They Turned the ‘Ugliest Rundown Condo’ Into a Hawaiian Dream

They Turned the ‘Ugliest Rundown Condo’ Into a Hawaiian Dream


When Nicole Hollis and Lewis Heathcote started generating common trips to Hawaii a decade in the past, their visits invariably mixed enterprise and pleasure. The married couple, who run NicoleHollis, a San Francisco-centered inside design and style organization where by Ms. Hollis is the inventive director and Mr. Heathcote is the chief government, ended up seeking to break out of the Bay Place.

“We ended up beginning to listen to much more and a lot more of our consumers say, ‘Yeah, we’re constructing, or we’re getting, or we’re investing time in Hawaii,’” mentioned Mr. Heathcote, 46. “So about 10 yrs in the past, we had a genuine intention to devote time listed here.”

“We had our honeymoon listed here,” added Ms. Hollis, 49. “But we also wished to function in this article.”

Their lots of visits more than the decades assisted them build a network of qualified contacts and reveal that they have been severe about functioning in the location. The couple’s firm has given that designed a lot of private residences in Hawaii and is presently at perform on the 1 Lodge Hanalei Bay and Kona Village, a Rosewood vacation resort.

Along the way, they fell in really like with the islands for a lot more personalized motives. “If you come from the East Coast, like Nicole, or you occur from Europe, it is just so otherworldly,” explained Mr. Heathcote, who was born and lifted in England.

As business trips significantly grew into prolonged loved ones outings with their kids — Poppy, now 10, and Beckett, 7 — the pair made the decision it was time to get a getaway home in Hawaii.

When they commenced looking all-around Kailua-Kona on the Huge Island in 2019, they realized exactly what they wanted. “We just started out on the lookout for the ugliest rundown rental we could uncover, for the reason that we understood that we would want to transform it,” Ms. Hollis said.

They discovered it at the 4 Seasons Vacation resort Hualalai: a a few-bedroom, 2,800-square-foot condominium with a series of lanais that hadn’t been modified because it was developed about 20 a long time before.

“It was super dated,” Ms. Hollis stated, with creamy wall-to-wall carpet, gold-hued slate and orangy woodwork, alongside with cabinetry and crafted-ins set up on diagonals that fashioned uncomfortable corners. “It was all ’90s angles.”

Following getting the residence for $1.9 million that April, they gutted it, looking at little they needed to hold further than the cedar-paneled vaulted ceilings, which they refinished, and the indoor-out of doors circulation. “We had been the to start with persons below, in any of these condos, to genuinely take it down to the studs,” Mr. Heathcote claimed.

In place of the product-and-orange coloration plan, Ms. Hollis produced a high-distinction palette of gentle and darkish grays, along with bleached and blackened woods. “I desired anything calming and comfortable, not a good deal of decoration,” she reported. “A ton of these destinations have tons of tile, and loads of accents, decoration and sconces. We just type of stripped all that absent.”

Aiming to enjoy up the textures of a variety of elements, she added bleached, reclaimed teak flooring, gentle white-oak doors and warm-grey lime plaster on the walls. Then she introduced in household furniture with a organic, unfussy enchantment. The terrific space is furnished with a small-slung sectional sofa protected in Belgian linen from Restoration Hardware, a blackened-oak Beam coffee desk by Marlieke Van Rossum, vintage French rattan armchairs and a handwoven jute rug from Mark Nelson Layouts.

Artful mild fixtures — like a Planck pendant by Jérôme Pereira with a sculpted oak body that hangs above the eating desk and cost-free-sort pendants by Rogan Gregory earlier mentioned the evening stands in the main bed room — increase visible flair.

The couple’s contractor, Dowbuilt, began building shortly right after Ms. Hollis and Mr. Heathcote closed on the house, and manufactured swift development bringing Ms. Hollis’s vision to everyday living — appropriate up right until the pandemic struck, at which place the undertaking hit a standstill.

Final July, wanting to press the renovation above the end line, the few flew to the island with their kids, quarantined and then personally oversaw the ultimate phases of operate, which expense a overall of about $1.2 million. Their intention was to transfer into the condominium for a brief trip before returning to San Francisco.

“We prepared on going home in August,” Ms. Hollis mentioned. “And then we improved our minds and reported, ‘Let’s keep. The school’s not open up. What is the issue in likely back again?’”

Over the following months, they retained organizing new departure dates, only to transform their minds. “We had been like, ‘OK, we’ll go back again for Christmas,’” Ms. Hollis stated. “Then we did not go back again for Xmas.”

It wasn’t right up until April of this yr that they last but not least returned to San Francisco. But after their extended knowledge of island daily life, they now prepare to return as often as feasible.

“If you are lucky more than enough to acquire a second home, you often have this form of wistful factor the place you say, ‘Can you visualize a time when we could dwell there comprehensive-time?’” Mr. Heathcote stated.

Just after having to do just that, Ms. Hollis summed up the expertise succinctly: “It was magical.”

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