Cory Laws considered selling his house and moving to an updated property with his girlfriend. But he likes his neighborhood, so he decided to spend as much as $100,000 to remodel the Herndon, Va., home.

“I bought the house for me and my two girls at the time, but they’re adults,” said Laws, 61, who’s already rebuilt one room and added mahogany floors to his basement to turn it into a guest apartment. “We’re morphing the house into our haven.”