Bar Room Design

[oldmacdonald]

I would put the bar in such that when you're sitting at the bar you look out through the windows. I.e. the barman stands between the bar and the windows, facing the pressed metal wall. This would allow the barman to turn around and serve beers through the double hung windows to people outside. Would be a perfect man cave that way - blokes inside at the bar and playing arcade games with the sheilas outside, being served through the windows so that the don't have to come inside where they'd be likely to start nagging their husbands about something unimportant.

 

[cdbrown]

I had considered running the bar in that direction, but it would take up most of the room. Current planning is the bar is still at the back of the room, with a typical bar tender set up. Placement of the bar will mean having easy access to serve through one of the windows. Still waiting on my mate for the sketchup drawing. Also waiting on myself to go and line up the fonts to see how much space they will actually occupy and figure out a height for the bar that they will mount to. What do you reckon a good tap height is (from floor to tap)? 1.6m?

Edit - very very rough sketch of the bar

View attachment bsketch.pdf

 

[cdbrown]

Here's a couple of 3d sketches of the room. The bar will hopefully be drawn in later today.

Currently trying to decide how many taps to mount to the bar. Found 5 of them so far in boxes
- beer engine
- flooded grolsch font
- flooded heineken font
- lowenbrau ceramic font
- fosters font

Still looking for the guiness font to make the 6. Also have a second beer engine which after watching Three Sheets last night will more than likely get a spot on the bar. Two different hand pumped ales for winter mmmm. Will get a pic up tomorrow of the fonts.

What are people using to insulate the beer lines?

 

[cdbrown]

Some more pics this time with the proposed bar. Drinking height is 1120mm and the height for mounting the taps to is 900mm. Means the tap height for the taller fonts is about 1350 which I think will be good. Also a crappy phone photo of the taps layed out. 7 taps takes up about 1.1m

 

[cdbrown]

The pressure is on to get the bar designed and built. From measurements of the room the bar will be 2.3m long and for the most part have a drinking surface depth of 40cm (except the return). Thinking a 15cm overhang for front and 10cm on the side. The serving side bar will be 2.2m wide and 60cm deep. Would like to keep the theme of the room right (approval purposes of SWMBO) so the bar front and side covered in thin jarrah board which have bevelled edges (same profile as the wall) and the top wide jarrah boards. All the supporting structure will be treated pine and any shelves probably mdf. A chippie recommended using 90x40 for all the framing. I've done away with the little flip up section at the end of the bar as it interferes with the window.

I still need to go and check out the thickness of standard timber. Do you think 22mm thick floor boards might be too thin? Perhaps look for something more like 40 or 50mm for the bar tops. Keen to here from people with their own wooden bar top to see what they have. What sort of joints for the frames would be best - pocket hole, screw from outside to end of timber, using brackets?

Cheers
-cdbrown

View attachment bar_sketch.pdf

 

[Jerry]

G'day cdbrown,

Re the bench tops, personally I prefer the look of a thickness of around 40mm. It gives it a thicker, chunkier look. A single thickness floorboard would look a little thin.

Cheers

Scott

 

[mika]

As Jerry has mentioned. 22mm while more than adequate for the purpose, looks wrong, so you'll find a lot of bench tops have a 'lip' around the edge to give it the impression of thickness. Best of both worlds, thick looking bench top without the thick looking price.

 

[Jerry]

As Jerry has mentioned. 22mm while more than adequate for the purpose, looks wrong, so you'll find a lot of bench tops have a 'lip' around the edge to give it the impression of thickness. Best of both worlds, thick looking bench top without the thick looking price.

Yes.

Our newish kitchen has Ceasarstone benchtops and they're done the same way.

When I built my bar I used some left over floor boards and did the same thing. A bit of fiddling around but if done properly can look really good. And much cheaper than 40-45mm thick boards; and lighter.

Scott

 

[cdbrown]

Cheers for the replies and tips on bigger boards or to put a border. I'll try and check out some timber places to see what stock sizes and prices they have - I'm sure that will help with the decision.

Any pics Scott (Jerry)

 

[Jerry]

Photos in the kegging setups thread.

Bit hard to see the detail but hopefully gives an idea.

Hoping this link works.



Scott

Edit - Link didn't work and I've gotta go.

