beachtrader
10-20-2008, 03:15 PM
It's not exactly a full-fledged man cave, but more like a stop over. In fact, it wasn't even a man's idea, it was my wifes.
The background:
When we moved into our house a few years back it had a formal dining room off the kitchen. Oddly enough the dining room is small and has a wall curved into it from the spiral staircase on the outside wall. We dumped a couch into the room and just left it while we moved into the house. Since we never really used the room for dining the room was wasted space. When we got around to actually look at converting the room from a couch wasteland into a dining room we found out the room was too small for a normal dining room table. We could only put a round table in there. Well, we left things as they were again for a while.
Time passed and then we looked for a round table. At the time I was building a lighted round poker table for someone down the street. I put the poker table in the dining room while I finished some electrical work on it. When I put it into the middle of the dining room I found out that if we put a dining room table into the room the chairs would physically block anyone from getting to one side of the room to the other because of the round wall and the size between the wall and the windows. Well, since we hadn't used the dining room in the three years we lived in the house we just left it alone.
Fast forward a couple months and my wife visited a house in the neighborhood who completely remodeled a house by putting 300k into the inside of the house. I mean they spent 6k on sand for the regulation volleyball court in the backyard alone. (Now the rabbits take a dump in the sand...ultimately a bad move, but I digress). While she was in the house they had a pass through which they turned into a bar. She mentioned it was pretty cool and I said we should do something like that. She then said why don't we do that in the living room. "Ding." The light went off.
Well, I started looking at pre-built bars for the room. I wanted something really nice, not just a walmart special. The ones I found were 15-20k. Cough, cough. I don't think so. So my search was refined and I started to look for plans on the internet to build the bar. I found someplace selling plans for $20 and bought them. I didn't use their plans, but used them for the basic how-to for the construction. Once I understood how the bar was built structurally I sketched out my own version and bought the wood.
My wife wanted the bar to match the existing cabinets in the house so we went for a maple bar. Never again, maple's such a bitch to work with and stain... In the meantime I also wanted to build a kegerator out of a freezer. For months I'd been searching on craigslist to find a freezer but people always wanted way too much for them. One day someone put up an ad for a freezer for $40 which would hold 2 kegs plus still have space for the co2, etc. I busted ass and drove 30 minutes to pick it up that day. Sold! I put the freezer in the garage and started the build.
The construction was done in three pieces. The actual bar, the kegerator and then the back bar. I decided I wanted the bar to angle across the opening of the door so it had a 45 degree cut at the end. I also wanted a bi-level bar so you could make a drink and then hand it to someone who would be sitting at the bar as well. And below had to have room for storage plus room for a wine cooler. You can see in the pictures below the construction.
As for the kegerator because I was using a freezer I needed to be able to access the top of the unit. I had seen many a converted freezer done by popping off the top and adding wood between the top and the freezer unit. I choose not to do this because I was afraid of how high I would have to lift the kegs to get them into the freezer (in reality with two people its easy to lift a full keg of beer.). So I needed a solution to cover the freezer but have a tower. I threw out the idea of running beer lines from the kegerator to the actual bar because I didn't want to get into any gycol cooling. So a tower it was. I found a steal on a ceramic tower on ebay from someone who makes them for bars. They retail for about $800, but he sells a few now and then for a fraction of the cost. I caught him on a good day and got the ceramic tower and faucets and shanks for less than $200. I picked up a unit which monitors the inside temp of the freezer and turns the freezer on and off to control the temperature and started building the unit.
I basically built a box unit around the freezer and then dropped it onto the freezer. This way I could open the top of the freezer. I then built two doors on top of the freezer as well which split open to allow the freezer door to be opened. The tower and the drain are mounted onto the top of one of these wooden doors and flip up with the doors when opened. A few holes into the top of the freezer and lines go down into the freezer. (While it's not installed yet, I also have a blower fan which will blow cool air up the tower to cool the tower and keep the lines cool as well.)
The back of the bar was pretty easy compared to the other pieces. I mounted plywood on the wall into the studs. I had already picked out a 5' mirror which would be the main focus of the back bar. I essentially put plywood around the hole on the wall and then mounted the mirror over the hole on the wall. On one side of the back wall will be lots of signs and on the other the tv will be mounted with a swing arm. The tv is not mounted in the picture, because the mount will arrive in a few days.
