Windows Boated Over for This Hawaiian Cabin Were Brought to Shore on—What Else—Surfboards

Jay Nelson is a dreamer who creates kid forts for grownups (and some for actual kids). I have been a fan of his aesthetic for decades now, but I was first exposed to his tree house installations and mobile experiments through Mollusk Surf Shop in San Francisco. Seeing that shop was like a dream come true for me—everything I loved about surfing and its connection to the arts encapsulated in a rootsy reinterpretation of a traditional surf shop. Jay’s architectural imprint helped define the shop’s now-iconic style.

Mollusk opened their second location in Venice Beach, just down the street from where I bought my first home, a dilapidated foreclosure. When I renovated, I took direct inspiration from Jay’s imaginative body of work and focus on reclaimed wood. A few years later, as I began documenting creative surfers’ homes for my Surf Shacks book series, Jay’s projects became the inspirational North Star—it became like a scavenger hunt to find his projects and feature them. I showed his own home, in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood, in Vol.2, and the house he designed and built for Jess Bianchi and Malia Grace Mau on Kauai, featured in Vol.1, is still one of my favorites that I’ve covered over the years.

Now 1o years later, that same project inspired this house on Molokai, designed and built for Hawaii local, waterman, and rancher Galen McCleary. It’s important to note that Jay doesn’t just design these homes. He builds them with his own hand-picked team of friends and curates all the materials, with every detail considered. Each of his case studies is special in that way—they feel like livable works of art. A lot of love goes into them, and it shows.

These interviews have been excerpted from Surf Shacks Vol. 3: Exploring the Spirit of Coastal Living by Matt Titone, published by Gestalten.

Matt Titone: How did this particular project come about for you?

Jay Nelson: My client, Galen and I first crossed paths at a restaurant by my house. He had seen the house I made in Kauai and asked if I would be interested in doing something similar for him, also in Hawaii. I was feeling a little unsure about taking on a big project far from home and family. But Galen invited me out, and when I saw the site and experienced the place, I felt like it was something I had to do. I knew it had the potential to be one of the great projects of my lifetime. In the end, it worked out pretty good because when the plans were approved, my kids were out of school during Covid, so we all went out there and built the majority of the house during that time.

Describe your design process for the home. Where did you draw inspiration from?

Well, I thought a lot about the place. I made a few trips before I started drawing. Where the house sits is a very special site. There are no other homes in the sight line, so I wanted to make something that blended as much as possible. It’s a big responsibility placing a home in a landscape but the location felt even heavier than normal, so I needed to get it right. The Big Sur architecture of the midcentury is a big inspiration, Northern California in general actually. I buy tons of books even if I’m just remotely interested in the subject. I pull a lot of inspiration from my books.

Were you staying on-site the whole time? What were some of the challenges during the build process?

It was a very challenging place to build. For the whole project, we were off-grid, and the closest hardware store is an hour away. The cement truck couldn’t cross the bridge, so the foundation had to be hand mixed, one shovel at a time. There were five primary builders on the project. Jerry Stauber was on-site almost every day and lives on the island full-time. Max Shultz and Sam Buchanan, who worked for me in California, they also had to make the commute back and forth. And then Galen, who ended up helping a lot. Plus lots of other friends who came for short stints. We were constantly traveling back and forth.

Where did you source all the materials from?

With all my projects, I try to use as much recycled and salvaged material as possible. A lot of the furniture was made from Formosa koa, an invasive hardwood that grows on the island. Because materials are so limited on the island, we sourced everything in California, loaded a couple containers, and shipped everything out.

What are your favorite features of the home?

I love how the house sits and how you approach the house as you arrive. When you walk up to the front door, you see straight through to the horizon. I also really like how Galen and Savannah have made the house their home. Once the house was finished, I didn’t return for maybe six months. When I finally did, it felt amazing to walk in and see it lived in. I got to stay there with them, wake to the sunrise and feel the way the house changed through the day. I think you feel the care and time that went into it. It has a lot of magic.

Any sage advice when it comes to building a house?

It’s important to spend time on a site before you build, as much as possible. We have a property up in the mountains at 7,000 feet, and we’ve been camping on it over the last three years. I just finished a tree house, so we have something more comfortable to stay in and we’re just now breaking ground on the main house. The place has really changed for me over the years, and I feel like now I’m at the point where I have an intimate relationship with the land and environment. With this project, Galen and Savannah’s house, and most of my work, I often conceive maybe three different concepts before I really understand what it should be. So yeah, just really spending time because building a home is so much work. But also, it’s important that at some point you start.

