13-May-2024, Tired but very satisfied is what I am feeling when writing this post. After another four weeks (eight weeks in total) of hard work and endlessly fixing Pelupuh bamboo on the roof, which I thought would never end. I have reached a beautiful milestone, the final milestone. At the end of week eight I have finished the little bamboo house that I have been working on so hard.

Here is a short day to day recap of this final week:

Monday – With a bit of help from Mr. Madé, I fix the last two remaining arches at the back. I surprise myself at how much quicker and better these two arches are installed. The arches are fixed with steel rods and nuts and several bamboo nails. Fixing the arches sounds easy enough, but the challenge is balancing on a shaky scaffolding with a drill in one hand, while holding myself onto the ceiling with the other hand.

At the end of the day, we remove all the scaffolding and the temporary support. Its beautiful end result is slowly revealing itself. We are so close! Only a natural disaster could stop me now from finishing it this week.

Tuesday – With a last burst of energy and with the motivation to finish it rather sooner than later, I come in on a Tuesday. After a Padel class in the morning and early lunch with Ayu (to discuss business plans), I drive back to Belega. Today we are pouring cement into the bottom parts of the bamboo pillars, a common practice in bamboo buildings. We do this is for extra sturdiness and stability. We drill a small hole in the pillars and we pour/shove the concrete inside between the first two nodes. The hole is closed with the original offcut from the hole-saw.

With the arches in place, I touch up the Pelupuh flooring and close the openings around the poles. Or at least I start with the touch-up. It is a lot of work to measure and custom make each part of the floor and I need to do it twice since the floor consists of two layers.

Wednesday – The floor is finished and I trim off the excess parts of the Pelupuh floor. During the build of the roof, we discovered the roof became very heavy, making the entire structure top-heavy and a bit unstable. We install eight extra diagonal support beams just above the arches. This is not part of the original design but it is necessary. Hopefully these eight extra beams will prevent the building from shaking too much during strong winds or earthquakes and hopefully prevent it from collapsing under its own weight. I made four out of the eight, they aren’t exactly my best work but they will do their job (I hope).

Thursday – An exciting day. The plan is to completely finish today. I still have those four more supports beams to make with a total of eight ‘fishmouth’ connections. I spent a lot of time working on these Y-fishmouth cuts as they are hard to make. After two hours I am getting tired and annoyed with these carvings because I just cannot get the hang of it. It shouldn’t take me as long as it did and I was very pleased when Mr. Madé had a few spare minutes and repairs them with ease and within no time. When he does it, they look so perfect; like a factory cut. But then again, he has many years of experience, I only a few weeks. To keep the support beams in their correct position I use the nail gun to temporary fix them and for the permanent solution I drive a few 8mm bamboo nails into the bamboo.

I tidy up the house and sweep the floor with only one thing left to do: make a whole bunch of photos of the final product! It looks absolutely stunning, like a true masterpiece if I may say so myself. I cannot believe I finally pulled it off! I am so happy right now and very proud of myself and of the end result. It took a lot longer than expected, but it also turned out to be much nicer than expected. It was worth my time, effort and sweat.

I am not be able to take this little house with me or even get to use it for myself but that is OK, that was never the intention anyway. For me this was a project purely to learn how to build with bamboo and to keep myself busy while staying in Bali. I am not the kind of person that can sit on the beach every day, I need to stay active and I have a strong urge to do something with purpose. I certainly learned a lot and gained a new useful skill. There have been stressful times, which is part of everyday life and part of building, but all in all I have been enjoying it very much and I think the end-result surely shows it. The photos speak for themselves.

On a final note: The owner told me she wants to turn it into an outdoor bamboo kitchen, as it is standing right next to her bamboo workshop house. So maybe the building itself is not yet finished, but my job is. If I get bored, I might come back to help with the kitchen, but this is unlikely. I want my next project to be a project that will benefit me personally. I cannot spend all my time and energy on building something that is not for me, nor even getting paid to do. I might even already have a plan in mind; buying a house to renovate… but probably not with bamboo. This is a story for next time.

For now, I would like you to invite the final time-lapse video. You can choose to watch the normal (long) version of 9 minutes or the shorter version of 6 minutes. Both videos will show the entire process from day one until day 32, but one just moves a bit faster through the images. I would recommend watching the 9-minute video.

Normal version (longer – 9 minutes). Recommended.

Shorter version (6 minutes)

~ THE END ~