Motivation:
My fiancé recently got a new apartment that was lacking in counter space. She had a counter top wine rack that was ugly and took up way too much space. She also had an empty space on her wall above a barren space of carpet. I put two and two together, and decided a wall mounted wine bar would be perfect. It was also very convenient that Valentine’s Day was the following week.
Material:
- Tack Nails
- Wood Glue
- General Lumber
- 4’x3.5″x1″ (Front face and sides)
- 5’x9.5″x1″ (Back plate, glass holder plate, wine bottle base plate)
As the picture shows, I went a little overboard with my wood purchase. I was unsure of my exact design, and I did not want to make an extra trip to get more if needed. I actually never used any of the largest widest piece of lumber.
Tools:
- 24″ Bar Clamps
- circular saw or miter saw(for nice square cuts)
- drill motor
- 1.5″ hole saw (or spade drill)
- jig saw
- rotary tool (Dremel)
Procedures:
The first step was to create the front face of the wine bar, because the rest of the build would be based off of this piece. I wanted it to hold five bottles of wine, and 19 inches was a reasonable width, but I needed to add the thickness of the wood because I wanted the front face to be clean all the way across. This is 7/8″ (and not 1″ because the lumber industry decided to save cost a long time ago), so I needed to add 1 3/4″ an inch to the length of the front plate. The spacing of each wine bottle hole is 4″ as most wine bottles are 3″ wide.
Once the points for the holes were mapped out, it was time to drill them. First it is a good idea to punch where the hole will be centered. This will keep the drill bit from slipping off center. I unfortunately donated my punch set to my old battlebots team, but found this old masonry drill with a nice point to use.
After the punch, I drilled a pilot hole with a small drill. Then I used a 1.5″ spade drill to make the cradles for the wine bottle necks.
Next I cut off the top of the front plate, so that the holes I just made became half circles. I don’t generally trust my cuts with a circular saw, and do not have the patients to setup a straight edge to follow. So I decided to cheat and use my massive sliding miter saw to make the cut. I made a cut halfway through, and then flipped the piece over, lined up the cut, and finished it. It came out slightly off, but nothing sand paper couldn’t fix.
The next part that was made, was the wine glass holder. This was made out of the 9.5″ lumber, and was cut to be 19″ long because it would be clamped between the sides. The base of a wine glass averages 3″ in diameter, so I made each slot 7″ deep to allow the storage of 2 glasses per slot. As shown in the image, I had some trouble spacing the slots evenly.
To make the cuts, I used a jigsaw to cut down the sides, and meet at a point in the middle. The piece to be removed was then easily popped out. I went back with my dremel and flattened the end of the slot while giving it rounded corners.
The sides, wine bottle base, and back plate were all simple square cuts with nothing exciting to show. Will all of the pieces ready it was time to assemble the wine bar. First, I glued and clamped the side pieces to the wine bottle plate. I put a very slight tilt on the plate in order to keep wine glasses from slipping out. I used two corner clamps in to make it relatively square. I then put in three tack nails so I would not have to keep it clamped while the glue dried and to reinforce the joints.
Next, I added the wine bottle base. I did not plan ahead, so this piece could not be cleanly glued. To get consistent spacing, I clamped scrap pieces of wood between the two plates, which gives a 7/8″ spacing. This plate was then attached using 3 tack nails on each end. This completed the center assembly.
Finally, it was time to attach the front plate and the back plate. A bead of glue was applied on the mating faces of the center assembly and the front and rear plates were clamped as square as I could get them.
I then put more tack nails along these bonds. Once the glue was cured, it was time for sanding. I sanded the joints to be flush with each other, and then used the dremel to put a rustic chamfer/round on all the edges.
A baby praying mantis decided to say hello while I was sanding.
My fiancé’s apartment has darker furnishings, so I decided to go with a dark cherry stain. Again, I did not plan ahead on this step and getting stain between the wine glass and wine bottle plates proved difficult. I ended up just poring stain into the gap and rolling the wine bar around until all surfaces had stain on them.
To mount the wine bar I found two flush mounts in the photo hanging area in the hardware section. I upgraded the fasteners to some larger screws because this project will be load bearing and so they could bite into the studs in the wall and not just the dry wall.
And now the finished product:
