The bar room construction project

I have been wondering when I would get around to posting a complete photo essay of the building process of the bar room. Well, it's a Friday night and I have a few hours to kill. Why not get the job done. I began this project in the early Spring of 2004. It has been eleven months since its inception and it is pretty much complete with the exception of just a few small items.

Of course, any renovation starts with ripping out all of the "old stuff". The two pictures below are a handful that I took to document the beginning of the project. Drywall removal was a messy and boring job. Still, the project was now underway and the excitement of the job ahead of me kept me pushing along.

Once the drywall was completely removed from the walls (the cieling drywall remained in place since it was in good shape and would make a good base for the new cieling lathe to be mounted to) - it was on to leveling up the floor. I contemplated not leveling up the floor and that would mean that the difference in the floor height from the back of the room to the front of the room (five inches of difference!) would have to be dealt with in every step of the way. I am so glad that a woodworking buddy of mine convinced me to do it.

That meant that I needed some way to get measurements for each and every floor joist that would be laid on the floor. I came up with the idea to string the room from side to side and from front to back - using a set up that the picture below demonstrates.

The strings gave me a handful of needed and important information. Across the room from side to side, it allowed me to measure in a number of places and make sure that the slant of the floor was consistent across the room in various locations. Fortunately, it was and this made for much less work. The strings from the back of the room to the front gave me the width needed for each individual joist from the elevation where the tops of the joists were going to be located to the high side of the angled bottoms. The bottoms needed to be angled to match the pitch of the floor. The angle worked out to be roughly two or three degrees, I don't exactly remember now, but it was a necessary bit of information so that when cut at this angle, the joist would sit on the floor and be plumb. The floor turned out to be lots of work, but in the long run, it was worth getting a level floor!

Once I had my measurements, it was plenty of back and forth trips from the room to the woodshop to rip the joists to their proper sizes. Once all joists were installed over the vapor barrier, the insulation in the form of foam boards and batt insulation was placed in all of the cavities. This floor was going to be warm.

Leveling off the floor meant lots of work. Because the floor was raised, it meant that the back door to the room needed to be raised also. Because the door was going to be raised, that meant that the siding on the back of the house in the area of the room needed to come down for that work. Yeah, as I said, the floor leveling added a nice amount of work!

Because the floor and door were raised, I now needed a step to be added below the door to facilitate stepping in the door. Below is the step after it was poured and setting up.

Well, after the siding was back up on the house, it was back into the room and the subfloor was laid. I chose to use tongue and groove sheathing for the added strength that it would supply. This stuff was HEAVY!

PHEW, I was sure glad that the floor was laid and I could move on with the project! First up was running all of the needed additional electrical wiring. I needed to add receptacles to bring the room up to current code. Also, I needed to run wiring in the cieling for the new lighting, the cieling fan and the air cleaner as well as planning the wiring routes for the television location.

Probably the worst part of the job - the drywall and spackling. I had had enough of that crap when I did the detached garage. That job had 120 sheets of drywall and I didn't want to deal with any more. This room though was not that bad since it was mostly full pieces and easy cut outs for windows and doors.

Below, as you can see, the cieling wiring is roughed in and myself and Karen have also gotten to faux painting the walls. That was an interesting experience! We initially wanted to "rag" the walls. We didn't immediately have much luck with that technique on practice boards and we went with "sponging" instead. This turned out to be the trick. In this technique, you first lay down a solid base coat of color and in our case, that meant a bright - very bright - coat of red paint. We actually thought we were in trouble due to the extreme brightness of the base coat. That all changed when we did the sponging and the darker highlights that we sponged on brought the intensity way down and it actually turned out to be a beautiful job if I have to say so myself! The result, though it doesn't show well in the photo, is that the walls take on a red leather kind of look.

Anyway, with the walls painted, it was time to get around to building some actual structure for the room. I am starting to fabricate the soffit carcasses above. In the picture below, I am mounting the first one up in place. The drywall lift was a brilliant idea for lifting them in place. It made for easy work! Man, worth every penny of the rental fee!

