Post #792535 by vinakavakalevu on Sat, Jan 19, 2019 9:42 PM

In about 9 months, I’ll be moving. This is a bit of a bummer because I just finished converting my screened porch to a tiki bar. But it is exciting because I am building a new house and have a lot of control over the new bar. But I need help! I want to make smart decisions in the setup of the new room.

My current bar is a stone floored porch, with sliding glass on two walls, and white painted bricks on the other two walls. I attached Plywood to the brick with tapcon screws and anchored thin plywood to the ceiling. I attached lauhala, bamboo fencing and other products to the plywood to create the attached bars. In addition, I built a bar on rollers with a torched/spar varnished top. I’ve hung a number of lights from the ceiling with Philips Hue bulbs that I can control remotely and change colors. Not really a bar, but more of a space.

My new bar will be a windowless basement room. I’m planning on carving a “barn door” style door at the entrance to the room. Inside the bar, I will have a 5 foot section of cabinetry with a sink, counter top and car top. There will be a set of cabinets with shelves above them on the back wall, a work space and then a cabinet section with the sink, a small undercounter fridge and the work/serving surface. I’m going to delete the “future fridge” as I don’t want a shiny/white/black fridge displayed so prominently. So far, I have some can lights in the ceiling that I plan to replace with various tiki fixtures. But that won’t be enough, so I plan to have some additional electric outlets put into the ceiling. I place on doing the burned/varnished bartop again, hence the temp surface in the plan. The walls will be drywall/paint, but I’ll need to immediately get those covered with lauhala, bamboo, bac bac, tapa, etc. My bar is loosely themed on a Fijian Island/Jungle motif. So onto the questions:

1. What’s the best method to attach matting or bamboo to the walls? Should I put up OSB/Plywood and staple/screw/glue my stuff into that? Or should I try to attach directly to drywall?
2. What are some good ideas for the ceiling? I was thinking of putting a slanted thatched ceiling over the bar itself, starting at the back wall over the shelving, slanting down over the bar top. What should I do with the rest of the ceiling? Paint it black and hang lights? Work in a bamboo grid?
3. What about ice? I’ve thought about a built in ice maker, but in reality I can probably get away with a combination of a countertop clear ice maker, my ice crusher and a pellet machine like the Opal.
4. Am I missing out on any great ideas that can be easily planned into a new build but are a tremendous pain to retrofit in after construction?
5. Any lessons learned that can be shared?

Apologies for the very generic feel of these questions, but I kind of don’t know where to start!