HANAPEPE — The exact renovations to a 1,672- square foot house in Hanaepepe are under wraps until this weekend, and Julie Black and Kela Caspillo said they can’t wait for the reveal. That’s because their first go at renovating and
HANAPEPE — The exact renovations to a 1,672- square foot house in Hanaepepe are under wraps until this weekend, and Julie Black and Kela Caspillo said they can’t wait for the reveal.
That’s because their first go at renovating and selling a house is debuting a new season of DIY Network’s “First Time Flippers.” It’s a national television show that chronicles the process of buying a fixer-upper and turning it into a dream home.
“We’re excited, but we can’t say too much,” Black, who owns Kauai Dreams Realty, said. “You’ll see the before and after on the show, though.”
The mother-daughter duo bought the Hanapepe house in January. It was their fourth attempt at buying a property, and though it wasn’t in a condition to be financeable, it had “good bones,” Black said.
The five-bedroom, two bathroom house sits on a 10,160 square-foot parcel of land that was littered with debris when the pair bought it. The house also had an illegal addition attached.
“I don’t know how much rubbish we carted out of the back yard,” Caspillo said. “We handpicked about 500 bottle caps. They were all over the yard.”
A family friend, who is a general contractor, led the way with the renovations and Black said many members of their ‘ohana helped with the process.
Black submitted the house for consideration on the DIY Network almost as soon as she and her daughter decided to flip it, and targeted “First Time Flippers” because she’s a fan of the show.
“Once we bought the house, we thought it’d be a fun thing to do, to be on a national TV program,” Black said. “But we’re also hoping it inspires people to buy some of the older homes and fix them up.”
Renovations started in February, and DIY crews came to Kauai for six days to film footage, utilizing local film crews for most of the work.
“We did do a lot of the work ourselves and they (the cast with DIY) poke fun at us as part of the show, watching as we struggle,” Black said.
The Hanapepe house sold in September for $512,007 to the first people who saw it.
“I was surprised,” Black said. “I was there and they told me they wanted it. I said, ‘Oh, really?’”
The episode, entitled “Tropic Blunder” is number 608 and will be shown on DIY Network, channel 324 on Spectrum in Hawaii, at 9:30 p.m. HST.
It’s the first “First Time Flippers” episode to be filmed in Hawaii.
“It’s kind of nice,” Caspillo said. “We took this unfinanceable house, one that we got a mortgage on another property to have the cash to buy, and made it financeable for a first time home buyer.”
