In March 2020, Reno Schooler Chelsea Parker and her hubby, Todd, were only a few months into their year-long round-the-world trip when COVID hit. Rather than return to New York, where they’d been living for the past 7 years, they decided to stay on in Bali and ended up living there for 7 months. In this time they stayed in some amazing Airbnbs which inspired them to build one of their own.

PICKING THE PERFECT PROPERTY

Chelsea and Todd had fallen in love with Ubud, in the uplands of Bali, and engaged a consultant to help them find the perfect block of land. They wanted to build a villa that would be used for their own holidays a few months of the year and as a rental the rest of the time. It was a piece of land on the outskirts of Ubud, with uninterrupted views of rice fields, that grabbed their attention. It turned out that the landowner was a builder who had completed several other villas which Chelsea and Todd had seen, so they engaged him to build their villa too.

BYE BYE, BALI

They’d completed the planning but only the foundations of their villa had been laid when Chelsea and Todd left Bali to return to the US for a wedding. While away, Todd was offered a job in Thailand, so they took a leap of faith and moved to Bangkok! Unable to travel between Thailand and Indonesia due to COVID restrictions, they managed the entire build from their home in Bangkok.

BUILDING FROM AFAR

Construction started in July 2020 and Chelsea and Todd left the country in October 2020, leaving their project in the early stages of the build and in the hands of their builders. They also have friends who remained in Bali throughout the pandemic and became their eyes and ears on the ground, giving them regular updates.

“We had to leave Bali but we were weirdly at peace with it. We put a lot of trust in our builders. We had seen a lot of their work and felt confident.”

— Chelsea Parker

Thankfully, Chelsea is an experienced Event Manager and so managing projects and keeping pragmatic and level-headed is her forte. Although they would have loved to have been on-site in person, they were in touch with the team on the ground daily via WhatsApp to check in on progress. The builders were motivated by staged payments as they completed each step of the build.

Chelsea and Todd designed all the furniture, wardrobes and cabinetry remotely, working with a local trusted vendor. As much as Chelsea would have loved to have been there to go shopping for all the “fun stuff” like soft furnishings and styling items, she wasn’t able to be, so she called in “magician” Wendy from The Interior Tailor. Wendy sourced all the gorgeous styling items to bring the Parker’s villa vision to life.

Remarkably, the entire project went without any major hiccups. In fact, the only changes Chelsea made was moving two kitchen windows to improve airflow in the living area and adding an outdoor bathtub off the guest bathroom.

INTRODUCING… VILLA RAE

Just over a year in the making, Villa Rae is finished and ready for bookings! Chelsea and Todd began designing in April 2020, broke ground in July the same year and ‘Villa Rae’ was completed in September 2021.

It’s spread over 100sqm (not including the pool and garden) has two bedrooms, a swimming pool with unobstructed views to rice fields as far as the eye can see and a stunning bespoke fit out.

Anyone else getting Eat, Pray, Love vibes? Bookmark Villa Rae for your next Bali stay! @villaraebali