An online speakeasy of potent potables and other pabulam.

The previous installment of this series is located here.

The ball really got rolling yesterday at 7:30am when the contractors showed up to begin the basement renovation. Tearing down walls, rewiring the current lights, and adding additional lights were on the docket. We got everything set before having to run out the door to get the baby to day care and us to the office. All day, I kept my phone within grabbing distance in case the contractors called or texted. Maybe I watch too much HGTV, but I had a pit in my stomach waiting for that “We have an issue . . . ” call. Thankfully, it never really came. The electrician called mid-morning and asked about lighting configurations, locations, and the (unplanned) installation of an access panel in the ceiling. The access panel needed to be installed to bring the basement electrical up to code.

In talking with various contractors I knew that we’d need a solution on fixing the holes in the floor once the walls came down. The easiest, and most affordable, solution was to use the flooring located in two adjacent closets to fill in the holes in the bar area and replace the flooring in the closets with something new or similar enough to what was removed. To that end I went to Home Depot and bought two cases of flooring that?almost matched what was currently there.

Hey, it’s going inside a closet, it ain’t gots to be a perfect match.

When I got home yesterday though, I learned that the flooring I bought was too thick to match what was there. The way one guy described it, “What was here was the lowest grade. What you bought was the best. What we put in was middle-of-the-road.” That was an interesting lesson in flooring. For me at least. Luckily, what they ended up putting in is an even closer match to what I bought that it’s virtually seamless.

Needless to say, I was really excited to see the work after I got home. I practically sprinted from the car to take a look. What I saw was amazing. Although unfinished in several places and more electrical still to do, it matched my vision to a tee.

This is what the closed off portion of the basement looked like before we moved in. If you remember from the last post I called the enclosed room the “weird room.” Here is what the space looks like now:

Standing a bit further back from the perspective of the picture above, you can see how different it looks. We had wondered about the use of this room ever since we first looked at the house. Shaped odd, power outlets high on the walls, and no, that’s right?no air registers really made this room something of a conundrum. After talking with the contractors, they confirmed what I had guessed, namely that the walls we just removed were put up by a previous owner to make this area a bedroom/living area. The high outlets were probable placed there because of a countertop which was removed. I bet if they had never put up the walls to begin with, they could have asked a lot more for the house. Another good lesson in long term planning when it comes to owning/selling a home.

Here is a close-up of the lights we had installed that will be above the bar. We’ll put vintage Edison bulbs in them when all is said and done.

In the last post, I asked folks to email me thoughts on their own renovations, home bars, or what I’m currently doing. My friend Sylvan from?Tasty Libations?emailed and strongly suggested we not scuttle the sink/plumbing from the plans. Has he stated;

“You won’t miss the money after a few months, but you’ll regret not having the sink every. single. time. you need to wash something. And every time you do use it, you?ll smile.”

While I don’t disagree with him, at this stage of our finances we just couldn’t make the sink and plumbing work without sacrificing something, which, quite frankly, is higher on the priority list such as the backbar cabinets and seating. But the option for adding a sink is always there in the future. Of course, we may have to find a new location for it since the countertop will be one huge slab of granite, but it’s still an option. While it does suck a bit, we also get a bit of luck on the sink front.

If you look at the photo above (sans walls) you’ll notice two columns. The one on the left supports the ductwork in that particular bulkhead. The one on the right was a bit of a mystery. Does it house anything other than support for the cross beam of the house? Most likely it was structural so we couldn’t move it, but was it hiding anything else? Maybe something like . . . plumbing?

This my friends is what we found. Apparently it is the main drainage pipe for the entire house. If you look closely at the bottom third of the pipe you’ll see a 1.5 inch pipe nubbin. (I’m pretty sure that’s a plumbing technical term.) Our contractor said that at some point there was a sink within the vicinity of this pipe and that nubbin was where the sink drain connected to the main drain. HUZZAH!!! Of course, unless we do some more investigative demolition, we don’t know where the water for the sink came from. But the point is, we have a pipe! And for future projects that could come in quite handy.

That’s it for this update. The next update should have the space completed and ready for back-bar cabinet installation and the bar itself. Cheers!

Welcome to? Bars You Must Try, the first in a series (until I get bored/forget/distracted/explode) of odes to bars that I believe it is imperative one visits soon. There’s no specific definition of what I’m looking for in the bar, just that I enjoy it, be it speakeasy or mall restaurant, dive or fancy schmancy (that is a technical term), just that it has good drinks and more importantly, good people. We’re starting off this series with Tom Brown’s Left Door, which just opened in January.

