In the articles on our basement renovation, I’ve covered a lot about how to renovate your basement on a budget, but I haven’t discussed our design process. For much of the basement, it has been a straightforward case of choosing the paint colour for the room and determining the required wall layout. It took a bit more planning for the living room to develop our pub design.
Whether you call it a basement pub, home bar, man cave, game room, or family room, many people want a room in their home where they can have friends and family over to hang out, watch movies, or relax with a drink and a book. We’re referring to our space as a pub, but of course, it is a private area not open to the public (in case this wasn’t clear).
If you are looking for some help with your pub design, this article will guide you through planning your pub design and discuss what we considered when developing ours. As you are likely aware, pub design can go from very elaborate to a straightforward basement sitting area. While I love the look of an authentic Irish pub, I didn’t want a full-on or over-the-top pub design but wanted to convey a traditional pub’s coziness and authenticity with our pub design. Read on to the end to see if you think we accomplished our pub design goal.
Some cozy Inspirational Pub Design Ideas
Our Vision
After finishing the bedroom renovation in our basement, it was time to tackle the living room next. We pictured a quaint pub design with a high-top table and bar area. The rest of the room would have a sitting area with cozy couches and a TV for movie nights. Many years ago, we found a fantastic authentic railway cart we wanted to use as a coffee table. The rustic, industrial cast iron and rough oak wood set the mood for the pub’s theme.
Our vision started with a sketch of a bar area with a large wall mirror and pendant lights (I had found the globes years ago, saving them for this moment!), plus some rustic wood shelves held up with black pipe hardware. We wanted a brick wall with lots of kitschy memorabilia and pictures. There would be a retro-designed bar fridge and a table to have friends and family over for a game night and a few drinks.
Changes to our Pub Design
The original design had shelves in front of the mirror with LED light strips embedded in them. The wires would have run up the pipes into the ceiling and connected to the pendant lights. But once we hung up the mirror behind the pendant lights, we realized that the shelves would make it very difficult to clean the mirror and would essentially block it completely. So, plan B meant a shelf along the bottom of the mirror for bottles and more on the bar top.
When renovating, be prepared to go with the flow and alter your plans. We haven’t had a renovation yet that didn’t involve some sort of plan B (C, D…G). Later I will show you another change we had to make to our pub design plans.
Ensuring our pub design worked with the rest of the house
Many traditional pubs have wood panelling. But, while beautiful, this is a costly way to adorn your walls. Also, wood panelling can create a dark, heavy feel in a room. If you want a traditional, cozy room, then definitely consider wood panelling.
For us, the idea for wainscotting came from looking through hundreds of pictures on Houzz and Pinterest. We chose to do antique white faux wainscotting to save money and mimic the look of panelled pub walls while keeping the pub design light and open.
The rest of our house is somewhat traditional, and we needed the pub design to flow from upstairs down. Wainscotting had the advantage of suiting a traditional home and working with a pub design. The wainscotting would wrap around the room and flow into the connecting hallways to create continuity. We will paint our front entrance and stairwell in the same antique white, which will also work with continuity.
First Things First
The running theme when renovating seems to be first things first. Once I get to the stage where the drywall is primed, I feel so impatient to get the room done (well, okay, I am impatient before that point, too).
Determining where to start with implementing the pub design took a bit of planning. Once we had a design plan, we needed to choose the colour scheme. The plan, which I will cover shortly, was to put peel-and-stick wallpaper on one wall above the wainscotting that will cover the lower half of the walls. We ordered the wallpaper so we could choose complementary colours.
The primed walls needed to be painted before papering. I chose a matching red to go with the brick and painted the upper half of the room in red. The colour is Georgian Brick by Benjamin Moore. We colour-matched at Home Depot to stay with the same paint line. I painted the red behind the paper so that should anyone want to remove the paper in the future, the wall would match the rest of the room.
I painted the bottom half of the wall the same colour as the wainscotting, Antique White by Behr. We placed the painter’s tape using a laser level set to the middle of the horizontal wainscotting board. We painted and then laid the flooring. By painting first, we avoided using drop clothes on our freshly laid floor. After painting, the paint had to cure for a month before we could put up the wallpaper.
There was no rush because we had much to do. The wainscotting had to go on before the wallpaper, so we had an edge to paper up to, and the paper wouldn’t be under the wainscotting should someone wish to change it in the future. But first, we had to install the baseboard and casing before putting up the wainscotting because the wainscotting sits on top of the baseboard, and the casing needs to be on before the baseboards. And before we could do that, we had to install the flooring…
You can see how much planning and organizing is required to renovate a room. During this time, I was also refinishing the furniture for the room and trying to find space to store it so it wasn’t in the way.
How We created the Faux Wainscotting for the Pub Design
Because any panelling is expensive, and we are renovating on a budget, we went with a faux effect – the look of wainscotting panels, without the cost. To create the faux wainscotting, we bought a few sheets of 4×8 Luan plywood and cut them into 2 ¼” inch strips and to our desired height on the table saw. We spaced the boards every 2 feet on centre. Our wainscotting is 4’ high, including the 5 ¼” baseboard.
While we could have cut the boards from the short side of the plywood (4 ‘ long), we chose to cut the long way (8’ long) to ensure the grain was running parallel to the board, which improved the overall strength. Had we cut them as cross-grain pieces, they would have broken easily.
Installing the faux Wainscotting
Once the flooring, baseboard, and casing were installed, we could install the wainscotting. We nailed the wainscotting boards with finishing nails and an air nailer and touched up the nail holes with paintable caulking, which we then painted.
The actual process of installing the wainscotting goes very quickly. Use a laser level and have the pieces cut to the correct size, or cut as you go – if the floor is uneven, the length of the vertical boards may vary slightly.
How you can achieve this look for your own pub design
If you wish to replicate this look, I suggest working with your room’s dimensions and measuring where the wainscotting boards land horizontally on the wall and vertically around the room. We tried to position our boards to land in the most aesthetically pleasing place. Our walls are under eight feet, so the top half was shorter than the bottom. I like the effect of the bottom panel coming up higher than halfway – it makes the room feel grander.
You can use our sizes or customize the design to your own preferences. Don’t forget to account for the saw’s kerf when calculating how much wood you need. The saw blade removes around a 1/8” of wood as sawdust; therefore, every nine boards, you lose an inch. The boards were primed and painted with trim paint from Behr in Antique White.
Adding warmth and an authentic Style to our pub design
Any pub design should include at least some traditional pub décor, such as a brick wall or a tin ceiling. We wanted to have a brick wall to display our items. Of course, an actual brick wall is a massive and costly undertaking for a basement renovation. To simplify this, we used peel-and-stick wallpaper from Amazon to create the brick wall design. I ordered two of the largest rolls, which worked out for a half-wall 22 feet long. We had just enough.
Another option is to use faux brick panels if you want the texture and look of real brick. They come in traditional red or whitewash. Another option I am toying with is using copper ceiling tiles to create a cozier room. We have a beam running across the room and could put the panels on the pub side. What do you think? Is this a good idea?
Hanging the wallpaper
I was going to title this section “near-death experience” because anyone who has hung wallpaper with a spouse knows that one or the other person is near death throughout the process (and if you don’t get that joke, I am both happy for you and annoyed with you). Okay, I joke about the nearly bringing someone to an end part, but hanging wallpaper with someone takes a lot of patience, especially when the floor and ceiling aren’t necessarily square.
We used our laser level and thought we understood the grid on the back of the wallpaper. We didn’t. The numbers are in no way associated with the pattern repeat. So we wasted a couple of sheets until we realized we could not precut our sheets. We needed to follow the pattern on the front and ignore the back gridlines. I used my large, self-healing mat and a rotary cutter with a straight edge to simplify cutting the pieces to length.
Another factor we didn’t notice was that the paper was stretchy, and no matter how much we thought we were square, it was slightly drifting. So it ended up not going on precisely perpendicular to the wall, plus the floor was lower on one end of the room, so the pattern wasn’t perfect. But, you know what? It looks good anyway. And if you are looking that closely at it, you haven’t had enough to drink… haha.
It is incredible how much the wainscotting, curtains, and wallpaper changed the room; they were what was needed to create the cozy pub design. It’s funny how you can have an idea and not be sure how it will look. It is so rewarding when it comes together. If you like the curtains we found (that worked perfectly), you can get them here on Amazon.
Adding some Barn Doors to our Pub Design
As part of our pub design, we needed to incorporate doors leading to my workshop area. The opening is four feet wide, so we couldn’t use a traditional hinged door. The wall is a supporting wall of solid 2×6 construction, so pocket doors would not work either.
The solution was to go with barn door hardware and slab doors (no hinge holes yet). The barn door hardware kit we bought didn’t have soft-close hardware, but a friend had leftovers from a project he had done in his basement and gave us the extra pieces. Soft-close hardware helps prevent the slamming together of two doors by accident, and they open softer, too. We also added some industrial-style door handles.
When calculating the length of the door hardware, measure the width of the door or doors and allow for the overhang on the ends. We needed a 12′ bar to accommodate our two 34″ doors and ensure they would open enough to fully clear the 4′ opening.
More changes...
As I noted earlier, be prepared to make some changes when renovating.
After we had the doors hung and everything put together, we decided we didn’t like the one wall red. The wall that runs into the hallway was challenging to design. I was not too fond of the abrupt colour change as the hallway started. Also, we previously painted the hallway with a greige colour that did not work with the red it met up with, and I found a lovely cream colour, Basketry by Behr, to paint the top of the hallway. The cream matched the mortar in the brick.
Once we painted the hallway, it became apparent that that colour needed to carry through to the brick wall. That meant taking down the barn doors and masking off areas. This change took a Sunday afternoon, but it was worth the effort.
Pub design is all about the little details
In a previous article, I detailed all the pub furniture I refinished to work with our pub design and other things we added, like LED lighting and pipe shelf brackets. The trick with a good pub design is not to overwork it; things shouldn’t be too matchy-matchy. I did go with some matching stain colours on some of the furniture to have continuity. You will need to have many small items– pictures, plates, ornaments, etc.- on the walls, as well as memorabilia and ephemera.
The theme can be sports, movies, historical, location (German, Irish, Scottish, or English items), or any other style that suits your home and personality. I have a lot of antiques and vintage bits and bobs I want to display. The fun part of pub design is you can bring out all the pieces you may have stored away because they are too kitschy for the rest of your house. If you want to display your childhood toys, throw them into the mix. The more details and things to look at, the cozier your pub design will become.
Where to find decor
I have many personal items, but I also spend a lot of time searching Facebook Marketplace and browsing secondhand stores. You don’t have to spend a lot of money; just look for pieces that match your theme. As you build your collection, and there is no rush to fill every nook and cranny, your friends and family may contribute to your room as well.
Vintage And Retro Touches we Added
Not only did we use our existing decor, we also added some great hardware and other touches to bring our pub design to life. If you read the earlier article on revamping furniture for the pub design, you would have seen some of the following, but I will also include them here.
Every good pub design uses shelves
In addition to the two cabinets and liquor shelf I refinished, we also found a fun industrial-style shelving unit on Amazon to hold our stemmed glass, including a wine glass hanger. It took a bit to put together, but I am glad my husband is a pipefitter and knows how to align the pipes. Don’t you think it adds the perfect rustic charm to our pub design?
Much needed appliances
The retro fridge was a great find that suited our retro pub design vibe well. The only problem was that it only came in one door configuration, which was backward from our plan. (Here’s one that has a reversible handle.) But it worked out in the end, and we found another cabinet I had on hand that worked on the left side of the bar.
I’m so glad I still have it because we needed a cabinet for the microwave and glasses. The cabinet is supposed to have a smoked glass door, but we have put that glass carefully away somewhere. We may or may not use it once (if) we find it. We will use the retro microwave to make popcorn on movie nights. A Keurig coffee maker (not shown above but added later) is perfect for guests wanting coffee or hot chocolate. Keep the fridge stocked with both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks to make guests feel welcome.
A place for everything is important to your pub design
Something to think about in your pub design is where everything will go—we needed storage for glasses, liquor, mix, tools, wine bottles, and microwaves. Don’t forget you will need a garbage and recycling area, plus a place for things like cocktail napkins and seasonings.
The bar cabinet I found on Marketplace was perfect – nice and deep with interior shelves and two large drawers. It holds much of what we needed to store, but we still had to add the side cabinet and shelf for glasses. The liquor bottles look great on display, and we found a nice wine bottle holder for the bottom of the side cabinet. Additionally, we added some cup hooks for the Moscow Mule mugs and coffee cups.
The china cabinet I refinished is excellent for displaying my custom boxes, collections, etc. The bottom holds all of our games for games night. We also added the bookshelf with glass doors, which will help reduce dusting.
Even more details
Lighting is a great way to add extra flare. We added LED lighting to the china cabinet and glass cabinet and backlighting to the TV. We are pleased with how the lights add that little extra touch to our pub design. Speaking of the TV, of course our old one quit right as we were ready to use it. So we did splurge slightly on a new TV. We are so happy with this one. It is a 65″ mini LED TV, and the details are so clear that you can see tiny hairs on people’s faces. I recommend it to anyone looking to upgrade their old set. And to get a TV this size under $1000 is a great deal!
You may have wondered how to hang all the signs, posters, and pictures without driving yourself crazy. I found the perfect solution for many of my wall decor items. Command Strips with hooks and loops (Velcro) work great – stick one side to the back of the item, peel off the sticky tape for the wall side, and press everything to the wall. The instructions say to put the strip up first and wait, but I had no trouble putting the pieces up in one step. (Seriously, buy these and get more than one set – I have used two already, and I know they will be my go-to from now on.)
I used these drywall hooks for heavier items like my metal and wood hangers. They make a small hole in the drywall and slide behind to create a solid hook from which to hang items; no drywall anchors are required.
Mission Accomplished
Overall, our pub design has fulfilled what we had initially designed, with a few changes along the way. We’ve had a few friends over already and have received enthusiastic responses to the pub design. What do you think? Was all our hard work over the past year worth the effort?
Finishing Touches to our pub design
We still have a lot of details to fill in. The one wall will have shelves and shadow boxes to feature more ephemera and photos and the hallway will get some pictures as well. That is the great part of pub design; it can continually grow and change as you add or move around the various décor. But for now, our living room renovation is complete. Up next, the basement bathroom and laundry room! Stay tuned.
