This four-story contemporary townhome occupies an urban South Loop block, and the work that remade it began by accident. On a dry day, a cigarette discarded into the home's exterior planter set it alight, and the fire climbed into the cladding before responders arrived. No one was hurt, and the damage was held to the façade. What began as a claim to repair that façade grew into something larger: the owners used the search for a restoration contractor to commission the interior renovation their growing family had wanted all along.

The exterior was restored first. Integro fabricated architectural composite cladding from Reynobond aluminum panels, rebuilt the planter that had carried the flames, and reinstalled both as a noncombustible assembly. Inside, the first floor carried the renovation. Roughly five hundred square feet of open-concept living had read as one undifferentiated room, short on storage and on usable surface, and a raised backsplash built to house outlets on the kitchen peninsula divided the kitchen from the living area, working against the open plan. Integro reconfigured the level with new framing, flooring, and lighting, resolved the peninsula into a continuous quartz surface, and set a gas fireplace as a see-through wall between the living and dining areas, clad in three-dimensional tile and finished with a custom porcelain mantel. Stone tile and luxury vinyl plank distinguished the zones that a single open room had blurred. Millwork carried both look and storage throughout, every piece custom, milled and assembled in-house in rift oak and laminate veneer: an entry closet with a built-in bench, peninsula casework extended into a banquette over hinged storage, an angled push-latch door that captured the dead space beneath the stair, architectural mirrors for the powder room and primary bath, and a rift oak architectural screen wall flanking the staircase at the first and fourth floors to create continuity throughout this mid-rise townhome.

The work answered to more than the usual parties — building inspectors and the insurance carrier each set requirements on logistics and craftsmanship — and it cleared every interim and final inspection without a single correction. Integro delivered ahead of schedule, and the family took the space back during the same week a stay-at-home order closed the city for the coming year.

The home the fire began is the one they came back to— elevated to a single open floor, behind a façade that won't burn twice.