This is the soffit structure (below) located above the door to our existing breezeway/family room. In the left side of the photo, you can see the closet I built into that corner of the room. This closet serves to hide the electrical panel and will provide some storage space for whatever.

Once all of the soffit structure was up and mounted in place, it was on to building the valance that would be mounted above where the bar would be. I needed to do lots of advance planning and measuring ahead of time because when this was mounted on the cieling (seriously lag screwed into the cieling joists) it would need to be centered over where the bar was going to eventually be located. Measurements and planning were critical for this item, as they were for many other items in the room!

And here is the valance carcasse - below - mounted on the cieling.

The window seating areas were next to be built and after they were completed, everything was skinned with quarter inch oak beadboard panels. You will notice that there is a gap between the two seat structures. That is because I planned on adding a big bookcase in between the two seating areas. That was going to be built in my shop.

And here is the bookcase up in the shop after I completed it. It still needed to have the crown moulding added, but that was done after it was in place so that it had that "built in" look. At this point, I had yet to build the shelving for the unit.

I had purchase plenty of quarter inch oak beadboard panels. Over thirty 4X8 sheets in all since it was covering the soffits, the window seating, the wainscoting (below) and eventually the body of the bar.

This is the base of the fireplace corner unit. I purchased a propane ventless unit and it was zero clearance and that made for a compact unit and installation. The receptacle with the wiring sticking out is not currently used. I added this particular box for any future considerations, should I want to add an electric blower to the fireplace. This box is covered by a blank cover and is hidden inside the fireplace cabinet.

The cabinet framework is complete and for now, that was all that could be done. Meanwhile, up in the workshop, I busied myself with fabricating the top for the cabinet. Obviously, clamping was critical.

I am pictured below installing the final Pergo flooring piece. The floor was pretty easy to install. AND it made a major difference in how the room appeared. At this point, the room was really beginning to take shape. You can notice that I have also wrapped what had remained of the concrete block foundation with 3/4" oak plywood. This was a nice touch that really added to the room. I would later wrap the exposed corner with a brass looking moulding.

Along with the floor, the addition of the Armstrong architectural cieling really brought the project along in the looks department. But first, a ton of work needed to be done in preparation for the cieling tiles. I needed to nail up 1x3 lathe at twelve inch centers so that it provided somewhere to staple the cieling tile flanges into. Boy this was some tough work since it was overhead work and made for tired arms. I'm not the spring chicken that I used to be.

The pictures above and below are two of the completed cieling. You can also see that the lighting has been added, both the soffit cans and the florescent fixtures. The cieling fan is also in place. The crown moulding on the top of the bookcase really gives it a built in appearance.

The photo below details the fireplace and its brass details. I included this picture though to show the five piece built up cap for the wainscoting. I really wish that I had taken a close up photo of it since it really added to the look of the room. I was going to go with a simple store bought one piece cap. I am so glad that I fabricated the five piece cap. It really adds to the look of the room. It made for a lot more work as I estimate that it added a few hundred more feet of trim work. By the way, I ended up buying a pneumatic nailing set up for the job since nailing by hand really would have sucked. The air compressor and nailing gun set up really sped up the trim installation!! BIG TIME!

I pre-fabbed much of the structural elements of the bar in the wood shop before moving to the bar room and putting it all together.

Below, the top, which was lelft over Pergo flooring, has been added to the bar and the plywood sub-face has been nailed on. The end unit to the bar has also been added. You can easily see where the Keg cooler will be located. The clamps are holding down the still wet glue under the Pergo bar top pieces. The straight pieces of wood on top of the bar are the oak edging that I fabricated in the shop.

The bar below is almost finished. Yet to be added is the brass looking strip that will cover the corner of the foot rest. I wanted to apply the finish to the bar before adding this item. We put two of the bar stools in front of the bar to see how they would look. We got a bargain on a dozen of these stools when the Three Bridges Tavern closed up and was selling all of their inventory. We got these stools - high backed and swiveled - for basically twenty bucks apiece! They sell for something like $80 per.

Applying the finish was a toxic adventure. I used a product called Waterlox on advice from a few woodworkers. It provides a very durable finish and it was what I needed for the bar particularly, but I used it completely for all of the oak in the room. It was a slow drying finish and had a high concentration of fumes. Thus, you can see that I needed to use respiratory protection.

