This Old House, Hawaiian Style

By Kelli Lundgren

Quite frankly it takes time to plow through muck.  Decayed cabinets. Sinks more brown than white. Landscaping that once was. Saplings here and there desperately trying to find water.  Items previously thought salvageable we throw into the trash heap.  As far as we can see the roof adequately protects from rain, the walls are solid.  Nothing a good double cleaning of detergent with bleach cannot revive.

"Phase Two" of Before, stripped out, ready for tile, kitchen

In the stricken yard, I collect Red Bull cans, screws, and food wrappers, and discover five squishy dog toys buried in overgrown weeds.  Discarded cigarette butts, glass and bottle caps are rammed flat into red soil, objects futilely trying to decompose. 

And this is only the physical mess.  The emotional mess, the “how do people live like this” reflection churns in my mind as I uproot weeds, clean walls, collect dirt, and clear feces left by past inhabitants, including people. 

Someone in the neighborhood asked if we got a good deal on the home.  No.  We bought a shell of a home at a price only a visionary could appreciate.

I could worry, but I don’t, at least in the sense that this place will be beautiful when Tom and I finish creating.  I have oodles of confidence.  I’ve done it before.  This does not scare me. 

What scares me is when I reflect on the fact I am coming here to live.  It’s one thing to take a structure and create a piece of art, it’s quite another to know that this place will be where Tom and I enjoy a glass of wine, entertain grandkids for the summer, and sleep through nights within its walls. 

Too, every experience now on Maui is looked at much differently than that of a tourist. To explain, when we turn right on Piilani Highway and see an expansive, gorgeous ocean view for the umpteenth time, the tourist I once was would look at this panorama as paradise.  I now look at it as: this is it.  This is our new rock in the Pacific for months and years to come.  We come here for another phase in life’s cycle, one where Tom has retired, we are scaling back, and where we will grow "older."

And the people in our new neighborhood?  Rick next door has given us carte blanche access to his garage, including use of an impressive array of tools and access to a well stocked fridge. Jay rides by on his bike with kids in tow.  He tries to warn us about the previous owners of our home.  We do not flinch.  He tells us nothing we do not know.  We have looked into the walls.  We have pulled up floors. The home tells a hundred more tales than those coming from Jay's lips. 

Before: We're expanding the living room, changing the door

On Friday evening Tom and I took a break and attended the Kihei town festival.  We shared a table with retired educators from Oregon State University, and another couple formerly with the U.S. Forest Service.  Twelve years they’ve been on Maui.  We memorized every word they used to describe what they think and love about Maui.  We clung to any knowledge validating our life-altering decision to move here.

Last evening our real estate agent texted me with unexpected news.  We have an offer on our Utah home.  We listed it for sale seven days ago. The offer is reasonable and the prospective couple we hear fell in love in one visit and offered within two hours.  They want to move in in three weeks.  What happened to the forever-trying-to-decide potential buyers from the Great Recession who could slowly ease us off of the mainland and onto this mid-ocean island?  

Someone wants our home.  Reality pummels me, more than I had anticipated. 

I designed our Cottonwood Heights home and its community.  This is my pride.  But more importantly, this has been my comfort since 2007. 

Someone wants our home.   Dammit, that’s why we listed it for sale.  That’s the plan.  Now fear strikes.

I search for thoughts and find so many memories when I have closed the garage door behind my car to then choose from many beautiful luxuries in our expansive Utah urban oasis.  My favorite certainly is the back deck in May--this time of year--when the scrub oak has freshly bloomed, with birds visiting our feeder; red, blue, yellow and gray feathered friends perched high, with doves and quails eating fallen feed below. The creek sings its soothing masterpiece against the back edge of our yard.  Memories in time cannot be more euphoric than this. 

Back on Maui’s Piilani Highway, Tom now drives with the ocean in the rear view mirror.  We head back to the stripped down walls of our Kihei fixer-upper. Tears well in my eyes as I look out the passenger window thinking of this past era of my life, of the home we are now selling, of what I created, of what I have loved. 

