Well, it's a start.

After much effort, toil, angst, deliberation and frenetic Craigslist-surfing...I managed to get the very first component towards my (eventual) Tiki habitat. I managed to buy a bar and (I think) a pretty bloody nice one at that. It has only a couple of tiny dings and chips, but nothing that even someone as manually unskilled as I can't set right. Those teeny flaws aside, it's practically new.

Below is the "overall view" of the beast.

It weighs a TON...that slab o'granite top does not help and, even worse, makes it ridiculously top-heavy when all you have are one and a half men (me & Joey) to schlep it from the wifely minivan to the back room via the obstacle course of a hypercluttered garage, tall steps and rugged lawn terrain. Ona a dolly that was missing a wheel, and was wa-a-a-a-a-ay too small for the bar's footprint. So I had to stop every 10 feet, for Joey to shove an old sneaker where the missing wheel wasn't, so I could adjust the bar atop the dolly's rickety frame. Even worse when the grownup in the equation is supposedly down with the flu. It took 2½ hours to go from driveway to back room. But I am nothing if not committed.

Or, perhaps this is proof I should be.

I'm slightly embarrassed to state in public how little I paid for this thing. I spotted it on CL and it was being sold by a storefront church which seems to have been using it (probably donated, I'm guessing) as a hallway table. Three grown men, from that church's rehab program groaningly placed it in the wifely minivan, which was then practically in wheelie mode all the way home. All of the other semi-acceptable bars I had seen on CL for the last year -- did I mention I was patient? -- were running in the $150-$300 range and this was not only FAR nicer, but also FAR cheaper. When I got there I was pleasantly surprised to see it more "tikiable" than I expected, with rattan-like panels and a workable color. It's supposedly a Bombay Co. model, but it has a Tommy Bahama-ish kinda feel to it. (See next)

Above is a closeup of the ornamental detail. (See what I mean about the Tommy Bahama thing?) So the question is this: How could I tikify those column-ish/rosette things (they look like they will pry off cleanly and relatively easily)? I was thinking of a shallow-ish set of wooden plaques with something (anything!) more tiki-ish, and possibly replacing those grooved columny details with something bamboo-y.

And, of course, placing a proper tiki dead center.

Any suggestions?

-J.

P.S. For those who are interested in following the progress of my eventual tiki habitat, be warned...this will go GLACIALLY slow, as I have very little in the way of time and even littler in the way of DIY skills and even littler than that in $$ my beloved wife will allow me to spend on such a project. Even if the projected space is the size of a medium phone booth.

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