The “final” stage of our den renovation was the bar. A lot of houses in our neighborhood have unfortunately had their bars removed. I can see the appeal, but the bar is something we really wanted to keep. It’s a unique feature of the house, and it’s just fun to have a wet bar. The bar did need a facelift though to match the rest of the room.
Since we hadn’t planned on doing the bar, we had no idea how we wanted it to look. The wood paneling was pulled off the front, and wine storage was added to the side of it to make it more functional. We made sure to do this before doing the floors since the face and top of it could be done whenever.
Once the wine storage was added we were able to install the new floors. This is how the bar sat for a period of time since we couldn’t make up our minds about how it should look.
Lots of searching was done for bar inspiration. We went back and forth between just drywalling the bar and painting or covering it with wood again. The wood option won and I used this picture I saw on Pintrest as my source of inspiration.
I liked the ribbed look of this design, but I decided to tweak it so the gaps between the protruding pieces were smaller. Lauan was added as a backing and 1×3 strips were then tacked in to place with a gap in between them. This was our mockup to see if we liked it.
Even though it looked pretty different from our inspiration photo, we still really liked it. So we pulled off the strips and I took them to my parents house to stain them. This was easier and less messy than staining them while they were attached to the bar. Since there is some existing wood trim right next to the bar, we decided to try and match that color as best as possible.
After everything was stained we reinstalled the boards and I applied some wipe-on poly to protect them. We were very happy with the end result.
You may be wondering why I haven’t talked about the bar top yet. Well, that’s because we never made a decision and just stuck the old formica top back on. The top looks so-so and most people don’t even realize it’s not finished, but it’s something that needs to be addressed one day. We just can’t decide between a wood top to match the base or a dark gray solid surface top. We’ve already ruled out a white or light colored top. Do you guys have any suggestions?
Be seeing you.
-Eric
