Thought I’d pop in another post on the progress being made on the bar front. Things have been going so slowly that I ended up actually taking a day off work to get some work done on this project! Actually, I had a ‘personal day’ that was going to expire if I didn’t use it by the end of the month so I figured it would give me a chance to get a little extra work done on the bar, not to mention get laundry and my taxes done! Pictured to the left here is my attempt at capturing what the oak pieces look like after two coats of stain and three coats of varnish. Shiny, isn’t it? What you see is the product of almost 2 weeks of effort. Every step takes me an evening, because you have to let the stain / varnish dry thoroughly before either sanding it or re-coating it. Plus, most of these pieces had to have both sides done, doubling the time! The good news is that I have about 2 other ‘groups’ of pieces that I have to work on, and most of these are simpler pieces with a lot of 1-sided finish coming up. After those are all done, it’ll be the true building time. Can’t wait for that stage! I have to question the people who submitted testimonials on the website where I got the design saying it took them 3 weeks to build the bar! Okay, maybe they truly meant ‘build’ and not prepare. In my opinion, there’s no way on God’s green earth someone could possibly do all the cutting, routing, sanding, staining, varnishing, dry fitting, and putting together this whole bar! NO WAY!! Maybe if they worked full time on it. Naw. Granted, I had to learn a lot of things along the way (namely how to properly use a table saw and router), but just these last few steps of finishing take so long…
Anyway, as always, I’ve got a few more pictures that you can check out on our flickr site. My next steps will be to start putting together things like the cabinet door, and hopefully this weekend I’ll even start the framing of the bar. After that, I’m hoping things will just roll along smoothly. However, I’m not sure how building the counter-top will go yet. I’ve got the laminate, but still have to cut and fit the two counter-tops, including making the cut-out for my dry sink. Oh, and there’s also the final arm rail that goes around the top of the bar. That’ll be made from 2×4 solid oak, and might be a bit tricky to cut, route and fit. Apart from those things, I’m good to go! Hopefully within a month I’ll have an invite out for thirsty patrons of The Nanaimo Bar!
