The genesis for the basement bar started at Lowe's. We looked for some custom cabinets, didn't see any we liked, so went to the 'unfinished' section. We did find something that we could make work, with some effort. About the same time, Aimee and Sherri did some "research". They found a movie theater candy counter that Aimee really liked. Aimee had good taste; she found a counter for $2,400…..back to Lowe's we went. The visit gave me an idea and I ran it past my expert wood-working friend Karen. After a week or two of deep thought, Karen suggested we build a bar ourselves. An intriguing thought....and completely out of the question. I wasn't born with wood-working skills, nor was I born with the patience to learn wood-working skills. But with Karen’s assurance that it would take two solid weekends, off we went.
We bought all the lumber from a local tree farmer who harvests the wood from his sustainable farm. Pretty cool set up. Lots of nice wood to choose from. We chose red oak to build all the face frames and doors with along with some red oak plywood from Menards to build the frames. Interestingly, it was Karen the wood-working expert that did a lot of the cursing while I remained pretty cool. It was easy to…we built the cabinet for about $350. If we had it made, it would have been about $3,500. A few mistakes were easily overlooked.
We built everything ourselves and I learned to do quite a bit. I designed the cabinet, Karen drafted the blue prints and made all the decisions and I did what she told me to. Hopefully from the pictures you can tell that we got Aimee exactly what she wanted: a candy counter.
Kudos to Karen for all the work that she put in and a nod to Don and Becky who helped out too. And yes, it took two solid weekends. Plus six more.
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