Scrat's Keezer Bar

I finally started my dream of building a bar. Recruited my friend who is really handy and has had some great ideas. I'll keep the pictures and posts coming as we continue to build. We are aiming to have this done for our fantasy football draft in two weeks. Thank you to all of HBT I have looked at a lot of posts to get ideas and asked a lot of questions. In the end I am going with an under counter keezer design similiar to the billy build with the slides.

Who needs google sketch when you have painters tape...

We got most of the draining done tonight. I have a 7.1 Haier chest freezer. Fits 3 kegs co2 and nitro tank.

Today we hit a snag took us about four hours just to get the slides for the freezer to pull out properly. For some reason they kept jamming at the half way point of closing.

Frustrating but we finally got it. Here it is in action.

Bad news we only had 24" slides and it didn't provide enough clearance for the lid to open. Today we had to back track...returned old slides and bought 28" slides which give a ton of room to open the freezer lid. Put those in and ran some electrical outlets and will now call it quits until mid-week.

Cool idea. Will the slides be supporting all the weight of the keezer or do you have some rollers under there too?

microbusbrewery said:

Cool idea. Will the slides be supporting all the weight of the keezer or do you have some rollers under there too?

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The slides support it all. They are rated to 220#. The freezer weighs about 60, the wood frame probably another 60, so should be good with three kegs and tanks. I stood on it this weekend and we tested it sliding in and out and had no issues so we should be good.....I hope.

Looking good so far! I will be watching this!

daveooph131 said:

The slides support it all. They are rated to 220#. The freezer weighs about 60, the wood frame probably another 60, so should be good with three kegs and tanks. I stood on it this weekend and we tested it sliding in and out and had no issues so we should be good.....I hope.

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Seems like you're exceeding 220. Full corny kegs will be anywhere from 45-50# each (i just weighed one of my full kegs and it's 49.5#). That'll put you at around 150 + 120 = 270 not counting the tank. Am I misunderstanding something?

No you may be right I just started adding this up as well. But with me (160#) in the chest freezer I had no problems. The only thing I may need to consider is externally mounting the tanks which would be ok or making a brace of some sort under the freezer if I keep the tanks in. Without tanks I assume ill be right at limit.

daveooph131 said:

No you may be right I just started adding this up as well. But with me (160#) in the chest freezer I had no problems. The only thing I may need to consider is externally mounting the tanks which would be ok or making a brace of some sort under the freezer if I keep the tanks in. Without tanks I assume ill be right at limit.

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I hope it woks out. I figure it'll probably be most vulnerable when it's fully loaded and open...just seems like a lot of weight that's essentially cantilevered when it's in the "open" position, but I'm not an engineer. Could be fine as long as it's handled with care.

Good looking floors by the way. My wife would kill for those.

Thanks we actually just installed those this will make the wife happy. I'm going to go home again tonight and test it. Worst case to be safe I may add a caster or something like you suggested.

Just a quick update on the slides. My wife and I both stood inside the keezer holder and had the slides pulled by a friend. All is well and that is around 300#

daveooph131 said:

Just a quick update on the slides. My wife and I both stood inside the keezer holder and had the slides pulled by a friend. All is well and that is around 300#

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Lol, awesome! Looking forward to seeing pics of the finished product

Should you have an issue with the slides, get yourself a skateboard wheel and bearing setup, and make yourself a center mounted caster that rides on the floor at all times, and mount to the keezer slide out frame.

Nice build!

I gotta see this one through!

I can't wait to see your finished bar build. And I'm happy to report I get to see it firsthand on our Fantasy Football draft day!

Oh. by they way, thank you for contributing to my daughters college fund since I am going to win the league :fro:

Progress update: got some goodies in the mail this week, bar rail and all internal keg components. My favorite is the stout faucet. I must say kegconnection is awesome! They matched pricing and I received the package next day.

As for the bar we now have a hidden trash can that will slide out similar to the freezer. This will actually pull out from under the counter top of the non sitting side of the L. We will make a hole on the back side counter space where you can drop the trash into. The pull out will only be to empty the can.

Very cool, any updates on your progress?

In the midst of staining all the wood for the sides. We decided to stain and touch up rather than stain once it's nailed in and sided.

Once the staining is done ( this week) I hope to make a big leap in progress in the next week.

Very cool! Looking to do something similar at my place. Interested to see how yours progresses.

Got my Custom maple tap handles in today and made two labels. Things are great - found them on the vendor page of the board. A HBT local makes them himself and I must say I think they will add a great amount of style.

I plan to stain them to match the rest of the bar.

Thanks for the kind words!

Looking forward to seeing the finished bar! Definitely a sweet build.