One of the main items I had to have is lit up liquor bottles. I had some white plastic left over from the round lighted table I made and used it in the same way. I built a small shelf in the back bar and bought a flourescent light fixture for $8 at home depot. I laid the fixture on the shelf and then put the white lexan over a few inches higher. The fixture is plugged into a small electrical strip which can be turned on or off. Flip it on and the light comes on to light up the bottles from below.
While I was finishing the lexan strip I decided it would look cool if there were a cris-cross wine rack below the liquor bottles. I started to look around for the pieces and found out it would be $200 for the pre-built "x"s. Screw that. I said I would just leave it closed off and put plywood there. I had to stop what I was doing to finish an emergency table for someone who needed it in just a few days. While I was cutting the holes for the cup holders in the poker table I thought that the size of the hole was just about the size of a wine bottle. I stopped what I was doing and went and got a wine bottle. It fit perfectly. I then decided to drill cup holder holes into the piece of plywood under the liquor bottles. I put another piece of mdf behind the plywood and drilled them several inches apart in a standard pattern. (I thought about doing something fancy, but was in a hurry to get it done for a poker party.) With two pieces of wood with corresponding holes finished I mounted each a few inches apart and put a solid piece of wood behind the mdf on the inside to stop the bottles from dropping all the way through. So when you slide a bottle of wine through it goes through the plywood on the outside, into the mdf and is stopped by the solid mdf piece in the back. Perfect. I even got an added bonus of spillover light from the light fixture. When the light is turned on for the liquor bottles light spills over and lights up the wine bottles in the makeshift wine rack. Pretty cool.
The last thing I did was to use a glaze for the top of the bar. I found this stuff at home depot and used it for the top of the bar. You mix the hardener along with the glaze and then spread like you are icing a cake. When it finishes drying in about 5 hours the top is about 1/16 to 1/8" thick and looks like glass. It is amazing stuff. You can see the reflection of the top of the bar in a few of the final pictures.
Well that's the story and the bar. It's not finished because my wife and I are going to scour places for the bar. We want to collect different signs and stuff and put it into the bar as we come across it over the next few years.
I hope you enjoy the story and the pics.
The background:
When we moved into our house a few years back it had a formal dining room off the kitchen. Oddly enough the dining room is small and has a wall curved into it from the spiral staircase on the outside wall. We dumped a couch into the room and just left it while we moved into the house. Since we never really used the room for dining the room was wasted space. When we got around to actually look at converting the room from a couch wasteland into a dining room we found out the room was too small for a normal dining room table. We could only put a round table in there. Well, we left things as they were again for a while.
Time passed and then we looked for a round table. At the time I was building a lighted round poker table for someone down the street. I put the poker table in the dining room while I finished some electrical work on it. When I put it into the middle of the dining room I found out that if we put a dining room table into the room the chairs would physically block anyone from getting to one side of the room to the other because of the round wall and the size between the wall and the windows. Well, since we hadn't used the dining room in the three years we lived in the house we just left it alone.
Fast forward a couple months and my wife visited a house in the neighborhood who completely remodeled a house by putting 300k into the inside of the house. I mean they spent 6k on sand for the regulation volleyball court in the backyard alone. (Now the rabbits take a dump in the sand...ultimately a bad move, but I digress). While she was in the house they had a pass through which they turned into a bar. She mentioned it was pretty cool and I said we should do something like that. She then said why don't we do that in the living room. "Ding." The light went off.
Well, I started looking at pre-built bars for the room. I wanted something really nice, not just a walmart special. The ones I found were 15-20k. Cough, cough. I don't think so. So my search was refined and I started to look for plans on the internet to build the bar. I found someplace selling plans for $20 and bought them. I didn't use their plans, but used them for the basic how-to for the construction. Once I understood how the bar was built structurally I sketched out my own version and bought the wood.
My wife wanted the bar to match the existing cabinets in the house so we went for a maple bar. Never again, maple's such a bitch to work with and stain... In the meantime I also wanted to build a kegerator out of a freezer. For months I'd been searching on craigslist to find a freezer but people always wanted way too much for them. One day someone put up an ad for a freezer for $40 which would hold 2 kegs plus still have space for the co2, etc. I busted ass and drove 30 minutes to pick it up that day. Sold! I put the freezer in the garage and started the build.
