OUR Irish Pub Home Bar Build.....From Scratch (that's Ireland not Notre Dame theme) - Page 2

Gee you guys are quiet!
guess some day you'll comment again, can't figure out if your disappointed,disturbed or snoring....

so below is the start of putting on the wainscote.





we had decided to put a booth in the bar, although table & chairs would have been faster (but not cheaper). I have been checking the restaurant supply auction sites for used booths, but never came across any. There were plenty of the whole vinyl type, but vinyl in an irish pub???nawwwww. online new booths were way too expensive, one we liked was $800 each side.

(BTW if any of you are looking for booths, check out the auction sites like bidfta.com)

so decided to build ours. I took measurements in our local restaurants as to what it should be, & designed it on that. although I did goof on a few measurements, on the foam,, (too thick on the back piece) .

most of it was 1x something oak boards either glued or screwed together. now if you remember this is where we really noticed the staining-gone-wrong, so had to remove the sheets & turn them around.



below you see the pieces parts






BAD SIDE>>>>>>





good side, corrected>>>>>






working on putting the seats on>>>>>>





while searching bidfta for booths, I came across a headboard that was being auctioned off a few hours from here. I won it for $14.00 ( although hubby had to take off a half days work to go fetch it ) I thought it would be a fabulous centerpiece for the back bar. It was in rough shape, & definately the wrong color, but figured I could just refinish it.




soooooooooo this thing sat in our garage for over 2 years, being ignored, which I reallly should have refinished it last summer when it was NICE OUT!!!

starting this build in jan. I figured there would be NO way I could strip this thing. I remember (with a cringe) a refinish doors project 30 yrs ago, that stuff was toxic - smelled & burned . had to realllly have a place to let air in. but I found some references online ( at Home depot, figures) about this "planet" "environmentally" safe product that has NO smell & could be used indoors...... nawwwww I thought no such animal. but after reading the reviews, decide to try it. & dang it did work,,, kinda... it did the job, kinda. had to use the wash a lot on it to get the extra bits off, but it was a heck of a lot better than the OLD toxic stuff.

the nooks & crannies were a bitch, & it took me a week to get it pretty much "ok". I did the majority with its legs on, then we cut the legs off to hang on the wall where I was going to stain it & varnish.






starting to stain & mirrors in

hubby's fav is killians,
then guiness

more stuff being stained/varnished





& more



& more




working on back bar

This is the wall with the switches....

now the picture that you see "I" picked out. figured it was typical irish humor. Hubby, didn't think so
I was planning on putting a tree in front of it anyway, & figured I'd decide what to do with it later on. couple days later he asked where the pic went.. I said behind the tree.... "I" thought you didn't like it.
he replied, kinda grows on you.
ok so its still there....... I'll see what responses are at our grand opening.





now the next few pictures are the liquor stand. I have been looking at them online for a couple years & could not find anything reasonably priced. shoot, some are starting at $400 up to over $1500
I could not figure out what was so dang expensive!!!!!!
ok, so they have disco flashing lights, but seriously,, have you ever been in a bar where the lighted stand is doing anything but sit there in ONE color???

well we built ours out of scraps left over from the build. then had the local glass shop cut the plexiglass strips,, for $5 each, then added a string of rope lights for $10... so $25 for a 4foot lighted stand!

& um,,, after building it,I realized we didn't need 3 steps... we could have gotten away with 2, since the edge of the stand sits at the edge of the shelf ........go figure..... oh well... its not the 1st mistake we made. (darn that drunken irishman we hired )

one thing , if looking for rope lights, I found out there are colored plastic covering of the lights, ( red/green etc) BUT the lights are still white, really weird looking. you gotta make sure the lights are the color you want. I am also sure there are simple ways to do the disco light thing, but we only wanted a solid green light.





we added aluminum foil to help reflect the light inside.





sitting on the back bar




& 2 pictures of the back bar with a bunch of stuff on it. we added a shelf above the liquor bottles to put our collectables on it. like our stuff from the adventurers club at disneyworld in fla. ( man I MISS that place )

one pic with flash, one without ( the green shows up better in that picture), neither really show the correct lighting that it actually is ( I can't figure out how to actually get that correct)











until later>

next was the flooring.

