Grateful Shed

Tanya and Chris Gamby—a psychologist and web developer/portable outdoor movie theater owner, respectively—have called Hawaii home for most of their lives. After a detour to Los Angeles, where their children, Jackson, now nine, and Zeke, seven, were born, they came back. They were perfectly content with their old plantation house in the town of Lihue, on Kauai, when they accompanied Chris’s sister on her own property search in the island’s lush mountains. When they came across a 20-acre parcel that backed up to verdant, rainy valleys and stunning views, Tanya was immediately smitten. "When I saw the land, I thought, ‘I’d sell my soul to live here,’" says Tanya, who luckily only had to sell her existing house to do so. They bought the property as an extended family, and then the Gambys, with $80,000, limited construction experience, and guidance from local architects Ben Sullivan and Tony Hatto (who are also designing them a larger house on the site), built a temporary hangout made from three 10-by-12-foot modules and dubbed it Ag Shed Villa.