Building A Dream With Hand Tools

At this point we are still not sure how many little villas we will have in the end.  It is looking like 4 most likely.  The nice thing about the new land parcels are that they are below the rest of the resort; basically down the hill from the swimming pool.  Because of this we will be able to have guests in phase one with very little if any disturbance from construction.  Besides construction by hand being interesting it is also quite quiet.  When we stayed in our new house last winter the pool was being constructed and we were not disturbed at all.

The small villas will have a king sized bed, full bathroom, small refrigerator and plenty of room.  The one that is just finished has incredible views and large windows all around.  Nice verandas will provide quiet places to enjoy the views and contemplate life or whatever it is you need to or want to contemplate.  Our goal for Tranquility Resort is to provide our guests with unassuming luxury, peace, quiet; a place to just “be” away from the chaos of modern life.

I hope you will enjoy exploring the new villa through photos.

With the purchase of the new land parcels we needed to revisit our current infrastructure.  Of course, with increased visitors needs for things like water will increase.  As you may recall from an earlier post, in phase one we put in a good sized underground water tank.  Wayan thought we should go ahead and build another larger one.  There was a good spot for it by the new villa so the digging began.  As usual, it was not fun, but thanks to a lot of hard work on the team’s part it is finished and ready for business.  Another job with hand tools successfully completed.  Enjoy the construction.

Over the last couple of years we have had the opportunity to purchase two parcels of land adjacent to ours.  After debating the pros and cons of expanding, we decided that this would allow us future expansions so we now have two parcels of land that cover the very steep side of our little mountain top.  The initial cleanup has been finished and it will await a few future small villas that will be amazing additions to phase one.  Following are some photos of the land.  You can see that it will be challenging building the villas in this area, but if anyone can do it  Wayan and his team can.  I don’t imagine clearing was a whole lot of fun.  Pay attention to how rocky the area is.  These will all be dug out by hand. 

When planning our resort we, of course, planned on putting in a pool.  We were thinking something modest but yet big enough to swim for exercise and deep enough to do a little diving off the edge.  We knew we wanted an infinity pool since we had the perfect spot right on the edge of the mountain top.  I was thinking that the space available would be big enough for a bungalow and the pool, but I was wrong.  Wayan’s pool plans were much more grandiose than ours.  We had budgeted a certain amount of money for the pool construction based on Wayan’s very quick estimate of what it might run us.  Well we definitely didn’t budget enough and we definitely didn’t have room for both villa and pool.  Wayan and his team built an amazing pool complete with a pool length bench on the inside of the pool, best views around and despite the small size of the resort he also constructed a bathroom and shower room for our guests’ convenience right next to the pool.  As you will see by the pictures, the pool is VERY large and I believe that along with all the other amenities of Tranquility Resort that it will be the crown jewel.

I think you will find the pool construction very fascinating. I know I did. I had never seen anyone make a pool before.  As with the rest of the resort it had to all be done by hand.  You will see by it’s solid construction that this pool isn’t going anywhere for a very long time.  In a few of the pictures you will see how retaining walls were built along the back of the pool to keep the earth from eroding around the pool.  Our crown jewel cost us twice as much as we budgeted but we think it is worth it.  We stayed at our place last March for two weeks, but unfortunately, the pool was not finished until a few days before we left so we did not get to try it out.  It took two weeks to fill it with two garden hoses.  Now that is a big pool!!!  Fortunately, we still seem to have plenty of water.  We had space for a very nice large pool deck also.  It runs the length of the pool as you will see in the pictures.  I keep thinking of this pool every time I look out our windows at the snow and the cold.  Surely our big pool must be feeling lonely with no swimmers to entertain it.  Hopefully soon guests will be sitting on the veranda of their villa looking out over the ocean or sitting in the pool looking out over the mountains.  It will not be long now.  More to come soon.