Annual Parade of Homes begins showcase tomorrow

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

Parade of Homes What: 22 model homes on O'ahu and Maui Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow and Sunday, and Oct. 13-14 Information: 847-4666 Cost: Free Sponsor: Building Industry of Hawai'i

Above all, we want to know how much they're spending.

That's why the annual Parade of Homes, which begins its two-week run tomorrow, remains so popular with thousands of prospective buyers and others, too. It's a chance to see all the latest construction, design, furnishing, landscaping and financing trends in one great around-the-island whirlwind tour.

Last week, Advertiser staff writer Mike Leidemann visited 16 of the 22 model homes entered in this year's parade along with the judges from the Building Industry of Hawai'i, which sponsors the event. Here's his unofficial list of winners, losers, new trends and old favorites.

• Best new construction trend: Nearly every developer is using Hardy siding for exterior walls. It looks like wood, feels a little like plastic and has the termite resistance of cement. Combined with steel framing, the siding is taking expensive, environmentally unfriendly wood out of the Hawai'i building equation.
• Best new construction trend, part 2: OSB — "Oriented strand board" — is a paneling made from wood waste that is starting to replace plywood in many roofs. Combining OSB with Tech Shield, a wafer-thin metallic radiant heat barrier, can reduce temperatures in attics 15 to 25 degrees. That can translates into a big savings in air conditioning.
• The one word you're most likely to hear around the sales office: "Flex." Want that three-bedroom home converted to four? Or want the downstairs den changed into a Tutu room? No problem. Developers are trying to "flex" their building designs so you can have it your way with no extra cost.
• Biggest outdoor design trend: Use of big Chinese pots, with rich green and blue glazes, as planters, water containers or just design elements.
• Biggest outdoor design trend, part 2: Use of fist-sized, smooth, gray river rocks to separate planting areas or to suggest an actual river, just as you'd see in a Japanese garden.
• Most unusual garden element: Free-standing glass-block walls, set at varying heights amid backyard plantings.
• Department of Overkill Department: One model home's master bedroom had 11 overstuffed decorative pillows on the bed; two others had 10 pillows on one bed. Looks great, until you have to get under the covers.
• Coolest idea for a kid's room: The hermetically sealed closet designed to look like an aquarium at the Pointe at Royal Kunia. Sand on the floor, painted fish on the blue walls, and a piece of wavy glass in front of it all. Fun to look at, but absolutely impractical to use.
• Most tired decorating idea: Botanical and flower prints. Nearly every model home had two, three or four on the wall.
• Worst new name for a model home, until you get it: Exhibit 3 of the Gallery Homes in Royal Kunia.
• It's not the sticker price that shocks you, it's the options: At Schuler Homes' StarsEdge in Makakilo, for instance, prices begin at $282,000. If you want your home to look like the model, though, it will cost you another $125,568. It's a similar story at all the other developments.
• Most popular interior wall color of 2001: Yellow, in all its warm shades from amber to ocher and avocado to peach. Accent pillows run the spectrum from gold to maize, with a touch of green and brown. Burnished golden bamboo picture frames complete the picture.
• Most decadent feature that we'd kill for in our own house: Corian counter tops in the laundry room. Runner-up: His and hers walk-in closets.
• Best architectural attempt to create a real Hawai'i lifestyle. The Coconut Plantation homes at Ko Olina, which have two-story lanais and an open-air, resort feel usually found only in Neighbor Island developments. Too bad the starting prices put them out of reach of the kind of Islanders who would enjoy them the most.
• Best update of a local tradition: Wicker is being combined with wrought iron, oak, steel, bamboo, teak, leather and just about everything else to make it the furniture of choice this year.
• Department of Overkill, Security Division: The Coconut Plantation is a gated community within Ko Olina, itself a gated community.
• Most innovative project of the year: Kapolei Ho'olimalima, in which Hawaiian homestead land is being developed into rent-to-own homes. Qualified Hawaiians will be allowed to rent the solidly built homes for 15 years, then offered the option of buying them for truly affordable prices, less than $100,000.
• Best new streetscapes in a cookie-cutter world: Haseko Homes goes out of its way in its Ocean Pointe project to vary the look and color of homes along safe, winding neighborhood streets. Garages are entered through old-fashioned alleyways in back.
• Best landscaping trend: Native Hawaiian plants in the suburbs. Dennis Kim's landscape design for Schuler Home's Kalamaku'u project in Kalama Valley shows what's possible these days with a little imagination.
• Most happening place: Hawai'i Kai. Hundreds of new homes, ranging from condos to waterfront executive houses, are being built there by two developers.
• Old design tricks that still work: Mirrored closet doors! Matchstick blinds! Potted palms! Grass mats on the walls!
• The dare-to-be-different award: Shari Saiki's bold colors and modern Asian interior designs for the models at the Peninsula at Hawai'i Kai buck every trend you see elsewhere — and they succeed spectacularly.
• Most encouraging thought: The quality of Hawai'i's new home construction keeps getting better and better; some former developers who cut corners on quality have been weeded out of the marketplace or forced to improve. Because of competition, prices have not gone up as much as you would expect.