home decor
new home
The Bar Has Landed
Some of you know the saga of the bar, but for those who don't:
When we started designing our home, this was a piece we told them absolutely had to go someplace prominent. The architect came up with the idea of giving it pride of place, and created a niche in the great room for it to sit in. There is a bump out on the side of our house for it, so the physical structure of our home literally flows around it.
Several weeks ago our electrician completely rewired a majority of the lighting, from cloth-wrapped wire/tube wiring. Yesterday they designed a mounting system/cleat for it, and today five guys showed up to mount it and secure it, and finally hard wire the new lights behind the stained glass to the switch (LED strip lights replaced the last "upgrade" to fluorescents!).
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| Temple Billiards |
This is a vintage soda fountain, that was later used in a speakeasy in Portland in the teens/20's. It was then bought by a man named Alex, who owned Temple Billiards in Pioneer Square. He used it as the bar at Temple, which was the local watering hole for early Seattle startups in the area. It is where Chris and I met for the first time, and where we hosted our Seattle wedding reception. Skip to some years later. Chris friend Rolando bought the bar from Alex, and wanted to remodel the place. They were planning to get rid of it, Chris asked Rolly if he could buy it off him, to preserve "the place we met". He sold it to Chris at a good price, and two giant Samoan men moved it into our garage, knowing we couldn't install it in our house at the time. But we planned to move after maybe 5 years to a larger house that it could go in. And we knew we'd be building our forever house someday to move it for its final home.
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| Sad, lonely garage life. |
That was almost 20 years ago. We never did get to do that second, interim move. So It's been sitting in our garage in our old house waiting for a future home we could install it in. It has had rats make a home under it. It has collected epic amounts of dust. In the last year, Chris undertook some restorative work to the marble bar top, which had been stained deeply from use as a wet bar for so many years.
When we started designing our home, this was a piece we told them absolutely had to go someplace prominent. The architect came up with the idea of giving it pride of place, and created a niche in the great room for it to sit in. There is a bump out on the side of our house for it, so the physical structure of our home literally flows around it.
Several weeks ago our electrician completely rewired a majority of the lighting, from cloth-wrapped wire/tube wiring. Yesterday they designed a mounting system/cleat for it, and today five guys showed up to mount it and secure it, and finally hard wire the new lights behind the stained glass to the switch (LED strip lights replaced the last "upgrade" to fluorescents!).
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| Th vintage marble slays me every time. |
The bar itself has huge slabs of uninterrupted vintage marble on the front side, and cabinets on the back side. We didn't want either to live against a wall the rest of its life, so I conceived of a caster set up where it could be rolled out for parties and used as an actual bar if we wanted to, and let the marble see the light of day from time to time. Today, our builder and his friend who is a metal fabricator came up with a final design for that, and will begin building a steel tray the bar will sit on, and can be safely wheeled around. It is temporarily on heavy-duty furniture dollies and a piece of plywood, so that's why it already seems to be "on wheels".
Oh and get this. I tell our metal fabricator where it came from. He says, "I know Alex. We go way back. I'm gonna text him a photo and tell him I'm working on it." He also knows Rolly, our friend and the current owner of Temple. Small city. He is also quite a Renaissance man, has his own certified Italian pizza joint in West Seattle, as a musician his band opened for many local famous bands in his day (opened for Pearl Jam before they were Pearl Jam, opened for Alice in Chains, etc), was a tour manager for Neil Young for years, and had lots of great stories to share today. But I digress.
Oh and get this. I tell our metal fabricator where it came from. He says, "I know Alex. We go way back. I'm gonna text him a photo and tell him I'm working on it." He also knows Rolly, our friend and the current owner of Temple. Small city. He is also quite a Renaissance man, has his own certified Italian pizza joint in West Seattle, as a musician his band opened for many local famous bands in his day (opened for Pearl Jam before they were Pearl Jam, opened for Alice in Chains, etc), was a tour manager for Neil Young for years, and had lots of great stories to share today. But I digress.
Anyway, this is a HUGE milestone for us, not just in this house build, but in the life of our beautiful bar. She will need some TLC and cleaning up, and still needs some more rewiring. The brass leaf motifs at the top underside of the mirror there are more lights. Rolly had a Seattle glass gallery create custom tulip shaped shades which go in there, in the same colors as the vintage stained glass already on the bar. We're moving toward seeing it in its full glory, and we're very excited. Enjoy some photos of the process of getting it up there. And here is a link to the video of them lifting it into place. A real nail-biter!!
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