Mon’s Tiki Lounge

I’m supposed to be waiting for someone else to write this article but it’s raining outside and I actually have been to see this room in person so what the heck, I can tell you a little bit about it, right? Just don’t tell on me.

I can’t give you a lot of details about the how’s and why’s of the room, but I can tell you in general how it came about. Monica and her husband Matt had a “game room” in their house, which previous owners had converted from a two-car garage. A friend of theirs was moving and gave them a pool table, so they decided it was a good time to “make something” of the largest room in the house that they almost never used. Monica already had an interest in pop art, tiki collectibles, and the lounge sub-culture . . . thus was born the Tiki Lounge.

They pulled up some icky carpet and discovered an old black tile floor - the tile isn’t all that great - kinda looks like something you’d see in a school built in the late 60’s or something - but if you ask me (which they didn’t, but) it suits the room fine. Why? Cuz they took a cue from Mick Jagger and painted the room black. That’s right, ALL the walls got painted black. Some uplighting was added to the walls to work with the four or so socket lights that were already in the ceiling. Oh, yeah, this room has something like five ceiling fans in it - dunno why - but none of the fans have light kits. On the slate for future lighting is the replacement of one fan with a light over the pool table.

In the planning stages of the Tiki Lounge, Monica and Matt delved into the Eurway website and did some pre-shopping for some retro furniture. Since the room is so big, there’s an entire corner of it devoted to “living space”. The area is set off from the rest of the room by the zebra rug. When you walk in, you know right where the hang-out is. The color combinations in that corner sound a little odd - mustard yellow, fire-engine red, black & white zebra stripes - but it all works well. The rounded table near the 6-foot tall silk tree will be the object of a future pop-art project, to complete the living area ensemble. The 1960’s orange Panton ashtray is one of the many Ebay bargains that are all over this room. The cat on the arm of the couch is real. The coffee table has the requisite “art” books - Dali & Warhol. Oh and that tag on the end of the chair is “freakin’ hilarious” to read - basically, there’s no smoking, or even overheating allowed over there because this furniture is quite possibly the next most flammable thing to rocket fuel. If the price doesn’t scare you out of buying the furniture, that tag should do the trick.

Immediately to your left as you enter the Lounge, is the Tiki Bar. This is really a marvel of modern ingenuity, or making the best use of what you have or what you can find. There were some solid wood shelves anchored to the wall in such a way that removal of them was practically impossible. So Monica planned that area to house her burgeoning tiki mug collection. That was all well and good but there was the matter of a bar that was suitably funky, tiki, retro AND affordable. The solution? A really interesting outdoor patio bar picked up at the local Target store. With some smart accessorizing, it looks like a custom ordered glass retro wet-bar. In fact, unless you happen to have it in your back yard, you’d never know it wasn’t designed to be a slick indoor wet-bar.

The center of the room is dominated by a regulation-sized pool table. I gotta remember to get a new photo because they’ve got purple felt to re-do the table in - but anyway, the room’s so huge that the pool table actually only takes up about half the overall floor space. The far wall is lined with some really funky red plastic chairs that remind me of the elementary school cafeteria when I was a kid. That’s where you sit while someone else runs the table on you... I don’t really know how that feels - maybe I should ask Matt . . . I’m really mean, ya know? Anyway, to continue with the description, there’s an easel currently in the corner with an original painting of a tiki man - in this photo, mister tiki man isn’t quite finished - I’ll have a photo of the final product later. There’s also a painting of 12 yellow spheres and I think that eventually these will hang on the back wall. And yeah, that’s a parrot sitting on the window-unit air conditioner. This photo is from the door coming into the room, looking left. You can tell by the zebra stripes on the floor where the living area is in relation to this picture.

There are more accessories in this room than I can remember but the list includes: lava lamps, a LOT of tiki mugs, miscellaneous “non-traditional” lamps, collectible pop art, some masks, a hippie-style door screen that looks like it’s made from leis (think “aloha”), some giant children’s toys, some candles and incense, a parrot on the air conditioner and that cat on the couch. And no smoking on the yellow furniture!