How About A Drink?! A Revamped Retro Bar Story.

 One of several little/ long term projects I will be sharing this week, The Bar!
As you will recall from a few posts back, I decided it was time to add a bar to the Casablanca and went searching for one on the computer. I used this great website "Freecycle" on yahoo it's regional, and you can find stuff in you own city, which its where I picked this up...

A 5 ft homemade cocktail bar, the guy giving it away said it it just needed a top and I could have it if id just come pick it up. Well naturally I loaded up the truck and went right over to get it. But my head was already teaming with ideas, while the stained wood was nice... it just wasn't "Casablanca". So once home I played around with my ideas on Microsoft paint, and came up with this I really liked.

Idea set in my head, I dragged the bar under the carport and spent all day painting 2 coats of course!

After it was painted I took it to the lake, and started thinking about what kind of top I wanted to go on it. It was then I remembered a project from 2009 and had the PERFECT solution to the bar top. One of my moms friends was remodeling her 1961 Ranch house (one of those great tract home!)  well she was going to put new tile in the kitchen, and she knew how "into" the 50's and 60's I am, so she called me up and said that if I could find a way to get them off the counter tops and back splash I was welcome to them. When I got there here's what was waiting for me.

The good thing for me, is after 49 years the tile glue tends to loosen up! 4 and a half hours later (you have to take your time, if you rush you'll just chip and break stuff) this is what I'd accomplished...

She thought I was crazy for wanting those ugly old turquoise tiles, but as you fine readers know "Turquoise is my signature color" so I didn't mind the bloody knuckles to much! Haha.  Well when I chipped those tiles out I didn't have a clue what id use them for so I packed them (49 yr old kitchen grit and all) in boxes and put them in the storage house. Now it was time to use them, the color of the tile matches the paint color almost exactly! Well when I knocked the tiles out and boxed them up they were FAR from ready to be re-tiled again. So I set up a "Tile reclaiming station" under the carport one afternoon and started scrubbing and chipping the old grout away and getting them ready to be relaid.

 (Most of the tiles had chunks of cement on them from the back splash)

Letting the tiles soak in warm soapy water helped the gunk come off a lot easier, and in no time at all I'd readied 86 tiles for my project.

Now all of this was put on hold because of the surgery, so this being the first weekend back to the lake I wanted to GET STUFF DONE! Saturday morning we cut the board for the bar top...

Anchored it down to the bar....

Then my friend Debbie "The tile Queen of Lake Diversion" came over to help, my little sister has been her apprentice on many a tiling job here around the lake so she helped too!

 (The Renovation Diva's of Lake Diversion)

Here is the nearly finished project! Doesn't the tile look great, it was well worth the save and cleaning time. However I had a few more finishing touches to add. I know there's a bottle opener on the side of the Coke Box, but that's about 12 feet away, so I picked this old cast iron bottle opener up at the flea market some new gold paint and...

Since the bar will be open mostly in the twilight hours, my friend Patricia and I got some blue tube lights, and mounted them under the overhang of the bar's edge so it will glow neon blue at night!

Pretty cool huh?! not bad for a freebie!
A special thanks to   Debbie and my sister Mable, as well as Kari for letting me tear apart her kitchen! I think it was worth it and ready just in time for Labor day weekend!

-Mick-