If those sliding rails are anything like normal casters, they're 220 lbs EACH, meaning 440 lb weight limit for the whole thing.

n0nsequit0rish said:

If those sliding rails are anything like normal casters, they're 220 lbs EACH, meaning 440 lb weight limit for the whole thing.

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That's what I was thinking as well because my wife and I both stood inside the freezer and had someone pull us out and we had no issues with the weight barring. I think it will be good.

Got the skins on the front today.

Lookin good

Decided to start tackling all plumbing related issues. So far so good. Tthe hoses on my test pull in and out with the chest freezer just fine. They take a little bit of wiggling when you slide the freezer back under the counter but nothing to bad. The last picture shows the gap between the Counter and top of the chest freezer . It's roughly 1" allowing for the hoses to move.

For the coffin we decided to frame it like we did the bar and we'll just skin it and trim it out. The frame is in place. It's 19.5" wide, 13" long, and 16" high. A little higher than normal but it felt like the right height when we put a tap up to the top. It's going to be recessed into the back part of the serving counter as we'll.

I'm having trouble visualizing how you will change kegs. The chest slides out, but you have a piece of pvc from the chest, through the decking and into the coffin. Won't this prevent the chest from sliding out (because the pvc stays attached? maybe I'm missing something.

johndejoie said:

I'm having trouble visualizing how you will change kegs. The chest slides out, but you have a piece of pvc from the chest, through the decking and into the coffin. Won't this prevent the chest from sliding out (because the pvc stays attached? maybe I'm missing something.

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the PVC does go through but I have a removable top to the coffin box which allows me to lift the PVC up to release the chest freezer. I also have a good seal to prevent air leak from the gap between the chest freezer and the coffin box. It's a Foam piece I actually found in the plumbing toilet section at HD. I'll take a picture when I get home. You can see from this picture though I have a black collar that prevents the PVC from slipping through the coffin box when it's in place and To change kegs I just open the coffin Box and lift the PVC up a bit and into the coffin box.

daveooph131 said:

the PVC does go through but I have a removable top to the coffin box which allows me to lift the PVC up to release the chest freezer. I also have a good seal to prevent air leak from the gap between the chest freezer and the coffin box. It's a Foam piece I actually found in the plumbing toilet section at HD. I'll take a picture when I get home. You can see from this picture though I have a black collar that prevents the PVC from slipping through the coffin box when it's in place and To change kegs I just open the coffin Box and lift the PVC up a bit and into the coffin box.

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That's very helpful. I think the pictures will make it even clearer.

Thanks. I am using your bar as a template for one I am hoping to build. Any additional framing pics that you have from different angles would be very helpful. I'm anxious to see how this all comes together for you.

John

johndejoie said:

That's very helpful. I think the pictures will make it even clearer. Thanks. I am using your bar as a template for one I am hoping to build. Any additional framing pics that you have from different angles would be very helpful. I'm anxious to see how this all comes together for you. John

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Here are some more pictures of the plumbing and backside framing.

You can see the pipe only comes up and Into the coffin box about 4 inches. This allows me to have room to pull the pipe up into the coffin allowing the chest freezer to release.

Also the last shot shows the black rubber sleeve that goes around the pipe. This piece keeps the PVC pipe in place and provides a seal around the hole in the coffin box floor.

In this photo you can see we drilled a 3.5 inch hole on the coffin box sub floor. In the chest freezer the hole size is 2.5".

On the end of the pipe we glued into place a foam gasket piece that we found in the toilet plumbing sections at HD. This slides slightly inside the chest freezer hole sealing it off. However it pulls free And up through the coffin box (3.5" hole) with a little twisting.

On the left we have a cutout for where our mini fridge will go to house bottled beer and sodas.

On the right we are building a shelf. We have some room in the L section to hold kegs. I'll make the shelving removable so I have Access to that dead space in the corner of the bar. That was originally where the trash can was fitting but we scrapped that idea. I currently can get 2 cornys in the space which I think will be a better use of space.

If there are any other questions or comments let me know. Also if there are any other pictures wanted I'll try to get those added as well.

Looks awesome. Thanks for the additional pictures. It makes the process much clearer for those of us who are mechanically impaired.

A little work put into tonight mainly filling nail holes on the siding but I also added some stabilizers to the inside counter of the bar. I put two 2x4 together on the left end, and in the corner, on the right end I stacked three so that I would have an even area to place the tile concealing the Side paneling. These will also serve to help stabilize the bar top.

Today is the day...I'm pumped the granite is being installed. I was originally going to do tile but a local shop down the road had one color of granite (which so happened to match the bar well) for 9.99 per sq ft. Very cheap for granite and not much more than the tile I was looking at. So I was sold. I think it was fate.

I'm still doing a wood top for the bar serving area, this will be counterspace.

Here is the cutout ft the coffin box

And the finished product...