Dan & Dan's Hawaiian Adventures: Ke Ala 'Ula

After about a decade of apartment life on Seattle's Capitol Hill, Dan & I moved South to Beacon Hill a couple years back. We rented a great little house just off McClellan. The market was at a peak, and we didn't want to commit to a specific neighborhood until we knew if we liked living in a house, in South Seattle, maintaining a yard, and could handle a little longer commute. The result was that we loved having a house and yard, and didn't mind being a little further out from the core of the city. While living in that house, we transformed an odd little room into a makeshift tiki bar, which we enjoyed as a place to entertain and to escape reality once in awhile.

After two years though, we were ready to buy something of our own. The market bottomed out, the Obama administration was offering tax credits for first time home buyers, and we were ready to have a home of our own. We hooked up with realtor extraordinaire, Sarah Rudinoff, and gave her our list of needs and wants for our new home: including that our new home must have a space we can completely convert into a tiki bar.

After a fairly short search, we found our dream home in the Seward Park Neighborhood, and it included a 18' x 8' pass-through room connecting the former back door with the new laundry/garage addition and the backyard. When we viewed the house, the former owner even had it staged as a bar of sorts - with a leather couch, small wooden bar and wall-mounted TV.

We knew this was the perfect space for our tiki bar.

After moving in and settling a bit, we got to work, first painting the ceiling Surfer Waves blue.

I drew up some general plans, did a lot of measuring, and placed an initial order with Forever Bamboo for materials, including split bamboo poles, bamboo paneling, and lauhala matting. After a little trial and error, Dan & I figured out methods for applying the matting to the top of the walls, paneling to the lower half, and bamboo as a chair rail and trim.

The next big step was to begin building the bar itself, and we opted to start with Billy bookshelves from Ikea as the starting point - with the goal of covering and adapting them to the point that they'd be unrecognizable.

Unfortunately, during a cold snap during the winter, some pipes froze in the walls of our new bar, so I had to pull down large sections of wallcovering to find the problem spot, fix it, and then insulate the pipes in hopes of avoiding this problem in the future. Thankfully, none of the pipes cracked, so we avoided major damage.

Crisis averted, we kept moving forward with the bar build - adding 1/4" plywood as a covering on the front and sides, topping the bar with 1/2" plywood.

I covered the front of the bar with bamboo paneling to match the walls, then edged the top with split bamboo. We covered the top with lauhala matting, sealed it with Mod Podge, then attached vintage-style Hawaiian postcards. All around the edge, I glued down electroluminescent (EL) wire from Cool Neon, then poured multiple coats of bar top epoxy to create a thick, smooth, waterproof, clear seal.

Connected to a driver, the EL wire lights up, giving the entire bar top a red glow.

Once the walls and bar were complete, all that was left was to stock the bar and decorate - which we did with the wealth of artwork and nick-nacks we've collected through the years, as well as with some gifts and some items bought on ebay.

Put all together, the effect is exactly what we hoped for: a room that, when you walk into it, transports you from often rainy and cold Seattle to somewhere tropical where your only worry is whether to drink a Mai Tai or a Pina Colada.

We christened the bar "Ke Ala 'Ula" - which means The Red Road, both because the bar looks like a glowing red path, and because the Red Road is the name of the road along the southeast corner of the Big Island, one of our favorite places in the islands. It runs from Kalapana (where lava flows wiped out the fishing village and blocked the highway) past Kehena Beach (where I spent my first week on the island year ago) to Kapoho (with it's beautiful tidepools).

There are still some finishing touches left - some artwork to put up, cushions to make for the bar stools, and hopefully someday a real reef aquarium... but for now, we're loving our Hawaiian escape inside our home, and enjoying sharing it with friends and family.