family-friendly but chic, and comfortable. Before the fire, the home had been overrun with toys. “When we redesigned, I wanted our first floor to be an adult floor,” she says. The family room, tucked away in the back of the house, has a comfy sectional for watching movies and is now home to two happy guinea pigs. “Our living room is more formal now,” says Phillips. “We never used to hang out in there. And now it’s the place we really love to be.” But the kitchen is another new favorite place. The old kitchen had last been renovated in the ’50s, but now is fully transformed, the true heart of the home with an oversized island the family eats at every night, white cabinets, gold hardware, and open shelving.

They moved back into the house almost a year after the fire—in August 2018—and lived for an additional month with some construction as crews finished the work. And then, one day, there was silence. The workers were gone. And it felt good. And the “fire house” just felt like home again.

“The fact that they could come home and actually feel like they are home and feel safe—I think that’s a huge part of the process,” says Bothner. Mostly, says Phillips, the entire experience is like childbirth. “Looking back, you say, ‘It wasn’t so bad. It’s fine.’” She sighs, “We’re so happy to be back.”

There are no drapes in Ken and Andrea Burkom’s 3,900-square-foot, one-story home. Instead, in the master bedroom and bath, wood-fenced courtyards provide privacy while extending the rooms’ visual boundaries and bringing in light and a sense of nature. And in the main room, a 48-foot-long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows blurs the line between the modern interior and the tree-lined yard.

To liven up the austerity of the simple design, vibrant pops of color (think orange doors, cherry-red light fixtures, and an abstract, Mad Men-style wall mural) punctuate the living spaces and incorporate the family’s personality into the simple midcentury aesthetic.

Before moving into this home in July 2014, the Burkoms lived in a custom home in Reisterstown that Andrea had designed from the ground up. After 11 years, the couple hoped downsizing and moving closer to the city would make life easier for them and their sons, TJ, 13, and Casey, 9.

“We wanted to live closer to everything, to be more centrally located to our lives and our kids’ lives, to simplify through one level,” Andrea says. “We also wanted to simplify by having a slightly smaller but more useful space, where we use every single square inch, instead of having rooms that we don’t use very often.”

That was when they stumbled across the distinctive community of midcentury-modern homes off Stevenson Road in Pikesville, built from the 1940s through the 1960s by developer Gordon E. Sugar. While each home is unique, they share an emphasis on natural light and incorporating the landscape—most are single-story homes with a nearly flat roof and a long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows.

When the Burkoms first saw the property, it didn’t take them long to decide it would be their next abode. “We walked around for 10 minutes and I told Kenny, ‘This is it, this is the one,’” says Andrea, an artist. “It’s not exactly that we were looking at what was there at the time, it was more about the vibe it gave me, the instinct.”

Visualizing a home’s potential can be tricky, says Peter Twohy of 2e Architects, whom the Burkoms hired to help them open up the floor plan and breathe new life into the design. Structurally, the couple removed a wall and bulky fireplace enclosing the kitchen, replaced the carport with a storage area and temperature-controlled two-car garage, added a gym and art studio, and designed an addition for their sons that includes two bedrooms, a study area, and their own laundry room. Aesthetically, however, the project was a carefully considered back-and-forth between Andrea and Twohy.

“We had a very unique relationship,” says Twohy, as he and Burkom stand in a hallway between the pantry’s chalkboard barn door and a supersized painting of the family’s English bulldog, Ozzy. “Every client dictates what happens aesthetically, but she was much more than that. The interior designer on this project was you,” he tells Burkom. “You selected every single color.”

Because her personal tastes can stray from eclectic to modern, Burkom devised a system to stay true to the playful, midcentury-modern aesthetic she and her husband envisioned. A manila folder with colors and inspirational photos served as a guidepost. “If I was looking at something to use in the house, I had to run it by my checklist,” says Andrea. “And if it didn’t fit, it was out.”