Left Door’s Front Door

It can be easy to simplify how the old Passenger/Columbia Room setup was. Columbia Room was for fancy cocktails, Passenger was not-so-fancy and a bit more simple. Especially after being there on nights like Fridays and Saturdays when it was packed to the brim with the beer and a shot crowd, it could be easy to forget that the folks there could put together some kickass classic cocktails.

After it closed, and the two joints moving to separate locations (Columbia Room is now open in Blagden Alley, and that’ll be the next installment in this series, while the Passenger will reopen later this year in Shaw), Tom Brown opened up Left Door in the Logan Circle area this January after some delays, and it is, perhaps, the essence of a classic cocktail bar.

It’s not ostentatious on the outside – you can see the front door on the left up top, it’s barely marked – but inside it’s nice and quiet. It’s like a meditation on good cocktails and tea (which it also specializes in). If there is beer on the menu (there aren’t any drafts), I haven’t even looked for them, and I’m the guy whose Twitter handle is “BeerAndAShot”.

Mick Shaking a Drink

He pulled in Mick Perrigo, who worked with Tom back at Hogo, the “dark tiki” bar that also closed in 2014. (Full disclosure: Tom and Mick are both friends of mine, and I got to bartend / pour punch there the last night, but if you read this site you know already I’m entirely biased in favor of my friends all the time and wear that on my sleeve.) Mick has been front and center when I’ve been there, along with Jason and another bartender whose name I have completely forgotten and will update with when I find out.

Part of the menu

But it’s not just all gorgeous architecture (I almost said scenery but didn’t want Mick to know I was talking about him) and vintage barware. One of the standouts is the classic liquor collection – and it’s not just old, delicious, and yes, expensive as shit liquor but you can get drinks made with them. Want to see what a $100 cocktail tastes like? Just pony up the cash.

(I am constantly tempted just to say I’ve done it. Then I remember my credit card bill.)

Tom has a deep love for spirits like those. He took a few of us through a tour of a number of them a couple of years ago including the Black Tot rum, old whiskeys, and enough other things that I Irish goodbye-ed without paying either of two tabs I had running (and boy oh boy did I feel guilty for WEEKS about that).

I didn’t write down the name of this drink but it was delicious.

A bit more about the space: it’s a quiet, well decorated spot on the second floor of the building. The middle part is mostly the bar, and by the windows there’s several seats and such for small groups to gather. I think it’s pretty beautiful, but do keep in mind it is not large, nor do they even have a kitchen (they do have some snacks on the menu). Personally, I like to go before dinner, because if I have a couple of cocktails I’ll often forget to have dinner unless Marshall is there to kick me in the nuts.

Ignore the sketchy guy in the mirror

Oh, for the quiet meditation of the adult cocktail bar. Guess I need to go there again, like probably Thursday.

If you’ve been, feel free to share your thoughts with us on Twitter or our Facebook page!

– ?SeanMike

One time, for a first date, we met at The Passenger for brunch on a Sunday. She showed up straight from a run (unchanged, unshowered), fell asleep eating, and then said she didn’t feel a spark on our date.

I liked going there for dates because the dates were usually terrible and Alex, Julia, Jade, and K. Clare would help me figure out how it went (wrong).

I’ve never really had a date or a girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. A few years ago I was dating someone over Valentine’s Day, but she was in Kentucky for the holiday and didn’t like flowers. That’s why we broke up, in the end, I tried to send her flowers, they called her cell phone for delivery (which she hadn’t turned off during a meeting), and she called me up screaming at me to dump me.

Let me get your jacket for you…

Back in October, I got an email about a Canadian whisky called Pendleton Midnight. I said, why, yes, I would like some, and they said, sure, here you go. I got the box for it and put it on my coffee table and let it box age* ( * – not a thing) until, uhhh, last night.

But then the other day they told me about a cocktail competition they’re hosting and I was like, oh, I should try this whisky. And write about it, obvs. And take pictures of it because PR/marketing folks are always like “we have hi-res images” and I’m always like “ha I got a cell phone and shaky hands” which is WAY realer than hi-res promo images, right?

(That competition: it’s open to everybody! One winner per month, through June, and you might get a chance to go to their final competition and win cash and prizes. I like contests that are open to everybody. And once a month, hey guys, that’s, uh, a couple of chances? How far away is June? It’s so cold. I don’t know anymore.)

So I finally cracked her open and … wow. That’s some damn good whisky.

That’s a nice outfit you’re wearing

It’s rich, smooth, and delicious. They have tasting notes in the booklet that came with it, but I’ll put it this way: I don’t know if I’ve had another Canadian whisky with the depth of flavor I got out of this one.

