Let's Build A Bar - Part 2

Let's Build A Bar

Part 2

Now that we had the water line and electric lines in, the next step was to wall up the garage side. The driving force for this was the impending warmer weather here in Houston. I needed to get this wall up and sealed and open up a wall into the house before the garage turned into a 100 degree sauna for the summer.

For this step, I recruited my friend Barry. When my brother helps me with a project he's pretty much all in and his quality standards are better than mine. Barry, on the other hand, will always help me if I ask him, but he's more like reluctant help. He wants to get in, get it done, and get out! He's very good at stuff, just not as interested in "Scott's bar". So when Barry helps me I try to have everything ready to go when he gets there by already purchasing the materials and setting up all the equipment. 

Sadly, it also means I didn't stop to take any pictures of this full day. We put up a plywood base and then a drywall exterior without overlapping any seams. It was a little tricky because we needed to leave an opening big enough for me to get through until I could open up a wall in the house.

The next step was kind of a big one - sort of the "no turning back now" step. I had to open up the wall into our kitchen and seal up the opening from the garage and it had to be done in one day.....we have cats....and children.  This is the wall that was being sacrificed for my wife's wine cellar (That's what I started calling it just in case it became a disaster. I felt like it would soften the blow a bit if it seemed like I was just trying to do something nice for Nel).

I recruited my mom to keep the cats from getting into everything as I cut through the wall from the inside and also to hand me things from time to time. Cutting drywall makes a mess, so I taped up some plastic to attempt to minimize the dust. It helped, but it still got everywhere.

A bonus to having mom helping is that she constantly cleans. Every time I would cut a piece out she would stick her head through the plastic and sweep up everything.

After I got most of the drywall out I sliced away the 2 x 6 boards that had formed the curved wall and then.....cats! As George pokes his head in you can see why this had to be completed in a day.

I used an oscillating tool to finish cutting my opening and then I sealed up the open panels from the garage and job done. We now had an unfinished bar that was opened to the house! It could have stayed like this for a while....and it did.

Next I went nuts with expansion foam. This stuff is great if you're trying to seal up a room as best as possible. I used it everywhere there was a seam or a potential opening. 

I also took the curved piece that had been the previous footer of the wall I cut out and used it as a header to finish framing up the top of the doorway. As I mentioned before, curved walls offer some unique challenges but re-using this piece did the trick for this one.

The next big step would be to drywall the room. Before I could do that I had to knock out a bunch of punch list items. One of them was rerouting the fresh air duct for the fireplace - which you can see in this picture. Another was doing a little framing to have a base for mounting the plywood in certain areas. You can see here where I kind of created a ceiling near the opening for the drywall to mount to. I also decided that this room might be slightly warmer than the rest of the house since it had no air vent and was on a garage wall. It actually needed to be slightly cooler than the rest of the house so I called my AC guy and he was able to splice into a duct and run a vent that blows into and across the bar. It works great!

I had the electricians come out for the 2nd time. Before we could put up the drywall I wanted to run wiring for a bunch of under-cabinet and over-cabinet and in-cabinet (you get the idea) lighting. The problem was that we didn't really have our cabinet layout finalized. Basically, we now would be dictating the cabinets with the location of the wires we placed. It should be fine, but it's probably not ideal.

At this point I also had to make a decision on size and location of a wine fridge. I had the electricians run a plug to the area I decided to place it in and ordered the fridge.

It fits!

Next up, insulation and drywall. Hanging drywall I could do myself, but the tape and texture part is kind of an art form. I found a guy and he did our small but complex job in a couple days.

This is where the drywall guys earn their money. Building the walls would be fine, but making them smooth and seamless is not something I would know how to do.

I also had him go ahead and tape up the new wall in the garage.

At this point we had a formed up room and a loose plan. We started trying to think about finishing designs but it's hard to do. As I said, we are taking this project sort of step by step and reevaluating after each one. Next time, cabinets!