Post #798324 by HopeChest on Mon, Oct 28, 2019 1:08 PM

I've been looking for the right tiki bar for several years now. Had a few near misses but just haven't been successful. I've never been able to start building out a proper tiki lounge because of it, as I needed the bar first in order to suss out the layout (the room is narrow and long so placement determines everything).

Last week I came home after work one day to see this in my driveway:

Turns out a mate saw it on the side of the road and thought of me so he grabbed a truck and a buddy and picked it up and dropped it off at ours. It was obviously outside for a considerable amount of time and pretty knackered - there appeared to be lots of weather damage. However, it seemed to be a really solid build, all the parts were there, and it was free so spending a bit of money and time to attempt to rehab it seemed a good proposition. The cane lashings at the joints were basically all rotted away, save for the ones on the canopy frame, but they're cosmetic versus structural so hopefully that will be an easy fix (knock on wood).

I expected the worst so I got a few different grits of sandpaper as well as some OxyClean (sodium percarbonate) in case simple dish soap and water just wasn't cutting it. I was absolutely gobsmacked after my first few rubs - it looked like I was holding a handful of mud. The change was astonishing:

As someone with no real carpentry / DIY skills to speak of, you've no idea how thrilled I was...this was essentially a clean-up job with a couple of small fixes.

Here you can see a lot of my half-and-half cleaning work to demonstrate just how drastic the difference is:

There are definitely going to be some challenges once thoroughly cleaned. The bar top is a bit uneven and needs to be sorted out; the cane wrappings will be a whole new learning curve; we need to make a new fabric canopy; and any painting / staining / lacquering or what have you is going to be a serious pain with all of those damn slats. Still, after a few hours of cleaning I already love this bar and know that it will mean more to me having fixed it up myself than if I had just bought one that was ready to go.

...and if I ever find another bar, I'm converting this one into the most awesome DJ booth ever...