Dewi has upgraded our car while I was away. Our old Toyota Camry was starting to require constant maintenance so she traded it in for a late model Pajero Sport.
It’s a very masculine looking beast with a diesel engine and leather interior. It’s a lovely car to drive, both powerful and responsive. It makes light work of Lombok’s mountainous hinterland.
I’m expecting to receive some income shortly from the settlement of mum’s estate which is timely as there is quite a bit of maintenance required at the guesthouse.
The office, which Dewi recently transformed into her day spa, is located in a room off to the side of guesthouse and is the front room of a separate wing, which stretches to the rear of the property and comprises store rooms, hostel-style accommodation, bathrooms and a kitchen.
This wing has a covered verandah in front which is in a bad state of repair. The corrugated iron roof above the front three rooms is letting in rain. The verandah and the whole front roof section need to be replaced.
We have a good tradesman who helped us upgrade alot of the rear roof section during our initial refit and built the large terrace at the rear of the guesthouse.
As there has been very little construction work going on in Lombok since the pandemic began, he is ready and keen to take on whatever work we have for him.
An initial inspection reveals that the timber roof frame above the the rooms is in reasonable condition so it’s just a matter of replacing the corrugated iron sheets.
As this is Indonesia however, the time and labour cost is reduced by not removing the old sheets but simply nailing the new sheets straight on top.
The verandah section also has a timber frame which is dismantled and replaced with a light steel frame. The underside of the roof section is lined with a bamboo thatch sheet called bedek. It offers a breezy tropical finish and ties in with the roof overhang surrounding the guesthouse.
The next job is an upgrade to the outside bathrooms. These bathrooms are used by guests staying in our hostel rooms. Like the ensuites in our private rooms, these bathrooms have slate tiled floors as well as hot and cold water. However, the ensuites originally had tiled walls, which we covered the with a gloss white laminated sheet to sharpen up the look of the rooms and make them easy to clean.
The outside bathrooms are just plain, painted concrete walls with exposed water pipes servicing the shower and toilets. Although the rooms are adequate enough and cleaner than most regular backpacker bathrooms, the painted walls are prone to peeling and require regular maintenance.
I’m in favour of spending a little bit of money now to make them highly presentable and maintenance free.
We settle on lining the lower wall section of each room with a white pvc plank which has a gold, marbled effect running through it. Each piece can be cut to size, slotted together and finished with pvc trim top and bottom.
The end result is very neat and tidy. We finish off by giving the floors a fresh coat of clear silicon sealer which protects the slate and gives it a quality lustre.
Since we first renovated the guesthouse I’ve wanted to create a feature wall in each bedroom, giving each room a unique, Lombok-styled theme.
We experimented in one room with an image of a sunset printed onto vinyl sheet which was hung as wallpaper. It wasn’t a bad effect but the image bled a little into the vinyl and wasn’t as crisp as I had hoped.
When Dewi turned the office into a day spa, she found a supplier of 3-D wallpaper. The walls in the day spa now boast a tropical island theme complete with blue sky’s, a sandy beach and palm trees. The sky theme continues onto the ceiling, with a number of seagulls flying around.
We select a different tropical island image to use for the feature wall in the main bedroom. The room next to it gets a wall-to-wall waterfall, bedroom three has a 4 metre image of the crater lake at the foot of Mt Rinjani and room four gets a floor to ceiling beachside sunset.
We finish off the themed rooms with a framed print above each bed.
One further issue we have is dampness in some of the exterior walls. It’s a particular issue behind the sofa in the living room where the wall doesn’t have enough space to breath.
The simple solution is to line the lower part of the wall with pvc boards, as we did in the outside bathrooms. We choose a white board with a silver fleur de lys motif. The end result has an element of Indonesian kitsch about it which is not entirely out of place.
Next it is time to do some work on our house. The upstairs bedrooms were never fully finished and there is a gap between the walls and the ceiling.
It’s not noticeable to look at but as Kevin and Kezia run their air-conditioners continuously, I’m concerned about the escape of air and energy.
Our power bill drops substantially as a result of sealing the gaps.
We order a couple or canopies to hang across the front of the upstairs balcony. We originally installed sunscreen blinds which look great but don’t keep out the rain when the wind blows. The rain collects in large pools on the landing and drips into the downstairs living area.
Our curtain maker also makes a couple of large blinds for the sides of the balcony but they are each 3 metres wide and made of heavy material but the roller mechanism he has used to raise and lower them used is not strong enough and they gather to one side or the other as you try to roll them up.
He has no solution for this as he is limited to whatever his supplier stocks. This is clearly one of the limitations of living in a relatively remote region of a developing nation and we are compelled to live with it until we can find a better alternative.
Finally, I’m ready to upgrade the sofa in our living room. It’s a really good looking 3-piece unit with no arms, low to the ground, square and sturdy and covered in a lime green fabric. It might not work in a western living room but in our open plan space with timber floors and tropical plants everywhere it fits right in. But unfortunately the inner springs have lost their oomph and my lower back hurts whenever I sit on it for any length of time.
We visit the Epicentrum Mall, the biggest and most modern shopping complex in Mataram, which has a well known furniture and homewares store. Dewi and I are both thinking modular sofa and day bed but are ultimately drawn to a classic 2-piece club lounge, a two-seater and a larger three-seater, finished in a sturdy yellow fabric. (Again, a colour that will work well in our living room.)
It appears to be well built and comes with a 2 year warranty. And best of all it’s on sale.
With maintenance and upgrades to the guesthouse and our private residence now complete, we settle in to wait for the arrival of guests.