Barn Wood Bar Booth

I love, love, LOVE the barn wood bar that Steven built for the Inn. It's handsome and sturdy and very much suits the surroundings.

I'm just realizing that I never actually made a post on how he built it. Hmm.... Here's the quick photo montage:

And DONE! Haha! Well actually it nearly happened that fast. Design*Sponge confirmed that they were gonna come up and do a feature and we were like, "Cool, there's literally nothing in the rooms right now but that's fine. We'll TOTALLY be able to stage two room types and build a bar in three days".

And while it was kind of insane, we did it.

We kept a lot of the bar the same for the first few months, moving and/or adding things here or there depending on how we'd seen guests use the space.

But as time has gone on, I've found myself feeling not entirely in love with this corner:

The orange chairs and low white stools are in the rooms and I love them there--

But for whatever reason they just weren't doing it for me in the bar. They somehow felt a little... dainty all together.

So one afternoon sitting behind the bar I asked myself, "If you could have anything there, what would it be?" and immediately I was like, "Duh, a big barn wood booth."

So I asked my carpenter-man and he said, "No problem" and spent the next few weeks thinking and planning, solving questions of weight and support and how to do this with as little lumber as possible. I'd wake up to the alarm ringing and roll over to find him open eyed, already talking. "I think I figured out a way we can get the kick space to yada yada carpenter talk early in the morning..."

We've been on a crazy project binge recently, finishing the wood trim in the hallway and "wallpapering" it with old encyclopedia pages and--

I'll do another post on that once it's finished up, but there's a sneak peek for ya.

So basically we've be on such a roll that we figured fuck it, let's keep going! Yesterday (yes, on Christmas Day, after opening presents), Steven turned his studio into a woodshop and built the booth's skeleton out of new lumber:

And luckily today it was sunny for the first time in weeks and all the snow had melted and our guests weren't arriving til the late afternoon so...

We dragged the interior frames into the bar and set up camp in there. And by "we" I mean "he". I mostly ran around with the dog, did some springtime-esque yard work, and wheelbarrowed over lots of wood for our bar's fire pit.

I occasionally bopped in to hold pieces in place, press here, pass me that etc. And to take pictures of course! Of Steven drilling from the underside so you won't be able to see screw heads on the bench seat:

Of the fronts with kick-spaces going on:

Of myself at the bar:

Of Steven head butting his shadow's butt back supports going up:

Of two stacks of planks for the backs of the booth:

And of the finished product!

If the carpenter looks a little more dazed than pleased as hell with his work, that's because he's consumed only half a Cliff bar and a Coke all day. And it's 4:15pm. And he just dragged that stump in to be a temporary table.

But YAY! Isn't he good?! Doesn't it suit the bar so well?!

Here's Before and After right next to each other:

Next up making a low table to set drinks on. And re-hanging the art and maps so they suit the new set up. And finding a new place for the toaster oven in the mornings. And making a pillow or five so guests can get cozy with their Nordic glögg and boyfriend and whatnot.

Woohoo! Thank you Steven! I love it. I love, love, LOVE it.

UPDATE 12/28:

He used the bases of those Ikea stools and made custom wood tops. BAM!

And I moved some pillows and dried wildflowers in here to soften it up. Ba-BAM!

But I didn't use a real camera to photograph it. BAM! I mean, sorry.

(What is I Love Lamp? This is I Love Lamp.)