Post #687768 by Trad'r Bill on Sun, Jul 28, 2013 9:39 PM

Thanks for the kind words everyone...

To say the least, this room has been a labor of love for me. I did all the work myself, except for the 2-man jobs when my brother-in-law helped out. Certain aspects of the build took much longer than I had expected... and if I knew then what I know now, I'm not sure I would have chosen certain paths. The floor, and the wood paneling jump out as examples. As I said earlier, it took me over a year to get to this point, and I still have more work to do.

My family moved into a new home about 18 months ago, and for the first 6 months or so, the room served simply as a storage space for my tiki stuff. I had a newborn daughter at this point, so my focus was obviously on her:

My floats were moved in without incident:

Moving in my baby, er clam shell:

Crap everywhere, albeit good crap:

I was still gathering supplies at this point... Bamboo Depot in Benicia was my main resource:

I found this booth on Craigslist, which came from a Chevy's at the Valley Fair mall in Santa Clara:

looked better once I painted the hideous fabric. I was too chicken to reupholster it myself:

I got this large piece of Tongan ngatu cloth for $35 at an antique fair - score! This is going behind the bar.

Little by little, I was able to do some work, like splitting and sizing the bamboo:

...and eventually I cleared everything out to start doing some real work:

Post is getting long, I'll add more soon. Thanks for looking.

-Trad'r Bill