Post #784048 by mikehooker on Sat, Feb 17, 2018 2:46 PM

Wow, can't believe it's been almost two years since my last update here. The biggest changes have been swapping the desk for a bar and exchanging the credenza for a sofa. It was a tough decision to get rid of some of the mid century furniture we loved but it's no longer an office (though we still refer to it as that out of habit). It's now a full on tiki room so we need it to be as inviting and accommodating as possible.

Daytime view

Nighttime shot

Still working on lighting. I have a few more fixtures to hang including the Orchids lamp currently sitting on the bar but need to make sure it remains ambient and not too bright in here.

We had some major house renovations done last April where we had to move out and put EVERYTHING we own in storage, so unfortunately we made the decision to sell the fish tank as there was no way we could maintain it during our time away. I have since picked up a rattan tank but it will be used for display rather than living organisms. You can sort of see it in the corner. I'll show it off once I figure out what the setting inside it will be.

The wife won't let me paint the ceiling, so until I figure out matting or something else we could put up there so it's not so glaringly white, I put together this little bit of eye candy.

These two Witco pieces were found in Springfield, MO for $25

I'm real proud of the bar. I found it at an estate sale and completely restored it. It wound up being waaaayyy more work than I anticipated and I probably could have built one from scratch in less time and for less money than I have invested in this one, but such is life.

What follows is the plight of a madman....

So this is what the bar originally looked like. From afar, it's great.

But up close, the original stain was chipping off, and it really was a much darker color than I wanted.

So I decided to pop off all the rattan pieces, 50 of them, and sand them down.

Some may say I should have kept the natural patina, but this thing spent a lot of time outdoors and was seriously neglected. The entire underside of the bar was infested with mud dauber nests. I didn't feel comfortable bringing any element of this into my home without a serious cleaning. So I stripped it of any potential funk.

Once I got it down to just the hardboard I realized it had a lot of water damage. So I ripped that off too and found a bunch more dauber nests hidden in areas I wouldn't otherwise be able to reach. It was pretty freakin nasty. I spent hours removing rusty staples and nails and scraping and cleaning all the surfaces.

Proceeded to give the frame and shelves two coats of paint and finally I was no longer grossed out.

Put up and painted new hardboard. it's starting to look like a bar again!

Stained all the rattan in amber shellac. This is the color I wanted.

Borrowed a neighbors nail gun and started putting it back together, opting to make the Bosko plaque the centerpiece instead of the cloth it originally had. Also got around to sanding the thick trim piece around the top of the bar which was a bitch cuz it wasn't easily removable like everything else so I had to be a lot more careful.

I damaged the foot rest supports when pulling off the hardboard so I did my best to replicate them with a jigsaw and sander.

And countless hours of blood, sweat and tears later, all done!

Now do I try to tackle those bar stools? The dark color super bothers me but I wouldn't know how to effectively strip the finish off of those.