The Bar & The Fear. - Page 4

NozeCandy · #31 08-02-2007, 04:54 PM

Has anything come of that book you were writing using the posts from that huge thread?

guids · #32 08-02-2007, 07:16 PM

I actually lvoe the look of the bar as is, Id make some minor changes, but all that wood looks great.

gl, cant wait for updates.

adsman · #33 08-03-2007, 12:59 PM

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I've been away for a bit, not that any of you lot have noticed.

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I noticed. Best of luck and I'm really looking forward to pics of the renovated version.

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FFK, you know how to warm a mans heart.

OK, on to the renovations. Due to complications with all the paperwork we didn't walk into the bar to start work until Friday the 15th of June. I had originaly hoped to be open at this time to hit the summer season. We gave ourselves a month to complete everything and we opened on Friday the 13th of July, which is a lucky day in Italy.

We did the bulk of the renovations ourselves. My partner, Alessio, is a young guy from the valley who has run bars for other people here for a few years. He was receptive to my ideas and so I brought him in when my original partner pulled out in mid-May. Alessio is a handyman and his father is a retired electrician, so between the three of us and a couple of other key helpers we got the job done. It was a hell of a lot of work and I wouldn't want to do it again, but we reckon that we saved about twenty grand by doing the job ourselves. Here's some photo's of the descruction.

First job was to free up the space by getting rid of all the horrible bench seating. As soon as we did this the size of the bar seemed to double. Unfortunatly the walls behind the benches were damaged by years of humidity.

We got some builders to fix this up for us. Next big job was to sand back all the wood paneling. We had to do it by hand due to all the cornices and grooving. This was a bastard of a job.

We then applied a primer to the sanded wood with the original intention of adding another 2 coats of paint. We were presently surprised by the effect of the primer on the wood so we decided to leave it at that. We went for a red colour scheme around the room with the bar being blue.

An idea of the destruction.

And a photo of yours truly and my partner, Alessio. He's the one on the right, obviously.

Tomorrow some more shots of the renovations and how it finished up.

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adsman · #34 08-08-2007, 08:08 AM

The next part was our audio system. We invested a good 30% of our budget here, it was something that I wanted to get right. We were very fortunate to find a great sound engineer who makes and designs his own systems. He's been doing it for 40 years. We put in 8 large speakers and 4 subs. This gives us the power that we need on big nights, but more importantly it lets us keep a good volume in the bar that you can still talk over.

Here's a picture of Gianci our sound guy getting our massive amp rack ready.

And so on to the finished product. Here is a shot of the bar. Behind the bar on the right you can just make out a DJ. We placed the DJ up behind the bar which gives him a good view of everything and lets me control the situation if he starts to play badly. Note the panals on the ceiling. We installed these due to the fact that both the ceiling and floor are very hard, which caused the sound to bounce horribly. It was quite a bit of money and effort to put them up but it was well worth it.

A shot of the lounges. These are the originals that are in the earlier pics. We got them re-upholstered in white washable leather, which was much cheaper than we thought it would be. Note the groovy 1960's wallpaper which I discovered by chance in Milan.

A shot of the entrance with the external stairs coming down from street level.

And the reverse shot looking from the entrance.

So there you go. We had a big night last night, the season is kicking in and it's going to be a crazy month. My apologies for not being here, I'll be back in my normal capacity of loud-mouth sarcastic guy in September.

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