Three items topped his architectural wish list. For starters, he wanted a northwest-facing master bedroom so he could wake up every morning and scope out the waves in the bay before even getting out of bed. He also needed a garage roomy enough to fit two pickup trucks and an ever-growing collection of surfboards, and he had his heart set on a large covered lānai for outdoor entertaining.
Dusty enlisted Maui architect Jeremy Stoddart to design a single-story residence that would tick all three boxes and capitalize on the lofty vantage. Jeremy used a compass to pinpoint the ideal position for the home (and, specifically, the master bedroom) and hammered surveying pins into the ground to mark the footprint. After a bit of fine-tuning—moving pins three degrees to the right, a hair to the left—he and Dusty agreed it was angled perfectly.
Jeremy’s blueprints were right on the money, too: three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a high-ceilinged great room, media room, 1,000 square feet of ocean-facing lānai, and a 1,000-square-foot garage. Once the home’s layout was finalized, Dusty sat down to consider its aesthetic. “I didn’t want to build just another stucco box,” he recalls. “I wanted the house to feel like it had been there forever, but had been modernized and updated.”
He tapped the expertise of a then up-and-coming interior designer: his sister, Molly. In 2014, fresh out of the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, Molly returned to Maui to launch her own fashion line, Alola, and also oversaw the renovation of a 380-square-foot barn on their parents’ property in Lahaina, transforming it into a scaled-down version of a French farmhouse. Impressed with Molly’s handiwork, Dusty recruited her to make design decisions for his new home. “It’s funny having to listen to your little sister, and it took a minute to get used to that dynamic, but there’s no one else I would have trusted more,” he says.
The siblings admit there were a few good-natured disagreements. “I pushed for a lot of things . . . and I won most of the battles,” Molly laughs. Dusty agrees. “She made me reconsider every decision.” One friendly arm-wrestling match came when Molly suggested a gas fireplace for the great room to create a cozy focal point. Dusty was initially resistant (a fireplace in balmy West Maui?), but eventually conceded. And he’s glad he did: He likes to thaw out next to the flames after a long day of surfing and on cool winter evenings. Dusty did wield his veto power on occasion. He quashed the idea of a pool—after all, the ocean is his swimming pool—and opted for a backyard putting green instead (golf is a runner-up to surfing).