Interview with Galen McCleary, homeowner:

Who are you? Tell us a little about yourself.

I grew up in Hawaii and also lived in Europe and the mainland for a bit when I was younger. I went to high school at Punahou on Oahu, then went to college and studied management, science, and engineering at Stanford, where I also wrestled for a couple years. I started a quick-serve restaurant business in Hawaii after school called Banan with some high school friends. We opened four stores on Oahu and two in Japan. I then moved on to work for Patagonia Provisions for five years in product development and sourcing. Now, I currently run my family’s ranch, Puu O Hoku, on Molokai and also do some consulting for sustainable food businesses on the side. In my free time, I enjoy hunting, surfing, downwind foiling (and racing), and spearfishing.

What are your favorite parts of your home?

One of my favorite aspects is how natural light comes into the house at various times of the day and especially at night. The moon will cast beautiful light through the windows and the lattices, and shapes will create incredible imagery inside the house. One thing that was important to me for this project was building a house with the place in mind. Wherever you put a house (or any permanent building), you are changing that landscape forever. Especially on Molokai where people are very antidevelopment and change, it was extra important to me that if I was going to alter a place, it was in a way that would blend with the landscape and make an indelible mark in a positive and beautiful way. We really pulled this off, and I love that about the house. Whether you see it from a boat or a plane, it looks as if it’s been in that place for years. It also complements the topography of the place and feels at home in that environment.

What are your favorite parts about Hawaii, island living, and the area in which you live?

I love Hawaii for the extreme beauty found in the ocean, the cliffs, the waterfalls, and overall landscape here. Molokai feels like a remote and much more naturally intact version of the rest of Hawaii, where there is not a single stoplight, no light pollution, and you experience nature in such an intense and pure way. My favorite part about where we live is the self-sufficiency of it. All our meat comes from the ranch, our fish from the ocean in front of the house, and our veggies and fruit from right here, too.

How did you decide to work with Jay on designing and building your home?

I saw Jay’s work while I was at Patagonia and loved how he was able to work with wood to create angles, shapes, and beautiful things while also letting the wood itself be part of the art. The work he did was so playful but also had a Japanese simplicity to it. Yvon Chouinard always would quote the idea that "perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Jay’s pieces felt this way, but in a very welcoming, warm way. They felt artsy and utilitarian at the same time. When I saw them, I thought how cool it would be to live in one of these tree houses, workwear vans, or just that world he was able to create. I ended up running into Jay in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco, and just walked up to him and told him I wanted to build a home with him.

What was the process like for you?

The process was very organic and felt like what I imagine building houses has been for centuries before there were fancy architect offices, 3D renderings, and fancy tools that folks use now for designing homes. Jay drew up many different models and ideas in his sketchbook that we reviewed. Once we decided on a direction, he made a wood model of the house in his shop that we looked at, talked through, and then we finally drew up some simple architectural drawings of the house to submit to Maui County for approval. We had the basic outline and size of the house solidified enough to get permits and order material, but while we built it, Jay would propose ideas and directions on-site that we would decide on, and build right then and there. For example, we never had a concrete idea of how the railings would be done, where exactly the staircase would be, kitchen layout, etc. But as we built, we would feel out the space Jay was creating, and then decide based on what felt right. This felt like the most natural way to go about it, as you could see how the light entered a space and what the views were before you locked in the position of a built-in sofa, kitchen counter, etc. When you are working with different architects, contractors, and the whole modern system of building, this becomes much harder to do and way more expensive to make changes at the last minute like this. All in all, it was a surreal and beautiful process, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

Any parting words of wisdom when it comes to building a house?

When you look back at a project like this, it’s so easy to think about how you would have done this differently, more efficiently, or what you may have changed knowing what you know now. While some of these thoughts inevitably come up, overall, this space serves as such a calming sanctuary for me and is such an easy place for me just to be in and enjoy. I enjoy the beauty of the building, the materials, the views, but also the stories and memories that are embedded in the house. The windows that we boated in from Maui and floated into the bay on surfboards to install, or the beam that we miscrewed when putting in the roofing. These aren’t just features but hold meaning and history. That’s what I think makes a hand-built house such a home. The whole process shapes and changes you, and living in it is just that much more meaningful.

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