Building your own Basement Bar: Tutorial

Since my birthday party is tomorrow, I really don't have that much time for blogging, commenting or replying right now - sorry for that! But I still want to show you how we built our basement bar! It was really easy to make, really cheap, but some of the details took up some time.

I didn't take photos of every single step (especially the man-part, e.g. assembling the parts). Still, I hope that this tutorial is all you need it to be. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment. (Of course, you're totally allowed to leave comments for oohing and awwwing, too! ;-)

We already had the closet doors from our old bedroom closet. They were huge, ugly, and in some places they are very thin, so we couldn't have used them for anything else really. And we started with four IKEA Billys that we already had.  If you have ever been to IKEA, you know them because they are one of their most popular products. And they're cheap (all four of them together should come at about $100). Maybe they aren't made to last an eternity, but for us they were perfect for three reasons:

1. They offer lots of storage behind the bar.
2. We aren't really woodworkers.
3. Buying wooden boards to build stuff can get kind of expensive in Germany. Probably different in the states.

Before we started I made a plan:

Of course, my plan didn't look anything like that, it was hand-drawn and really crappy.

Step 1:

Nothing much to explain here, right?

Step 2:

Some steps are missing in between, I know. You have to assemble your Billys, but them where you want to have them and screw them together. For us, the width of the bar had to be the length of the closet doors. If you use anything else than the doors, then you can adapt your width accordingly. The gap in between the shelves turned out perfect for all the electricity sockets and switches and stuff we needed, but that was just pure luck. After mounting the closet doors, the whole bar became very stable and sturdy.

That's what the finished thing looked like. I used some paint to cover up the screws. And at the bottom of the bar you can see a huge gap (ca. 7 cm). We thought about using indirect lighting there, but finally we decided to cover it up with a white board - you can see it in the final photos.

Step 3:

The lettering was the part of the bar that took the longest. I had prepared a Seattle printable months ago, when I first thought of the design for the bar. It had actually never been supposed to be a printable, but - oh, well!

 We already had this carpet in the basement that was still really really good, had been really really expensive, and was really really a bitch to remove, so we left it there and the color concept had to include that greyish blue. Necessity is the monther of invention, right? And the color had always made me think of our stay in Seattle where we had felt right at home. So Seattle it was. And I included lots of names of Seattle places. Please don't ask, but the program that I use for making things like that is powerpoint. Totally lame, I know. But it gives me what I need ;-)

We used a video projector to decide on the perfect spot for the lettering. First I had wanted it to cover the whole bar, but then we made it smaller because it just looked better. We traced all the letters with a pencil.



Step 4:

Then I used white paint to color everything. I like it better that way than with vinyl lettering or something like that - it's more original and the surface of the doors isn't completely even. We were really happy with the outcome, even though this took quite some time.



Step 5:

My favorite step. We weren't quite sure about the bar top at that moment. And there was lots of other stuff to do around the basement, so the bar just sat there waiting.

Step 6:

Finally we decided to buy a kitchen countertop, solid wood. We gave it several coats of heavy duty white paint and then mounted it on top. Pretty straight forward. (Later on we drilled some holes into it for the little pink lamps.)

The husband has a thing for LEDs (and energy-saving light bulbs) so he bought these LEDs and mounted them with double-sided tape. They are really bright and I like them, too.

Here's the finished result! On the back and on both sides, we have lots of storage for glasses, shakers, and other stuff. You could also add a little fridge - we've got one in our basement kitchen just three steps from the bar, so we didn't include one.




Hope you liked this tutorial! I'll post more about the Seattle skyline and some other things we did in the basement.

I'm sharing this post at these lovely linky parties: http://tatertotsandjello.com/ , http://www.houseofhepworths.com , http://www.52mantels.com , http://www.notjustahousewife.net/ , http://www.vwbblog.com , http://myuncommonsliceofsuburbia.com/ , http://carolynshomework.blogspot.de/ , http://www.brassyapple.blogspot.de/ , http://www.skiptomylou.org