It also came with some cocktail recipes, which normally I laugh at and throw away. I did the same thing here, but laughing in a good way: they’re three recipes. A Manhattan and an Old Fashioned are both listed, made in the proper ratios (IMHO) of 2-1 for the Manhattan and just a bit of sugar and bitters with the whisky in the Old Fashioned. The third is just two ounces, neat.

Let’s get you out of that dress

Pendleton is imported from Canada and bottled by Hood River in Oregon. Some Googling didn’t lead me to know who distills it in Canada (not that it really matters, to be honest, as they’re not claiming to distill it themselves – I just like to know). But with all that branding and such, it boils down to that it’s a smooth, delicious whisky even neat at 90 proof.

Oh, you look good like that

That’s why this year my date for Valentine’s Day will be Pendleton Midnight Whisky. Unlike that time I went to Estadio on a date and she told me that she was going to start a website calling out servers and bartenders by name and establishment if she didn’t get good enough service, I will probably instead drink it alone. Like the aftermath of so many bad dates, it’ll probably end the same, with me entirely too drunk, helping to donate to charity, then sleeping alone. But hey, sometimes that’s all a guy needs on a Valentine’s Day night.

I was re-reading my last post and at the end, I asked if anyone has ever built a home bar and had stories to share to let me know in the comments section. I completely forgot that we disabled the comments section soooooo . . . If you have any stories or advice to share shoot me an email at Marshall@scofflawsden.com?and I’ll share in the next post.

We’ve been in the house for a little over two weeks now. Moving was an experience. We were scheduled to move on a Saturday. The weather gods decided that Saturday was the perfect day to have a huge snowstorm on the East Coast. So the move was rescheduled to the Thursday?before the storm. It was hectic. The movers finished everything by Thursday afternoon and on Friday, I had four contractors out to look at the basement, take measurements and prepare quotes. We also had the cable/internet guy out and luckily got everything hooked up just before the storm hit.

Dealing with the contractors has been interesting. Most came in, measured the space, talked briefly about the project and left. Some, spent considerably more time discussing the project, providing ideas and suggestions, and generally seemed to be more interested in the job. After a week of having a couple more contractors in, we slowly started to get estimates. Some were laughably high. Some pulled out of consideration because the project was “too small” for them. ?One of these latter contractors actually said that he would be happy to do the work, even though it was too small, if I agreed to meet a minimum of $25k. Twenty. Five. Thousand. Dollars. Right, that was ridiculous. I mean who would say yes to this? It’s not like we’re having the entire basement remodeled. Crazy. A few of the estimates came in under our budget but still seemed high for the work we wanted to do.

When we met with all of the contractors we clearly detailed everything we wanted done to the space – two walls to tear down, some plumbing and a sink installed, light electrical work, and cabinet purchase/installation. After receiving a handful of quotes, we decided that the plumbing aspect was too time consuming and too costly at this particular time.?It was a very intense discussion with my wife over making this a true “wet bar.” It would be fantastic to have a fully function sink right behind the bar to wash glasses, tools, fruit, etc. and not have to cart dirty items upstairs to the kitchen. However, there is a full bathroom right around the corner from where the bar is being placed with a perfectly good sink installed. And truly, I don’t think we’ll be serving so many people at one time that taking a few dirty glasses to the dishwasher in the kitchen is a big deal.

I also went to Home Depot and met with a kitchen design person and had them draw up plans for a service bar counter and cabinets. I’m currently waiting for the finished estimate on these to see if Home Depot is a good option for this aspect of the bar. It was really exciting to see my vision put in a 3D print out containing many of the very specific details I requested. I’m looking forward to seeing the final numbers.

As promised in my last post, below are a few pictures of the basement as it looks now, before any work is done. In the next post, I hope to have some “after” shots of the basement and some more info on the service bar area.

This is looking down the basement hallway. the steps coming down from the living room are to the right and the bathroom is to the left. At the end of the hall, just before the carpet, there is a door on each side. To the right is a storage closet. To the left is the entrance to the “weird room.” This is the room we’re removing.

This is affectionately called the “weird room” due to it’s shape and unclear purpose. We think it was an office, but it could have also been a bedroom. This is the room we’re opening up to the rest of the basement. The wall directly to the left (door jam) will be removed as will the perpendicular wall to the left.

This is looking at the enclosed “weird room” from the main basement floor. The wall right in front will be removed. The door to the right is to the utility room (hot water heater, HVAC, etc.) The carpet will eventually be replaced with hardwood or the like.

This is the wood burning fireplace and sliding door to the fenced in patio.