A mozzie net to stop the rain?
If you’ve been reading this build diary, you’ll know that my gorgeous feature wall also lets in a lot of water when it rains. We needed an affordable solution, and decided on a metal mosquito net.
We’d ordered it a while ago, but it finally arrived. Basically, it is a long roll of metallic mosquito mesh. This will be used to cover the inside of the feature wall. The feature wall is made up of bricks that each have a big arch in them – great for letting in the breeze, and unfortunately, also the rain!
Ideally, this mozzie net will do 3 things: (1) keep out the mosquitoes (it hasn’t been too bad yet, but it’s only a matter of time!), (2) stop our indoor cats from running outside (they need some time to get used to the safe interior space before they experience the outside world) and (3) reduce the amount of water that comes in during a storm.
We’ve already been semi-flooded during some intense rain storms, so any help the mozzie net can provide would be amazing. We seem to be coming to the end of rainy season (fingers crossed – it’s not raining every day and the storms are not as strong). By the next rainy season, we’ll have an electric rain cover installed on the outside of the feature wall, but for the moment, we just have to grin and bare it.
The team cut the metal netting up into pieces and drilled it in. There haven’t been any big storms since it was put up, but it coped with the small showers quite nicely.
Bathroom bench tops
A couple of months ago, I had just had my bathroom mirrors installed. Along with my lovely bench tops, the bathrooms finally looked great. Such a pleasant moment! But less than 24 hours later, the bench tops broke when a little weight was put on them. A quick investigation revealed that the resin was incredibly thin and was not reinforced underneath. I contacted my resin guy, but I feared the worse as there was little chance he would stand by his product.
Amazingly, he did! He offered to remove it, and re-do it. Fast forward to now, he returned with the bench top and installed it. Hopefully, it lasts longer than a day this time!
Prevention is better than cure
Sometimes, building standards in Bali can seem very haphazard. I recently went over to the area of the villa compound where the electrical board is housed and got the shock of my life. It was exposed and open to the elements.
I’m not expert, but combining water and electricity seems like a bad idea, especially as this has been a really heavy rainy season. We hadn’t had any issues yet, but prevention is better than cure. So I tasked our electrician/plumber/metal worker/jack of all trades, Pak Slamet, with making and installing a cover.
Diane – my knight in shining armour!
I had a large gorgeous recycled wood decorative piece that I think came from an old joglo. I liked it and had it on the wall in my living room in our old house. Eventually, I needed a change, so I moved it and it ended up on an random balcony. Although it is big and cumbersome, I knew I could breathe new life into it when we moved into our new home.
Soon enough, I decided to put it in the entry way, but it wasn’t quite right as it was. It would overwhelm the space. I decided to put a mirror inside the piece, so that the focus would be the mirror rather than the surrounding wood.
Once again, our incredible gardener/landscaper Diana helped me tremendously. Her team measured the space, ordered the mirror and installed the piece on the wall. It looks amazing! Thanks so much Diane!
Smokey time
It’s a joy to live surrounded by nature. We are fortunate to have rice fields all around us. The one downside is when the farmers have harvested their rice and are burning the leftover organic material to prepare the field for the next crop. It gets really smokey!
Sheila
