The Year of the House: Building a Bar

I’ve been through my fair share of Renovation Trauma. Shortly after I bought my first little two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in 2006, I began to appreciate that owning a home was a never-ending story. There always seemed to be a list of things that needed to be maintained, changed, or fixed.

In fact, it was bad enough when I lived alone, back then I only had my own crazy ideas to deal with (and budget for). Then I got married, and instead of one crazy idea-generating brain, we had two! As an aside, no one warns you of this reality before you tie the proverbial knot.

Gerhard and I tackled a DIY bathroom renovation at the first home we bought together. The end result was quite spectacular (and I'm happy to report that we managed not to kill each other), but the process was excruciating – at the time it felt as if we lived at the hardware store. We spent an inordinate amount of time buying bags of tile glue, grout, or some weirdly shaped plumbing tool I’d never heard of. We learned our lesson and vowed “never again”, firmly agreeing that the next time we would hire "someone" who knew what they were doing.

The challenge was finding “someone”. Based on my past experience, most contractors charge an arm and a leg and typically deliver sub-standard work. It was a toss-up between accepting what we got or doing it ourselves. Since doing it ourselves hadn't worked out all that well for us previously, I'd made peace with the fact that I would probably never be 100% happy with whatever work was eventually delivered. 

In January 2021, we (actually me more than the long-suffering hubby) decided that 2021 was to be The Year of the House. We'd lived in our current home since 2014, and I had assimilated a rather long list of things that needed to be done in the house. A champion procrastinator, I had conveniently avoided thinking about all the things that needed to be done. 

Sigh. 

There never was a convenient time for these things.

There were a couple of reasons prompting the decision, one of the main ones being that the global pandemic called for everyone to stay at home. Home took on a new meaning in 2020. In addition to being the many things one usually associates with home, it also became our office. This underlined the need for each room to have a clearly defined function. There was no room for clutter. I knew that I was unable to control the weirdness that the global pandemic had introduced into my life, but at least I could make sure that the space we occupied was well maintained, tidy, and functional. The time had come to tackle my blasted list.

There was one room in particular in our home that had no real use, but neither Gerhard nor I had ever been able to find someone willing to tackle what we wanted to be done in that space. We had given up on our plans and I didn’t have much hope that we would ever achieve what we wanted. Some of the other items to be tackled were less complex, but uber inconvenient - repainting the entire interior of the house for example. 

The time had come to hunt for "someone" who would be able to help us.  

I came across Gaza Projects through one of the Midstream Hill text message groups. 

The services offered aligned well with the items I needed attended to and since lists don't magically complete themselves, I took the plunge and contacted Donovin. We decided to start out with a small tiling job at our front door entrance.

Donovin arrived promptly with his small team and our usually quiet home soon became a construction site. It quickly became clear to me that they knew what they were doing. Even Gerhard was impressed with the precision of their work (and he is very difficult to impress).

To cut a long story short, one thing led to another, and the small job at the front door expanded to include retiling our braai room. This meant that the space that we used the most in our home was out of commission for a while. Gerhard and I ended up making use of the room (the one with no real purpose) adjacent to the braai area for our morning coffee and evening meals. 

This space was the outcome of yet another one of Gerhard's and my harebrained schemes. We’d added it to the house in 2015, but for the life of me, I cannot recall what we intended to do with it. 

I remember that after the renovation was completed, we’d trawled numerous furniture shops, in a fruitless hunt for furnishings that would render the room functional. Eventually, we settled on a small two-seater blue stripy couch and a coffee table. These pieces of furniture looked pretty enough, but as functionality went, failed dismally. Ultimately, the only regular inhabitants were the cats, and later on, my treadmill ended up sandwiched between the window and the couch.

I’ve come to realise that the longer one lives in a space, the less one sees it. This room was no exception. Forced to sit there whilst Gaza worked on retiling the braai area, Gerhard and I resuscitated our discussions about what to do with the room.

For as long as I have known Gerhard, he has wanted a bar. He has also always been (more than a little) obsessed with wood. In fact, a freestanding wooden bar was a specific item we had hunted for on our forays to the furniture shops. Unable to find anything suitable we abandoned our idea as unattainable.

 ‘Maybe Donovin can build the bar’, I suggested tentatively to Gerhard. I had begun to appreciate that Gaza Projects was capable of a lot more than mainstream home maintenance.

‘That space is difficult, I’m not sure…’ he replied.

‘Well we won’t know unless we ask him’, I replied. ‘How would you want it to look?’

‘Wood, there must be wood’, he said, cocking his head as he contemplated the space. ‘We could put the counter there near the wall, the space is really small though, I’m not sure it will work.’

‘Ok, well let’s see what Donovin says when he gets here tomorrow. Maybe he will have some ideas and then we can decide.’

And so the idea to build a bespoke bar area started to take shape.

We anxiously waited for Donovin to arrive the next morning. I was a little concerned that what we wanted was an impossible ask, and he would tell us that there was no way he would be willing to tackle something so unique. I abandoned the husband to explain what he had in mind.

Donovin listened carefully to Gerhard, asked a couple of questions and added a few really awesome ideas and suggestions. The conversation ended with the surprising response of ‘No problem, we can do it. I'll get back to you with a quote.'

I waited rather anxiously for the quote to arrive. Weird and wonderful ideas are great, but they usually had a hefty price tag attached.

Nope, not in this case.

Building a bar was bumped up the list and became a priority task. In fact, Gaza Projects started almost immediately.

The "Before"

Doing some planning

What followed was par for the course when one was renovating. Our cars were evicted from the garage, and enough tools to stock a small hardware store took their place. Our home became a noisy hubbub of activity – sawing of wood, hammering of nails, grinding and welding hummed along in tandem with my zoom calls. We adjusted to navigating around wheelbarrows, paint buckets, spirit levels, and grinders. I was quite proud that I managed not to focus on the dust that seemed to have settled everywhere, no matter how many times Gaza diligently cleaned up at the end of each day.

There were all sorts of tools EVERYWHERE!

If you had told me that the addition of the bar would change the entire dynamic of our house, I would not have believed you, however, this is exactly what happened. 

Ironically, the braai room has unceremoniously been downgraded from being the room we used the most, to an area we now use only for the braai. We hardly sit there anymore. In the mornings we can be found drinking our coffee perched on our tractor-style bar stools. During the day, Gerhard sits at his spot behind the bar, frowning at his emails or conducting meetings, whilst in the evenings we can be found practicing our newly acquired mixology skills, or sipping a glass of wine.  

I am a firm believer in consistency and have proven to myself time and again the amazing results that can be attained by committing, showing up, and giving your best effort. The Gaza Team has all of these traits in bucket loads. They are the real deal - genuine, hard-working, and with exacting standards that neither I nor Gerhard could fault. I had finally found that "someone" whom we could trust.

The "After" (lots of wood)

I just love the upcycled shelves!

My “Things to do in the house list” has officially been renamed the “Donovin List”.  In fact, as I write this blog, we have already embarked on the following project… 

Stay tuned to find out what crazy renovation we tackle next.

“It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it” - Unknown

Have you read my book yet? Published by Quickshift Publishing, Running in Heels is available on Amazon and from good bookstores. For up-to-date information on when and where you can find your copy, please check out my website, sign up for my newsletter, or find me on Linkedin, Facebook, or Instagram.