Building in Bali - Slow Progress is Better than No Progress

Update numer two on our Bali build!

Our annual summer TDL buying trip to Bali included our usual work - driving all over the island visiting new and old vendors for carved panels, beautiful baskets, lava stone statuary and pots, and solid teak furniture for the store. But this year our family was also tasked with finding contractors and materials for the villa we are building outside of Ubud.

I think we knew right away that our architect was the one when we saw that she has a beautiful antique Java home as part of her office in Canggu.

Back in April my husband went over to Bali solo to interview architects and we ended up hiring the most amazing firm to help us bring our vision to life.

I hand sketched plans last summer that I thought would best use our long, skinny rice field lot. My husband, who is much neater and tidier than I, was able to place them on our topography plot in a more sensible manner.  

But it took our amazing architect to make sense of it and craft a plan born from our concept - but with fresh new life breathed into it.

Our initial sketches that we drew up before meeting with our architect - can you guess whose is whose??

Technology is absolutely amazing - being able to see our plans come to life in 3D is nothing short of miraculous.

As you can see in the rendering above, our architect was able to take our initial inspiration and turn it into a thoughtful, cohesive plan.

You can see how there will be three large structures, and a rectangular pool centered on what we call the long house. Two of our structures are old Javanese houses, or joglos - (as discussed in our first Bali Build blog post - click here to see what I am talking about!) and our center structure is more of a traditional building with a small second floor.

At right is our primary bedroom joglo bordering the jungle at the end of the property. At left is the main joglo that one first walks through when coming in from the street. It will house the main kitchen and dining area as well as a bedroom, bath, and living space. The more traditional build long house will have two en suite bedrooms and a TV room upstairs that can also sleep a handful of kids.

While we have remodeled a number of homes - and of course I have been practicing our TDL version of interior design for over 30 years - we have never built a house from scratch. And we certainly haven't learned to navigate building in another country on the other side of the planet.

Being guided by a skilled, local architect is the only way we are able to move forward with our project.

In June we started meeting with contractors to decide how best to handle the combination of building styles we will have in our project.  

We need both a talented vintage woodworking team as well as a more standard construction crew. In addition of course is the foundation team, the MEP guys, the pool builder, landscape architect... the list goes on and on!

The fun stuff this summer was starting to source one-of-a-kind doors and architectural elements for the build. We bought all the above pieces - so excited!

Top right will be the front doors of the main joglo - big and dramatic. In clockwise order the next image shows two pairs of windows that will be used in the long house - one as an upstairs "owl window" looking down to the open living room below - and one in a bathroom.

Next are tall doors that will go to the bedroom wing of the main joglo - and then skinny doors that will lead to the bathroom in the primary bedroom joglo.

We also happily spent a lot of time thinking about what plants and trees we can include in our landscaping. As anyone who has ever been to, or dreamed of traveling to Bali can attest, lush vegetation is of utmost importance. Layers of flowering plants, climbing vines, and towering trees... it's all essential for creating a verdant indoor/outdoor paradise.

We found the perfect lava stone Ganesha to grace the front entry in our front garden - he will be in storage for some time - but will have pride of place just as you come up the steps from our parking area.

This beautiful hand colored rendering was created by our landscape architect - it really makes the drawings come to life - and helps us believe that someday we actually will have a home in Bali!

But right now - as of September 2025 - this is what our land looks like. An excavator has been there for days leveling the lot and creating two distinct elevations and also digging out the pool. Our neighbor's rice field is just getting ready to be planted with baby rice again, and dealing with the paddy water is its own interesting challenge...

It's so hard imagine going from this to that magical home in the rendering above - but we are trying our best to believe.