Post #810276 by UnkleChewie on Thu, Aug 10, 2023 5:22 PM

I’ve been wanting to do this for years, finally stopped procrastinating and jumped in a few months ago and said, “Screw it, do it.” partially due to getting inspired by falling down a tiki hole on YouTube (some of whom I’ve seen posting here, so thanks people!).

Quick intro, I’m Matt, a graphic designer from Van Nuys, CA. Grew up around Los Angeles and have always been fascinated by the whole Tiki vibe, the rest of my family is all from Louisiana so the Voodoo crossover felt like a pretty natural direction to go. I’m absolutely trying to be patient and enjoy the journey and fight the urge to do everything at once as I learn more about the nuances of everything, so yes, the party store cargo nets will be getting phased out.

I’ll probably do up another sign with a longer piece of wood so I can hang it by ropes from the sides rather than the hooks, give it a more rustic feel. Bamboo Ben was kind enough to throw in an extra skull when I bought a few items from him at the hardcore tiki marketplace in Long Beach last weekend, so that worked perfectly here. I’ve also ordered a few more glass floats which should be here hopefully this weekend, so I’m planning on hanging one in the center from behind the beam (yellow or red 10”).

I built the pond years ago, feels nice to finally tie everything else into it. I shamelessly stole the rope fence idea from a photo in the Polynesiacs book (according to a post about the book it belongs to bongofury).

The Marquesan tiki is by Victor Hernandez ( vics_art on IG).

The goal here is to replace the Buddha statue with a 7-ish foot tall tiki at some point.

I lucked out that one of the previous owners of the house was a carpenter at Disney, add a few vines and some rope work and the pergola he built looks straight out of Adventureland.

Here’s a closeup of the little fence posts. My first time using a Dremel, so I’m super happy with how these came out. There were spots where I thought I TOTALLY screwed up, but once I burned and brushed it, those mistakes just became “character.” I think the two biggest lessons I’ve learned so far are:

1. Fire will fix almost anything.
2. Don’t climb a ladder in flip flops.

Here’s a photoshop mockup of what I’m planning for the back wall of the patio.

Was searching for a weatherproof power strip to power the lights and found this one for landscape lights with a built in timer on Amazon. Normally mounts on a post, but also has screw holes on the back to mount to a flat surface. I’m sure I’ll find info online, but if anyone has any good weatherproofing tips for lights, I’m all ears.