--

Any time a friend is looking to purchase a new home and the offer falls through, so many times I see rejection, dismay.  And I tell her, I know you do not think it possible to find another home equally as perfect, but I guarantee you will.  It always happens. You have to remove yourself emotionally from the last home. I know you "moved into it" in your mind.  We all do.  But move on so you are ready to invest in the next home, which will be better. You just don't know it yet.  And in my years of experience, every time, the next new home is the right new home for my friend.  Every time. 

I need to give a friend some advice right now.  My friend is me. Our next new home is the right new home.  I guarantee it.

Toilets and Paradise; We're Moving to Maui

When traveling, how many times have you asked yourself “Could I live here?”  I confidently guess this self-pondering question is common.  We can always dream of new places, and of course we do.  We think: could I be happier living here? 

Many of us never venture far enough from our dreams to actually make a move.  But some do.  We are. Tom and I are moving to Hawaii to the island of Maui this summer.  Yes, we will no longer own a home in Utah.  Yes, I’m moving away from my family, my oldest children and grandchildren. 

After the initial exhilaration of saying let's go, I now feel sadness many times each day.  My heart hurts in moments when holding a grandchild or having lunch with a friend.  But if I did not follow through on my dream, I think I would be even more heartbroken, and more so, very disappointed in myself.  I have been waiting 20 years to move, waiting for the day my youngest child ventures off to college, for when my business and Tom’s schedule allow for us to, for the first time in my adult life, live somewhere other than Utah.

I am a California beach kid who had been transplanted to Salt Lake City at 14 years old.  For many years I have desired to move back to the golden state.  It has been absolutely wonderful living in Utah, absolutely.  And the friends I've made I cannot replace.  But now I’m moving back to the ocean. 

When Tom and I tell people we are moving to Maui, they are surprised and look at us like we are living the dream.  "You get to do that? Lucky you," they say.  I tell them we are compromising.

Yeah, right, compromising.

Really, we are compromising.  Tom’s retirement vision is to live on a sailboat and sail around the world.  I need land.  I need real estate.  That's what I do, invest in real estate.  I also need a place to house at least some possessions; a place that does not rock from ocean swells, a place that does not require pictures to be bound to fiberglass walls, a place that does not need a periodic head cleanout, a place with a hot shower.  Call me entitled, but, really, I ask for very little... a foundation.   Land, I need land.  So, we’re heading to Maui, a land next to our sailboat. 

I have to say, honestly too, that although I love, just love, my conversations with Tom, two days is the max in a confined space such as a boat until I desperately need to talk to other people.  I cannot be constrained by a hull for too long.  A Carnival Cruise is hell to me.  I cannot get away from the top-heavy boat-city fast enough to seek land and local culture.  Perhaps I was a lion in a past life, a creature averse to confined spaces. Tom must have been a dolphin.  

I love to sail.  But Tom breathes sailing.  There’s a difference.

Tom recently retired after 30 years in the aerospace industry.  My son Daniel is taking off to Vancouver Canada to attend the University of British Columbia.  It’s time for us to travel.  It’s time to let the wind blow our sails and take us to the outskirts of Hawaii, to Tahiti, to sail amongst the whales.  No blaring motor, just quiet solitude; humpback whales and us trying to figure each other out.  Euphoria.

And our home in Salt Lake?  It’s a paradise we’re leaving.  We’re selling.  The snow shovels have been donated to charity, the humidifier no long needed.  Six thousand square feet of wandering elegance situated next to a rushing, soothing creek are to be replaced with one thousand square feet of roof and the world’s most beautiful beaches. 

Our most priceless possessions--pictures, writings, children’s art from over the years--are heading with us. 

I do not know what’s in store, except a rat hole of an investment of a house we intend to make a gem.  But that’s what I do for a living. 

