My Bar

I got the idea to build a bar for our little backyard patio in DC from a magazine article where a cheap potting bench was transformed into a serving station. I liked the idea, but thought I could do a little better than a converted work station. This was my design:

What was difficult with this piece wasn’t the building; I threw it together in two days and painted it on the third. The hard part was knowing that it wouldn’t really be finished for years. I tend to get a little obsessive about my projects, and it was hard to accept that I had to quit after 90% of the work was done.

Back then, building something was like a shuttle launch. Everything had to be planned down to the last detail. To build this functional symbol of modern maledom, I had to wait for a three day weekend where the chance of rain was nil, buy my supplies on Friday night, and then work like mad to get it done before I had to go back to work on Tuesday.

Here’s a picture of the bar after the first day’s work:

Over the next two days, I finished the piece and painted/stained it. It was made to be left outside where the elements would take their toll. Since we knew we would be moving within the year, I didn’t think it would be wise to inset a mirror just to have it shatter in transit. So my bar sat outside, mirrorless, for the better part of a year:

People always ask how I got that Earth-tone red. I actually painted it with an oil-based, outdoor, brown paint, and then went over it lightly with a paintbrush dipped in red. That’s why the pine knots, accent pieces and beadboard ruts seem to have brown streaks in them.

The table-top area was stained with colonial maple, and it has a cut-out for a galvanized steel beer bucket:

The drawer on the left is real, but the one on the right is false. This shot shows all of the storage space:

It occurred to me that the hobos who slept in the alley might catch a glimpse of it and sneak over the fence at night to steal my stock. So I put in a barrier that separates the bucket drop-in area from the shelves beneath, and I installed locks on the cabinet doors.

If you look in this picture, you’ll see the other changes I made after moving. I finally installed the mirror, added a shelf to hold drinking glasses, attached a wine bottle opener on the left side, and added a bottle cap opener on the right side:

I thought it was looking pretty good at this point, but there was still something missing. After moving from a short-term rental (above) to a new house (below), I finally finished my bar. I moved the feet to the outermost edges of the framework to give it better stability and I added some crown molding.

Behold my (empty) bar:

Anyone who creates things from scratch understands what it’s like to be unhappy with what you produce. Whether you’re a chef, a painter, a writer, a potter, or a carpenter, the tangible results never quite measure up to the original, abstract idea. Of course, everyone who looks upon your work thinks you’re a crazy perfectionist or that you’re fishing for compliments when you say you’re not happy with it. They take the finished product for what it is. They’re impressed. But they have no prior frame of reference, and therefore they don’t know how much better it could have been if you had done this or had left out that. But as the creator, it’s hard not to notice and magnify the flaws.

There’s an urge to continually change your creations to suit your evolving skill and style-preference. I think that’s generally a mistake. A creation is like a bookmark, or like a balance sheet. It displays your capability at one point in time under a specific set of circumstances. I’ve tried not to go back and work on my DIY projects after they’re completed, and, for the most part, I’ve been successful with that. I like to think that I didn’t revisit my bar and change it; I just helped it evolve over the years into a more elegant and functional piece.

Although I would build my bar differently if I did it today, I still love this piece. I made it with only a circular saw, a jigsaw and a screwdriver, and managed to finish it in no time. I probably put another 20 hours into the piece over the next few years, but I think they were all good additions.