Vertical Construction

January 13, 2025

It's been 5 months of rainy season since I last posted. It has been a very unusually long rainy season this year. It typically ends by the first of April. Though it may have ended as we had no rain for several days, but alas it is raining again this morning. I looked at the stats for the lat 5 years and found that Dec 2023 thru June 2024 was more rain than the normal average. From Dec 2024 to date it is double the same period from last year. So while the rain doesn't impact normal activities, when you are moving dirt and working with concrete it becomes painfully slow. We started this project just at the beginning of the rainy season so we have been at it 17 months with 10 of those being rainy season. I am happy to report that the ground work, foundation work, step and wall building is 99% complete and we should be out of the rainy season. I am assured that the building of the house proper is a much faster process than ground work and not impacted by rain. I am happy to report that we finally have an actual structure, a store room, complete with roof and door ! It has been a journey and an education. Many ask how long it will take to build and I answered honestly saying " I have no idea". I can now say that I could be build in a year if started at the end of the rainy season and you had an exact plan for the land. We have taken it step by step as building in this environment is quite a bit different than building in the states. Also the terrain the house is on is drops 10 feet from front to back so we had to figure out how we wanted to terrace it. So the design and redesigning has occupied a lot of time. I design it and then get with the architect to see if he can build it and what that entails. Of course I get educated a lot by the architect about water drainage and building techniques that are foreign to me and I can say that his experience and suggestions have been invaluable. With the store room built and the stairs that lead to it we can saw that needed some retaining wall retaining wall around the back-yard and some smaller one within the back yard.. FYI they call back-yards gardens here (Taman's in Bahasa) and they also vegetables gardens (Kabun's) so I will call it back-yard even though there is no yard as in a lawn as also as the lower levels beyond the back-yard (Taman) will be vegetable and flower garden (Kabun).

Here are some photos of the progress.

The lower level retaining wall

That's cos-mesh made from coconut fiber to hold the soil on the new terraces.

We re planting mondo grass into the netting

Wall next to parking area at the front

Our first door . Woo Hoo !

Topping with stone on the concrete steps

Front entrance, that no one will use ! LOL

I was wondering how they were going to hold the forms in place

Pool equipment room

Leak test in process

Bali Benong " lazy house", a gazebo with a daybed underway

Finishing the wall tops with andesite tiles

Concrete steps now stone faced and tiled edges

So the journey continues and it is not all about developing this property. I have made some incredible friendships. My friend Jero has a beautiful homestay near our property and we are staying here like long terms guests until the project is finished. Homestays here are what we might call a boutique hotel a they the owner do live on site but you are not staying in there home. His has 8 separate rooms and a private villa. I can say that without him this would have been much more work. He is a wealth of information and has a wealth of contacts. He found our property, negotiated it, hooked us up with our contractor and stays intimately involved for which I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. To that end I have created a new more international menu for the restaurant at his homestay and have helped them better understand the western expectations as his guests are primarily from Europe. Meet Jero -

We have lots of morning walks from where we are staying and it is always amazing as every turn the nature and the views remind us of how lucky wee are to be here.

Pic of Mount Agung at sunrise after going to the local market

An exotic entrance to restaurant

Another view of the mountain

Embellished face on a natural spring

An Ogoh-ogoh from a village nearby. Once a year, on Pangrupukan (the day before the Nyepi Day of Silence), the Ogoh-Ogoh are brought out for Ogoh-Ogoh competitions and for Ogoh-Ogoh parades. It is a tradition that comes from the Tawur Kesanga (the rituals of Nyepi) that is meant to stop negative energies from manifesting in the following year.

Traditionally they are burned after the ceremony. There are 100's of them built each each year, mainly by the teenagers of each village.