A wood bar can be a fun place to hang out and enjoy cocktails and the big game, because DIY bar can be customized and used as a sundae bar for birthday parties, or serve as a gathering spot for coffee catch-ups with friends. Yes, a DIY wood bar is possible to build in a weekend. Here’s how to build a bar for your home.
I mean, what’s better than a cool place to hang out with friends, catch a game, have a holiday or birthday party? This wood bar project was actually a mash-up of adulting, enjoying time with friends after the kids go to bed and, their young daughter’s impending birthday party. Here’s what you need to know to build a bar at your house.
How to Build a Bar: Tools and Materials
DIY bar materials don’t need to be exotic to draw friends together, but they probably should be in reasonably decent shape when you buy them. So rather than pull 2-bys off the top of the pile, I always dig down a little to the stuff that’s underneath. Since they’re always the straightest boards and least forklift-boot-marked-returned-est.
Materials
This backyard bar is made with typical framing lumber bought at Lowes. We were careful to pick out nice, straight boards with no knots or voids, especially on the edges. Pick from a few boards down in the stack and look them over on both sides. One side may be terrible, the other just fine.
The Idaho Forest Doug Fir 2x4s I used for the frame were awesomely straight and for the wood nerds among us, because that grain is lusciously tight.
Finally, let the 2x8s dry out for about a week in a conditioned (read: Low humidity) space. This’ll minimize or prevent the boards–even though they’re kiln-dried–from shrinking as they lose water. Store stack them on “stickers” (little strips of wood ~~1-inch thick) so air can travel over the tops and bottom of each piece. For extra insurance to hedge against twisting, tie the ends with a bowline hitch or put a couple of cinder blocks on the stop board.
Frame
2x4x8 typical wood studs.
Cladding
1×8 shiplap knotty pine, milled side showing
Bar Top
2×8 white fir.
Fasteners
We used our go-to fastener for the bar, Spax #10 x 3-inch and Spax #8 x 2 ½-inch HcRX coated screws. Note, if you’re fastening your bar to a concrete surface, you can use the #10 screws wood-to-wood and wood-concrete. You’d also probably want to use pressure treated lumber for the bottom plate. This pail is a lifetime supply of screws for a lot of people.
Coating
To seal the wood and bring out its knotty, natural texture, we wiped on a heavy coat of our favorite finish for a project like a back yard bar. We just used a terry towel to apply boiled linseed oil. Linseed oil is suitable for exterior applications and will effectively liquid-proof the wood and make it much easier to keep clean.
Tools
This is not a tool-dense project compared to others. We didn’t empty the truck for this project, which was nice.
Table Saw
The edges of the 2x8s have a “bullnoze” (they’re rounded off at the mill just a little bit and they’re straight, but they need to be straightened a little. We accomplished both tasks using the Skil 10-inch table saw. You might look at the brand and think that this can’t be an awesome table saw compared to others. It’s our go-to. It fights way above its weight and price tag.
Impact Driver
You can certainly make these connections with a robust drill/driver, however, once you get your mitts on an impact driver, your drill is going to take a powder for most of your projects. We used the Flex impact driver. My modified countersink was a huge help driving angled screws on this project.
Sander
To really tune up these 2x8s and flatten their surfaces so they could be home to cups and plates and elbows and hands, I sanded them thoroughly. I used a Bosch random orbit sander, but I didn’t use this exact Bosch random orbit sander. I wish I did. Right angle random orbit sanders are next-level.
I used a heap of sanding discs, too. I started at 40-grit, then went up to 60, 80, 100, 120 for the final pass. I’ve had good luck with Diablo sanding discs.
Nailer
I used a 15-gauge finish nailer for the shiplap and it worked fine. If I had it to do again, however, I’d use my narrow crown stapler instead. I love this thing. It used be called Hitachi, now it’s Metabo HPT narrow crown stapler. Plenty of power, super-light.
Router
Bosch has been making this router–or a version of the Bosch Colt palm router–for 25-years. I don’t use mine very often, but it’s the first iteration of this tool and it’s still going strong. I just used a basic round-over bit to ease the edges but you could add a different profile with a different bit.
Miter Saw
For cross-cutting the bar top boards, frame and shiplap we could have gotten away with a circular saw but thought it best to set up the Delta Cruzer 10-inch “gliding” miter saw. This has an armature–no rails like a typical miter saw–and is awesome for use on site or in a tight space like a one-car garage.
Bar Clamps
You always need a clamp or two on a project like this. I used my Iriwn 24-inch bar clamps as helpers to flush up a few pieces at the end of the bar that didn’t want to cooperate.
Sadly, they’re not designed for getting your friend who might’ve had one too many or is upset the home team lost and you can’t get him to cooperate.
