Create an Enchanted Tiki Room

I am about to begin pulling EVERYTHING out of The Room of Doom™ aka the Enchanted Tiki Room.

This time the major remodel and de-junking IS FOR REAL!

Really, it is!

A month from now I will have some time off from work. More importantly, I will have the entire house to myself for six full days! During this time, I intend to pull EVERYTHING out of the Tiki Room - which has again become an impassible mess - and REMOVE all the bamboo wall covering.

Then I will re-install the wall covering with a proper backing so that no white painted wall shows through the spaces between the individual reeds. This mistake has been bothering me since the original installation.

I can’t believe it was FIVE YEARS AGO that I installed the original bamboo. Has it really taken me this long to get around to fixing it?

Anyway, that’s the plan: move everything out, fix the walls, and sort the junk before I put it back in so there’s some kind of method behind the madness. Oh, and, of course, I’m still “working on” clearing out the clutter.

I’m working on the clutter problem today; or at least, I will be once I stop goofing around on the computer.

Sometimes I wonder if I define my life through this Room of Doom? I’ve been looking through Flickr.com photos of this project from the past four, nearly five, years, and despite occasional small signs of progress, the clutter creeps back. Today the room is as full as ever of stuff. Indeed, there is more stuff in there now than at many times over the past five years.

Shouldn’t five years be long enough to clean out a room?

Not only do I have a hard time letting go of individual items, I seem to have a difficult time letting go of The Mess itself. As soon as I make progress – give something away, sell something, toss something out – I slide back, accumulating more than i discard.

Why do I keep buying things, usually on a whim? What EMPTINESS do I have inside that compels me to fill up the space around me with things; in many cases, things I do not truly want or need?

Sometimes I buy things – Amazon, eBay, whatever – and when the box arrives a week or two later, I’m no longer interested. Sometimes boxes containing things I “desperately wanted” remain unopened for weeks, months, or occasionally, years.

I accumulate “things,” and I accumulate debt buying things. It’s a kind of self-destructive behavior.

I wish I had the confidence or know-how to engage in more entertaining forms of self-destructive behavior.

For what it’s worth, I did mount a row of “flaming crystal skulls” along one wall. Yes, that entailed buying (plastic) crystal skulls; but it does, if I do say so myself, look great!

The skulls will stay. But the boxes of crap need to go!

The wicker shelf above the window turned out so well, I spent several hours this afternoon crafting another one from the last pieces of the wicker settee for the space above the closet doors. The shelf itself turned out better than the first one. I have some work to do on the wall before I can mount it. And I have a huge mound of boxes to shuffle somewhere before I can even reach the wall.

Despite the clutter, I’m making progress.

I cobbled together a shelf that fits above the window using parts from a discarded wicker settee. It looks kinda cool, actually, although at the moment it’s too cluttered to make a good photo.

I also made a “bamboo aquarium,” featuring an “authentically sized” acrylic replica of the Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull. I just got it set up with gravel and plants and stuff, so I’m waiting for the water to clear before getting a picture.

The room is still a mountain of clutter, but there are a few small signs of progress.

I need to make faster progress on this. I need a “place of refuge” which will inspire creativity and a zest for life and adventure. Or that at least has enough clear desk space that I can write a letter or set down a bottle of beer.

The skull in the aquarium looks so good that I’m going to mount a row of “flaming crystal skulls” along the wall. Totally tacky… it’ll be great!

Using a hot melt glue gun, I attached bits and pieces of old rattan beach mats and worn out bamboo window blinds to the plain, boring, battered hollow-core door to the Room of Doom… gradually, oh so gradually, on its way to becoming the Enchanted Tiki Room.

It’s still just a junk room, a dumping ground, heaped with lower-grade rubbish than ever before.

Was it really FOURTEEN FREAKING MONTHS AGO that I installed the bamboo on the walls? Where the h3ll does the time go?

My last update on this goal was March 2006—19 months ago! Only today did I make a bit of progress. Well, over the last three days or so, actually.

The problem with working on The Room of Doom is that it is full of boxes of stuff. I hoard stuff. It is a bad thing. I have a compulsive need to try to make myself happy by buying stuff. The net result is the opposite: I am more depressed than ever because of the mounds and heaps of stuff… none of which ever holds its value. My attempts at recouping my expenditures by selling things on eBay have been fruitless lately.

Anyway… I bought several rolls of bamboo privacy fencing and a total of 23 8-foot bamboo poles a while back, and this week I started covering the walls and ceilings of the room. The project necessitated moving out the stuff… or half of it, anyway… and then continually shuttling the remaining stuff from one side of the room to the other. Tedious, time-consuming, physically demanding work. But…

... it looks really cool! Or, it would if I hadn’t had to move the junk back in.

I’d say I’m about 90% done with the major wall- and ceiling covering. I ran out of bamboo poles, I need about three more, so I have a two-foot section of wall to complete. Then I need to fill in a few gaps with bamboo rods or straws from the fencing. After that, I need to paint the small amount of wood trim that’s still visible.

I also have a cunning plan in mind for creating a tied-together-with-rope look at all the intersections of the bamboo rods. That will be a labor-intensive process, as there are a lot of intersections. In fact, all the little “finishing details” will add up to a considerable amount of time, probably equaling or exceeding the time I’ve already put into the project.

At least the main walls and ceilings are covered. So “yay” for accomplishing something!

Of course, I still need to thin out my stuff.

They have big rolls of bamboo-type stuff at Wal-Mart with which I could cover the walls. It’s about twenty bucks for a 6-ft tall by 16-ft long roll. They also have 4-ft x 8-ft rolls for ten bucks. I should measure the room. First, I should move enough junk out of the room so’s I can reach the walls in order to measure them.