Mark Mywords' Walls of Voodoo (updated 6/17/15) - Home Tiki Bars

M markmywords Member Sacramento Joined: Jan 11, 2011 Posts: 60	M markmywords Posted posted on Tue, Feb 8, 2011 2:30 PM Long time lurker here. Thought it was finally time to put up pics of what I've been working on(and off) and on for the past year. So this whole thing started when we moved from Sac to Davis a year and a half ago. We're used to living in old funky places. The house in Davis is newer and well, pretty "Normal". Having the luxury of extra space for the first time provided the opportunity to add some badly needed character and create the getaway I've wanted to build for some time now... BTW, yeah, the name probably isn't as "Tiki" as the purists might want. My kids named it and it sort of stuck. Unfortunately, more than a few of the early photos of the build got wiped out when I had an sd card die. The only "Before" pics I have are frame grabs from a video. Behold, a very cluttered, boring white walled room - Sooo much white... The first thing I did was paint and start work on the ceiling. Things got off to a bad start with two mistakes. First of all, we had new electrical installed in the ceiling for mood lighting in the corners and a light fixture in the center. This left circular holes in the ceiling (used to route cable). I decided to leave the holes open because my original plan was to use grass matting on the ceiling which would cover them. This was a bad idea that would come back to haunt me later. Putting up the matting was a challenge. The matting that I got is only rectangular in the vaguest sense of the word. The mats were 4 x 8', but swooped in up to a 1/2 foot on the sides. I struggled with this for many hours trying to get it installed so that seams could be covered nicely with trim later on. Getting it stapled down flat was also a struggle. I had about 90% of the ceiling done, when I was informed by a drywall contractor that I absolutely should not have left the electrical routing holes in the ceiling open. The rational being that such holes would create a greater hazard of a in-wall fire (serving as a chimney to suck in air). So, down came all the matting. It couldn't be salvaged and went into the garbage pile. The ceiling was put on hold for awhile while I concentrated on painting and installing the wall of bamboo rounds. I also made a mistake on the painting. I wanted green to peek through the gaps in my bamboo. The green paint I chose was too bright. Luckily, it ended up not looking too bad later on when the room got built out with more dark materials. It was pretty shocking when I first put it up though. I made a similar mistake when painting the other walls in the room. I went with a brownish yellow. Of course, this shone right through the fern wainscoting I put up. I spent weeks trying to convince myself that this looked ok. I did eventually have to buckle and take the fern off and repaint the backing wall dark brown. That's what I get for not doing detailed planning before actually starting work. On to the ceiling... For ceiling ver. 2.0, I decided to go with rolled reed fencing. Unlike the grass matting, this went up like a breeze. I very quickly moved onto the bamboo ceiling poles. I installed a 4" support pole on one side and a 2 1/2" pole on the other with 2" crosspoles. The mismatched support pole sizes worked good. It creates an illusion that the roof is slightly slanted. At this point, I got stuck for months on getting the poles installed and looking right. The thing that took the most time was doing the fake rope lashings. The poles themselves went up with rope treatments already on them. I ended up gluing rope for the cross lashing effect. This, of course, took forever. BTW, if you ever want to get an extremely strange look from a hardware store clerk, purchase 40 little tubes of super glue. The look of wonder/fear was priceless. OK, time to move on to walls. More coming later... [ Edited by: markmywords 2011-02-08 14:32 ] [ Edited by: markmywords 2013-01-20 20:36 ] [ Edited by: markmywords 2014-05-31 14:40 ] [ Edited by: markmywords 2014-06-01 09:45 ] [ Edited by: markmywords 2014-06-02 08:04 ] [ Edited by: markmywords 2015-06-17 20:55 ]

Long time lurker here. Thought it was finally time to put up pics of what I've been working on(and off) and on for the past year.

So this whole thing started when we moved from Sac to Davis a year and a half ago. We're used to living in old funky places. The house in Davis is newer and well, pretty "Normal". Having the luxury of extra space for the first time provided the opportunity to add some badly needed character and create the getaway I've wanted to build for some time now...

BTW, yeah, the name probably isn't as "Tiki" as the purists might want. My kids named it and it sort of stuck.

Unfortunately, more than a few of the early photos of the build got wiped out when I had an sd card die. The only "Before" pics I have are frame grabs from a video.

Behold, a very cluttered, boring white walled room -

Sooo much white... The first thing I did was paint and start work on the ceiling. Things got off to a bad start with two mistakes. First of all, we had new electrical installed in the ceiling for mood lighting in the corners and a light fixture in the center. This left circular holes in the ceiling (used to route cable). I decided to leave the holes open because my original plan was to use grass matting on the ceiling which would cover them. This was a bad idea that would come back to haunt me later.

Putting up the matting was a challenge. The matting that I got is only rectangular in the vaguest sense of the word. The mats were 4 x 8', but swooped in up to a 1/2 foot on the sides. I struggled with this for many hours trying to get it installed so that seams could be covered nicely with trim later on. Getting it stapled down flat was also a struggle. I had about 90% of the ceiling done, when I was informed by a drywall contractor that I absolutely should not have left the electrical routing holes in the ceiling open. The rational being that such holes would create a greater hazard of a in-wall fire (serving as a chimney to suck in air). So, down came all the matting. It couldn't be salvaged and went into the garbage pile. The ceiling was put on hold for awhile while I concentrated on painting and installing the wall of bamboo rounds.

I also made a mistake on the painting. I wanted green to peek through the gaps in my bamboo. The green paint I chose was too bright. Luckily, it ended up not looking too bad later on when the room got built out with more dark materials. It was pretty shocking when I first put it up though.

I made a similar mistake when painting the other walls in the room. I went with a brownish yellow. Of course, this shone right through the fern wainscoting I put up.

I spent weeks trying to convince myself that this looked ok. I did eventually have to buckle and take the fern off and repaint the backing wall dark brown. That's what I get for not doing detailed planning before actually starting work.

On to the ceiling...
For ceiling ver. 2.0, I decided to go with rolled reed fencing. Unlike the grass matting, this went up like a breeze.

I very quickly moved onto the bamboo ceiling poles. I installed a 4" support pole on one side and a 2 1/2" pole on the other with 2" crosspoles. The mismatched support pole sizes worked good. It creates an illusion that the roof is slightly slanted.

At this point, I got stuck for months on getting the poles installed and looking right.

The thing that took the most time was doing the fake rope lashings. The poles themselves went up with rope treatments already on them. I ended up gluing rope for the cross lashing effect. This, of course, took forever.

BTW, if you ever want to get an extremely strange look from a hardware store clerk, purchase 40 little tubes of super glue. The look of wonder/fear was priceless.

OK, time to move on to walls. More coming later...

[ Edited by: markmywords 2011-02-08 14:32 ]

[ Edited by: markmywords 2013-01-20 20:36 ]

[ Edited by: markmywords 2014-05-31 14:40 ]

[ Edited by: markmywords 2014-06-01 09:45 ]

[ Edited by: markmywords 2014-06-02 08:04 ]

[ Edited by: markmywords 2015-06-17 20:55 ]

Post #575226 by markmywords on Tue, Feb 8, 2011 2:30 PM