Comrade’s Grotto

I wanted to share the tiki bar my son and I have been building for the last 5 months. It’s small, 7’ x 9’ and about 60% complete. A friend who is a professional photographer shot the bar and that made me decide to share. You can find Carlos (photographer friend) on Instagram @crhla. Hope this lives up to some of the home tiki bars that inspired me.

[ima]https://tikicentral.com/uploads/42561/5b8225af.jpg[/img]

Welcome to TC! Your tiki room looks very good. I’m very interested to see how your father-son project develops.

Welcome Sparc. Nice! Keep dem posts/pix comiing.
Cheers

Nice, cozy, atmospheric space. That’s a cool Marquesan piece on the bar too.

Thank you for your comments and warm wlecome. I will add updates as they occur. Looking forward to adding masks and some pieces from Tki Tony and Bosko. The Marquesan piece was a gift several years ago and the two headed Tahitian piece I got from Islands Bamboo and Hawaiian Furniture in Westminster. Cool place.

It's gorgeous. Definitely a space to get lost in.

Wow! That's great! I love the lighting. Thanks for coming on and sharing it!

The space is a great spot for relaxing after a long day. The lighting has gone through several iterations. My son Euan had the best ideas, the small LED tea lights in the storage crates for the tikis and putting a Christmas shimmering LED light from Target into the hanging float. It's nice and dark with nice moments of sparkle.

Holy hell that's good! If there were ever a place to lose yourself with a drink...

That's a killer build! Thanks for sharing it with us--please post more!

Yes! Definitely looking forward to seeing more of this.

Thank you for the kind words. Here are a couple more of the professional photos. After this it's going to be Iphone shots of additional progress.

Wow, that's slick! Looks like you've got more carved panels than flat wall space around your bamboo frames and lauhala. Great layering, lighting, and textures.

Jeff

Yeah, the upper portions of the walls have the matting, bamboo and carved panels. The bottom of the walls are stained fleck board. We have gotten used to the bottom being merely stained but are still considering adding more detail. The carved frames are by my son and I. The router time is kind of soothing.

Oh man, that lighting. is. superb. Especially for such a small space. I've seen those "lobster trap" lights before, but never thought they'd be so effective. Beautiful!

That’s a beautiful space. Well balanced elements and superb lighting. Very inviting; I would love to drink a tall cool one in there!
Very well done!

Very nice and inviting.

Love your lighting, would love to replicate it in the Hut

I am going to work up a post to describe all the lighting. Thanks for the feedback. We went through a couple of rounds of lighting tests before we settled on what got photographed.

I love the way you used all the textures of matting and bamboo as your source and refrained from making your space a display of tiki collectibles. Very classy take on a usually very nerdy project. One of the best!

Adam Aku Aku, thank you. It's a fine line between too little and too much, glad to hear you feel a balance has been struck. I also promised some information on lighting. I have no electrical abilities so everything is either battery operated or plugged in to strategically placed power strips. Type A is an LED tea light glued into the upper inside of each shipping crate for a sparkle of light on tiki mugs and rums. Type B is a set of Christmas lights my son was given at a tiki marketplace event at Don's. Clear glass, small bulbs with bamboo screens around them. Type C and E are the same but are different colors. Both are from Target and are Christmas lighting for your lawn that flicker and create a pattern of colors. The light moves inside the fixture and the light projects through a prism and that creates the movement. The one in the globe is blue and the other one is hidden behind the bar and is green and red.Type D are LED remote controlled candles. We have about 6 in the bar placed wherever we wanted more light than the tea light can provide and we want to see the light source.

Hope this helps.

Fantastic detail. Say, what kind of room was this, or is it outside your main home?

This is in the corner of our garage. Total bar size is 9’ x 7’

On 2018-10-25 14:45, sparc wrote:
This is in the corner of our garage. Total bar size is 9’ x 7’

Wow! Fantastic work in such a limited space. You've got a great vibe going on there.

Congrats; I see you were recently featured on Tiki with Ray:

http://www.tikiwithray.com/home-tiki-bar-spotlight-46-comrades-grotto-long-beach-ca/

Yeah. I was lucky to get a feature. One goal unlocked for the bar. Another coming soon (fingers crossed) which I will post when it is official. Also have an Instagram feed where I post consistently. @swparchitect

Killer, just killer!!!