We are building a villa in Bali!

After 30 years of visiting Bali on yearly buying trips, bringing our kids up playing in rice fields on their summer breaks, and watching the island go from quiet to crazy, we are taking the leap and building a home outside of Ubud.

This is not a guide of how to build in Bali - but it is an article on how to try and make a dream come true.

We have sourced and purchased two joglos to use in our build. One will be the large entry structure as you come up from the street with our kitchen and living room - and the smaller one will be our primary bedroom way at the bottom of the long property.

We will also have a more conventional structure mid-property with poolside lounge and additional bedrooms - but will still use reclaimed wood and one-of-a-kind doors and carvings to create a vintage feel.

Joglos are old wood frame homes from Java with multi-stepped ceilings that often feature intricate carving. Their distinctive peaked roofs rise up to encompass many carved layers of decorative structure underneath - the more carved layers - the more prized.

In the above images you can see the smaller joglo for our bedroom - it's a truly old building with an incredible ceiling - I can't belive we will get to look up at that while lying in bed! The other image shows you how the bones of these structures work before the decorative carvings are fitted together and the peaked roof is on.

The detail in our primary bedroom joglo ceiling is astounding - it gives me a little shiver everytime I see it!

This is a restaurant in Berawa I snapped a photo of for reference. It shows how the roofline will present when you come up to our first joglo from the entrance to the property. Lots of glass - lots of plants. Our joglo is even larger than this one - wild!

Here you can see the primary bedroom of one of our favorite villas in Bali - Villa Sagitta in Pejeng ourside of Ubud. The owners here found a truly jaw dropping joglo to use - they've been in the villa business for over 20 years. I wish we had started then!

This is another photo I used as reference from the beautiful Villa Tau in Tegallalang, where we were lucky to stay last year. I love how they created a vintage look with newly carved old teak for the pillars. We want to create a similar deep back patio off our bedroom joglo.

Of course we are sooo excited to landscape when the time comes. This sideyard in a great old place we used to stay called Villa Gajah has the perfect mix of high and low plantings - with a bale, (a traditional sitting pavillion) as focal point.

Shopping for plants in Bali is freaking amazing. There is so much beautiful variety and it's so affordable compared to US pricing. Plus you can be assured that things will actually survive here! Amazing what living in a place with rain makes possible.

Slowly we will be sourcing carved doors, stone planters - and yes giant boulder bathtubs - for the project!

While I have been coming to Bali since I was 19 - our kids have been coming since they were little babies. In the image above in a village outside of Borobudur our twins were five and older son was 9. Below you can see them from our trip last summer - ten years older - on our land we are building our little slice of Bali life.

I will post a few of these blog articles as things progress in our planning and build - and you all will be the first to know when it's available on Airbnb. Yes! We are going to make it rentable a good portion of the year. We will have 4 en suite bedrooms and a loft for kids. Lots of space to entertain and play. All a short distance from Ubud center and all the adventure and culture Bali has to offer up in the rice fields.

Thank you for following along!