I would have dearly loved REAL hardwood flooring

but it was way too hard to do that. over the concrete floor , it was a nono. we would have put a wood underlay in,,, & then the flooring itself would have cost 6 times as much as the laminate.

One thing it had to have was character. I searched for distressed laminates & found something that was pretty nicely priced. the only problem is it looked like every other laminate I saw,, kinda plastic look & feel. but what could you expect from a picture printed on fiberboard

it went down fairly easily.

now remember the concrete floor being not completely level? Well there still are some spots not flat, & I was really worried that the floor joints would 'pop' when walked on. well, you CAN feel the difference in the floor when you walk on certain spots, but It really seems pretty connected together and I doubt it will pop... gonna blame Irish chipmunks tunneling under the floor for the uneveness....

but.......... its a SMALL bottle.... never know when them guys in kilts show up

now more on the booth.


look carefully at picture.
this is a case of painting yourself in a corner




we used the bucket to prop up the bench seat to screw it into the wall. after it was all screwed in we realized we couldn't get the bucket out......

soooooo had to undo bench & reinstall it,

now below is the table top after 8 coats of varnish... I thought , hey add a couple more,,, that is when I should have stopped... after the coat, I noticed 2 globby runs on middle & 3 hairs embedded,,,, dang it.... tried sanding & revarnish.. but not as great as before the mistake. dang it....





we decided to put the table stand on the wall. I did not want a stand to get in the way to kick.
but another mistake ( darn irishman). did not measure correctly, (???????) where the table top was supposed to be........ so had to redo the bracket.










and as you can see the outlet is now in the wrong spot. (have to fix that later) thats the 'price' of buying things as you go along. we had no idea the size of the bracket till it arrived right before install. after searching for what we needed. seems a lot of the things we did had to be adjusted as we went along, since many items were bought along the way.

now here is the back pad with the 2" foam in it, which I "thought" was what I needed ( from my notes on measuring the irish bar we went to).well I was wrong it just is way too deep for my comfort ( everyone else said leave it, but I didn't like it) so the 2nd picture is where I redid the other side.







& picture of final (??) booth

yea, but the bucket had a LOT inside it still. not about to clean up that mess

ok. um downloaded this, but it doesn't seem to be what i could use.
it worked for some of my albums, but for most they just messed up. guess the music was not on my hard drive in the correct folders for this to work.

I have over 16000 songs.. most are in folders of various music, like billboard top 100 of various years,,, like a LOT of them. others were in folders of just a lot of misc music. sooooooo the program just took a random picture from a random song for the album cover ( a lot of albums listed are like that)

now what I NEED is a program where I can pick the name of an artist,, .is there such a thing? that would search all my music files & list & play by artist? when i do try to choose by artist,, well it doesn't work obviously,,, since it only looks at the album cover list, some of these albums listed have a couple hundred songs in them.

oh well, any suggestions?

want to thank the positive comments so far!

ok, so we are slowwwly catching up to real time here
in real time I am just about to varnish the bar top, one of the things I was waiting to do till most of the dust stuff was over...we are having the 'grand opening preview party' in less than 3 weeks....

so another thing we waited ( can you say PUT OFF )
was dealing with how to finish the end of the bar top.
for some reason the bar rail was 1/2" longer than the bar top itself. i dunno why, & we decided to deal with it later on, instead of cutting the thing off. I HAD seen some other bars with ends finished , even saved pictures with ends on my computer to look at later...... ahh but it did not really work out simply.

since it was not just a straight flat edge, some carpentry skills came into play.




so hubby took a 1x6 & shaved it down reallly thin,glued it to a 1x2 (also cut that piece to match the piece we put around the back bar edge.)

below is the rig to get it glued to the edge.









next is working on the moulding on the bar front.

thank you!

it is amazing as we went along how much the pieces of moulding added to a polished look!

took me forever to find Irish inlays (etc). I actually found some irish corbels on ebay, but had already purchased the corbels I already had a long time ago on clearance. its funny how the same stain takes different on each species of wood. very noticable on the door & cheap wall/floor baseboard.

well , we have pretty much caught up in real time.
I have started putting the varnish on top of the bar top, a task I have been really dreading.

