Follow us as we write a series of articles taking this trashed, abandoned house to a newly renovated dwelling for a local family. 
This house, we’re told, has been vacant since 2009. It is a three bedroom, two bath Hicks home built in 1972. Our goal is to update each room of the house and to clean up the yard so that the next buyer will be thrilled to call this home.
“Hicks Homes” were house kits that were sold for about $6500 by the Hicks Construction Company, Inc. in Hawaii back in the the 1950s. Some of the typical materials in a Hicks Home included tongue-and-groove Redwood single walls, Oak flooring, jalousie windows, and a white roof.
At the time, the goal of the company was to build affordable houses for the first time buyer and to enable developers to build a number of homes in a short amount of time using house kits. By the mid- to late-1960s, when the owner of the company passed, Harold Hicks had built 10,000 homes for people of Hawaii.
This particular house has definitely seen better days. At first sight, you are greeted by a mess! Garbage and unfinished work throughout the house.
Here’s what the house looks like untouched.
Our first task was to walk through the house and decide what the scope of the job will be. In other words, we had to determine what would stay and what would go. Next, we hired a clean-up crew to clear the work space, throw out the garbage and any other material that would not be needed for the renovation.
Day One is done, and look how much better the house looks!
Of course, there is much more to cleaning to do over the next several days, but after Day One, things are looking up. Since there was so much to dump, we rented a 30 yard container for all the trash. After Day One, this is what it looked like. 
Check in next week as we share some thoughts of our kitchen design and planned improvements.
References:
http://www.biahawaii.org/mpage/261
http://archives.starbulletin.com/2001/09/09/special/generations/story8.html
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