The construction was done in three pieces. The actual bar, the kegerator and then the back bar. I decided I wanted the bar to angle across the opening of the door so it had a 45 degree cut at the end. I also wanted a bi-level bar so you could make a drink and then hand it to someone who would be sitting at the bar as well. And below had to have room for storage plus room for a wine cooler. You can see in the pictures below the construction.
As for the kegerator because I was using a freezer I needed to be able to access the top of the unit. I had seen many a converted freezer done by popping off the top and adding wood between the top and the freezer unit. I choose not to do this because I was afraid of how high I would have to lift the kegs to get them into the freezer (in reality with two people its easy to lift a full keg of beer.). So I needed a solution to cover the freezer but have a tower. I threw out the idea of running beer lines from the kegerator to the actual bar because I didn't want to get into any gycol cooling. So a tower it was. I found a steal on a ceramic tower on ebay from someone who makes them for bars. They retail for about $800, but he sells a few now and then for a fraction of the cost. I caught him on a good day and got the ceramic tower and faucets and shanks for less than $200. I picked up a unit which monitors the inside temp of the freezer and turns the freezer on and off to control the temperature and started building the unit.
I basically built a box unit around the freezer and then dropped it onto the freezer. This way I could open the top of the freezer. I then built two doors on top of the freezer as well which split open to allow the freezer door to be opened. The tower and the drain are mounted onto the top of one of these wooden doors and flip up with the doors when opened. A few holes into the top of the freezer and lines go down into the freezer. (While it's not installed yet, I also have a blower fan which will blow cool air up the tower to cool the tower and keep the lines cool as well.)
The back of the bar was pretty easy compared to the other pieces. I mounted plywood on the wall into the studs. I had already picked out a 5' mirror which would be the main focus of the back bar. I essentially put plywood around the hole on the wall and then mounted the mirror over the hole on the wall. On one side of the back wall will be lots of signs and on the other the tv will be mounted with a swing arm. The tv is not mounted in the picture, because the mount will arrive in a few days.
One of the main items I had to have is lit up liquor bottles. I had some white plastic left over from the round lighted table I made and used it in the same way. I built a small shelf in the back bar and bought a flourescent light fixture for $8 at home depot. I laid the fixture on the shelf and then put the white lexan over a few inches higher. The fixture is plugged into a small electrical strip which can be turned on or off. Flip it on and the light comes on to light up the bottles from below.
While I was finishing the lexan strip I decided it would look cool if there were a cris-cross wine rack below the liquor bottles. I started to look around for the pieces and found out it would be $200 for the pre-built "x"s. Screw that. I said I would just leave it closed off and put plywood there. I had to stop what I was doing to finish an emergency table for someone who needed it in just a few days. While I was cutting the holes for the cup holders in the poker table I thought that the size of the hole was just about the size of a wine bottle. I stopped what I was doing and went and got a wine bottle. It fit perfectly. I then decided to drill cup holder holes into the piece of plywood under the liquor bottles. I put another piece of mdf behind the plywood and drilled them several inches apart in a standard pattern. (I thought about doing something fancy, but was in a hurry to get it done for a poker party.) With two pieces of wood with corresponding holes finished I mounted each a few inches apart and put a solid piece of wood behind the mdf on the inside to stop the bottles from dropping all the way through. So when you slide a bottle of wine through it goes through the plywood on the outside, into the mdf and is stopped by the solid mdf piece in the back. Perfect. I even got an added bonus of spillover light from the light fixture. When the light is turned on for the liquor bottles light spills over and lights up the wine bottles in the makeshift wine rack. Pretty cool.
The last thing I did was to use a glaze for the top of the bar. I found this stuff at home depot and used it for the top of the bar. You mix the hardener along with the glaze and then spread like you are icing a cake. When it finishes drying in about 5 hours the top is about 1/16 to 1/8" thick and looks like glass. It is amazing stuff. You can see the reflection of the top of the bar in a few of the final pictures.
Well that's the story and the bar. It's not finished because my wife and I are going to scour places for the bar. We want to collect different signs and stuff and put it into the bar as we come across it over the next few years.
I hope you enjoy the story and the pics.