I so much would have loved one of those bar tops covered in the deep gloss of a poured top . but with all \\I had read, you can't expect to put anything on the bar top. without an eventual indentation. & I planned on several items to be placed on the bar top. which I seem to notice that many of the bars I have seen online do NOT have anything sitting on it! so I bet you guys will really think I am weird when you see the stuff

ok, so on to putting the gloss finish on. I am not too happy with the results so far. I can't really figure out what the problem is since I really had NO trouble with the other items I varnished in THAT room , even the table top, for the most part looks pretty good. now the bar top seems to have a bunch of dust particles in it. it is so frustrating. it is pretty much noticable on the flat part over the laminate flooring we put on, the bar rail, well it really isn't noticable, it its there .

I dunno. like I said , had no dust in the other stuff, just other problems ( like runs/hair/bubbles...) I have 6 coats on right now, sanding after coat 2 & 4. IF you aren't staring at it with a flashlight like I am it looks ok. but I am sure picky.

ok bar top after 5 coats



now here is the underside of the front of the bar where we ran the rope lights. pictures don't really show the best view, but you can get an idea.








now something that I am amazed at.
NO one has asked,, what on earth is that hole in the floor for?!



until later

Now we get to the part where we LEAVE the "man cave"


Now remember this is an IRISH bar.

sooooo put your mindset to another side of reality.
we get into the myth - whimsey - lore side of Ireland.

now "our" story goes, that as we were building this bar, during the excavation, we came across a leprechauns treasure cave. Luckily he was out doing whatever leprechauns do during the day & we took this opportunity to put a 'secret' see through 'spy' roof over his cave, we can see IN , but he has no idea we are spying on him.



ok, just go with it......

NOW, have any of you gone on a royal caribbean cruise, OR come across one of those glass floors with stuff in it? we fell in love with these & always wanted an excuse to build one. would have loved one on our bathroom but could not ADD something like that .

here are a couple pictures of the RCCL floor, must have cost MANY thousands to build.





hubby would have liked the floor area huge, but after I did researching on how much the plexiglass would cost,, I scaled it back.so we thought ,
to walk on, the plexiglass would have to be 1 inch thick, & that is for a 3 foot by 4 piece at almost $300. Ok we thought , we just won't have anyone walk on it!

we settled on a 1/2 piece of plexiglass. glass would be best..... but way too heavy. lexan, thinner, but that has way too much flex. plexiglass has a fault of being scratchable, so did not want to buy a $$$$ piece of plexi & then have it scuffed up so bad you could'nt see through it. the 1/2" was cheap enough that could be replaced.

now kiddies it is arts & craft time.

for those of you man cave purists, you may want to skip this post & wait for me to get back to the bar.......

so when we poured the concrete , we formed out the hole in the floor. now of course flat concrete walls would not look very cave like, so i got forms (like they use for train builds) of rocks & made a gazillion pieces with plaster of paris & glued them onto boards to set into the hole






since just white rocks stuck on a wall would look stupid, it had to be jazzed up.

sprayed it all with a pebble paint, & started gluing moss in the cracks & adding jewels (ok, has to have a gem cave look to it)










Now the rocks below, we got them 30 yrs ago from Lakeside Ohio ( on lake erie) & been schleping .. no... uh dragging....... hmmm oh yea lovingly carrying them from place to place ( actually I LOVE these rocks, they have a strong sentimental meaning). we have had them in our garden, & power washed them off. I put a bunch of glitter glue on them & was surprised to see they took on a green look to them! way cool.





the gold bars (below) were copies I made from a mold I made. I purchased ( on ebay) a few gold bar props from the Die hard movie (where the gold bars were stolen). I made the molds out of brush on stuff & used plaster of paris & of course gold paint.





so much to do yet.........

until later

have not seen one in a restaurant yet.
do you have any suggestions as to what to put in it? as I am not done yet .
I have LOTS of stuff & ideas , but maybe you saw something I havent thought up yet.

I think this will be an ongoing project, of finding stuff to add. I still haven't found just the right dagger/sword/scimitar yet to add. or crown etc.