Post #537580 by robotiki on Sat, Jun 19, 2010 7:58 AM

Recipe for winning room decor:
Step 1. Be presented with a theme that you know you've got the goods for. When we heard the theme included space & space age, we knew we had the props to pull it off.
Materials needed: 1 big-ass robot

Step 2. Find out the hotel is sold out, but get lucky and have Tiki Kiliki contact you with a cancellation.

Step 3. Road trip. Like any good art director, I scouted the location. Took a trip earlier this year to Ft Lauderdale to see the room and take measurements. I knew it would be small, and if the bed was attached to the floor, we'd be sunk as far as really doing anything of worth. Luckily the bed was not, and I measured an alcove off the bathroom and made sure all the furniture would stack up in there. Our room was 10'x12'. Very small for what we could have brought

(I had planned on bringing Chip but we did not have the space). http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=32959&forum=5

Step 4. Work out a scale plan.

Step 5. Make props. Sticking a robot in a hotel room with it's yellow walls would look like a robot in a hotel room. We wanted to really transform the space. We sought out to find something to cover the walls with that would be easy to set up and not damage the hotel room in any way. A few trips to Home Depot and we discovered 4x8 panels of insulation foam that had a silver reflective coating on one side. It was light, and it's size meant we'd only have to make 9 panels. Excess from a short panel was cut up to go around the door frame. There was too much silver in it's raw form, so we painted them turquoise on the bottom 40"
Materials needed: 4x8 panels, lot of double faced tape, paint and wreath forms.

(My big Tiki Farm Moai fire pit oversaw the painting)

We made portholes for the right hand wall out of styrofoam floral wreath forms. My helper did the painting.

The bar we already had. It was one I custom made for our clubhouse last year. It's been on my back porch since we lost the building to development.

Step 6. Strip Trader Ricks back porch of his bigger tikis, and grab a bunch from my back yard.

Step 7. Load up two SUV's and a cargo trailer stuffed to the brim, including crap strapped on top. A investor stopped as we were packing asking if my mid-century house was going to be for sale--looked like we were stripping the place.

BTW, we are AWFULLY GLAD we decided to take the bikes! It was the best way to get around.

Step 7. After damn near killing ourselves loading and unloading the goods, we stuffed the entire hotel room into the back alcove and installed the wall panels.

Step 8. Fill bar
Materials needed: A couple dozen bottles of rum and untold quantities of various mix ingredients.

Step 9. Add fountain, lighting and tikis.

Step 10. Prepare for guests.

Step 11. open the door and pour, repeat as needed.

And yes, to edit my post, as Jetsetter mentioned below: Step 12: Take care of the folks patiently in line. We stayed open an hour and a half longer to accommodate everyone. Trader Rick was drenched to the bone with sweat furiously mixing each drink (no punch bowl for us!) Luckily we had a big picture window folks could watch Robby singing in the "blue fishbowl" whilst waiting their turn.
BTW if anyone has any additional pictures of our room, please PM me as we were too busy to take more than a few after we opened.

Robotiki
Mira Mar League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

[ Edited by: robotiki 2010-06-19 17:30 ]