How I Transformed My Basement Into An Irish Pub
I lived in quite a few different apartments before I bought my first home in 2015. It had an unfinished, concrete basement. It was great for storage, as long as we kept boxes off the floor. If it rained too hard we would get water and lots of camel crickets in the warmer months. Terrible, terrible camel crickets…
When we bought this house, I had grand dreams of finishing this basement. Putting down some flooring, hanging up some lights and decorations, and making this the basement bar to rule them all!
Between having our daughter, lots of rain, and some crazy work schedules, this never happened.
But my dream never died.
2019 rolled around and my family and I purchased a new house. This time around, the basement was completely dry and habitable. This basement was the perfect storage area, with shelving already installed on two walls.
It might have been the perfect storage room for our house, but it was also the perfect space to create my Irish pub. And so the building began.
I’m starting to feel like this is the 20 page intro to a meatloaf recipe, so I’ll get to some pictures and details about O’Schreiner’s Pub.
The Build
As you can see, this basement also started completely as concrete. Concrete floor, concrete walls. That’s what a house foundation is made out of. So instead of painting that and trying to figure out how to hang stuff on concrete, I decided to put up walls.
I added 2x4 studs all along the wall with the window. This required a couple of concrete drills and some blue, concrete screws. But once the studs were attached, anything was possible!
Another note, it’s important to take pictures like this. I now have a record of where pipes and wires are. I don’t want to be drilling into those.
Speaking of not wanting to drill into any of the pipes. I also wanted to put in a couple of extra outlets. I should have drilled holes before mounting the studs, because putting a hole in the sump pump pipe wasn’t a good idea. Luckily I learned all about epoxy quick dry sealers. That was good to have on hand.
So after five new outlet boxes were attached to studs we put the OSB panels up. It was pretty satisfying as this really made it feel like a different room. Not just my concrete basement anymore.
Before putting anything else down into this room, we decided to put the paint on. This is always a fun project, especially when you have help like I did! I wanted to go with green because it is by far my favorite color!
The Bar
The room was complete. We had walls. We had power. It felt like it was becoming something. The only other piece that absolutely needed to be there before it became O’Schreiner’s Pub was the bar.
O’Schreiner’s Pub’s bar is pretty simple, but a bar can be even simpler. It is basically two big boxes. We started by making a bunch of rectangle frames. After we stood those up, we took a couple more 2x4s and put them all together. There are lots of blueprints and design pieces all over the internet. I also plan on eventually doing a much more detailed article on the actual build of the bar, so make sure you hit that follow button so you don’t miss it!
Another important thing to pay attention to while we were putting the bar together was making sure it was level. Unfortunately the floor in my basement wasn’t exactly level so we had to use a couple shims to prop it up, but once we got it in place, it feels great to stand or sit at.
A couple more sheets of plywood really make the bar look like a bar! My tip for this part is to use the cheap plywood on the sides and then an expensive, hardwood piece for the bar top. The sides are going to get kicked, the top is going to be felt up and stared at for years to come!
We threw a little bit of a cherry red stain on most of the bar. Then I splurged for a few nice pieces of trim to go around the edges. I put a very dark wood stain on those and I think they turned out very nice.
Once the stain was done drying, I put a coat of polyurethane all over the bar and at least four coats on the bar top. Sanding with fine grit sandpaper and another coat was my mantra for a couple days!
The Details
We had a bar that people could drink at and the room didn’t look like a creepy abandoned old basement. That was what I needed. But what really makes and Irish pub? The details.
I have added so many details, secrets, my favorite memorabilia, memories, knick-knacks, and meaningful moments to O’Schreiner’s Pub than I have time to show off. I’ll try to show everything off one day. Here’s a few of my favorites and the must haves.
- Proper lighting. This is obviously hard to capture in a picture. But I have a few Philip’s Hue lightbulbs, I’ve found a nice hanging lamp, a couple light up beer signs, and for the real party, a cheap disco light off of Amazon. Good lighting can completely change the feel of the whole room.
- Decorations. I have been collecting things for years in anticipation of opening O’Schreiner’s Pub. But the collection never stops. It’s fun to see all of my favorite things in the same place. Everything up on the walls in O’Schreiner’s has a story. After people see the beautiful narrative the shelves tell, I have had SO MUCH STUFF donated because that stuff tells a story too.
- A Dart Board. Specifically a dart board is not required, but something as fun as a dart board is required! The dart board is universally fun for just about everyone. Not too many people know the official rules, but everyone has a good time when they are chucking those darts!
Future Additions
One thing I’ve always told myself is that O’Schreiner’s Pub is always going to be a work in progress. I’m always going to be improving and changing it. I’ve done a few upgrades since opening night that I thought were also worth sharing.
Being in the basement, there were a lot of pipes, tubes, and wires.
I built a couple of boxes like the one pictured here to cover them up. This was to do a couple of things.
First this helps protect them. Helps protect them from accidents, when we’re moving and storing stuff in the basement. Also protects them from people that are enjoying themselves or maybe an errant dart.
The second reason I wanted to build a couple boxes like this was to help insulate the sound. With water running through these pipe, I put insulation on the inside of the box. This helps dampen the sound of water running when someone flushes the toilet or uses a sink so that we can continue to pay attention to the music!
When I originally built the pub, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the ceiling. I had seen a lot of pictures with tiles, flags, aluminum panels, and others. I finally decided to paint it black after deciding that was going to be the cheapest.
The other nice part about painting the ceiling instead of putting tiles or panels is that we didn’t lose any height on the ceiling. It still feels like you’ve got plenty of headspace down there.
Pro-tips for painting the ceiling: Get enough plastic to cover EVERYTHING. Get a sprayer. Get protective gear for yourself. There was a lot of paint in the air and I would have breathed a lot in without some sort of face mask.
In the end, an Irish pub, a basement bar, your version of a mancave, should be fun. O’Schreiner’s Pub is always going to be changing, it’s going to be evolving, and it’s going to be a space that’s always a good time for me and my family and friends.
Just like the pub, this article and other’s I write will be updated and include everything that I’ve done and will end up completing here in the pub.
Got specific questions on how I did something? Want a closer picture? Want to share your basement bar? Drop a note in the comments section and I’d love to connect!
