This was our first Hawaii trip, with 2 small kids. We stayed 4 days at Waikiki beach (recommend Hilton Hawaiian Village beach resort). Fantastic.
After those 4 days at Waikiki we rented a nice Mustang Convertible and stayed another 5 days at Douglas' condo at the North Coast. Really loved it. The apartment itself is perfect in size (around 600square), with everything you need to make it a great stay. You could cook if you'd want to (oven/microwave/stove and bbq at the pool). Really comfy bed with air-conditioning which actually isn't needed because the fans provide sufficient cooling. With a huge LCD TV with great DVD movies, e.g. Battleship 2012 which features the USS Missouri which we saw earlier that day at Pearl Harbor. BTW Douglas, I'd recommend you providing a Magnum series DVD as well. Great fun watching that back recognizing many places on Oahu.
Things to do at the North Shore? More than enough! E.g. watching the turtles, either snorkeling or just on the beach at Laniakea Beach (with 90% chance of seeing them). Turtle Bay (within 5 minutes walk, 2 minutes by car) is great for snorkeling too as well as just relaxing. There's a great restaurant at the beach operated by the hotel with reasonable prices. We recommend doing Polynesian cultural village from here (by car) as well as e.g. Laie view point. A late afternoon at the pool is recommended too.
Basically we were more busy at the North Coast than we were at Waikiki Beach.
Some practical tips; For breakfast and a quick take-away dinner go to TED's (3 miles west). FOODLAND supermarket is at about 5 miles west where you can pick up ready made food including great salads as well as your caffeine fix in the morning.
We like to mention the neighbors as well. Great New York couple, very helpful and fun (I'll come back one day to be the caddy :)).
In short; this was our first Airbnb experience, and a real good one. Douglas thanks for the excellent service.