Build a Bar: Layout
If a wood bar ain’t comfortable to linger about, then it ain’t a bar. It’s a shelf with booze on it.
We designed this wood bar to be 42 inches high and three 2x8s deep (22 ¼-inches) with a little wing wall jutting back.
Before screwing anything together, a little tape on the floor is a handy way to time travel and get a feel for what real life will feel like once there’s something in the space.
Build a Bar: Framing
When you consider how to build a bar at your house, my take is to go down the simplest path. The scaffold, so to speak, the wood bar hangs on is essentially a framed wall. When I build a wood bar, I lay out the front face of the bar with studs at 24 inches on-center.
The wing wall is just a box. So the first time I framed the wing for this DIY bar, I just carried my 42-inch height through. However, the deck was pitched and therefore so was my wing wall, which I caught with a level. This can happen if you’re building a bar anywhere, say, in a basement. Slabs undulate. The point is, you want your transitions to be in plane with each other so the wood bar top’s base is flat. Straight is better than level.
To say I used a lot of jobsite pocket screws on this one is an understatement. They’re everywhere. I used my mighty countersink–see my countersink video here–to pre-drill, then screw, the wing wall to the front wall.
Bartop Base
Then I built what some framers call a “chicken ladder” for the bartop base. Since it is 16 inches wide, it allows the bar top to cantilever this base 2-inches on each side for a nice effect and it gives the top of the bar a little heft.
How to build a bar: The bartop is fastened to the walls with…wait for it…pocket screws.
Bartop
I’d love to go on a dilettante Instagram-y rant about craftsmanship and how craftsman-ish…no, no I wouldn’t…but I do like my work to be crisp, simple, and attainable. On a budget, too. And the bartop is where the glass sits and the elbow rests, so, let’s find a way to make a board intended to be a joist or rafter look like a place to cozy up and leave some marks in when the home team hits/misses the game winner.
I picked the three cleanest 2x8s I could find. Nice, straight, untwisted White Fir. Next, I took my Bosch Colt router–I love this thing–and knocked the round-over off with a bevel bit, creating a micro-bevel like you’d see on pre-finished flooring. I matched up the boards–best sides up–bookmatching to a degree how they naturally fit together best and then installed them that way. I butted them edge to edge, clamped them tight, then fired in my #10 x 2 ½-inch Spax. It worked.
DIY bar: The first board to screw down starts from the bartender’s side.
You can blow in screws from the top like deck boards, and that could be a cool look. But for this DIY bar, I decided it’d be cleaner to screw up from my chicken ladder with 2 ½-inch screws. Also note that I screwed 2×4 blocks on the flat next to the “studs” on the chicken ladder. This makes fastening the bar top boards much easier.
Rack Brace
There was a wiggle in the wing wall. Even though it was screwed to the deck below it, it flexed. And even though the shiplap membrane applied later may have cinched it up, I don’t do things that way. So, to hedge my bets now, I hurled a 2×4 rack brace in there and it went from meh- to Monst-ah! This thing is pretty close to a bridge abutment at this point. Party on (top of it) Garth!
And how did I make those connections? Pocket ‘em, baby.
Bar Top Ends
More pocket screws!
Then I cantilevered the bar top about 8 inches past the wing wall and the boards weren’t quite even with each other. Also, I didn’t want them to open where they were unsupported. After that, I supported them with some jobsite pocket screws. Next, I drove them front/back front back so that thing is locked down. A clamp snugged them up in-plane with each other.
SHIPLAP! rant
A quick break from the DIY bar how-to:
-Please, god, please know that Joanna Gaines (who entirely deserves her empire as far as I’m concerned) did not invent shiplap.
-Or pine.
-Or pine shiplap. It’s been around for a while. Just sayin’.
-I use it on my custom sheds, which my customers j’ adore.
I used it here (and my customer likes Chip and Joanna, so there you have it; bookmatch made in heaven) as cladding.
To make the most of the material available at Lowe’s (8-foot lengths), I ran a vertical at the center of the bar, then ran horizontals out from it on each side.
Final Backyard Bar Details
I used a Bosch 5-inch random orbit sander–awesome tool–to soothe the framing fury in the White Fir. I used 40-, 80-, 100-grit passes, which did the trick.
After sanding, I eased the edge with the router and a nice Ogee profile.
Then the bar top got its obligatory wipe down with my favorite finish of all time, boiled linseed oil.
The last little doohickey on this backyard deck bar, a storage shelf for the bartender. I mean, you gotta keep the goods somewhere. A 2×4 cleat on the wing wall and a 2×4 cleat on the main wall with a 2×10 shelf so you’ve got a lifetime supply of supply storage.
I think that’s all she wrote: How to build a bar. Now it’s time to trick out your DIY wood bar to make it even more awesome.
Awesome video