By now, they had hoped to be well on their way to building their $750,000, five-bedroom, three-bathroom dream house in 'Aina Haina. Instead, with no concrete, the foundation is unfinished and all work has stopped.

The delay means Kevin and Suzie Murray's anticipated August completion date has been pushed back perhaps until October.

So they'll have to keep paying $280 per month to keep their things in storage. And they'll have to keep sharing a rental home in Waipahu with Suzie's parents.

And they'll postpone getting pregnant for the second time, after the birth of their son, Niklaus, 16 months ago.

"We had hoped that once the house was halfway through being built, we would try for another baby," Kevin Murray said. "We didn't want to move in just when the baby was due. Now the only thing we can do is be patient. But at some point, it's going to get to the point where it's not reasonable anymore."

The effects of O'ahu's concrete strike have rapidly expanded beyond the picket lines that went up Feb. 6, when 144 Teamsters struck Ameron Hawaii. They were followed the next day by 67 Teamsters who struck Hawaiian Cement.

Negotiations between the Teamsters and Hawaiian Cement are scheduled to resume tomorrow at 5 p.m. at the union's Kalihi headquarters. No talks are scheduled with Ameron.

The strike has caused hundreds of construction workers to lose their jobs and slowed or halted construction projects. Now new homeowners are facing extra financial and human costs because of the delays to their houses.

The strike also has indirectly exerted more pressure on O'ahu's tight rental housing market because people such as the Murrays will have to stay in rental properties longer than expected.

Suzie's parents, Nancy and Wilfred Heirakuji, will move in with them when the 'Aina Haina house eventually gets built. But for now, their home in Waipahu represents one fewer rental on the market while the Heirakujis pay for extra rent they hadn't budgeted for, Kevin Murray said.

"I can't blame (the builder), I can't blame the union," Kevin said. "Everybody has their own agenda and their own family to look after. But it's unfortunate ... "

Murray also knows that the end of the strike won't mean an immediate return to construction.

Marshall Hickox, whose Homeworks Construction Inc. is building Murray's home, predicts that every day of work lost during the strike will need to be matched with at least one week of work.

When the strike ends, Hickox said, Ameron Hawaii and Hawaiian Cement will be swamped with backlogged orders that will take weeks to fill. At the same time, he said, masons won't be able to take care of all of the back-ordered concrete work all at once.

Normally, Hickox said, construction projects evolve in different stages, which allows the various trade unions to flow with the work that's needed at the time.

But when the concrete strike ends, Hickox said, "You're going to have hundreds of jobs and everyone is going to want all of those people right now. There won't be enough to go around. Then there will be a huge demand for framers and they'll be the next to get slammed."

Dr. Ramsey Hasan, an emergency room physician at Castle Medical Center, and his wife, Cindy, hope their project can get restarted quickly once the strike ends.

They had hoped to move into their custom home on Hawai'i Loa Ridge by August to get their two children — ages 5 and 7 — settled into their new schools.

As their property awaits its concrete foundation, the Hasans will pay rent on a home in Kapolei, uncertain when work will resume on their 3,000 square-foot, four-bedroom, 3ý-bath dream house.

"I understand the strikers' perspective," Ramsey Hasan said. "But boy, does it have ramifications — not just for the business community, but for people like us who are just trying to build the home we've been waiting years and years for."

Like the Hasans, the Murrays try to be patient. But it's taken them five years of saving, preparation and planning just to get to this point.

"All of this frustration makes it seem like we would have been better off just moving into ... a subdivision somewhere," Kevin Murray said. "But we chose to follow our dream."