The Bleak Saloon - Basement Bar Build

Here's the room in the condition we found it on move-in day:

As you can (maybe) see, it's off another similar room. I think these two rooms together figured as one bedroom in the official count, as one of them has a closet and the other has windows. (I'm under the impression both are required.)

It's got a drop ceiling, wood paneling, and maroon carpet, and there's absolutely nothing hedonistically freaky about it. YET.

Step 01: Dat Floor

Directly under the carpet was concrete, so my original plan for this floor was going to be an acid concrete staining job. I love the way these look.

But when I pulled the carpet up all the way, the floor had several patched areas, precluding a stain treatment (unless I wanted to pour a new floor on top of the existing one, which I didn't). So I decided to try one of these epoxy kits.

Cleaning the floor to prepare it for the new finish was a big ol' pain. The pad under the carpet stuck to the concrete in some places, and degraded to dust in others. Scrape, sweep, vacuum, repeat, scrub, vacuum again, scrub. I'm a little surprised I don't have pictures of the room in this godawful state. Maybe I lost them.

Once it was clean, it took no time at all to apply the epoxy kit. My friend Joel was on hand to help, because after you mix the components you have a limited time to get the whole area painted. But it wasn't hard to finish inside that window.

While the floor is wet, you chuck handfuls of different-colored chips into it -- this kit had black, white, gray, and silver. Here's what it looked like when we were done:

@matthew, needs banana for scale

Are you comfortable sharing any overall budget? (I'm guessing you're not carefully pricing out each piece of tape like our pal @shawn.)

Looks awesome! I love the door, excited to see how it comes along. Having a basement bar is also one of my dreams.

Step 04: Wall and Ceiling Tear-Out, New Paneling

I pulled down the drop ceiling, which hopefully won't give me mesothelioma.

I tore down the wood paneling on two walls, too. Unlike certain other stakeholders in my family (OK, I just mean my wife), I actually sort of like this stuff. But it's not part of the plan for this room.

The ceiling tiles are pretty heavy! I double-trash-bagged them in small stacks. Then I sawed the paneling into manageably-sized sections which I bound together with that plastic wrap that movers use. I stashed all this material in another corner of the basement, where it sat for months until I got around to renting a pickup truck to haul them to the dump. (Add truck rental and dump fees to the cost of this project.)

Uh, that turns out to be a pretty weird wall. Let's cover it up!

In place of the old paneling, I put up cheapo wallboard, which I painted a cheery modern orange. I got better at installing it as I went, so the last section I did was considerably less shoddily done than the first. But it all looks OK if you don't examine it too closely. And anyway, if you're in this room at all, there's a very good chance your perception is impaired. Here's what it looks like now, complete with some of my stuff hanging up:

There's a lot of molding to install before these two walls look finished. And the other two are getting a different treatment, which I hope to share soon. But it's definitely coming together.

Step 05: The Bar Itself

This was just a storage room for my oddball junk until I put an actual bar in it. That step took me a while.

For one thing, just figuring out the construction plans was kind of hard for me, as I have basically no experience building anything.

One recommendation I found online was to mock up the proposed bar with cheap materials to get an idea of the dimensions before building something permanent. This seems sensible to me, but building one bar was intimidating enough for someone of my scant aptitude; I wasn't going to build a pretend one first.

I did do a lot of floor taping to test different layout ideas -- and once I settled on one, stacked up some furniture to get a very rough sense of whether it would work. I think this was helpful.

I scoured the web for whatever free plans I could find, and even paid for a couple low-cost sets. They were useful to look at, but it was clear I was going to have to customize them to suit my project at least -- and probably just draw up a new one from scratch. Which is what I did. I post it here as a resource for other home bar builders (and dare you to try to use the scribbly thing).

It's a much simpler design than any plan I found online.

But apart from the raw intimidation factor, there was the practical problem of getting raw materials to my house. I finally got started on bar construction only after I acquired a pickup truck, for which I'd been shopping a long time, and the cost of which I don't think it's fair to add to the itemized list of project expenses, @DAVE.

Here's my friend Josh helping me anchor the platform to the floor. I had to buy a hammer drill for this step (which IS fair to add to the list of expenses).

Here are the boxes that describe each end of the bar:

And here's the upright section of the bar almost completed:

Here it is from the front, with barstools anchored in place:

Here's my friend Joel helping to install the bar top:

Here's a front view of the bar top with its facing pieces attached, and rope lights installed underneath:

Inaugural tipple!

@matthew, Ooh, ground effects lighting. Someday you could upgrade to the Philips LIghtstrips, basically rope lights that can change color based on whatever (like turning red when there's a Red Wings game on). But, uh, they're pricey.

Looking good man!

I'm liking that stuff you put on the floor more and more. { I recently painted the concrete floor of a small downstairs bathroom. It's mostly covered in throw rugs, so I didn't do anything fancy.}
Wondering how it's holding up. {So much more work needed in said basement} Has it been long enough to tell ?
The reviews on HD {your link} sucked. I was worried for you.
ETA: Also wondered about how it smelled. {During application and if it lingered}
Thanks

@ceagee:

One thing I'll say about the floor kit, it doesn't have the slick, glossy finish you might expect it to. Probably there are competing kits that do. On wear, it's probably too early to tell. Since it's intended for garage floors, and this room only gets (very light) foot traffic, it seems like it should do fine.

The room has an exhaust fan, actually. I don't know why. But we ran it during application. I don't remember the smell being anything more intense than you'd get just doing latex paint on the walls. But the room is in a place where I could just shut it up and stay out of there until it was all the way dry, too.

Is wallboard something different than sheetrock? I know sheetrock is a brand/trademark, but I'm not seeing any seams in that picture. You must've done good enough with the joint compound! Nice work.

Comic books, longhorns, and antlers - it is scary how appropriate putting all of those things together seem in this setting.

A bar where everybody knows your name!

Would love to see more Drinking Terrible Episodes.

I love this… do you have an updated pic of the bar all done and being enjoyed?