And then man learned to shape stone…

It’s been what seems like decades since I’ve spent any meaningful time working on the basement.  I’ve been too occupied with some other non-basement projects.  So I took a few days off work around my birthday in August and cashed in a stack of credit card bonus points for some Lowe’s gift cards.  I added those to the birthday haul and it was off to the man cave!

The store-bought floor cabinets have been placed on vapor barrier, kicked up a bit with 1×6’s under the ends, joined together and mounted to the walls.  Rear wall outlets have been relocated to become over-the-counter-top outlets, and the beverage cooler has been slid in for fit with access holes cut to the in-cabinet outlet.  All that remains for that portion is to get some 1/2″ ply for tops and then figure out what we’re going to use for the surface.

We’ve bounced around the idea of using the 12×12 tiles that consist of 1/2″ or 1″ slate tiles for the upper level bar top, but we kinda think it’ll be ‘slate overkill’.  There are some 12×12 with slate and colored glass mixed in that we kinda like though.  I’ve also worked through the process in my head of a thin river-rock tile with coarse sand looking grout then pouring a 1/2″ or so of epoxy on top of that to make it look like a creek bed under water, but the mess I’m guaranteed to make is not appealing.  I’m sure the right thing will make itself known when the time is right.  For the main working counter top, we’re clueless on that as well, if the price is right, it’ll probably just match the upper bar finish.

Moving back around the front of the bar, I put some masonite peg board on the backs of the light boxes.  It’ll be hidden from view so I didn’t care what it looked like.  It was cheap, and the holes will add ventilation to whatever lighting ends up in them.  For the front of the boxes I’m thinking about thicker acrylic/plexiglass and doing a custom paint on the back vs using a type of stained or painted glass… Knees will be bumping things under there ya know!

Then it was on to the lions share of gift card usage so far, bar-front tile!  I picked up a lower end tile saw and FORTY THREE boxes of 4×4″ tumbled slate (9 pieces per box for 1sqft of coverage).  I actually had to hit two different Lowes to get all that I needed after sorting through boxes with broken tiles or extremely rounded corners.  I projected 41 boxes but wanted a couple extra in case of work-site breakage and also leftovers may be made into coasters after adding some cork backing.  I also read around where people use these tiles as back-splashes and use power-grab construction adhesive instead of mortar/thin-set.  The guy at Lowes talked me into the dry-mix instead and I bought that, but when it came time to mess with mixing some up, I said screw it and returned it and bought some tubes of power-grab maximum strength. 🙂

Today I fired up the tape measure, calculator and wet saw and got the long-leg of the bar mostly tiled!  I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.  New goal is bar and game room finished enough for a new years party!  (Year omitted on purpose 😉 )

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