Friday, July 31, 2015

End Of Silence Has A Tasting Room In My Garage...





























It has been a few years in the making, some paint here, some glasses there, updating the keezer, etc, etc, but the bar is pretty much done.  I really enjoy the look and feel of it, and so does my wife.  The wood on the wall, light gray paint, bright purple accents, and white trim really pops.  The way that it turned out really makes me hopeful to translate it over to the brewery tasting room as well.  Just a few things that we want to do to finish it up, but those will have to wait until we have the funds for them.  We want to swap out the ugly carpet for vinyl flooring.  It will make it much easier to clean up spills, and finish off the look nicely.  We also want to knock out the wall that leads to the deck and put in a slider door.  We need some better lighting which we are working on at the moment.  We also want to make the window bigger so we can look out at the hops against the fence and watch the kids play in their area just outside that wall.  The chairs I have in there are super comfortable, but extremely ugly, so we want to get some fabric to cover them with.

When we first bought the house it was just an ugly addition on the back of the garage, not even built to code (still isn't).  The walls were a dull green, even the baseboards and ceiling were that color.  The window had ugly floral salmon colored drapes.  There were two really big shelves on the wall, and the light was a 4' ballast light.


Once we moved in it was immediately taken over by my wife for a toy room for the boys.  The biggest issue with this is that the boys never really played in there.  They would take all the toys to the living room or their bedrooms.  The room was usually in disarray with stuff scattered everywhere.  My wife eventually decided we could sell much of the stuff, downsize a lot of toys, and move the remainder to the boy's rooms.  At that point she agreed to do a bar area.  We started by painting the room pale yellow like the living room (we painted the ceilings in every room when we moved in and changed out all the lighting fixtures).  I was able to move my beer fridge in from the garage.  We also found some really cool shelves at Goodwill and painted them to match the wall.


Our church gave me a nice financial bonus at the end of last year as I stepped down from ministry.  With those funds I was able to buy a freezer and convert it to a keezer with a beautiful collar.  It fits 6 kegs and I can run 2 different levels of CO2.  At the time we were only able to buy 2 taps for it, but that was better than nothing.  I was also able to start on a brew lab with an incubator.


I updated my taplist from chalk or markers on the freezer door of the old fridge to an electronic one on the wall with our old TV.  It runs on Excel, and was much nicer looking than the previous lists.


Of course this was kind of nice, but I really didn't like the look.  I hated taking pictures on top of the keezer since there were always cords from the TV dropping down, and the pale yellow didn't help the beer pop.  We recently painted all of the living room in a nice light and warm gray, and turned all the oak trim and base boards white.  It really made the whole house pop, and I wanted to bring it over into the bar.  I had a weekend off and was given permission to go head first into the project, but we had to get it done that weekend since my brew club was gathering at my house the next weekend I wanted it done before then.  I pulled all the glassware and alcohol out to the kitchen counter, and moved all the furniture into the center of the room.


Then I started painting the walls and the trim.


On Sunday my wife joined in on the fun and painted the shelving with the bright purple I picked out for it while I brewed my Saison.  I was able to leave work early the next day and return home to join her working on the room.  While she painted the base boards and finished the shelving, I cut old fence boards to size for the wall.


I cut notches in the back of some of the boards coming out form under the TV to hide the cords.  Then we were able to move the other shelves back inside from the garage.  Once the keezer was back in place, and all the paint was dried I was able to put the glassware and alcohol back on the shelves, as well as set up the surround sound.  


Then my new shanks and taps arrived.  I bought 2" shanks since the 4" shanks I had originally purchased caused problems getting the kegs out of the keezer.


I also updated the look of the taplist to match the color scheme of the room.


I flipped the lab in the same corner it was in to open the room up a little more.


And organized it to get as much off of the ground as possible.  I need to make a simple door for the incubator, paint it white, and put my logo on it.


And then hung all my awards on the wall to display.


My wife really wants the 2 big Sierra Nevada banners down, I tend to agree with her.  I would like to put photos of my beers on the wall instead.

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