Build Diary 22 – Extra changes, extra costs

Home-school is over!

Life has been slowing returning to normal. My kids are off school (i.e. home-schooling with me) so there’s less pressure to teach them while maintaining my own sanity! Corona numbers in Bali appear to be low but doubts persist regarding the accuracy of those numbers. Other parts of Indonesia have much higher rates and with plans to open domestic tourism soon, there are fears that Bali’s numbers will rise soon.

Tropical life

Tropical life has its ups and downs. Both my husband and I had dengue fever in the last few months.  After 20 years of living in Australia, I thought I had experienced more than my fair share of creepy crawlies (I still hate cockroaches with a passion). But this week my son suffered a tomcat burn this week. A tomcat is a bug about the size of a large ant. It’s doesn’t look dangerous. It doesn’t even need to bite or sting, just touching the skin is enough to set off a nasty rash.

My son Phoenix must have had one on him as his wrist had a slight rash on it. Fortunately, it didn’t hurt him. Little did we know that the next day the rash would blow up with what looked like burn blisters. Considering how painful it looked, the little guy handled it like a champ. Barely complaining at all. Sadly, the blisters popped and the raw skin was so tender underneath.

Meanwhile, my kids still love getting out of the house and exploring the build.

I’m a fan

As the build continues and the house appears before us, I’ve been thinking about the interiors. I have realised that I love fans, and we are going to need a lot of them. AC is also necessary at night but I don’t like the room to be freezing or I start to feel ill. If we have a ceiling fan, we can turn down the AC. Plus it means we use less power which is good for our budget and the environment.

Our current villa didn’t have any ceiling fans. At night, with the doors closed to keep the bugs and snakes out, we sweltered. Standing fans are unsightly and just don’t do the job. So we installed 2 ceiling fans in the living/dining room and it made a huge difference. Lesson learnt – our new villa will have a lot of ceiling fans. Definitely in the living/dining, and the bedrooms too. Plus the offices too.

Extra changes…..

As I mentioned previously, I’ve been making some changes to the build plans. I’ve added more windows, and many of them are curved (and expensive).  I decided to add a door between our two offices, as well as an external storage that we can access from the driveway. It’ll be great for our kids’ bikes and surfboards etc. We’ll also move a wall in my photographic studio so there’s more storage. You can never have too much storage!

We also decided to add a retaining wall behind the pool so that we can raise the level of the garden on one side of the pool. Plus, we realised that we hadn’t included carpentry costs in our budget. Whoops!

Extra costs ……

All those changes are adding up. And these are not expenses that we had budgeted for. In fact, at the beginning of this adventure, when we realised the cost of the build was going to be more than we had originally expected, we planned to save up some money during the construction process to cover these extra costs. Sadly, corona put an end to any hope of saving money over the last few months.

Arches everywhere

One of the themes I have used extensively in our build is arches. I love how they look. Here you can see how they build them in Bali.

Shopping with Sheila

I’ve been visiting various stores looking for some of those features that are used every day, and can make a real difference to a home. Taps, toilets, shower heads, sinks and switches may not be as glamorous as dining room tables and sofas, but they are certainly important.

Sheila