Many a local boy has gone off to the Mainland to pursue college, career and family, dreaming all the while of retiring back home in the Islands. That, in brief, is the story behind the recently returned couple who bought and remodeled the East Honolulu home featured this month. The Hawaii-born husband was the owner of a successful high-tech business in California, his wife, a charming textiles artists originally from Florida. "It was always our goal to retire in Hawaii," he says. The fortuitous sale of his business made that possible, earlier than expected, and left the couple ready to embark on a new adventure - finding, then remaking, the perfect home for themselves.

Their search ended with this house. The couple was immediately enchanted by its distinguished roof . "It looked like a Polynesian long-house or canoe house," says the wife. "As soon as we saw it, we knew this was the house for us."

The roof, it turns out, is just about the only thing they kept. After buying, the couple contacted architect Paul Noborikawa AIA, ASID, then with Kajioka Yamachi Architects, Inc., now vice president of ADI Design Group, Inc. "We asked Paul, What can be fixed here?," says the husband. "We thought it would be a small job, but then we put pen to paper and all these grand ideas started flowing."

Some of these grand ideas were aesthetic options. The owners wanted a strong Asian-Pacific theme for the house, inside and out. Even the roof got a touch-up to further enhance its Asian-Pacific design. It received wooden fascias hand-carved in Indonesia and thin, triangular ironwood shingles that smooth out its curve, and have more of an Island look than the original thick, New England-style cedar shingles. Inside, the owners' collection of Asian and Pacific art and furniture is set off by minimal, natural surroundings, as well as more overtly Asian themes, such as kitchen cabinetry modeled after Japanese tansu chests.

Many of the grand ideas, however, were really necessities. Originally built in the early 1960s, the structure suffered from what Noborikawa calls, "very bad design and shoddy workmanship," all of which needed to be undone.

The ground floor, for example, which serves as a combination entryway-dining room-living room, had five different levels, each differing by just a few inches. The dining room area was cramped beneath a 7-foot ceiling. A huge, decorative moss-rock column - complete with plumbing for a water feature that had never been installed - overwhelmed the interior. The kitchen was canted in toward the main room of the house at an inexplicable angle, and had its own multi-level trip hazards. And the structure of the house suffered from extensive termite damage, water leakage, water rot and sagging beams.

Finally, the floor plan of the home was ill-suited for the needs of these retired empty-nesters. "Basically, we took a five-bedroom house and made it into a two-bedroom house," says Noborikawa. The other three bedrooms became an office for him, an art studio for her (both on the ground floor and enhanced by views of a new outdoor Japanese garden), and an astounding home theatre with its own art gallery and wet bar.
The owners and architect worked closely on personalizing these spaces. In the wife's case, she talked to artist friends about their work spaces and measured all her usual art supplies before they designed the cabinetry for her studio.

The husband also got some personalized details into the house, including a downstairs bar just off the kitchen. "It has room to seat exactly as many people as there are brothers in my family," he says with delight. "So all the guys can watch sports." Behind him, his wife rolls her eyes with loving patience. "All the guys," she jokes. "I also muscled my way into her pantry for a wine cellar," he points out. But, alas, his dream of a pool table in the home theatre room was nixed somewhere along the way.

There was one other original feature of the home the owners kept, besides the roof - a swimming pool that extends into the living room. "Every time people come over, the first thing they ask is, Can we swim into the living room?," says the wife. "I tell them, yes. They just can't get out of the pool in the living room?"

But the pool was not left untouched. Landscape architect David Tamura rebuilt the rocks and plants around the pool and added a small waterfall at the living room end. He also built a koi pond with waterfall at the top of the driveway, near the entry. The two water features work in concert to create a subtle, ingenious effect - the sound of gently falling waters follows you from the outdoors all the way into the house.

As for all the home's design and structural problems, these were solved - mainly by the wholesale replacement of the structure. "The house is built like a tank now," says Noborikawa. Looking back on the experience, the owners say, "This was our first remodel, and it was a little overwhelming." Designs, drawings and ideas passed between the owners and the architect by fax and phone for a year while the owners still lived in California. Then demolition and construction took another 13 months, during which the owners rented a house down the street so they could keep an eye on things.

To tour the house with the owners, one gets the impression that they wouldn't rush into such a project again. Not because they didn't enjoy remodeling this house, but because this house is now everything they dreamed of.