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The Treasure Island Room |
forgotten tikiman
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Aug 18, 2011
Posts: 348
From: Forgotten Tiki Room. Pismo Beach, CA
|  Posted: 2012-09-24 9:07 pm Permalink
Thats a great idea. Looking really cool  .
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mike and marie
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Jun 24, 2008
Posts: 73 | Posted: 2012-09-24 9:09 pm Permalink
Thanks tikiman!
Next we painted the ceiling grey in the little vestibule area at the bottom of the stairs. There's a doorway to the 'beach' here ... but more on that to come.
[ This Message was edited by: mike and marie 2012-09-24 21:09 ]
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Q-tiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Sep 22, 2011
Posts: 158
From: East TN
| Posted: 2012-09-25 8:28 pm Permalink
I love how much effort you guys are putting into the floors and ceiling! The "star" effect looks great.
Keep up the good work and mahalo for taking the time to post your progress.
Cheers and Aloha!!
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mike and marie
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Jun 24, 2008
Posts: 73 | Posted: 2012-09-29 8:28 pm Permalink
Next step were the walls in the "outdoor" dance area: the plan is to do a giant wall mural of Treasure Island on one side and a rock grotto on the other.
The walls were originally paneled:
So we measured and taped out out the areas
filled the gaps in the paneling, applied primer and wallpaper liner
hung the mural on one side
(this is a night shot taken in the back courtyard at Arvilla, one of the mid-century motels in Treasure Island)
to prep for the rock grotto area on the opposite wall, we painted it grey
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mike and marie
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Jun 24, 2008
Posts: 73 | Posted: 2012-09-29 8:37 pm Permalink
Then it was time to start work on the Wreck Bar area. First consideration was lighting -- we wanted to achieve the underwater, sunken ship effect of having realistic looking portholes giving off watery light.
There were several small, recessed windows near the ceiling that we knew could eventually become the portholes:
so we installed lights inside of them at the ceiling level,
so the lights are hidden from view
and yet shine down into the room.
Blue fluorescents made the right glow:
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mike and marie
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Jun 24, 2008
Posts: 73 | Posted: 2012-09-29 8:59 pm Permalink
It's necessary for a quick diversion before going further. There were actually two Wreck Bars, both within an hour or so of each other. The first was Bob Gill's at the Yankee Clipper in Ft Lauderdale:
Possibly hoping to copy the success of that one, a slightly different (but similar) Wreck Bar was one of the featured rooms at the Castways in Miami Beach:
(Notice the same chains in the ceiling, but instead of a "wreck" hole there's an addition of fishnet.)
Both of them are great (or in the case of the WB at the Castaways, was great as it was ultimately wrecked and bulldozed in the 80s), but are a little different. The Yankee Clipper Wreck Bar (YC WB) has larger windows to the pool directly behind the bar and is set up for the mermaid shows that continue to this day (hi Marina!); at the Castaways, the portholes were smaller but the actual bar seemed just a tad bigger and had a nice feel as well. We wanted to capture elements of both in our Wreck Bar.
We matched the color of the overhead "water" in the Ft Lauderdale Wreck Bar and painted all the window wells as well as the ceiling area where we'd reproduce the hole:
[ This Message was edited by: mike and marie 2012-09-30 12:38 ]
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Tabu
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Sep 07, 2004
Posts: 136
From: Port Hope, Ont.
| Posted: 2012-09-30 08:39 am Permalink
Love your attention to historic detail. I have very fond memories of Treasure Island and St. Pete's Beach from family trips in the 70's. I bet a lot of the amazing mid century signs and motels are long gone. Thanks for posting your progress shots.
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tiki eye
Member
Joined: Sep 26, 2012
Posts: 8
From: Orlando
| Posted: 2012-09-30 10:24 am Permalink
this is getting interesting, sure hope to see more.
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mike and marie
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Jun 24, 2008
Posts: 73 | Posted: 2012-09-30 12:26 pm Permalink
Tabu, yes, sadly, too much of what made it Treasure Island is gone. Lots of McCondos now. The really sad part is that it was relatively preserved well into the 2000s and impressed the heck out of anyone who saw it. It could have been to Mid-Century Modern what Miami became in the 70s to Art Deco, but there just wasn't enough local interest. (If you happen to unearth any photos or anything from your own trips there, we'd love to see them!)
[ This Message was edited by: mike and marie 2012-09-30 12:50 ]
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mike and marie
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Jun 24, 2008
Posts: 73 | Posted: 2012-09-30 12:49 pm Permalink
Both Wreck Bars have wood plank ceilings and beams. The WB at the Castaways had a much lighter wood than what we see today at the Yankee Clipper, but the YC WB had undergone a few changes in the look and finish of the wood over the years, as we were able to discover through postcards and old live record albums. This is about the oldest one we've found so far, and the wood has a much more rustic, unfinished look than the dark beams of the YC WB as it exists today:
Ultimately we decided to go with the lighter color ceiling of the Castaways WB and the darker beams of the YC WB as it exists today.
And of course the hole from the Yankee Clipper, which meant a few research trips to get the shape right:
After going from photo to paper, we took the freehand drawing and scaled it to size and drew it with chalk on posterboard as a template:
Then we were able to transfer the shape to the paneling that was to be the ceiling:
After tracing the pattern to the panels we used a jigsaw to cut it to shape. Then all the ceiling panels were nailed to the ceiling with liquid nails plus the help of Crabby Joe and his pneumatic nail gun:
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VampiressRN
Grand Member (5 years) 
Joined: Nov 23, 2006
Posts: 5086
From: Sin City Lincoln Hills (NorCal)
| Posted: 2012-09-30 6:12 pm Permalink
Wow....love the realistic approach on that ceiling...looking forward to seeing it finished.
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mike and marie
Tiki Centralite
Joined: Jun 24, 2008
Posts: 73 | Posted: 2012-10-09 7:27 pm Permalink
With all the ceiling in place the next step was the ceiling beams. We modeled them after the darker beams of the Ft Lauderdale Wreck Bar and the first step was to construct them out of standard lumber, measured to fit across the room and holding the sides together with nails and wood glue:
Then we had to distress it and make it look like it was part of a shipwreck. The operating table had all the necessary tools:
ready to begin:
already the first signs of distress:
once we did that to all the beams we poured a little strong, cold coffee on it and rubbed it in for color:
We repeated the whole process three, four, five times. Lots of scrapes and nicks and pounding and when we took breaks we rubbed the coffee into the wood. Finally we gave it all a coat of rub-on polyurethane stain:
Then after that dried we did even more damage to the wood, then gave it a second stain. Finally the wood started to look right:
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tikilongbeach
Grand Member (first year) 
Joined: Aug 05, 2011
Posts: 688
From: LBC via DFW
| Posted: 2012-10-10 6:35 pm Permalink
Really cool looking space. I like your antiquing technic on the beams.
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Monkeyman
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 04, 2003
Posts: 2301
From: Vista, CA
| Posted: 2012-10-11 09:36 am Permalink
Nice Distressing.
Just Beat It....
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littlegiles
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Jun 08, 2003
Posts: 408
From: Lancaster, SC
| Posted: 2012-10-11 4:47 pm Permalink
Love what you got going on there. I'm ready for updates already. 
Keep up the great work.
- Dale
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