Post #769561 by ginnyfish on Thu, Oct 20, 2016 8:00 AM

Hello all! I am new to the forum, but have been reading for about a year.

My husband Garth and I got into Tiki in 2014 when we visited Disneyland for the first time. It was our first night and we decided to grab a drink (or two, or three) at Trader Sam’s.

I don’t know if it was the amazing cocktails, or the wonderful 50’s vibe, or just the little details, but we where hooked! We purchased a couple of the mugs to remember the night by and tried to recreate some of the cocktails when we arrived back home to Brighton, in the UK. Back home we started to look up some of the other wonderful Tiki Bars, and decided that when we could next visit California we would try and see a few.

Last year we decided it was time to move out of our little one bedroom flat in Brighton, to a ‘future proof’ family home in Worthing. When we looked around the houses we would joke about space for a Tiki Bar, but didn't really mean it. We finally moved into a wonderful 3 bedroom house in the suburbs last October, and the same December, made our second trip to California.

Starting at San Fransisco, we visited Tonga Rooms, and Smugglers Cove. Then in Eemeryville, Trader Vic’s on our way to Yosemite. Trader Sam’s again in Disneyland then off to Palm Springs! This is where it went a little pear shaped, after a wonderful evening at Tonga Hut and Bootlegger Tiki, I broke my foot in three places! (Slipped in the rain). Las Vegas and Frankie’s would have to be for another trip as we were flown back home so that I could have an operation and recover.

Even with it’s abrupt end, the trip to California was amazing, and my husband said that while I was recovering he would make a start on a Tiki Bar in our house. We had an unused dining room in the centre of the house that was a perfect space for the bar.

Here is the room as a dinning room from the sales PDF before we moved in.

There was a lot of white to get rid of. We started with the skirting board and door trim. Them painted the walls red. We had decided to cover the chimney breast and celling with Lauhala matting from Cheeky Tiki in London, but it was out of stock, so the bar was on hold for a while. In the mean time we started to collect some bits and bobs.

We picket up a wonderful Tiki from Brighton carver Trader Tark, along with a mid century bar and other bits and bobs from Gumtree.

Then the matting arrived! (You can see from the picture we covered the radiator too. Just a cheap MDF one we found online, treated with teak oil)

After much reading on Tiki Central, we got to work glueing the matting onto the celling. We used carpet spray glue and cut the matting into 9 squares. Here is Garth with the first square up!

I must admit, I was quite worried when we first put it up. The finished result looked really tatty, but this all changed when the bamboo went up. Wow what a difference that made!

Then we moved onto the Chimney, adding wooden battens to box things in:

Then late in the day, after moving all our bits back in the room, it was dark and the perfect time to play with optics!
We put up some fish float lights and fitted the bar with a Hue light strip.

We have a friend that makes signs for a living and he printed us a simple PVC door sign for the glass door. Garth designed the Logo.

And here is a picture of the whole room, its still pretty bare bones, but its a good start. We have put a few more bits on the wall recently and I will add updated pictures soon.

Now time for a Navy Grog!

[ Edited by: ginnyfish 2016-10-20 09:41 ]