I remember our first condo we purchased on Maui three years ago.  A foreclosure.  A nightmare.  I remember getting into the rental car with my volunteer helper, my son. We stopped immediately at the Maui Costco by the airport to pick up a toilet and beach towels; the essentials.  We then drove the Costco toilet across the island through sugarcane fields.  And I thought, I cannot believe it, I’m heading to "our place" on Maui.  We have a place. We do not have a key to get in (that's another story), but we have a place.

It took three months until we could install that damn Costco toilet after we had to dig much deeper into the walls than we had expected to repair decaying rough plumbing.  The only items we ever saved from that original condo shell were three ceiling fans and an air conditioner.  Everything else?  New.   We absolutely love our dwelling now after months of sweat; that is, Maui humid, dripping sweat that you surrender to while proceeding with work.

And in the three years since we traveled across the sugarcane fields with a toilet, life is treasured in Kihei when we're there.  I had the opportunity to help Irene, our neighbor downstairs.  She passed away this year, but I helped her carry her groceries from her car to her cozy one bedroom place.  Once she said to me, “Kelli, I’m 92 years young.”  I too want to be 92 years young someday.

Becky, the young gal raised on Oahu, now working on Maui, rented a condo two doors over, one floor down.  She and I sat at the pool one evening as I described the plumbing disaster we had found in the building using my arms and hands to animate, telling her how our second floor toilet fell through the floor. Becky, filled with anxiety, moved out two days after our conversation, grand piano and all, until her landlord forced her to return to meet her lease obligation.  I watched as the piano was being hauled back into the condo by two strong men dripping with Maui sweat.  I decided I have to be more sensitive with my storytelling.

One evening, on the street below our condo lanai, three homeless people were conversing. I couldn't help but overhear while sitting inside our screen door.   Two described to one the ins and outs of homelessness in Hawaii.  You see, the state’s no-questions-asked $300 monthly welfare check goes a lot further if, for one, you rent a storage unit for $60 a month.  Stay there when it rains (which isn’t often on the leeward side of the island) and use the space as a home base for your possessions. Two, collect cans and bottles from the dumpster to return to the store to receive the recycling deposits (the same bottles and cans tourists neglect on their vacation).  And three, go through The Times grocery store’s dumpster for food.  The remaining welfare money? Use it for drugs of choice.  Sleep on the white sand beach under a Sandalwood tree by forming a sand pillow. Get one blanket to ward off the chill of 62 degrees around 4 a.m.   Wake to a pink-clouded sunrise skimming the calm morning ocean.  Paradise for homeless.

I met Leroy, a condo neighbor one building over and one floor below during the tsunami in March of 2011; the wave that decimated Japan and hit the shores of Maui.  Leroy and his wife loaded their car as I loaded mine and we whisked ourselves to the Safeway parking lot a mile up the hill.  When the waves came into Kihei, they passed our condo and flooded Kihei Road.  A few residents came home after the first few waves hit, knowing by then the effect was less than disastrous in Hawaii.  

We were tired of sitting in cars with our adrenaline rushes, listening to emergency radio channels and sirens for six dark hours in a parking lot.  I just wanted to sleep.  After I had crept home at dawn, I spoke with the folks below on the first floor as the sixth tsunami wave percolated past our condos and up the street.  It swamped our parking lot.  Yet the lower condos were another four feet up and stayed dry.  From my second floor lanai, I pointed out to my friends on the first floor they were on the tsunami level. 

It is these Maui experiences I have cherished, those that make me yearn for more.  I do not have room in these words to write about all the wonderful experiences and people I have met in Utah. Perhaps a simpler life on Maui will afford me more time to document these dear stories.

Although Tom and I are emotionally attached to the sweat and tears of that first condo, we rent the place now for income.  We cannot move into it when we move to Maui.  You see, we have our dog Chester.  He’s a member of our family, my last child.   And you cannot have pets in vacation condos.   And I cannot forgo my dog.  That would be too much added on to much.  So it’s a little Maui house with a yard and garage we have set our minds to.  I hope the neighbors in this new residential community are as treasured as those in the condo complex.

This is an adventure I hope to enjoy.  I will enjoy.  I cannot see it as anything else.