How to Build a Home Bar: When it comes to home entertaining, cocktails and spirits-based drinks tend to take a back seat to wine or beer. With more discerning drinkers attuned to cocktail culture, specialty bars and premium spirits, there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a shift towards making cocktails at home and attempting to reproduce the experience offered by bar professionals.
How to Set Up a Home Bar is a five part series taking you from building your home bar to stocking your bar with spirits, mixers and modifiers, the tools and glassware you need to make cocktails at home. For the first part of the series, we’ve partnered with Woodford Reserve to bring you a step by step guide to building an affordable home bar out of everyday pallets.
You could invest in buying a home bar or convert an existing space, such as a cocktail station behind stairs, over the sink shelving, set up a cocktail trolley or part of a bookshelf. The DIY approach allows you to add a personal touch to a space that will ultimately become a hub of home entertaining and fine libations.
This short instructional video is a collaboration between The Design Twins and Woodford Reserve and shows you everything you need to do including the tools and materials you need to get started.
How to Build a Home Bar
What You’ll Need
Tools: drill, saw, hammer, clamps, tape measure, sander, jigsaw and 60mm screws
Materials: timber pallets, structural pine (4 x pieces high, 4 x pieces long, 4 x pieces wide), marine ply and washed sand
Instructions
- Use the hammer to remove the palings of wood from the pallets.
- Remove the nails from the wood using the hammer.
- Sand down one side of the palings.
- Build a rectangular box frame using the structural pine and simply screw together.
- Fix the palings to the box frame of the bar, from one side to the other with the sanded side facing out.
- To make the top of the bar, ensure there is a 200mm overhang over the front and sides of the bar. Once in place, it can be screwed in and puttied over.
- To finish off the bar top, apply two thin coats of concrete by hand. Mix water with washed sand in a 3:1 ratio. Add water until you have a yoghurt like consistency. Allow two hours drying time in between each layer.
Now that you’ve built your own home bar, time to toast your success. Can you pick all 212 flavours in Woodford Reserve?
Next in How to Set Up a Home Bar series… Part 2 – Essential Spirits for a Home Bar
Photo Credit: Supplied