Twohy emphasizes that there’s more to design than beauty. “A house is a machine that people live in,” he says. Twohy’s designs are meant to be as logical as they are visually appealing. For example, the Burkom home’s garage opens up to a mudroom, which continues to a bathroom, pantry, and kitchen. “The kitchen is the heart of the house,” he adds.

And to make that heart visible, they removed a load-bearing wall separating the kitchen from the open feeling of the main dining and living room. “We’re always striving for beauty, but, for me, the beauty is meaningless if it’s not functional,” says Twohy, as he points out the kitchen’s more practical elements. A deep drawer by the stove hides away spatulas and whisks. The dishwasher is adjacent to the sink for convenient cleanup. “It’s easy to live here,” he says.

Designing her prior home from scratch gave Burkom the perspective to see what is needed for simpler living. Although their current home is 1,000 square feet smaller than their last house, the thoughtful design makes the lost space almost unnoticeable. “There’s a place for everything,” says Burkom. One way she made things easy was by installing concrete flooring throughout most of the home. “They kept asking me about the floor, ‘Are you sure you want the concrete in your closet, in your bathroom?’ I was like, yes, I want to simplify. I didn’t want a different floor in every room.”

Like construction in any half-century-old home, Burkom and Twohy encountered a few surprises. “Time and again, the house presented challenges, and we would come up with some sort of a solution,” says Twohy. For example, when elevating the ceiling in the entryway, they discovered that the brickwork on one wall didn’t extend to the ceiling. The pair considered a few solutions, including faux painting, but in the end decided on simple, white drywall and added an oversized transom window to maximize the added height. “I’ve trained myself to say, ‘Here’s an opportunity to reinforce the design,’” says Twohy. A tall, narrow window beside the door allows the eye to flow along the brick wall from inside to outside, making the space seem to extend beyond its boundary, a design principle famously used by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Sitting on the living room couch, Twohy points out how interior-design elements allow the open great room—which encompasses the dining room, kitchen, bar, and living room—to feel intimate. “It’s an interesting trick to make the space work for 50 and for two,” says Twohy. Controlling ceiling height and creating rooms without walls help to achieve the effect. And the space required special attention while decorating, too. “You have to really use restraint, because you can see everything at once,” adds Burkom. “It was a challenge.”

After going from concept to finished home, and living in it for nearly six months, the Burkoms are happy with the finished product.

“You see the result of a thousand great decisions,” says Twohy, “and it’s fun to see that.”

It may sound like a cliché colliding with bad dating advice, but when it comes to your home’s appeal—and market value—looks do matter, as do first impressions. So what upgrades can you make that will make a big difference to a buyer, but not break the bank?

We went to the local experts, from contractors and developers to Realtors, to get the answers, and they came up with a top 10 list that would move the curb-appeal meter on any house. And the best part? Owners of average-sized houses can pull each of them off for $5,000 or less.

Clear as Day
Not everyone feels that new windows will get a quick payback, but it’s still important to the resale value—after all, it affects the functionality of the house.

“New windows get rid of nagging problems, such as when they won’t open, have broken hardware, and have drafts,” says Jeff Rubin, the owner of The Baltimore Handyman Company and also an architect.

Especially if a home was built decades ago—or if the original windows were cheaply made—the improvement can make a big difference.

“If you have a home that is more than 30 years old, your windows probably are ready to be updated,” says Kim Cavanaugh, owner and project manager of Cavanaugh Homes.

Average price per vinyl window: $65-200.

Watch Where You Step
While this next tip doesn’t have anything to do with how a home really works, it can change its appearance dramatically—we’re talking a flooring redo.

“Get rid of that tired carpeting you’ve been staring at for years,” says Rubin. “This will improve the appearance of a room easily, and you won’t feel embarrassed by those stains.”

And if it’s not carpet, consider changing the color palate of hardwood floors, rather than doing a complete overhaul.

“Most hardwood floors can be sanded and refinished easily and inexpensively,” says Clay Goodier, president of homebuilding at Goodier Baker Homes.

