Tiki build-along, pt. 17

Unseasonably wintry weather had driven me indoors this winter, so I've not had a lot of opportunity to work on my tiki bar. No in large ways, that is. However, I have taken my work indoors--the garage, to be specific--to work on crafting an actual, for-true sign for the Lagoon of Mystery. I've been calling my tiki bar that for a while, but it felt like something of a cheat. A sign would change all that, right? Make it official, or something like that.

Unfortunately, I started working on it before I thought about making a blog post, so the earliest steps were missed. I picked up a 1" thick board from a local lumber supply yard. It was 12" wide and something along the lines of 4' long. I took half of it and routered out a sign directing clients to The Wife's boudoir and pin-up studio. I kept the remainder for myself. I noodled around in Photoshop off and on for ages, tinkering with a design for the sign. I tried all manner of retro fonts, different tropical motifs and whatnot before I settled on an illustration that incorporated a stylized version of our pool with palm trees and hibiscus, because that's literally the Lagoon of Mystery. There are actually more passion flowers than hibiscus, but passis are so delicate and complicated a flower there was no way I was about to try and router out one of those. I printed the design out in segments on legal-sized paper then tiled it together with tape. I overlaid the design on the wood, then used an Exacto to slice out the pattern. Then I traced over it with a pencil, ultimately transferring the design to the wood. Got it? Good. I then used a router to carve out all the large sections, and my Dremel to work the details, such as the outline of the letters, the palms and the hibiscus. Very time-consuming. That brings us to the image below.

That conjoined oval blob in the middle? That's the lagoon, aka our pool. I'm doing this whole thing as a kind of bas relief, right? So I'm thinking the pool area needs to be lower than the letters. What's more, it needs texture. I am dumb in so many ways. This is one of them. I used the Dremel to carve out textured waves in the "water." This took a very, very long time to complete. Did I mention I'm carving the sign into both sides? No? Well, I am. A very, very long time.

At some point, I finished. I assume. It's all a blur to me.

I had one really big screw up with the trim router, gouging out a not-insignificant section of the pool under the Y. I repaired it by resorting to my favorite do-anything fix-it, wood putty. After letting it dry overnight, I took the Dremel and carved texture into it. Problem solved.

Fire! Fire! Fire!

I scorched the entire sign to foster that vintage Witco look. The black is all carbonized wood, which means it is burned.

After attacking it with a wire brush and much vigorous scrubbing, all the burned soot is removed leaving a deeply textured wood surface. The wood grain forms peaks and valleys, with the softer wood having burned away leaving only the harder, denser grain. Amusingly enough, this also removed much of the "texture" I'd carved into the water.

I applied my go-to stain, Minwax Special Walnut. Eventually, I'd add a coat of Minwax Dark Walnut as well, to give the color more texture and depth.

The stained wood forms a frame for the sign. The stain also colors the palm tree trunks.

For the water, I used the same blue I've been using for the patio ceiling. It's even got the paint glitter in it to give that occasional shimmer. The green of the palm trees is the same paint I used for the directional sign, as is the black. I had to buy some red and yellow for the hibiscus flower because I didn't have any. Still, I'm trying to keep costs as low as possible.

I attached eyehooks about 4.5" from either end of the sign for hanging.

The black lettering? That took a lot more effort than I expected. Getting the edges of the letter painted without blotching up the other paint, or the raw wood, was maddening. Tiny, tiny detail work. Eventually, I had to remind myself that the sign was meant to have a rustic, almost makeshift feel to it. It didn't have to be perfect. In fact, perfect would probably go against the intended aesthetic. That was very difficult for me to accept and internalize, but eventually I did. Thank goodness. As The Wife says, I can be way too anal sometimes.

Finally, I applied several coats of water-based spar urethane to weather seal it and add protection from the sun. I chose to go with the water-based spar rather than the oil-based because the water type dries clear, whereas the oil type has a warm, sepia-kind of finish. That actually looks pretty good on plain wood, but I didn't want it muddling the colors of the paint. Also, I don't know if anyone else has shared this experience, but I've found the water-based spar urethane does not have much of an issue of bubbles forming and drying to mar the finish like the oil-based urethane does. I can get as sloppy as I want, but the water-based type will dry perfect every time.

And here's teh sign in situ. It looks good. It'll look even better once I come up with some way to tikify that beam. There are two small hooks holding the sign up, which the eye hooks set into. But you'd probably figured that out already. I don't think the sign's likely to blow off the hooks even in the strongest wind storms, but we'll see.

And here's the sign, full-on. It feels good to get this finally up. It might not be as slick as some other home tiki bar signs, but it fits the mood in the Lagoon of Mystery.

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