The picture below gives a good shot of the hue that the clear Waterlox finish gave to the oak.

Another shot of all of the oak and the way the finish deepened the appearance. I had already mounted the pool table light mounting points and that is the chain hanging from the cieling in the top of the photo.

As it turned out, the color of the oak bar stools were a damned fine match for the oak in the room.

I had fabricated the oak with walnut inlay pool table light way ahead of time and lived to regret it as it was constantly in the way in the shop. I was a happy camper when I finally got to hang it and have it out of my hair.

The bar is ready for customers (freinds) and the pool table has been delivered (below).

The soffit access holes have been covered by flat panel oak and walnut covers.

This project has been a blast to do. It was certainly a ton of work. Don't know if I want to do something of this magnitude for quite a while. I still need to build an oak poker table which will be located right in front of the fireplace. I also need to build a number of picture frames for a bunch of racing related lithographs. I bought the window seating foam the other day and I will be sewing up fabric covers for them soon. That's right, I will be manning the sewing machine. I've done it before with a window seat cushion that is located in our guest bedroom upstairs. Not so hard. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this little trip through the contruction process of the bar room. Though, these pictures can't begin to actually demonstrate the true amount of work and planning that was involved.

Did someone say FISHIN'!

  Since I had gotten a bit away from the writing and other stuff associated with the local racing scene, I have found that I have a wee bit more free time to fill.  Filling that time has not been a problem.  However, the small change in my life has allowed me to enjoy my love of fishing just a little bit more.  One of the more enjoyable fishing deals that has come down the pike has been the Sunday morning drifts down the Delaware River in search of bass.  There is a small group of various guys that can make up the days crew.  In the past, I had always needed to borrow my brother Dave's boat for the fishing drift.  That entailed calling him up in the middle of the week to (1) see if he wasn't using it that weekend and (2) to set up a time for me to make the trip over to his house to pick it up.  THEN, I had to hope that the weather held up on the positive side for Sunday morning.

  That hassle got to be a real pain in the butt and I decided that it was time to try to find myself a used boat that I could use for our drifts down the Delaware and also for use for such things as fishing for herring during their annual Spring run in the river and for occasional fishing excursions to the area's larger resevoirs for a variety of fish species.  I had a limit as to how much I was willing to spend on a boat.  I know that I wanted an aluminum boat, 12 feet or larger and I definitely wanted it to come with a motor since I wanted to go through as little trouble as possible putting the entire package together.  I was in no hurry to buy the boat, figuring that if a deal was to come my way, it would come my way on it's own time schedule.  I looked at a boat here and there and they were either too much money or they were not exactly what I was looking for or they were in tough shape.

  Late last August, I was taking my morning break at work with a co-worker and he knew that I was eventually going to be in the market for a pool table (see below).  He noticed a used pool table in the classified ads and mentioned it to me.  I turned to the page and looked it over, but I also noticed that there was an ad for a used 14' aluminum boat just below it.  The price was right and it had a motor, trailer and a number of other ammenities that seemed like a great bargain!  I called the number and it turned out that it was pretty much on my way home and it was still available.  My juices got flowing.  I stopped on the way home and lo and behold, for $500, this deal was a true bargain.  A trailer that was in great shape, a 14' boat with lots of room for three fishermen, a 7 1/2 hp motor that turned out to be in fine running shape, oars, seat cushions, life jackets.  It just needed a little cleaning up.  And clean it up I did.  I'm just getting finished up with everything that I needed to do to spruce it up and the results are below.

   I started with the trailer.  I decided to re-wire the thing and that was a wise move.  It was a simple task and the wiring harness was very inexpensive.  Before re-wiring, I cleaned off the minimal rust that was on the trailer and primed and painted it.  That made a big difference right there.  With the wiring done, I put new wheel bearings in and it definitely needed those.  I recarpeted the rear boat supports, added a new front manual winch and a new coupler and the trailer was pretty much done.

