Proper DIY - Wooden Top for my Summer House Bar
Discussion
Serious stuff now...
My summer house is nearly finished and the all-important job of constructing a bar has begun. Bunch of 3x2 for the frame, some whitewashed crappy 22mm ply for a slatted front (lloks great BTW), shelves, optics behind, bit of concealed LED strip for the full 'council' look.
It's 2.25m long, maybe 500mm deep, and about 1m long at one end making an L shape wth fridge underneath, shelves, blah blah blah....
On top though? What I'd like is a three inch thick piece of oak or beech, with a live edge, and a bucketful of character, just begging for a couple of "Beerhog*" beer towels to sit upon the grainy loveliness. Trouble is that's probably a £500.00 piece of timber.
Suggestions from the PH massive always appreciated, but my current thinking is 22mm OSB doubled up and 12mm ply glued to top and front, nicely sanded to some kind of bullnose and deeply stained/varnished.
Would like to do the job for £100.00 and save £400 to spend on Star Wars posters, optics, custom beer mats and other epic paraphenalia that should adorn a man's bar in a man's summer house.
My summer house is nearly finished and the all-important job of constructing a bar has begun. Bunch of 3x2 for the frame, some whitewashed crappy 22mm ply for a slatted front (lloks great BTW), shelves, optics behind, bit of concealed LED strip for the full 'council' look.
It's 2.25m long, maybe 500mm deep, and about 1m long at one end making an L shape wth fridge underneath, shelves, blah blah blah....
On top though? What I'd like is a three inch thick piece of oak or beech, with a live edge, and a bucketful of character, just begging for a couple of "Beerhog*" beer towels to sit upon the grainy loveliness. Trouble is that's probably a £500.00 piece of timber.
Suggestions from the PH massive always appreciated, but my current thinking is 22mm OSB doubled up and 12mm ply glued to top and front, nicely sanded to some kind of bullnose and deeply stained/varnished.
Would like to do the job for £100.00 and save £400 to spend on Star Wars posters, optics, custom beer mats and other epic paraphenalia that should adorn a man's bar in a man's summer house.
- Beerhog is my home brew 'brand'. We have many hedgehogs in the garden.
Wood is the obvious choice, and there are many ways of doing that, but bars have also been known to have tops of metal like zinc or copper or aluminium.
You could also consider, stone, ceramic tile, concrete...
Then there's resin options, clear resin with optional stuff cast in, carbon fibre.
Plate glass?
One particularly rustic country cider house I knew in the 80s had a formica topped bar... Which wasn't exactly level, so glasses would drift down the bar by gravity!
Personally I would consider blocks of whatever timber came to hand bonded onto ply, OSB or chipboard, kind of freestyle parquet effect?
Or veneer can be cheaper than you think. In my limited experience it can also go comically wrong...
You could also consider, stone, ceramic tile, concrete...
Then there's resin options, clear resin with optional stuff cast in, carbon fibre.
Plate glass?
One particularly rustic country cider house I knew in the 80s had a formica topped bar... Which wasn't exactly level, so glasses would drift down the bar by gravity!
Personally I would consider blocks of whatever timber came to hand bonded onto ply, OSB or chipboard, kind of freestyle parquet effect?
Or veneer can be cheaper than you think. In my limited experience it can also go comically wrong...
OutInTheShed said:
Wood is the obvious choice, and there are many ways of doing that, but bars have also been known to have tops of metal like zinc or copper or aluminium.
You could also consider, stone, ceramic tile, concrete...
Then there's resin options, clear resin with optional stuff cast in, carbon fibre.
Plate glass?
One particularly rustic country cider house I knew in the 80s had a formica topped bar... Which wasn't exactly level, so glasses would drift down the bar by gravity!
Personally I would consider blocks of whatever timber came to hand bonded onto ply, OSB or chipboard, kind of freestyle parquet effect?
Or veneer can be cheaper than you think. In my limited experience it can also go comically wrong...
Yes, blocks and a word with my joinery mates who have an industrial planer/thicknesser are certainly a possibility. I have countless offcuts. There certainly are many options, but I'm certainly thinking wood of some kind, of which there are many kinds.You could also consider, stone, ceramic tile, concrete...
Then there's resin options, clear resin with optional stuff cast in, carbon fibre.
Plate glass?
One particularly rustic country cider house I knew in the 80s had a formica topped bar... Which wasn't exactly level, so glasses would drift down the bar by gravity!
Personally I would consider blocks of whatever timber came to hand bonded onto ply, OSB or chipboard, kind of freestyle parquet effect?
Or veneer can be cheaper than you think. In my limited experience it can also go comically wrong...
Russet Grange said:
Yes, blocks and a word with my joinery mates who have an industrial planer/thicknesser are certainly a possibility. I have countless offcuts. There certainly are many options, but I'm certainly thinking wood of some kind, of which there are many kinds.
You could do something really nice, but at the end of the day, it's going to get used as a bar, abused as a bar and then left outdoors.I have owned nice wooden racing dinghies, I have some wooden things that IMHO deserve to be pampered and some which are there to be used. I'm not sure I'd want a bar top to be in the 'things I want to be precious about' group. I might prefer to have a rough bar top that wouldn't have me in tears if it got scorched during a barbecue. I might be happier with a bar lashed up out of laminate flooring, groaning under the weight of beer and food, all there to be enjoyed not fussed over. Rather than an exquisite example of the wood worker's art, that I'd want to punch anyone who put a coffee cup on it.
Having said that, our sailing club bar is solid wood, many coats of polyurethane varnish, it looks the same now as ten years ago. I think John revarnished it during covid.
A couple of decades ago, there were slabs of teak available, ex-school science benches. What I could have bought then, had I the space to store it...
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