May 31, 2025
As I was walking from the truck in the driveway, back to the gazebo, I noticed something by the pile of pallets there!
A male Jackson chameleon! – click on the picture above for a short video.
The pond/waterfall/ fountain is coming along nicely.
I check back with the chameleon, and he has moved from that metal fencing and onto a tree nearby.
The first section of wall goes up at the makai corner of the house!
June 1, 2025
Yesterday, I put up the first section of wall for the upper floor of the house. Today, I added the intersecting wall to complete the corner, and the intermediate blocking at the floor line as well as at the 4′ height.
June 2, 2025
It’s like christmas! My solar panels arrived. I had ordered them from Amazon a couple of weeks ago, and they arrived today. Now I can put them together with the solar powered portable power station I had purchased from Lowes.
I laid the panels out on the roof of the gazebo extension and hooked them up with the various connecting cables I had purcased.
I did not purchase a cable long enough to extend to the location where I wanted to place my power station. I called my neighbor Brian who also has this brand of solar system to see if he had any spare parts. It just so happened, that he had one long cable that he had damaged the connecting end of. I was able to reconnect the wires and tape them together with electical tape. It worked. I have power at the gazebo!
June 3, 2025
Over at the Ahi property, there are a few strawberry guavas. The fruit is smaller than a normal guava – noy quite the size of a ping pong ball, and full of large seeds. There is not very much pulp inside, but it does have a strawberry taste to it!
The work on South Point Road is about finished. All they have left is the striping.
Along the side of South Point Road, they left piles of excess material just like they did when doing Kamaoa Road.
It’s just not as obvious as the other piles. Under and behind this vegetation is a pile that filled my truck.
June 4, 2025
Time to move the refrigerator out of the sleeping shed, and up to the kitchen.
June 5, 2025
It’s time to do a little bit of laundry. I went to OceanView to the laundromat.
On the way back, I stopped along South Point Road and gathered some of the excess material from when they repaved here!
This material was then spread out where Amepela Road, Makani Akua, and Palaoa, Road all come together in an “S” curve. This has been a real rough spot, and this helped to smooth this out. My little contribution to the community!
June 6, 2025
The framing of the house walls continues. With both corners on the driveway side (the Hilo side) built, I start on the side near the kitchen gazebo (the Kona side).
I am building the walls with 12 ‘ 2 x 4’s that extend from the masonry walls, past the floor construction and all the way to the roof line. A method called baloon framing.
June 7, 2025
I procured a couple of pineapples. one of them has three “tops” at one end, and two at the other end. Weird!
Continued with the wall framing and built the intersecting wall to create the corner nearest the gazebo.
I build each wall as a unit on top of the floor framing, and then stand it up, and carefully thread it down, between and around the floor framing! All, while balancing on the edge of the 2 x floor joist, and without being pulled off from the weight of the wall!
June 8, 2025
Ahi Road is looking a little ragged at the top of the property.
The driveway could also use a trim.
The flat area next to the driveway is beginning to become overgrown as well.
Time to do some landscape maintenance!
On one of my previous trips, I had disassembled a lawnmower and packed it into my checked luggage – “Two bags fly free!”
S, it was time to get it out and see if I could get it put back together – successfully!
I used the weed eater to chop down the weeds around the Ahi property – at the back, the area next to the driveway, both sides of the driveway, and the top of the property next to the waterlines.
Mowing the road is a joy with this lawnmower!
After I had mowed Ahi Road, I was visited by the local dog pack!
I’ll park the lawn mower next to the bungalow. . . for the time being.
My neighbors took pity on me and sent over some dinner! yumm!
June 9, 2025
Brian, my neighbor stopped by to borrow my concrete hand tools. The edgers were under the shed. The hand trowel was in the back of the Ford Escape. The hand tamp, and the floats were at the back of the bathroom. While I knew where they all were. I found it annoying that they were not all together. All in one place. A place for everything, and everything in its place! So, I decided it as past time to build a tool shed!
I gathered a bunch of pallets from the bakery. They pile them up and they are there on a first come first served basis . . . for free . . . my favorite part!
Then I chose a spot along the back of the driveway and cleared out the vegetation.
Using more of the roadwork excess material, I created a base for the storage shed.
All the limbs were taken down to a pile by the chipper.
June 10, 2025
For a good solid base. I chose to sit the walls on a concrete “foundation”. I set up forms using 2 x 6’s to make it 6 inches thick and 6″ wide. Then I laid in some rebar, and identified where the door would go, and the best placement for anchor bolts.
Using the generator and the concrete mixer, I was able to make quick work of pouring this.
The generator is the old original one. The carburetor is messed up, the spark plug wire it jury rigged up, and the pull rope mechanism is broken, so I have to wind a rope around the end of the crancshaft to start it. I bought a new one, and the day the new one arrived, I decided to give the old one one more try . . . it started! that was months ago during my last trip. I still have not taken the new one out of the original box!
The concrete mixer has been a real saver. It has been well worth the $389.00 price!
I also mixed up enough to pour a front piece to my pond!
Applied another thin layer of roof coating over the tin on the shower roof.
June 11, 2025
I strip the forms from in front of the pond, and around the tool shed “foundation”. And I haul in a bit of dirt from the road work along Kamaoa Road.
I fit a couple of pallets into the foundation as the basis of the floor for the tool shed.
And spread a bit of the excess dirt around the tire gardens.
The walls of the tool shed are shaping up nicely.
June 12, 2025
Received a delivery of more lumber today.
Some 2 x 4’s for the storage shed roof, some 2 x 6’s for the house roof, and some sheets of plywood for the sheathing on the house exterior walls.
Began framing the roof of the storage shed.
Rceived an invite to dinner at the Jones home up on the hill!
June 13, 2025
The storage shed is all framed up and ready for siding and roofing.
While the walls are predominately made up of pallets, the roof is a standard framed shed roof with standard 2 x 4’s.
June 14, 2025
Still gathering up the excess material the county discarded while doing the roadwork on Kamaoa and SouthPoint Roads. It is getting rather scarce and harder to find. But I still found enough to spread on the pathway past the back of the bathroom at Holowai to make walking here much easier.
One of the piles I gathered was more dirt than gravel. In fact, I had avoided it before because I was looking for roadbase material. This stuff has lots of organic material in it, so I have added it to my garden area and filled in around the tires.
TTFN
TropicalCastaway 