Post #792767 by leevigraham on Tue, Jan 29, 2019 2:52 AM

Hi Tiki friends!

Firstly a quick introduction.

My names Leevi and I live in Australia. My wife started calling me Leroy as a joke which morphed into Roy.

I've been interested in tiki (in a broader sense) since I was a kid. Pretty sure it was watching Elvis movies in the back ground, my mum travelling to NZ in the 80s (coming back with stories) and finding all kinds of Polynesian tourist art at local markets.

What follows is a summary of the build so far from August 2018 to Jan 2019, 5 months in total. It's my first ever bar build.

Here we go…

The shed

We bought a new house in October 2016 which came with a 6m x 7m aluminium frame double garage. My mind immediately started ticking over considering options for a man cave / tiki bar / outdoor room.

• Here's what I started with
• Another photo

Wall cladding and insulation

After experiencing one summer in the garage with 40+ internal radiating heat I knew I would have to do some insulating before even considering building anything internal.

I opted to clad the internal walls with Yellow Tongue Flooring. It's pretty heavy and dense but it came in the perfect size sheets (3600x900x19) for minimum wastage. I could fit 6 full sheets along the back and 6 sheets on either side using the offcuts for other bibs and bobs. I figured with the density I wouldn't need wool insulation between the boards and outside aluminium sheeting. The yellow tongue also allowed the boards to click together flush.

Here's some pics:

• First sheet down
• First course down
• First side nearly done
• First side done!
• All walls done (video)!
• and a weird panorama

The wall cladding was pretty tough work. I mostly did it myself with some help from my wife when it came to lifting the more dangerous pieces.

The yellow tongue is 19mm thick which is more than strong enough to screw into when it comes to decorating.

I was pretty happy with the result

Building the bar

Next I tackled the actual bar. I planned to put it in the corner on wheels so it could be dragged in an out as needed. The idea was to make the bar the depth of normal shelves (540mm) so it wouldn't stick out to far.

• First I created the carcass out of 2x4 pine. I pocket hole screwed all the joints.
• I then tested the height of the raised section of the bar by temporality placing some some more 2x4s
• Adding the bar top gave me the actual height
• Which of course was too high. So I pulled everything apart and made some more cuts
• I used an old bench top from an inside reno for the bar top. The thought was to somehow paint or cover the top later.
• I experimented with capping the bench with bamboo poles
• Once I was happy with the height I started to add some details
• Finally I sanded enough poles to cover the front and sides.
• A girlfriend of mine owns a sign shop and she graciously printed up a large vinyl wrap which I stuck onto the bench.
• Final result Well kind of. I still have to stain / seal the top.[/url]

Bar Shelving

Part of the indoor reno involved removing some old shelving. Rather than throw it out I kept it for the shed. I'll eventually trim the bar with bamboo and add lighting. More on the lighting coming up.

• The shelves secured to the wall
• The bar slides in underneath nicely. The floor slopes down to the corner which is why there is a gap.

Lighting

I started searching for lighting on Gumtree and Facebook marketplace. I found some small bamboo tub lamps that I thought could do with some love.

• Original gross brown
• Stripped back to the frame
• Sewing a new shade
• Done.

Insulating the ceiling

Like I said at the start… the shed gets HOT! It's basically a giant heat sink that radiates down the stored heat from the sun. I considered a couple of options but in the end settled on Foilboard. Basically it's 25mm of polystyrene covered with foil. It acts as a reflective barrier and insulation. At $AUD50 a sheet it was going to be pretty expensive so I looked around and found it cheaper online. Bunnings matched the price and gave me 10% off which reduced the price to more like $AUD35. This was one material I didn't want to skimp on as I knew it would have the largest impact.

The number one reason why I chose Foilboard was becuase it was light and I could install it myself. I ended up using tech screws to attach directly to the top hats.

• First 3 panels up
• 12 to go
• 3/4 done
• Done

Adding the foilboard made a huge difference to the internal temp. It still gets hot on a 40℃ day but it's bearable. Truth be told on those days we'll probably be inside in the air conditioning. The only downside is that now I couldn't see where the top hats where so I'll have to get creative and use a pin to poke through when it comes to attaching the matting.

Dividing the shed

At some point it occurred to me that I didn't want to sit and look at all the workshop stuff while having a drink so I decided to halve the shed somehow.

We had some crappy old rubber backed curtains replaced inside the house. We were going to throw the old ones out but I rescued them (after they sat out in the rain for a week). Unfortunately they were getting mouldy so I put them through the washing machine with bleach to kill the mould and freshen them up.

• I think the came up alright
• I had to sew multiple curtains together to get the right width
• and the right height
• My original plan was to run the curtain track up and then down following the main support of the shed. This didn't work so well. The way the curtains hung was off.

Still I pressed on. My idea was to paint the curtains in a giant mural. I found some inspiration online and some really cheap and nasty pink paint from Bunnings.

• I rolled the paint onto the curtains with a roller
• Which gave me some decent coverage
• I planned to stencil the pink with monstera, birds of paradise and other tropical plants. Most of these plants are in gardens in our neighbourhood.
• More Stencils
• First test… This might work
• First curtain done
• Birds of paradise detail

More lighting

I'm a web developer in my day job and I've always like building things out of raw materials with my hands or software with my brain. A friend of mine is mad into Christmas lights so I asked him about it and he gave me a RapsberryPI and some individual addressable LEDs.

• LEDs
• The Pi and lighting controller
• Success… the wiring is good!
• Another Success… Controlling the lights with Falcon Player
• Testing how the Leds look in lamps

I plan on building multiple lighting sequences with xLights and controlling playlists with Falcon Player.

Curtains Part 2

After playing with lighting for a couple of days I came back to finish the curtains.

• I grabbed a few more greens from the local graffiti store
• Start with a dark green / blue outline
• Fill with green
• Highlight and spray in structure
• Done
• Relax

Remember when I said that:

My original plan was to run the curtain track up and then down following the main support of the shed. This didn't work so well.

Well I went back and decided to straighten the tracks.

• I cut a new frame from left over particle board
• Attached a new track
• and did a test hang of the curtains. The length was obviously off but that was easy to fix.
• Curtains drawn

That brings me to today

If you've read this far thank you. I hope you've enjoyed the journey so far! Let me know if there's anything you would change or I could have done better.

There's plenty more photos in the Google album which I'll continue to add to as I post more.

I'm also adding stories to my instagram if you want to follow that: https://instagram.com/leevigraham

My TikiBar build: Leroys Luau Lounge
Instagram

[ Edited by: leevigraham 2020-03-19 04:26 ]

[ Edited by leevigraham on 2022-03-13 20:38:02 ]

[ Edited by leevigraham on 2022-03-13 20:39:00 ]

[ Edited by leevigraham on 2022-03-13 20:47:04 ]

[ Edited by leevigraham on 2022-03-13 20:56:37 ]

[ Edited by leevigraham on 2022-03-13 21:31:02 ]