Voodoo Lounge - Van Nuys, CA

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.

Its looking good. Very tropical

Very Pirates of the Caribbean meets Tiki!

I like the mashup. Works well in an outside bar.

Updated the entrance today, went with the 10" red float here (ordered a yellow one too). I'm too chicken to try drilling into this one, so I'm going to try the tip in another thread here about just squeezing in a candelabra bulb under the top of the netting (rotated the float inside the net so the divot was on top to give it a little more room too). Also added the net floats, found a batch of 18 of them for $40 on eBay, put the rest across the back fence that you can see in the background. There are two steps down before you get to this, so there's plenty of head clearance unless Chewbacca comes over for a visit.

Great space Chewie. I love the vibe!

Awesome

Wish I could do something here outside besides melt

(Vegas)

Lighting is starting to come together, here's a quick video walkthrough: https://youtube.com/shorts/qe2Rt2XjSpI?feature=shared

Yesterday's project was that I was looking for a way to hide some ugly electrical boxes on the back wall, found a small bamboo medicine cabinet on amazon that worked great. Left the back piece off, cut out some wood on the bottom for the cords to pass through, glued some fabric on the inside of the door, and rigged up a little light with a couple of flickering candelabra bulbs. Also ended up being a perfect place to stash my bluetooth speaker, with the music playing it looks like it's just some sort of light up speaker cabinet. https://youtube.com/shorts/LnU7ra17sko?feature=shared

[ Edited by UnkleChewie on 2023-09-04 12:51:08 ]

I love it. Nice feel!

Couple of updates, added a Tiki Bosko Ku:

Found some macrame wine bottle carrier things on temu for around $3.50, so I rigged up a couple of lights out of some bottles I had laying around:

After I checked out a tutorial on Youtube about how to make them I figured I'd take a stab at it myself and I was a lot happier with how it came out, I'll probably redo the others at some point:

Here's the tutorial I based it off of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDEPKhtEaKU

[ Edited by UnkleChewie on 2023-10-27 01:54:58 ]

Wow, you've got a real nice collection of tikis. Very cool build.

Haven't updated in way too long, but here's a recent photo tour through my patio (starting to take over the rest of the yard as well now). Fun stuff!

Killer space! Great work.

Looks great.

What a incredible collection of tiki art is displayed OUTSIDE!!! Wow, love your Voodoo vibe. A great space.

Super well-done. I moved my tiki space from outdoors to indoors this past year as we don't have your balmy climate in Nevada. Outdoor tiki spaces suck under several inches of snow!!

Great Tiki things happening here!

Love the vibe already, Matt. Can’t wait to see where it goes!