Building an Outdoor Home Bar

Don’t feel as though you always have to get all dressed up and hit the local bar in town or down in the city every time you want to enjoy a nice drink. Still, it can be difficult to find that middle ground between a night out on the town buying drinks and lounging around in pajama pants drinking cans of beer on the sofa. For many people, what works best as a middle ground is a [patio bar][1], complete with all the essentials of actual bars, but catering to the convenience and casual atmosphere of home.

Building an outdoor home bar requires someone with vision and motivation to complete the job. If you’re not looking for anything that closely resembles a bar, you can always put an alcohol cabinet under your patio dinner table and umbrella. But if you want an outdoor bar that actually has the look and feel of a real bar, a few essential pieces should be included when putting everything together.

The actual bar counter can be devised and placed in many ways. If you have a large porch or patio space, you can actually build a whole countertop at bar height so that it doesn’t interfere with other furniture already on the deck. If space is limited, you can try building the bar as an extension of the railing area, creating a flat countertop space where part of the railing had been.

Swivel chairs are important to that bar atmosphere. Sure, not every bar is outfitted with swivel chairs, but since you’re not building a bar business but instead a home bar, capturing the essence of what people feel is part of bar furniture is critical. The patio barstools should be height appropriate, but simple, as you don’t want to utilize any materials that can’t be weatherproofed or aren’t weatherproofed already.

If you plan on having lots of friends and family over all at once to use this patio bar space, you can even consider adding an outdoor pub table. This way, you can seat more people in the bar area, but also keep to the theme of a bar (without resorting to keeping some guests away at the actual outdoor dining table). A bar should be an inclusive environment, so the more pieces you can use to bring everyone into the same shared space, the better. After all, close quarters shouldn’t be a problem, as no one gets claustrophobic in the great outdoors.

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Check out the Patio Furniture site linked above for more tips.

*Drunk & Unemployed* does not endorse any product or service based on this article, which was paid for by patiofurniture.net.

[1]: http://www.patiofurniture.net/