A Pub In The Back Garden
We love featuring the fantastic DIY Projects from our 500,000 members at ‘Make A House A Home’. Thank you to MAHAH group member Aidan Daly from County Meath who sent us these fantastic pictures of his DIY garden bar.
With pubs and bars closed during Covid, especially in 2020, people across Ireland began to get creative building their own home watering holes while their local pubs shut their doors.
Lockdown
During lockdown, Aidan decided to get stuck into this passion project, with fantastic results. We caught up with him recently to hear all about his ‘Pub In The Garden’. We soon realised that, not only did he construct this incredible garden bar, he also recently built an entire house with his Dad.
8 Weeks
“The bar took about 8 weeks to complete. My dad and I were pretty much working on it everyday. The back story is my parents and I sold both our houses and decided to buy a house together to renovate with a granny flat attached for them.”
My parents
“First my parents sold their house and moved into my home with my wife and our 1 year old. We found the perfect property in July 2019. It was a full on renovation totalling about 4500 sq. ft so my dad and I went full time working on it . We also put our own house on the market late 2019. Then COVID lockdowns arrived in March 2020 and left things a little more complicated”.
“We had sale agreed on our house early March but with COVID payments the buyers got refused their mortgage and their was a lot of uncertainty about the housing market. We continued renovating and hoped for the best. We had a fair idea that a lockdown was imminent so we stock piled as much building materials as we could get our hands on so we had plenty of work to keep us going during the rolling lockdowns.”
“As luck would have it, against all odds, we sold our house in October 2020. We had the granny flat completed and a partially finished kitchen, 2 bedrooms and an ensuite for us. When we moved into probably about 50% of the house and we had no landscaping done. Basically we were living on a building site with our little boy who thought it was great fun! It was also fine for me really as my commute to work was the dream. I was one of the few carpenters who got to work from home during COVID!”
Delays
“We were over 3 months waiting for windows for the 2nd phase of the house so we were really curtailed with what we could do, progress was slow. April 2021 our second child arrived and pressure was on at least to get the master bedroom completed. We started to get on top of the outdoor landscaping pre summer of 2021. In July-August we had accumulated quite a bit of building materials left over from the house so my dad and I decided to build a modest man cave instead of dumping everything. And then it all really spiraled out of control. So, much to my wife’s delight, we spent 2 months working on the bar in the back yard”
Done deal
“We tiled the floor in various different tiles left over from the house including a few new ones, we used leftover herring bone oak flooring from our master bedroom, we built the bar and countertop from leftover wood , the lighting was all sourced from Amazon , we found a bar tap and cooler set on Done Deal and some bar stools from a Facebook page”.
Memorabilia
“We bought a few bits of bar memorabilia online. We have had some great night’s out there with friends and family, it’s really great for us with 2 small kids. We probably wouldn’t have been out socially very much otherwise, and not having to stand around in the rain waiting for a taxi is a great bonus!”
“We haven’t had any of the neighbour’s over yet. We had planned to but since our eldest started preschool last September there’s hardly a week goes by there’s not some new virus in the house so lately it’s just been ourselves enjoying an odd impromptu pint or hot port!”