Photos on page 40 in above thread. Post 788

Sorry

 

[Jerry]

This should work.

Link

There you go, I'm getting much better at this computer thingy stuff.

Scott

 

[cdbrown]

Cheers Scott. So are you saying that the bar top is about 20mm and that you used some spare flooring to boost the edge thickness to 40mm? I can see on some pics that there is a slight colour difference between the top half and bottom half of the edge. Looks good mate, well done. What wood was that and what did you apply to get the good finish?

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

As Jerry has mentioned. 22mm while more than adequate for the purpose, looks wrong, so you'll find a lot of bench tops have a 'lip' around the edge to give it the impression of thickness. Best of both worlds, thick looking bench top without the thick looking price.

Yes this is how it is usually done.looks the goods as well.
GB
GB

 

[Jerry]

Cheers Scott. So are you saying that the bar top is about 20mm and that you used some spare flooring to boost the edge thickness to 40mm? I can see on some pics that there is a slight colour difference between the top half and bottom half of the edge. Looks good mate, well done. What wood was that and what did you apply to get the good finish?

G'day cd,

The bench top is made of Tasmanian Oak flooring that was left over after I did the floor. From memory its 19mm thick. Across the front and down the side there is an extra length glued to the under side of the top. The finish I used on it, after lots and lots of sanding, was Cabots CFP. There are lots of different products available though.



You can just make out in the photo the chipboard substrate that the floorboards are attached to. The narrow piece runs across the front hiding this and gives the illusion that the bench top is much thicker than it is.

Here's a couple of close up photos of the front. You can see where the timber is joined. It's more noticable in the photo than it is when you're looking at it.




To give you an idea of bench thickness differences here's a photo of a bathroom vanity we've just had installed. It's 20mm Ceasarstone. We have the same bench in the kitchen but it's 40mm thick. 20mm looks good in the bathroom but would look too thin in the kitchen.



Hope this helps with some ideas.

Cheers

Scott

 

[cdbrown]

Cheers mate that's great. Love how you've done the border. Did you do biscuit joints for joining the boards together?

Took a look at jarrah boards last night at the big green shed - standard sizes seem to be 150x19 or 125x30 and the thicker is about $10 a length more.

 

[Jerry]

Cheers mate that's great. Love how you've done the border. Did you do biscuit joints for joining the boards together?

Took a look at jarrah boards last night at the big green shed - standard sizes seem to be 150x19 or 125x30 and the thicker is about $10 a length more.

No, being floorboards they are tongue and groove, so no biscuits required. If you end up using something other than floorboards then you will need to use biscuits.

Personally, I'd go and have a look at proper timber merchants than Bunnings. You'll get a much greater choice and the quality will be much better.

I used proper flooring adhesive on the chipboard, laid the board down and then screwed up from underneath to keep the boards in place while the glue went off. So no nails or screws visible on the surface.

Scott

 

[Jerry]

Did you do biscuit joints for joining the boards together?

Sorry, if you meant on the outside, then no.

Just used wood glue and screwed to hold in place while the glue dried.

 

[cdbrown]

Ok - so tongue and groove floor boards glued together over some chipboard. Makes good sense.

I won't be getting the timber from bunnings, my BIL works for Laminex group so will get most of the stuff from him, anything else I'll try for a salvage or 2nd hand place.

So thinking go for the 20mm thick boards, glued and screwed to chip or mdf board, jarrah strip around the edge for asthetics.

 

[Jerry]

Sounds good.

I only used Tas Oak because its what I had left over. If I was buying the timber specially I would choose a hard timber, like Jarrah, or one of the lighter ones like blackbutt, spotted gum etc.

Lots of different ways and combinations.

Good luck with it.

Scott

 

[cdbrown]

Have finally begun construction of the bar. The keezer collar was installed on the weekend and just need to get all the gas lines sorted and then the beer lines. Have constructed the 3 frames of the bar and just a few more cross members to get it all rigid before putting in some shelves. End plan is to have polished jarrah top, but I want the bar ready for action in a couple of weekends time so will use some particle board. Ended up reducing the length to 2.2m after seeing how much room was left to squeeze past so need to cut some pieces a little shorter.

Three frames

Bar all framed up.