[ SELF-BUILT HOME ]
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Do-it-yourself
‘villa’ taxes vows
Ten years after moving in, a Kaneohe
couple still labors on the house they
designed and built from the ground up
Tom and Kathy Tyler began building their dream house with their own hands 13 years ago, but they haven't quite finished. Scaffolding is still up, concrete pillars remain unpainted and the stairway to the basement is missing (being reconfigured).
"Just a few details we haven't gotten to now that we got kids," Tom Tyler said.
Building a house is never easy, but the Tylers were faced with lots of challenges.
"This is a good way to test your marriage," Kathy Tyler said.
"If you can survive building a house with your husband, you can survive anything."
When the couple first married 16 years ago, they lived in a one-bedroom condo and dreamed of a big house. They decided a vacant quarter-acre lot, which had been in Kathy's family, was perfect with its view of Kaneohe Bay.
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After working nightly for a year on the design, Tom, an engineer, drafted plans for a beautiful, three-story Mediterranean-style house.
But the cost of a general contractor was so prohibitive, the couple opted to go owner-builder.
Despite doing much of the work themselves, Tom said, "nobody builds a house themselves." He hired a plumber, electrician, a carpenter and other tradesmen.
In preparation, they read a lot, got advice and got on-the-job-training by helping another couple build their home.
After getting the necessary permits, they cleared years of overgrown brush and trees.
When they were finally ready to break ground, they couldn't afford to pay excavators the $100,000 they were asking to cut back the steep hillside.
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So Tom got his two cousins from Indiana who, for the price of plane tickets, a bed-and-breakfast and pocket money, removed a mountain of earth.
Next, masons poured 15 truckloads of concrete for a foundation and erected a concrete tile retaining wall.
Waterproofing the 19-foot-high wall, Kathy said, "almost ended our marriage."
Kathy, dressed as if entering a hazardous-waste site, dangled on the wall on scaffolding and painted on three coats of "black, icky, gunky gooey stuff."
The couple relied heavily on a friend with carpentry experience, along with amateur help from friends and family.
After putting in a full day's work at their regular jobs, the Tylers toiled at the construction site and on weekends.
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After three years the couple moved in on Nov. 1, 1994, two days before their first child, Sarah, was born.
"We like our house," said Sarah, 9, speaking for sister Laura, 7. "I just wish the basement was finished."
The family's "villa on the hilla," as Kathy calls it, is imposing as you drive up the narrow roadway, but its peach-toned stucco walls give it warmth.
Was it worth it? "When I'm in a good mood, yes," Kathy said. "When I'm depressed, oh no. Nobody in their right mind would do this!"
