This landmark 1948 home’s renovation features many delightful additions—including a tiki room room dubbed the Chi-Chi Lounge.
If you’re lucky enough to live in a quintessential Mid Century Modern home, then you already know how special it is. But when your home has been honored as a landmark by the local historical association and featured in books and documentary films, then you have even more reason to have pride in it. This home has achieved that well-deserved recognition in addition to delighting its owners and their guests.
A Riverside Architectural Gem
Caren and Fabio Silveira’s Riverside, California is unique for many reasons. The single story ranch-style home is a dance of wood and glass and features as flat torch-down roof. It’s also perched high in the Mt. Rubidoux hillside, allowing for expansive views of downtown Riverside. “After over a year of looking at overpriced fixer-uppers that were much ‘cozier’ than we were willing to live with and branching out to a larger radius than we had intended, our realtor told us: ‘I think I found something.’ We looked at the pictures, were intrigued by what we saw and made an appointment to go see the house the next day. As we drove up the steep driveway, we looked at each other with joy. Caren said, ‘This is it!’—we knew we had found our grail. I don’t believe we had even gone through the entire house when we told the realtor that we would take it. She was quite surprised, but for us it was love at first sight.”
Tiki Room Style
Along those lines, Caren channeled certain feelings when designing each space in the their home. “We wanted very different experiences in each area of the house,” she explains. “Entering the Chi-Chi Lounge, one might be transported to the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland and reminisce about their childhood or recall their latest Hawaiian vacation as they sip a tropical drink and listen to the beats of Los Straitjackets.”
Building a Tiki Room Collection
Caren started collecting tiki almost 30 years ago. “When it came time to create a space, we were still residing in Upland. We had our friend, tiki designer Bosko, come over and give us some ideas. The space we had in that house was over 500 square feet, so when we moved here to Riverside, we needed to shed over two-thirds to make the collection fit in this 144-square-foot room. Using the same design ideas we had at our previous place, we transplanted the tiki room, and it’s been growing ever since. The mugs are strategically displayed in shelves that were hand-built by Fabio. We add dimension to the space by layering our tiki lamp collection. And, of course, the centerpiece of the room is the tiki bar that Fabio and I built together out of an old kitchen cabinet we acquired from Craigslist decades ago.
Some of the tiki-god statues have recently migrated to the Mainliner Room, mostly by design, as the only ones who were freed from the Chi-Chi Lounge were the ones that belonged to United Airlines travel agencies during the height of the island travel inception.
Want to start your own tiki collection? Here are some of Caren’s favorite makers:
Mugs:
@minitikimeow
@oddrodney
@tikipop
Lamps:
@madeyesforbiddenreef
@lanaitikidecor
@tiki_js
Tour Caren and Fabio’s full home tour here. Looking for more tiki inspiration? Check out the Royal Hawaiian tiki bar in Laguna Beach California. Of course don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest for more Atomic Ranch articles and ideas!
