A woman buys a traditional house for $8,000 and transports it across Indonesia to build her dream home in Bali.

The first time Bali captured Katie Denham's heart was when she traveled to this Indonesian island on her honeymoon in the 1980s. "When the airplane door opened on the runway, the intoxicating tropical aroma promised everything that the UK didn't," she recalls. "The opportunity to enjoy life and soak in the sun."

She kept that memory alive and returned to the island from time to time to feel connected again. The marriage ended, but Denham says her love for Bali went much deeper than for any man.

After 25 years in the UK, Denham moved to Byron Bay in Australia, where she and a friend created a series of aromatherapy-based beauty products. Later, in Sydney, she worked with a local movie studio as a screenwriter. Fast forward to 2004, when Denham left Australia for a teaching job in Bali, which led to a series of positions at international schools on the island. She continued to take writing commissions, including a period working with Scottish chef Will Meyrick, founder of Sarong and Mamasan, two of the island's famous restaurants that specialize in using local produce.

The vivacious Denham, who has always loved live music, crossed paths with Roby Supriyanto, frontman of popular Balinese rock band Navicula. In Indonesia, Supriyanto is known not only for his energetic grunge-style performance, but also for his involvement in sustainable agriculture and his efforts to encourage pride in farm life, passions Denham shared while working with Meyrick and studying permaculture with guru Bill Mollison in Australia. "If you want to learn about Balinese culture, just open a traditional Balinese calendar," Supriyanto told CNN in 2018. "Everything has to do with agricultural elements. If you want to preserve Balinese culture, you must also preserve agriculture."

Denham discussed similar ideas with Supriyanto, who lives in Ubud, Bali, with his American wife and child. "We talked about how great it would be to have a home farm where you could do permaculture and grow organic produce," she says. "For me, it probably came out of fantasies I nurtured reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a child."

"I had to work on trust and trust people," Supriyanto helped her find a semi-rural property in Tabanan District, often referred to as "the real Bali," where terraced rice fields follow the natural contours of the land and the dormant volcano Batukaru can be seen in the background. The family cathedrals, surrounded by stone walls, utilize an irrigation control system based on the local Balinese community. Here Denham was able to realize her dream.

She partnered with Supriyanto to secure the land in 2015 and entered into a contract that lists Denham and her daughters Kepsibel and Sevren, who live in Australia, as legal tenants along with the help of a lawyer. "I didn't have tons of money to invest, just my teacher's salary," Denham says. "I had to work on trust and trust people. The phrase 'It will all work out' was something I kept repeating to myself over and over again."

This 1.2-hectare plot of land adjoins a government nature reserve near the village of Sanda, which Denham says "lives by seasons and rituals, market days and motorcycles." Surrounded by durian and mango trees, the property slopes from misty wooded hills down into the valley and flows through a terraced coffee plantation inherited at the time of purchase to a natural spring. The spring flows into the Balian River, sacred to the Balinese because the 16-century-old Indian ocean waves in Bali, famous for its empty, solitary surf, are a 40-minute drive away. "I can't see the ocean from land, but it's cool up here in the mountains," Denham says. "Beautiful clouds roll through during the day, and the sky is often clear and bright at night."

Two years after acquiring the land, Denham and Supriyanto traveled to central Java to find a limasan, a traditional wooden house with a thousand-year design history in Java and South Sumatra. The high, roofs, collect warm air that rises during the day, keeping the lower living area cool. These days they're popular with developers who convert them into luxury villas or boutique hotels, but Java locals are less enthusiastic about maintaining the old structures and are happy to sell them in pieces. Denham found a vacant Limasan in the former royal capital of Surakarta, now often known as Solo, and after negotiating a price - $7,000 - hired handymen to disassemble the house, load it onto a truck and deliver it to Bali, which cost about $650.

Eventually the Javanese returned home to Solo, and Denham completed the house with the help of Ketut, a local craftsman who worked in the house she was renting in Kerobokan. She continued to teach so that she could have the funds to build her dream house. When possible, she traveled from Kerobokan to Desa Sanda with her builder, Ketut, to monitor progress. When everything was ready, the assembled and expanded "T" shaped house measured 11 by 10 meters in the front and 22 by 5 meters in the back. A toilet was added inside and Denham began to bring in furniture, bookcases and antique chests. The interior began to take shape, starting with a huge kitchen centered on a large table for 12 people.

"I was still connected to the world of international, expatriate-oriented schools, but I started approaching the Sanda community and heard about their desire to make the village an ecotourism destination," Denham says. "There is an organic bakery nearby that bakes fresh bread and pies for cafes in the south. I've also found locals making organic jams, handmade soaps and shampoos."

To develop the land around the house, a group of local residents and foreigners, including several former students of Denham from the international school, organized a "Permablitz," a kind of quick permaculture event. They built bamboo toilets with pits and started working on an organic garden, spending nights in tents and playing music with the locals. Seeing organic coffee, cocoa, durian, mangosteen, and avocado begin to grow on the site, Denham felt that her dreams easily merged with the dreams of the community.

In July 2018, Denham flew to Australia to take a teaching job in a remote town in the desert, returning to Bali during school holidays to continue her home projects. She spent most of the New Year holidays in 2019 transporting the remainder of her belongings from Kerobokan, where her lease had ended, to Sanda. She decided that instead of unpacking everything, she would keep it safe so she could immerse herself in the atmosphere of her beautiful home with its antique wooden living room, spacious kitchen, and a spare room to store her material life. "The rain poured, leaves dripped, birds chimed, civets cried, and almost nothing happened, except for one night when a hunter took shelter from the rain and startled me a bit. But those last days in the house were bliss."

After Christmas, she returned to Australia to continue teaching, telling her friends in Bali, "See you in April!" When April 2020 arrived, unexpected pandemic travel restrictions left Denham in Australia. It has been over a year since she was in her home in Bali. At this point, Denham says, "I live on WhatsApp messages. I receive photos of my beautiful house in the big forest, empty and waiting for my return."

A local family takes care of the house in her absence. Just recently, Robi's group filmed a music video in the garden. The coffee farm produces organic, sustainable robusta. "Some of this coffee arrived at my doorstep last week," says Denham. "Every time I brew a cup, I'm amazed by the place I haven't lived in yet, but have dreamed about for years."