Build Yourself a Bar

Hello,

in this Instructable I will show you, how my friend and I built this bar for about 100€.

This will be my first instructable and I hope you will like it. Please excuse possible language mistakes, since English is not my first language.

Sadly I do not have pictures of every step, because I did not plan to publish it.

Step 1: Planning

The first thing I did, was planning how the bar should look like and what measurements it should have with AutoCAD 2015. After I chose measurements, which seemed useful, I used tape to mark them at the desired place. This way I was able to see, if there was enough room and I could imagine how it would look.

Step 2: Tools and Materials

Now I needed to get the materials, to build the bar.

For the framing I chose 4cm x 6cm timber bars. I bought five pieces with 3m length each.

The surface is made of glued wood boards with 60cm depth and the paneling (I hope it's the correct word) is made from the same wood but with 25cm depth. Both do have a thickness of 18mm.

I also bought brackets for every place where the bars intersect and a lot of screws.

Last but not least I got some varnish with walnut tree optic.

The tools we used where:

• a circular saw
• a battery-powered drill
• a corded drill
• a jigsaw
• a brush

Step 3: Building the Framing

First step here was to cut all the bars to the length they had in the CAD-plan.

To build the framing we first built all the frames in "one direction" (also see the notes on the image) by connecting the horizontal and vertical bars with brackets from underneath and one tilted screw from above.

After the three frames in one direction where built, we connected them with the remaining horizontal bars.

Step 4: Adding the Surface

Because right now the whole thing wasn't really sturdy, next thing was to add the surface to reinforce the framing.

We did this by screwing the board into the framing from above. After that we filled the screw holes with wood filler to have an even surface without visible screw heads.

We then realised, that the 18mm board was not strong enough for the 20cm overhang we had in the front. So we decided to reinforce it by adding a beam (second picture) to each of the vertical posts in the front. We did this by screwing the beam to the post with long screws. To prevent the wood from splintering we pre-drilled the holes.

Step 5: Paneling and Varnishing

The next two steps were to put the paneling on and to varnish the whole thing. We worked on both steps at the same time, that's why in the first picture almost everything is already painted.

We began by cutting the boards for the short side to length and screwing them on, starting at the top. All the boards have 1cm distance above them and are held by two screws on each end.

After that we sadly had to recut the boards for the front (the actually were already cut to length at the hardware store, but we changed some measurements during the building process) and in the top board we made cut-outs for the three beams. Then we also attached those boards by lining them up with the other boards on the left side and using the same distance at the right side.

They also were screwed on with two screws on each side.

Putting on the varnish was really easy. We took the brush, dipped it in the varnish and spread it all over the wood.

Step 6: Last Adjustments and Ideas

The last thing we did, was to take some scrap wood and build some shelves on the horizontal beams inside the bar for glasses and other stuff. I did not take pictures of this step, but I think it's pretty clear how to do this.

For the future I'd really like to put some lighting (maybe LED-strips) inside the bar to light the 1cm wide slots.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, questions or criticism, feel free to comment.