When siblings David and Michelle Jaime talk shop in David’s Chinatown studio, they’re so focused — leafing through blueprints and materials with eloquent, long-fingered hands — they seem to forget the others in the room.
Both are in the building trade but own separate businesses. Michelle’s company, the Vanguard Theory, specializes in interior design for hotels, with clients such as Surfjack in Waikiki, restaurants and high-end second homes.
David, who owns Blue Star Design & Builders, counts the Sig Zane store on Smith Street among his commercial projects and says his residential clients tend to be younger local couples who have inherited or bought older homes in desirable neighborhoods; as the father of a 4-month-old daughter, he can relate to their needs.
“David designs and builds. I’m just a designer,” said Michelle, 38, with a smile.
“Michelle is so much more well-versed in what’s coming up,” said her brother, 36. “In Hawaii, we’re very traditional; she pushes the envelope.”
The Jaimes channel their differences productively in regular, informal exchanges of ideas that help them both professionally.
Sometimes they work together: A recent collaboration, the renovation of a Kailua beach house, was featured in a pilot for “Aloha Homes” that HGTV/DIY Networks aired nationally in February. Their younger brother Davin, 28, who often assists on construction jobs, is also in the show.
Built in the 1950s, the beach house’s sound original structure had been cluttered by earlier remodeling. “It was in really good shape, but different owners had added on through the years, so the function was very disjointed,” Michelle said. For instance, “There was a plug-in fireplace that glowed.”
The siblings flipped the orientation of the kitchen, facing the workspace toward the living areas “so it was a lot more inviting,” Michelle said. In addition, to let the outdoor space and light flow into the interior, they opened up and reframed the whole back wall, installed a 12-foot sliding door and added more windows.
They also moved and reused the existing cabinets, which were in good shape and made of solid hardwood, the best material and the most expensive to buy new, she said.
Another re-use idea evolved from replacing the old louvered windows with windows that had panes. “We were looking at lightening up the space,” David said, “and thought of cutting up and using the old glass jalousies as tile for the kitchen sink backsplash.”
They needed more jalousies, which they got for free from ReUse Hawaii, with whom they partner regularly to disassemble old structures as well as provide old materials. Regular glass tiles cost $12 to $15 each.
Instead of a budget “that could have ballooned,” they saved money and kept materials out of the landfill.
OAHU ROOTS
The concept for the HGTV/DIY show, which the producers are shopping as a series, is how the Honolulu natives use their local knowledge and contemporary ideas to rejuvenate old island homes.
This takes into consideration “the harsh, cold reality of renovating with the high cost of living in Hawaii,” Michelle said, noting that a lack of local resources, requiring that most materials be shipped here, inflates the bottom line.
“So it’s really about how to be resourceful.”
The Jaimes learned to be resourceful early on, growing up in Hawaii Kai in a close-knit family with six other siblings. Their grandparents came from Hawaii island, Kauai and Brooklyn, N.Y. Their father was a housekeeper who became a pastor, and their mother started out as a secretary at Honeywell and worked her way up, becoming a top salesperson.
“We figured out when we were kids that we wanted to challenge the conventional ways of thinking,” Michelle said.
She studied psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, which turned out to be good training for a home renovation consultant. “People have such an emotional response to their homes, and renovating your house is one of the most stressful things you can do,” she said.
But when it goes well, “You can make people really happy.”
Michelle transferred to the California College of Arts in San Francisco, majoring in fine arts, but came home to care for a sick family member before receiving her degree. She enrolled at the architecture school at UH and left when she was offered a job.
“So I’m an architect dropout,” she said. Later, while working as an interior designer for Mary Philpotts, she met her business partner, Judy Andrade, and they founded Vanguard in 2009.
One downside of being a business owner: She’s been too busy to renovate her own apartment, apart from putting in new floors.
BRAINSTORMING
David, who loved to take things like VCRs apart as a child to see how they worked, studied graphic design; his first job was at a local church, designing pamphlets and lighting its theatrical productions. As a result, he said, he tends to view home interiors as a stage.
A drawing of one of David’s current projects, a house renovation in Kaimuki, was projected on a wall screen in his office.
His young clients, he said, wanted to open up the space, taking out partition walls while keeping and restoring the tongue-and-groove style of the original single-wall construction.
Looking at the drawing, Michelle introduced a different idea. “There’s a trend to compartmentalize again, like you get in New York high-end condos. They have a workhorse pantry so when you entertain, you throw everything in there and close the door,” leaving the kitchen clear for serving.
Hawaii, she said, “has a Costco mentality” that might make that sort of storage pantry attractive.
The two played around with this notion for a while, but David didn’t think his clients would go for it.
GROUP APPROACH
Whatever their wish list and lifestyle, before homeowners dive into a renovation they need to budget “or you’ll blow your money on the first fun thing and can’t do the rest,” David said. And one needs to stick to the plan. “Families get upset when they make changes and this creates delay.”
With housing costs so high, Blue Star saw a growing need to bring designers, contractor and homeowners together in the same room, at the outset, to plan out a realistic design according to the homeowner’s budget as well as dreams.
“There’s a huge disconnect, we find, between designer, contractor and architect,” David said, adding that, while he is a contractor and not licensed as an architect, he drafts and plans, and consults with architects as needed.
As an interior designer, Michelle knows about materials and specs for everything from floor and wall coverings to cabinet sizes. “She’ll sit here with me on the couch and we’ll look at samples, costing things out,” her brother said. They enjoy the give and take of working together — and learning from each other — so much that there’s an occupational hazard: “When we get together for family time we’ll start to talk about work.”
Luckily, they get plenty of distraction during the regular dinner get-togethers of the large Jaime clan, which rotates between homes.
HOME RENOVATION TIPS
>> 1. Get rid of the clutter. “If I have a lot of clutter, my mind is the same way,” Michelle Jaime said. Once you have a clean slate, you can see more clearly how you want to redesign the space.
>> 2. Draw up your budget first and tailor your design to fit.
>> 3. Save money and waste by reusing old materials and designing to standard sizes that new materials, such as plywood sheets, come in.
>> 4. Plan for plentiful and consistent lighting. If you change out your light bulbs, 2700 Kelvin provides a nice warm glow; the higher the Kelvin number, the cooler and harsher the color becomes.
>> 5. Paint goes a long way and is the most inexpensive thing you can do to refresh a space. Make sure that door and trim color is a brighter white than, or contrasts with, the wall color.
>> 6. Flooring should be consistent in color and materials throughout the home.
>> 7. Solid-wood cabinets are always best and can now be had for good prices. Pressed board cabinetry warps and bends.
>> 8. Maximize natural ventilation in walls with windows facing prevailing winds. Jalousies, casements or awning windows (which swing open) give you 100 percent ventilation, where as double- or single-hung windows cut your breeze in half.
>> 9. Invest in high-quality windows. In Hawaii, with the humid salt air, make sure they’re framed with the strongest, rustproof stainless steel.
(Source: Michelle and David Jaime)
