When we bought this house in 2013, it was full of boring rooms:
Including this covered patio:
Years went by and we didn’t realize that we were into Tiki yet (as Tiki Tom-Tom pointed out when we came to visit and interview us last year); but we had started a small collection from several trips to Hawaii, local vintage stores, and estate sales.
In 2015, the collection didn’t really match the vibe in the house, so it started to collect outside under the covered porch, which we had turned into a movie-night room. Lina added burlap on the roof, some thatch on the edges, and some lauhala on the walls to cover up the brick walls to get that authentic tiki style.
Every tiki room needs a waterfall, so version 1.0 and 1.1 of the waterfall project started around the same time:
We started to get nicer stuff and thought we were doing pretty good.
Then the local Denver Tiki Tribe had a home bar tour in 2017 that made us realize that we were amateurs, which inspired us to step up our game. So we started making plans to enclose the patio to protect our stuff from the elements and give us a three-season room.
Chris created some metal frames out of 1/2″ conduit and enclosed the outdoor patio with greenhouse plastic to see how it would work. We used that setup for a few months and it ended up being quite nice; so we started looking at options to permanently enclose the patio. We have no pictures of this version, but we still have the conduit. In fact, two pieces are currently re-enforcing the 8′ foam and papercrete Moai you’ll see later on.
Chris took some measurements and found a custom window/screen product called EZE-Breeze that has metal frames with full length screens and four window panes that can be arranged to cover the screen, or only cover the top/bottom half/quarter. He surrounded the perimeter on the ground with contact-rated 4x4s and bolted them into the concrete pad, and then used more 4x4s to create frames for the window frames to mount into.
The whole thing was pretty easy to install, except for one frame that didn’t quite fit. Chris tried chiseling out the section and the chisel slipped. A trip to the hospital revealed that he missed his tendons by a mm. The doctor was sure that he was going to have to call the hand surgeons in when he first saw the wound and was shocked when only stitches were required. The new walls looked great and we installed Ikea wood tiles directly over the concrete. Many people have commented that they love that Ikea floor over the years.
New walls means that you need a new waterfall…right? Here is waterfall v2.0
After that first Denver Tiki Tribe Home Bar Tour, we started to create a dedicated tiki space in earnest. Coming soon in the next post…
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