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This painting served as the inspiration for the home’s design, with the same colors used throughout the house to reflect a fun, beachy lifestyle.
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| The sectional, multicolored couch creates a comfortable, intimate
setting, steps away from the open shoreline. The indoor-outdoor layout
offers breezy trade winds and sweeping ocean views.
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Jan Adams wants people to walk into her newly completed home on the ocean at Puako and think fun. “Not, ‘This is gorgeous,’” she says. “I want them to smile and say, ‘This is fun.’”
How could a house with interiors designed around a painting of a bright red, vintage Woodie station wagon with pastel-colored surfboards on top, which is parked on a tropical white sand beach—a lighthearted painting that exudes surf, sun and carefree summer—be anything else?
Adams worked with interior designer Jamie Jackson, and junior designer Isla Schmidt, of Pacific Home Studio in Honolulu to coordinate the home’s entire interior design with the Darrell Hill painting that hangs in the living room. From the turquoise, easy-to-sweep cement floor, which reflects the colors of the ocean, to the many-sectioned couch’s varied, bright colors, which also match the painting, it all adds up to a casual, beach feel. The “painting as design focus” works.
“And it’s all simple and easy to take care of,” Jackson says, adding that she enjoyed the collaborative project. “It was fun to work together. Jan came up with ideas and was open to playing with us. Obviously I have a vision when I design a house, but I always want it to be someone’s home.”
Jan and Bill Adams lived at a nearby Puako address for years before building their new house. “Puako is really Old Hawaii,” Jan says. “It’s not manicured. Not formal, dressy.” That’s the feeling she wanted for her house, on which they put an old-style tin roof.
Jackson’s design is a perfect mix of that older, informal style, plus some casual new. Chris Reiner designed and built the mint-colored, old-style dresser that fits perfectly between two closets in the Adams’ master bedroom. Throw pillows scattered throughout the house, made of vintage-looking fabrics, rest alongside a handful of Chinese antiques. On the lanai, new chairs, covered with woven plastic that looks like wicker but is easier to care for, sport cushions made of colorful, striped, fade- and stain-resistant Sunbrella fabric.
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| The design is, in part, focused on clean, simple living. The
turquoise cement floor is easy to care for, and the fabrics all offer
additional protection against stains, soil, mildew and UV rays. These
details are important, especially with eight grandchildren.
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| The open floor plan and large doors allow for trade winds to move
easily through the house. The old-style tin roof complements the
property’s Puako setting.
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Jackson included touches of nostalgia for Old Hawaii, such as the expandable koa table made by Martin & MacArthur in Honolulu, and the canoe paddles mounted above the door. And some of the beds have chenille bedspreads, “like you would see in your grandma’s house,” Jackson says.
Jan says that besides the home being easy to care for and not fussy, it needed to be functional for lots of family members.
When they planned the house—designed by Bill Weigang of Weigang, Markvick and Associates of Kona, and built by Dave Mulligan of White Sands Construction in Kawaihae—they included three master suites: one for Jan and her husband, and one each for their two sons and their wives, all with sliding doors that open to the beach.
When Jan and Bill celebrated their 50th anniversary last summer, everybody flew in to join them at the newly completed Puako home: their sons, daughters-in-law and eight grandchildren, who range in age from 2 to 23 years old.
A large, dorm-style room has four high, fluffy beds for the four older granddaughters, and the girls’ nightstands hold bedside lamps in a Beachcomber design, each made of different old, seashell-filled bottles. The girls’ bathroom, with separate shower and toilet areas, includes a long, no-seam, Corian counter with a colorful “speck” design, planned so several girls can simultaneously use the mirror.
The younger kids bunk around, some on the many-sectioned and versatile Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Dr. Pitt couch. Each couch section has indoor/outdoor slipcovers made from different yet complementary soil-, mildew- and UV-resistant fabrics with names like “Pipipi Shells” and “Limu Lei,” from the Perennials line of Wendy Tsuji’s Hana Road collection.
An open-air, outside shower has a giant showerhead and a smooth river-rock floor, as do all the indoor showers. The outdoor shower beckons from alongside the house for rinsing off after the beach.
Both the front- and ocean-facing lengths of the house have retracting doors that open wide to the sea. Jan and Bill love the near-constant breeze and the comforting sound of waves rolling up on rocky inlets just beyond the house. “It’s like being outside all the time,” Jan says.
They had the house blessed, Hawaiian style, when everyone was there in July. “We planted two coconut trees in the corner, for the grandkids, so they are a part of the land,” she says.
The kids and grandkids loved the place when they recently saw it finished for the first time, and Jan says they will be back whenever they can get away.
Which is fine with them. She and Bill are there to stay, she says. She points to the comfortable, fade-resistant rocking chairs on the lanai and laughs: “We’ll be out here, rocking away.”
