At last

At last! It took months but I finally found my way around the Beauteous and Talented Elinor's new fancy-schmancy digital camera well enough to share a few pix of the completed Dr. Zarkov's Tiki Lounge. I apologize for the image quality; sometime soon I hope to get some pix shot by a pro, but until then these will have to do.

I’ll try not to burden the members with too much text, so I will offer only a brief introduction and then I will be happy to answer any questions you have, although it might take me a day or two for me to get back with answers.

Elinor and I first saw our house when it was for sale in mid-2004. The rectangular rec room included a bump-out at one end that was 10 feet wide and eight feet deep, shaped like a bay window, which is the downward extension of the breakfast nook on the first floor and part of our master bath on the second. Neighbors who have the same layout as ours don’t know what to do with this odd space (one couple put in mirrored walls, a dance floor and a disco ball!). I took one look at it and immediately exclaimed, “Tiki hut!”

For more than two years we used the rec room as storage space, piling boxes and whatnot in it. In 2007 we got serious, cleaned it out and replaced the beige wall-to-wall carpet with stone tile that looks like sand. My head was filled with a jumble of ideas. After I saw pictures of the Moai Lounge on this site, my heart sank because that couple independently came up with many of the ideas I had been thinking about, too. I started thinking about how I could make mine different and decided to create a 1950’s Sci Fi/Tiki Lounge.

I thought this would work for a number of reasons. When I was a radio DJ on Radio Free Burning Man and the radio station for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival station in Scotland, my on-air name was Dr. Zarkov, who was Flash Gordon’s sidekick in the 1930s serials starring Buster Crabbe. And what goes better with Tikis than robots and retro space toys?

The theme also would allow us to mix in Mid-Century Modern furniture and décor. One problem with theming a rec room entirely in Tiki – all bamboo, woven wall matting and thatch – is that the room can end up being quite dark. Adding in MCM furniture and recessed ceiling lighting helps eliminate that problem.

It took us a year to complete the room – I could spend 5,000 words describing all the delays (including the mistake of attempting to us an interior designer I had to fire) – but will save that for the Q&A. Also, unlike the couple who built the Moai Lounge themselves, Elinor and I are not at all handy and had to rely on contractors to do most of the work.

One advantage to the delays were that they gave me more time to scour Ebay and other websites and stores for robots and other space toys, art as well as for furniture and my favorite addition, ukuleles and guitars. I quickly discovered that most retro space toys are much sought after by collectors, and therefore are very expensive. However, there are enough reproductions available that, as long as you are acquiring them just as fun decorations, are reasonably priced. A few others, like 1950s banks shaped like rockets and a Buck Rogers ray gun, were relatively inexpensive, especially if you didn’t care whether they had a little rust or a piece missing here and there.

The extra time also allowed me to thoroughly research my TV/Audio set up, which resulted in my saving quite a bit of money while getting what I wanted. Without further adieu, here the pictures of the final result:

The stairway leading down to the lounge

Robbie the Robot from the ‘50s movie “Forbidden Planet” ready to party with assorted friends. Below is some of the stairway art:

The first thing you see when you get to the foot of the stairs:

Along the stairway we removed a recessed banister and inserted glass shelves. You can see some of the jungle leaves wallpaper we put up on the wall behind:

If you turn right at the bottom of the stairs, you see the hall leading to the Bettie Page Bathroom on the left and the laundry room door straight ahead:

Hallway artwork on the opposite wall:

The Bettie Page Bathroom. We had a faux painter do the walls in purple leopard skin and I collected the art work over the past 18 years:

At the opposite end of the room from the cabinets is this fireplace. Originally boring red brick, the faux painter made it look like lava rock and painted the mantle and wood trim to look like bamboo: