I Nailed the Chic Dive Bar Aesthetic of My Dreams

This is Making a Bar, a four-part DIY series in which our intrepid Executive Editor turns her under-utilized basement into the hopefully chic home hangout of her dreams.

The decor of the bar—the final step of this project—was in many ways the easiest part of the whole thing. I had been collecting weird ephemera for years, to the point where I sort of wonder if the bar came about only because I had all this stuff and I needed to figure out a somewhat cohesive vision to install it all.

The Decor

Here’s a running, likely incomplete list of art and items we had, over the years, collected and decided would be good for this space:

1. A Boar’s Head neon sign
2. A Corona neon sign
3. Two neon candles won at a Yankee Swap
4. A Molson-branded mirror (are we sensing a theme?)
5. A vintage Vancouver Grizzlies clock
6. Some Chicago-themed banners from some vintage store
7. Several collectible tiki mugs from Benihana
8. A bowling pin that serves as my partner’s trophy from when his league won last year
9. My swimming trophies from high school
10. A Garth Brooks poster
11. Several copies of Bon Appétit from the 1970s
12. A print of an illustration by Tara Jacoby from a story I once wrote
13. A Jazz ‘n’ Blues Summer Film Festival Poster
14. Several ads for Warren Zevon’s albums from back issues of Rolling Stone
15. Sketches my partner’s mother has done of various basketball players
16. A framed Playboy Bunny puzzle from the ’70s
17. Old photos from various southern landmarks

The Furniture

The main piece of decor we needed was the bar itself. We’d gone back and forth about building our own, but ultimately realized that would end up costing too much money. Since we were trying to do this project on the inexpensive side, I decided that our best bet would be to scour Facebook Marketplace in the weeks leading up to when we’d be able to pick something up in the TriState area, and favorite styles I liked until I saw something that was a. A great deal b. Feasible for us to pick up in our truck.

One thing I learned during this search was that there are a lot of people (men) out there who think their ginormous handmade bars are worth thousands but because their wives likely have told them the man cave needs to go, they’re hopeful that someone (another man) will buy it from them. (These men, I came to realize, are like the children of parents who have said that Fido went to a good home in the countryside: gullible.) In any case, there were often promising items, but they were very expensive, or went quickly to someone on the same search as me. Eventually, after messaging a couple people that didn’t work out, I settled on a funky midcentury piece with two matching bar stools at the very reasonable price of $220, and we set out to pick it up in Connecticut.

It was unfortunately raining that day, but we got the piece home in one piece—minus our truck breaking down about 15 minutes from home, RIP truck, you had a great final journey—and were happy with it in the space. During the visit, they revealed that another couple had been interested in it, but they decided not to sell it to them upon learning they wanted to paint it. Not us! we said. We liked it funky.

We also brought down a papasan chair that had lived in my sister’s room for some time, and likely before that was a freebie whose origins spanned to college, to flesh out an empty corner; she’d subbed in a nicer chair for her new everything chair. Do I think a lot of people will take to reading in this dark corner? Probably not but sometimes decor is just about what things look like.

Framing and Hanging

Next, I moved on to framing. This was a little more tricky; we had several pieces that were odd, unstandard sizes, and they weren’t (no offense to them) valuable enough to warrant getting professionally framed. After some consultation, we decided to buy some fairly cheap frames from Michael’s in sizes that were roughly close to them and figure out the matting when they arrived.

This worked out surprisingly well; though I was excited to try out a trick I saw on TikTok where you use fabric to mat when the thing you’re framing and the mat are incompatible, it ended up not being necessary; the cardboard mat on one of the frames actually matched some of the ink in the image, and the other was white. Hanging was, I hate to say it, easy: as is probably clear with the fact that my partner is the kind of person capable of installing plywood cabinet fronts with little effort, he was once an art handler, which makes hanging decor a true pleasure. I offer him up to friends all the time just to see them marvel at his speed and ability with a skill few have.

We’d struggled with the door to the strange vegetable cellar space—I’d come to a great epiphany, by way of a suggestion from a friend, that we cover it with a tapestry of some sort, and had taken to searching eBay for funky towels. But then my sister revealed that she was hoping she could store her (good-looking) skis downstairs and maybe we could mount them on the wall? And a solution was born: we could mount them on the door.

There’s still plenty more space to hang things; we purposefully put pictures close together because we still have a box of small vintage frames that we’d like to fill with photos of family and friends to really lean into the Cheers vibe, and tuck those around the bigger frames we’ve hung. But I’m kind of amazed at how far it’s come from its initial inception—and trying to be complimented by the fact that my partner’s best friend said, upon seeing photos of the space, "You made your own Jimbo Slim’s!" Yes, that’s the name of their favorite dive bar.

Related Reading:

I Tried an "Architectural Wellness Paint" to Transform My Basement Into a Bar

I Tried Cork Tiles to Achieve Warm Texture in a Dark Space

I Replaced My Big-Box Store Cabinets With Custom Plywood Fronts