Scavenger Chic

DIY Bar, with Reclaimed Wood and an Old Door

• By Joan
• March 22, 2023
• 4 Comments

DIY Bar, with Reclaimed Wood and an Old Door

Welcome back friends, today I have a DIY bar that I created for my oldest son, Keith, for his birthday this year.  His new house had a great spot for a game room and bar so I knew this had to be my next project.

This DIY bar was created from an old door, reclaimed hardwood floor, old 2×4’s and reclaimed cedar planks.  All of those were found in the dump pile at my local salvage yard.  You know what they say about one man’s trash….

I started with the bar top. I had several old 2×4’s and this beautifully aged, naturally crackled finished  green painted wood.  I did have doubts about my natural crackly wood.  Was it full of lead paint? Actually, I was 99 % sure it was, but just in case, I ordered the lead paint test strips from Amazon and had to wait a couple days before being able to test and start in on my project.

That wood, which I so happily scavenged, was full of lead paint.  I didn’t throw it away.  While it was not at all appropriate for a bar top and anywhere near food, I could still use it in all its chippy gloriousness on an application where I can use multiple coats of poly or wax over top of it.

Plan B, after my little lead paint problem, was to use old hardwood flooring which I happened to find at the same wood dump pile as the chippy wood in Plan A. 

Cut a frame for the bar top. Miter the corners of your 2×4’s so that you have a nice picture frame .  Mine is about 5 foot long and just over 3 feet wide.  But this is your bar, make it any size you like, I just needed mine to be able to fit in a car.

On the inside edge, dado a channel on which  your bar top will sit. Adjust the depth of the saw blade so that it is exactly the depth of the hardwood top.  Run each of the pieces of wood thru the saw starting at about 1/4″ from the edge.  Once you’ve completed all 4 frame pieces, adjust the fence so its even closer to the edge.  Do this a couple more times and you have the perfect ledge to sit the hardwood floor bar top.

Screw and glue the corners of the 2×4’s together to complete your frame.

Lay out the hardwood floor.  You may have to mix the wood up if you have wood from more than one house.

Once you’re happy with the layout, use a pneumatic nailer to attach the hardwood floor to the frame at the ends (where you created the dado). 

So I turn my bar top upside down and try to figure out how I’m going to lay out the bottom of the bar.  I’m thinking an I shape. You’ll have 2 walls on the ends and a place to put legs or a shelf in the middle.  Shiplap  (horizontal boards) would be a great divider between the sides. Here, I have cut 2 2×4’s for the center and 2 for each end.

So here I am measuring and cutting the 2×4’s for my I, and what do I see in my picture?  A fantastic door that has just been sitting around taking up space after it got cut from my past mudroom project. The door would make a great center divider.  Forget the shiplap!

I definitely missed a step with my pictures.  You can just see the bar ends here and just a little better in the next picture. A typical bar is 41-43″ tall.  Cut your 2×4 ends accordingly taking into account the depth of your bar top. Use 3″  wood screws to attach all your pieces.

The middle 2×4 is turned so that I can screw directly into the door.

Of course the door is too long but I did want to keep the decorative ends (blue arrows) so I took a big chunk of door out of the middle.

This is a better picture of the 2×4 structure of the bar.  

There is a long piece of trim just peeking up above the top of the door and on the bottom of the door.  Those are what is holding the 2 sides of the door together.

I’m repairing the door with the big cut down the middle, with drywall tape and spackle.

The door divider has been screwed to the 2×4 ends.

I’ve added some scrap wood strips to give me something to nail  my finish wood to (more blue arrows).  The horizontal boards at the ends, will be on the inside of the bar to hold a shelf for bartender storage (the boards between the blue arrows), such as glasses, icebucket, drink fixins…

My finish wood is reclaimed cedar strips cut to size and nailed to the 2×4 structure.

Before adding the cedar strips to the inside of the bar I added a 12″ shelf then cut the cedar strips to go around the shelf.

That one little piece of cedar on the ground was all the scrap I had left after encircling my bar.

I was so happy to get to this point without purchasing any additional supplies.  While I had the Watco danish oil in my supplies to finish the barkeepers shelf, I did have to purchase a quart of chalk paint for the remainder of the bar.  This is Tate Green chalk paint from Rustoleum.

 

I also had to purchase enough trim to go around the bottom of the bar both inside and out. While I have tons of scrap wood, I did want all the trim to be uniform.

Cut the trim  that will go around the bottom of the bar and prepaint .  Make sure you number these so you have no problem knowing where they go. These are pieces of 1×4 pine,  mitered at the corners.  It was so much easier to prepaint the trim rather than keeping the white paint off of the newly painted bar.

Nail on the bottom trim then cut corner molding to cover up all those messy edges.  I’m using my own cut corners made from 2×4’s.

Stain the corner moldings before attaching with finishing nails.

Finally getting back to completing the top.   With a electric sander I took away much of the old finish, not all, since I wanted a variation in color on the top.

I followed the sanding with a blackwash of black paint mixed with water (about 1/2 and 1/2) painted on and immediately wiped off the excess.  All those wood pores that were opened up with the sanding will eat up the black paint.

When the black paint is dry, finish the bar top with a couple of layers of polyurethane.

The bottle opener  on the right was from Hobby Lobby.

This is a view of  behind the bar.  Other than the bottle opener, all of the accessories have been thrifted.

 

 

In front of the bar.  The bar stools are a ReStore find, $25 each compare to Home Depot price of $175.

Keith was so happy to receive his new DIY bar for his birthday.  I hope he is able to get lots of use out of it.  Not too much, I am his mother after all. 😆 

Until next time, stay inspired.