My Witco Bar & Theatre

Hi there, I'm new to the site and have a huge amount of respect for all the amazing bars on here. My Tiki bar adventure started with buying a house in 2015 that had many Witco items in it including a great fountain, a bar, a carved door and a lot of Witco trim. The house had sat on the market for a while and one of the reasons was the dark and "ugly" basement but my wife and I loved it at first site. The previous owners knew nothing about other than it was put in place by the original owners in the sixties. We didn't know anything about Witco at the time other than this was a very cool and unique collection and we wanted it all included in the sale.

We had young kids at the time and the basement soon was taken over by toys. Fast forward to Covid and working from home and the kids were now teenagers and the basement bar had become a makeshift home theatre. I knew I wanted to redo the basement into something for hosting once the pandemic ended and to reflect how we currently used the space (movies and game nights) and to honour the Witco collection that we loved so much when we bought the house.

I expect that some may find our Tiki lacking, but I wanted to share here since I don't know of anyone in my city that has a Tiki bar and can't really share this passion with anyone locally.

I'll start with some before pics and post some progress pics after.

Wowza - LOVE that multicolor Witco bar and stools; those are fantastic!!

Every Witco fountain is a joy - super cool stuff! Thank you for sharing!

Thank you!

I started with repositioning the bar and the couch and experimenting with the layout since I decided I wanted the screen on the opposite side of the room so that I didn't have to crawl under it to get a drink during a movie. I also wanted to figure out why some of the ceiling lights didn't work... this opened up a can of worms and I found that the whole ceiling needed to be rewired for safety. Since the room will double as a home theatre I decided to insulate the ceiling and the walls for soundproofing... so all the drywall and wooden panels had to come down. Oh and over the next few weeks I decided to steal a few feet from the laundry room and the furnace room so now the bar had to be dismantled. It was a total rebuild.

more pics to follow

What an incredible score! I can’t wait to see what you do with it.

Witco Fountain !!!!

GLORIOUS!

Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Rob

Here are some more tear out pics and the start of the rebuild. I took out a brick veneer wall in order to insulate and made a mock up of my future projection screen.

Now that the back wall was rebuilt it too was insulated

I also wanted to extend the Witco bar

Put a sink under the stairs.

and then started redoing the walls with Witco panelling.

Next we built a new fireplace surround using trim from a previous soffit.

and glued up a bar extension to match the Witco bar.

Good luck with you build out

yes, enjoy the build.. and yes tiki builds are pretty rare here, but there are a few of us.

Thanks! Very cool to see you are from Ottawa as well! I feel like I may edit my first post if I had bad info from my realtor or is it just a coincidence that I bought this house from a Linda and Mark?

[ Edited by Nurbel on 2023-12-13 11:24:01 ]

or is it just a coincidence that I bought this house from a Linda and Mark?

:-o

Sweeeeet

Oops -My bad, my wife corrected me... Linda is not the one of the names of the couple who we bought the house off.

Really nice work.

Thanks! BTW, that table you are making is looking amazing!

Now here is where I will lose some people (I just finished reading dozens of posts in the Controversial Tiki Opinion thread). Remember, this bar is serving as my home theatre and as a Tiki bar, and I am trying to navigate through the conflicting needs of both.

Here is the screen, on some blocks as I figure out projector and surround sound placement. For anyone who happens to be into this very non-Tiki aspect - I am running 7 THX certified speakers at ear height and 4 Dolby Atmos in the ceiling and 2 subs (with prewiring ready for 2 more when the budget allows).

and now this will annoy some people probably but my layout is a 1st row of two 5' bean bag chairs for the kids, 2nd row of theatre recliners and then a 3rd row of 4 Witco stools behind the bar. So yes this does make it hard to see some of the carvings but it suits my needs, at least while the kids are still living at home.

Here is a pic of the A/V shelves and the trim around them (and of a complete mess all over).

More to come on my work in progress.

Not sure if you can tell from this picture, but here is how I hid the HVAC. I cut slots in the horizontal trim, in between the carved details. I am getting plenty of airflow and it is totally hidden.

Slick! Love tricks like that.

Here are some pics of the current state of affairs. The family is enjoying it as is on the daily as a theatre and I'm having guests over every other weekend or so to enjoy the bar side of things. Of course none of my friends know anything about Tiki but that doesn't stop them from having a good time. You'll see from the pics that the room is now usable but I've got a long list of unfinished touches to do.

You can see that I still haven't mounted the projector on the ceiling, I need to order a part I lost during the tear down :(

Other than the Witco carvings the room is pretty sparse. My ceiling is pretty low so I'm not sure I'll ever get the layered look that most of the bars have.

The front of the room is the most unfinished, relative to my plans.

You can see the front right of the room I inset an Ikea shelf and trimmed it with Witco carved trim. The third side is unfinished because of future plans for an angled cabinet on each side of the screen.

Looks great

I plan to build a low shelf for more mugs and the kids' Xbox below the screen. The idea for the cabinets is to have a subwoofer hidden in the base, the middle would house the left and right speakers and then above them would be a niche for a lit up Witco Tiki on each.

I'll put a round Tiki column on either side of the screen to frame it and also to eventually hide automated curtains for movie time.

Really great build-out. I like how you’re incorporating the theater into the design. Sliding curtains sounds great and might be a way to tiki-fy it when you’re not using the theater. I also covet those carvings on the back bar, the stacked heads. I’m saving those to my inspiration folder for later. Adding some tiki lamps to the space will also amplify the mood IMO.

Thanks! I have a few Witco swag lamp shades that may find their way into the bar or in the hall outside of the room.

Here is a pic from the side of the back bar Tikis in case this helps with your inspiration files. and another angle

[ Edited by Nurbel on 2023-12-17 12:19:38 ]

So very cool!

Thanks. Sweet lamps!

Here is another pre tear down pic that shows the two columns. They used to be on either side of the stairs. They are about 6" in diameter and will be used on either side of the movie screen to frame it out.

I have a few Tikis and a seahorse that my parents gave me, which was very nice but they don't really go with the Witco. I have them in the room for now but ultimately they may have to move into the "lobby" (hallway outside of the theatre) where I have yet to finish the drywall and have a clean slate for a different look.

So what do you guys do with gifts that don't quite fit the look your going for?

Great job, Very cool space! I'm jealous of this Witco fountain! Parents, they don't always understand but it's so sweet of them :)

[ Edited by Tikifrog on 2023-12-19 17:21:16 ]

A few more things to work on. I plan on carving some cedar covers to hide the jack post coming out of the bar. kind of like this was from before the tear out (it was just 2 sides before since the back was in the furnace room):

I also need to hang this outrigger wall art, once I figure out where it should go: