by So a couple of weeks ago my friend Joe found a Keg-o-rator on sale at Home Depot. Little did I know that it was the beginning of the end for my basement. As soon as we placed the keg-o-rator in the basement, it was on. Yep, we had to build a bar. So Joe and Eric came over and we built an amazing bar. Sorry that this post is a little late. I wanted to add a final coat of varnish on the bar before I took the pics.
I brought the beer, Joe brought the tools and Assembled all of the bar stools. Eric drew the short end of the stick, the bar stools were a pain to put together. To start we ran to Home Depot and purchased all of the wood. Side Note – exactly 22, 8ft 2×4 fit in a 2006 Pontiac Grand Prix. It was a tight fit, but it got the job done.
Next we built the frame out of 2x4s and then sheeted it with 1/4 inch red oak plywood. Then we built the top out of 3/4 inch red oak plywood. Finally we added the moldings to cover my bad sawing of the plywood. It is hard to cut a sheet of plywood straight with a circular saw. The molding around the edge of the top was purposefully left 1/8 of an inch above the bar top so that we could pour in clear resin to make a mirror finish bar. The resin is some extremely sticky stuff. Pour it on, smooth it out and then use a hair dryer to get the bubbles out. 72 hours later it is as hard as a rock.
In all it took a little over a week to assemble, stain, and poly the bar. It also took about 15 gallons of beer. I think if we would have drank less it could have been done twice as fast, but what fun is that. If you ask me, that would not have been fun at all.
Special thanks go out to Eric and Joe for all of their help. Could not have done it without them. Next years Wingtacular is going to be awesome with the new bar.
Rex’s Bar and Grille, who knew?
The bar top process is interesting, I might have to do that when I replace my Egg table next year.
Very nice finish work, looks like you got nice tight miter joints from the picture. What did you do the detail accents on the front with? 1 x 3″ ?
Did you have a plan or was this a rough sketch?
One last question, how the hell do you have wood floors in a basement? You must have some serious vapor protection down below.
Chris, The bar top was awesome. It was a two-part resin that was poured on the top. Cures completely hard and makes for a perfect mirror finish.
The detail for the main part of the bar is 1×3's, and the 45 degree angle parts were done using a crown molding that had a 45 degree angle on one side and a 15 degree angle on the other. It worked perfectly.
We designed the bar as we went along. No plans or anything. For having no plans, it turned out really nice.
As for the wood floors, they are really just a laminate. However, it looks pretty nice. I tried to match the bar to the floor color. Didn't turn out too bad.
Is the Packer game being shown there tonight? 😉
After seeing your wonderful bar i am gonna amazed to see your designable bar model which will be very useful to me as well. I am very excited to buy the the bar furniture which i need must be.