“I’m going to build a bar.”
With these words, T. Lindeman of Philadelphia, PA made a declaration, a vow, and a promise.
After moving in August of 2023, Lindeman and his wife, L. Burton, settled quickly and easily into their new home. Carpets were swapped with hardwood, bare walls became adorned walls, and their television was set up to stream through an Xbox. Every space was filled with mementos, meaning, and love.
One room, however, was still a question mark.
“It’s the room downstairs, in the back room behind the garage,” explains Burton. “We originally used it to store spare couches, since we had a lot of couches.”
But once the furniture was passed along to friends, the room was empty, a big absence of love and meaning. That’s when Lindeman made his declaration.
“I’m going to build a bar,” he said. “And it’s going to be great!”
The goal, Lindeman posits, is to have a “chill hangout space,” where people can “relax” and “take it easy” and also “slurp down a couple of pints of big boy bevies.” His enthusiasm for this new project was clear, though not as infectious as he had hoped.
“My co-worker and I made a bet,” Burton says. “We knew it would take a while for [Lindeman] to build it and get it ready. So we made a wager on what specific date we thought it would be finished.” Perhaps embarrassed about the lack of confidence in her husband, Burton refuses to even hint at what date she picked.
But that lack of confidence might not be unfounded. Though a self-proclaimed “LEGO maniac,” Lindeman has no real experience building anything of any true substance.
“He claims he built a desk during the pandemic,” says Lindeman’s friend M. Protesto, a seasoned woodworker who had volunteered to help Lindeman in his project. “But that was just putting legs onto a single piece of butcher block. Not really much he could mess up.”
But Lindeman could not be dissuaded. He went to work researching, planning, organizing. He even bought a binder to hold his “schematics.”
Plans in hand, Lindeman flashed them in front of Protesto.
“They seemed ok, from what I glanced at,” shrugs Protesto. The question remained, would he be able to actually execute the project?
After sitting on the plans for a few weeks, the wheels of progress began to inch forward with an influx of confidence from a surprising source: in what can only be described as a bout of madness, his parents gifted Lindeman tools for his birthday. Armed with his own proper equipment and borrowing his father’s miter saw, Lindeman had no excuse not to begin with haste.
Lindeman visited several places to get the wood he needed for the project. He started at Home Depot, which didn’t have great quality. Then he went to Lowe’s, which also didn’t have great quality. Finally, he went to a lumberyard in West Philly. It didn’t have great quality either. But he bought it all anyway and brought it home. Some of it wasn’t even warped!
Eventually, the room was filled with piles of wood, tools, and screws. It was time to get to work.
When it comes to cutting wood, the inexperienced Lindeman subscribes to one rule: “Measure twice, cut yourself twice, cut the wood once.”
Things began to come together. With a Bud Lite in hand and Thin Lizzy on repeat, a bar began to appear.
Now over a year after they had moved into their home, it seems like there is still a long way to go with the project.
“The frame is built, the kegerator installed,” exclaims Lindeman. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel!”
“But not much light,” adds Burton, referring to the fact that a vortex of sawdust spins continuously around the room, blocking out both natural and artificial light. With sharp tools all over the floor and scraps of wood piled over every spare surface, Lindeman’s work is a bit of a mess. But he insists that is just what it takes.
“Once we tap that keg,” smiles Lindeman, who doesn’t know the first thing about how to operate a kegerator, or even how to properly pour a beer, “nothing in the world will taste sweeter.”
As of now, the bar is still incomplete.