Six termite-eaten, lead-paint-laden homes dating to 1942 are finding new purpose on a North Shore farm after a team effort to save what had been historic Navy housing at Red Hill.

The Historic Hawai‘i Foundation plans to show off a couple of the refurbished homes and tell the story about their history and rescue Saturday as part of a farm tour with opportunities to milk goats and eat cheese at Sweet Land Farm in Waialua.

The tour will recount an effort begun more than a decade ago to avoid destroying simple homes that look like plantation-style cottages and once housed personnel supervising construction of what was a classified project during World War II to put giant fuel storage tanks deep underground at Red Hill above Moanalua.

Deciding what to do with the homes became a challenge as the Navy was working with a private contractor to replace or renovate thousands of housing units on Oahu under a privatization contract begun in 2003 with Ohana Military Communities.

The six homes, along with two duplexes at Red Hill, were of little use to the Navy, which ceased using the homes in the early 2000s and wanted to demolish the structures because of the termite damage, lead paint and degraded kitchens and bathrooms, according to Historic Hawai‘i.

However, the Navy had to assess and address negative impacts of its housing privatization on historic property under the National Historic Preservation Act. As part of that process, several organizations including Historic Hawai‘i, the State Historic Preservation Division and the National Trust for Historic Preservation pushed for rehabilitating the old homes.

For a while the Navy and the preservation groups were at an impasse because of the cost for preservation. As a compromise the Navy agreed to donate the six single-family homes in their deteriorated condition.

But who would want to take on the expense and effort to move and then fix up the residences?

“It was just a happenstance kind of situation,” recalled Eric Bello, a Wahiawa architectural woodworker who was helping his daughter start a goat farm and knew a family friend whose Kauai construction company specializes in moving homes.

Bello’s contractor friend, Mike Faye of Kikiaola Construction, knew about the Red Hill housing preservation effort and asked Bello whether he was interested. After taking a look at the homes, Bello agreed to take them along with five carports in 2011.

“It was really a nice outcome for everybody involved,” said Kiersten Faulkner, Historic Hawai‘i’s executive director.

Bello hired Kikiaola, which cut every house in half and trucked them to the 86-acre Waialua site planned for the farm in the middle of the night to avoid traffic.

Bello declined to say how much the salvage project cost. But he said the homes were in beautiful condition for their age and that the expense to move and renovate them with new flooring, paint, ceilings and roofing was less than building something similar from scratch.

“We wanted the vintage look on our farm,” he said. “It was such a perfect fit.”

Since the move, Bello has made two homes livable again. One is occupied by his daughter, Emma, who started Sweet Land Farm about four years ago and now has about 70 goats for milking and products sold at Whole Foods Market and R. Field Wine Co. inside certain Foodland stores. The other is occupied by his son, Austin, who also works on the farm. The other four homes are slated to become employee housing after renovation is completed.