Before fires ripped through Lahaina, the craftsman-inspired home at 271 Front St. didn’t stand out much in the neighborhood. The nearly 100-year-old structure had been lovingly restored in recent years, but it was one of many charming homes lining the waterfront of one of Hawaii’s most historically important towns. 

Today, the house is unmissable: A red-roofed structure in seemingly pristine condition, surrounded by piles of ash and rubble for blocks in every direction.

“It looks like it was photoshopped in,” homeowner Trip Millikin said of the house, which stands in such contrast to the surrounding ruins that images of the home have gone viral in recent days.

Millikin has spent much of the last week — in between anxious calls to check up on friends and neighbors — puzzling over why his house was somehow spared.

Maybe it was just luck. Maybe the wind shifted at just the right moment. Or maybe it was a series of serendipitous choices made during a recent home renovation that helped prevent flying pieces of burning wood and debris from doing little more than scorching small patches of his yard and bubbling the paint on one wall. 

Experts say it was likely a little bit of all the above, but that one element of the home’s recent renovation is actually the most affordable and important thing people can do to try and protect their homes.

A Painstaking Renovation

Millikin and his wife, Dora Millikin, fell in love with the Front Street house several years ago, although it was vacant and had fallen into a state of disrepair.

The home, known as the Pioneer Mill Co./Lahaina Ice Co. Bookkeeper’s House, is believed to have been moved to Front Street in 1925 from a nearby plantation. For decades, it was used to house management-level employees.

The Millikins, who started living in Lahaina more than a decade ago, used to bicycle by the house and talk about what it would take to fix the sagging roof, the rotting lanai, the peeling paint.

“The house was an absolute nightmare, but you could see the bones of it,” Millikin said.

Millikin and his wife bought the property in 2021, working with the county on a historic preservation plan before embarking on a nearly two-year renovation project. They did much of the work themselves, along with a local carpenter and the help of neighbors.

The effort was a source of neighborhood pride, Millikin said, with people walking by and frequently talking to the couple as they hand glazed the 500 window panes in the structure, painstakingly repaired the termite damage, dug out the mushrooms growing in the downstairs ohana unit.

The house is what’s known as a craftsman-inspired “plantation vernacular” dwelling, a style of homes constructed mostly by sugar and pinea