Average price, carpet per square foot, including padding and installation: $5. Average cost, floor refinishing for 12-by-12-foot room: $450.

Open it Up
Another item Goodier advises homeowners to consider is an open-concept living space.

“People live socially and casually now,” says Goodier. “Confined, formal living spaces are a thing of the past. More often than not, fewer walls are better.”

Realtor Lisa Richland of Long & Foster agrees: “If you can take a wall down, it makes a difference. Buyers who I work with want to be in a kitchen that isn’t secluded.”

Average price to remove typical interior wall: $750.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Something several contractors support is adding good organizational systems inside the home.

There are several cost-efficient products to achieve that, but they require assembly by either you or, if you’re all thumbs, a professional.

George Brown, president of Greenleaf Construction Baltimore, believes closet organization is what homeowners should focus on. His recommendation: “Install custom shelves and rods, instead of a pre-fab system, if your budget allows it.”

Average price for a storage system: $500-2,000.

Up in the Attic
This next option may not be seen, but it could help a homeowner’s wallet.

“Upgrade or add attic insulation and air seal,” recommends Brown, who also suggests getting a home-energy audit.

Cavanaugh shared a similar sentiment: “Most attics in older homes are drastically under-insulated.” Homeowners will likely see a difference in their utility bills after installation.

Average price, insulating attic of 2,500-
square-foot home: $1,000-2,000.

Get Control Over Your Air
It may not seem very sexy, but having a modern and efficient heating and air-conditioning system is a crucial home-improvement item. It’s one Richland believes is so important, she won’t show a house without a proper air-conditioning unit.

“If the HVAC isn’t working, take care of that first,” says Richland. “Focus on the basics first before the glamour items.”

Rubin concurs, saying that energy-saving home improvements are good for the wallet and the environment. “When it comes to new energy-efficient heating and cooling equipment, everyone should embrace these home improvements.”

Average price, new HVAC unit, 2,500-
square-foot home: $3,000.

Get Cooking in the Kitchen
The “heart” of the modern home—the kitchen—is the place potential buyers often zero in on.

For that reason, says Brown, “the kitchen is still the main area of the home that most of our clients have chosen to invest their money in.”

And when you consider the amount of time spent on family dinners and entertaining in that space, a simple, cost-effective solution can really be worth it.

“Installing new kitchen countertops and cabinet knobs can add a whole new look to your kitchen,” recommends Cavanaugh.

Typical price range for manmade or natural stone: $60-90 per square foot.

Apply Yourself
New kitchen appliances are also a good place to put your money.

“If you have an old fridge, it’s worth paying to deal with that before new countertops,” Richland suggests. And it’s a pretty cheap upgrade.

“Replacing your kitchen appliances is a good value,” says Rubin. “It is something you use everyday.”

And those stainless-steel appliances that used to be the sole province of the rich? Not so, anymore, says Goodier: “Stainless-steel appliances are standard now and are inexpensive to put into a home.”

Average combined price of new stainless-steel refrigerator and oven with convection: $2,500-3,000.

Think: View From The Street
If a homeowner can only budget for one item, Cavanaugh suggests focusing on curb appeal, especially landscaping. “If your home looks terrible from the road, some buyers may not even get out of the car. Make sure your landscaping is trimmed neatly and the grass is mowed.”

And that may mean plant upgrades, says Goodier: “Changing out overgrown bushes and trees shows off your home better and gives you a fresh look.”

Typical price range for front-yard redo, including mulch, hauling, and new shrubs and flowers: $2,000-5,000.

Take a Broad-Brush Approach
One of the most economical on this list—and most important—is paint, whether it is the interior or exterior of your home.

“Painting is inexpensive and can even be done yourself,” said Goodier. “It is a great way to change the mood of a home.”

But, if you’re thinking of selling, skip the chartreuse. “When I work with buyers, they talk about awful wallpaper or paint colors. Some people can’t get past it,” shares Richland. “If you can, paint neutral colors.”

Average price for a professional to paint a 12-by-12 room: $400-500.