   The boat was next and I removed the old registration numbers and boat name from the previous owner and gave it a quick once-over with my random orbit sander to rough up the old surface in preparation for a painting.  But first, I took the time to seal all of the aluminum seams with an epoxy.  A coat of "aluminum" paint on the entire bottom and once dry, it was flipped over to work on the interior of the boat.  For the most part, that consisted of shoring up the three seats here and there since the bolts that were holding them in were rusted out here and there.  A few "L" brackets here and there also came in handy for firming up the seats.  I added a left over tie down loop from a truck bed liner to the front of the boat to allow for strapping down the boat once it's on the trailer.  For maintaining the oars in the boat and not having them shuffling around in the boat, I fabricated up some brackets out of some copper tubing that the oar lock brackets fit right down into and they worked great as the oars now sit firmly in place and do not move around.

  Getting the boat registered was a bit of a hassle since the boat did not have a true hull number.  This is similar to a cars V.I.N. or Vehicle Identification Number.  With boats, it the H.I.N. or Hull Identification Number.  Because it had no number anywhere on the boat (actually there is a plate on the inside of the transom that is so old that it is now illegible) I had to go through some additional trouble to get it issued a new number.  That meant trailering it to Burlington,NJ to a NJ State Police Marine unit for inspection.  They issued me papers that I returned to motor vehicles with where I finally got everything needed to get registration numbers and my boaters license.

  As I sit here typing, I can't help but wish that the next few weeks fly by as within a month, I hope to be on the river enjoying my first bass float.  Oh yeah, did you notice the name of the boat?  It's on the side of the boat in the back.  The letters are MYOTT.  Sound it out.  (My Yacht) hehe

It's Billiard Time!!!

One of the final things to do to complete my bar room project was to order a nice pool table. I have always wanted a pool table and simply never had the opportunity to own one and even more importantly, never had anywhere to actually place one. With this room, that was now not an issue. I put a lot of time into researching tables and companies and got a lot of advice over the internet. I finally settled for a table from the A.E. Schmidt company. More on them later. I ordered my table through Phila-American Shuffleboard Co. Inc. - an A.E. Schmidt dealer and it took about a month to have it made in the St. Louis, Missouri plant and get it to my home for installation. The main installer was Frank LaCroce, that's Frank in the first picture below, a third generation installer who really knew his job. While he and his crew were installing the table, I was told that Frank started as a young boy, sweeping up around the pool table factory and progressed up through the ranks and is now one of the top installers in the area.

The table comes in components when these guys recieve them and they erect it on-site. The main frame came as one unit and had the legs, a raised panel design incorporating oak and satinwood hardwood in my case, bolted onto the bed frame. Once that was done and it was positioned, the slate began to be set. Three pieces of one inch slate made up the playing surface.

Once the slate was positioned into correct alignment with all sides, it was on to perfecting the surface. Although the surface was very close to being perfectly flat, a light sanding was done on the two seems, in preparation for the next step, and that is the sealing of the Joints and the screw hole voids.

Frank told me that I had done a great job on the leveling of the floor since it was a former garage and the room from front to back had a difference of 5". You can see below that he was using a level to check for "levelness". He actually didn't need to adjust the table at all as the floor's levelness transferred right to the tables dimensions.

Meanwhile, Frank's two assistants began to construct the rail assemblies and the pockets. They eventually would be erected into two assemblies before being applied to the table. Each assembly was composed of the end rails and the two adjoining side rails.

The red felt (to go along with the rooms red theme) began to be applied.

The pockets began to take shape thanks to an electric staple gun.

Once all stapling was completed, excess felt was trimmed away.

Now it was really beginning to look like a pool table! After the felt was completed, the rail assemblies were set on the table surface and were bolted on from underneath.

RACK 'EM UP!!! What do you think??? It's a great looking table.

I upgraded on the ball set. I simply loved this set, which is supposed to mock a stone look. Actually, it is supposed to look as if they incorporate granite in them.

Here's a closer look.

The A.E. Schmidt Billiard Company is the second oldest pool table manufacturing company in the USA. Second only to Brunswick. Out of St. Louis, Missouri, the A.E. Schmidt tables are crafted as heirlooms, to be enjoyed now and treasured later for their superb play and timeless beauty.