Beginnings: How Paradise Bar & Grill Shaped Up

Beginnings

   Let me first say that I'm not the crafty type. Sure, I can turn out decent graphics on a PC, but things like wood, nails and glue are (for me) usually tools of necessity, and not creativity. Nevertheless, my desire to create a "real" bar to house PB&G pretty much dictated an unorthodox stage or set. An ordinary doll house or room box just couldn't contain what I had in mind. Part of the reason why this site is so late in coming is that I've spent a LOT of time trying to find a pre-made shell of some kind. What I decided on was more like a television or movie set than a finished building.
   Once I accepted the inevitable, I did some preliminary measurements and was surprised to realize just how big this sucker was going to be when complete. Space in my 'creative room' is at a premium, but PB&G has secured two-thirds of a desktop for it's foundation. The base of the bar is approximately three feet across, and eighteen inches deep. The pic at right shows the unfinished shell, made from sturdy 1" thick pine with a half inch plywood back. The supports for the second floor are just thin strips, un-attached to the actual floor. This makes the 2nd floor a shelf that is (fairly) easily removed, which is handy in a number of ways. That shelf is recessed about a half-foot "inside" the bar, for a balcony effect. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I left those wall gaps on the second floor.
   The recessed edge of the second floor made adding a staircase much easier, and with a bit of searching I found a nice one in the correct scale. Speaking of which, the entire bar is set up in the standard 1 inch = 1 foot scale, which is as close to actual DC Direct scale as I could get. I did have one slight hurdle since I used a pre-fab staircase: the bar's ceilings (equivalent to about 14 feet) were much higher than the standard dollhouse ceiling. So that meant building a platform to go at the base of the stairs. Though an open floor plan is easiest to work with when you're using a camera, I still wanted to partition off the kitchen and bathroom. This was accomplished by building a "T" shaped, self-standing wall with division between the kitchen and toidy. I decided to use an "L" shaped bar, situated next to the kitchen, and the round dancefloor pretty much filled up the rest of the inner bar. I had initially planned to add an office to the second floor, but a lack of "standable" space on the first floor meant the seating area would take the place of an office upstairs.

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   The thumbnails above are all from the early stages of construction. #1 Shows the exterior paint job and the base paint for the inside. #2 is a frontal view of the same stage. The interior walls took a long time to finish, and included no less than twenty coats of various paints (green, gold, white, black) and gloss paint sealers to achieve the "marble" mirror finish. Unfortunately, yours truly didn't sand as well as he could, and the back wall retains some of the wood grain. #3 and #4 above are closeups of the bar and dancefloor. My original plan for the bar was to build a long cabinet with shelves underneath, but with so many details for other pieces banging about in my head, I opted to make something simpler. The bar is an "L" made out of 2" thick solid hardwood. (No shelves or storage space, alas!) The pieces were primed after being attached, and covered on three sides with black felt. The top uses decorative ceramic tile strips, glued to the base. These pics don't show the wood trim that was added to the front edge of the bar (see below for more detail). The dancefloor is a pre-made wooden disc, with beveled edges. I glued a round mirror to the painted base, and added a tinsel-like strip to the mirror edge. Simple, and relatively decent looking. I also made two tall tables, using a wide wood "spindle" base and square ceramic tiles.

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   Thumbnail #5 shows much of the furniture and appliances for the bar, though some of these pieces were later painted to match the green & gold color scheme. #6 shows just a few of the teeny tiny items I bought to stock and decorate the bar, from fake food and drink to hardware to disco balls. The next group of pics is from several weeks later, after the interior walls had been painted, and the second floor assembled. In #7 you have a head-on view of the set, with carpeting, stairs, railing and molding in place. I used wide molding to hide the underside of the second floor, and the reflective light string as well. You can see the big drop at the foot of the stairs, without the pedestal. I got a lot of use out of a roll of rubber matting, the sort of non-slip pads people use on kitchen countertops. There are strips of the mat acting as stair treads on the staircase, and also on the floor in the pool table area. I tried painting the mat white for a faux-tile look in the kitchen and bath (lower right), but the mat remained sticky and had to be replaced with felt.
    #8 is a closeup of the staircase, and shows more of the detail on the edge of the 2nd floor. #9 is a good view of the 2nd floor, unfurnished for the most part. Note that at this point the wall gaps on either side hadn't been filled. #10 is a view of the first floor, and includes a view of the finished stair platform. (Yup, more rubber matting on the pedestal sides...sooo stylish!) #11 is a fairly complete look at the first floor with the basic components in place. Note you can only see the face of the interior wall; the kitchen and bath are on the right side of the white partition. This partition took some time to detail and assemble, with three apertures (kitchen entrance, serving window and bathroom entrance), and not a little painting and trim work. The light string is also in place here, though this pic was taken before the loose cord was taped out of sight. That big, unsightly hole in the back wall was a necessity for the electrical plug, but is high enough to be out of view in story panels. #12 is a variant view that includes the dancefloor in the left corner.

   The next group of pictures are from the tail end of bar construction. Though most of the furniture appears in this set, the final wall decorations (mirrors and art) weren't in place at the time. #13 shows the left-most corner of the second floor, which is a sitting room. #14 continues the view to the right, and shows the center of the second floor. #15 completes the top floor, with a view of the pool table area. #16 is a split-level view of the area around the stairs. #17 offers a good view of the pedestal at the base of the stairs. (Can you tell that said pedestal is made from four pieces of square board? Each is felt covered, and the assembled platform has rubber mesh on the non-stair sides.) #18 offers another view of the dancefloor, though without the mirrors and mirror balls in place. #19 is a head-on view of the bar, including a "cabinet" I built (rather hurriedly) to display various bottles, cash register, etc.
   #20 moves us a little farther to the right, and shows the partition wall that separates the bar from the kitchen and bath. #21 gives a closer look at the service window to the kitchen, though it's too dark to see the interior. Last, #22 is a view of the interior of the bathroom, which is pretty plain. Like the rest of the bar, space in the bath is at a premium, but allows most of my DCD figures to get around. The finished floor plan is very close to my original designs, though I wish I had made the base longer.
   All told, this project took me around two months to complete, though I suspect the contents of the bar will be subject to change as time goes by. As you might guess, the bar is very heavy and somewhat difficult to maneuver for moving. But then again, I know the construction is solid, so moving it is less painstaking than moving your average dollhouse. As a finished set or stage for adventures, I'm very pleased with the results. The only thing that I'm not 100% happy with is the decor, but fortunately it's much easier to change decorations than to add more rooms or levels. Persistence and imagination served me best in this project, and regardless of how highly you value your skill at such crafts, I think it's safe to say that ANYbody could do what I did. If building something like this from scratch is too much work, remember that there are pre-made kits that you can adapt to your desires. It was a LOT of work building PB&G, but a lot of fun too. Best of luck to you in all your creative work!

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Beginnings Let me first say that I'm not the crafty type. Sure, I can turn out decent graphics on a PC, but things like wood, nails and glue are (for me) usually tools of necessity, and not creativity. Nevertheless, my desire to create a "real" bar to house PB&G pretty much dictated an unorthodox stage or set. An ordinary doll house or room box just couldn't contain what I had in mind. Part of the reason why this site is so late in coming is that I've spent a LOT of time trying to find a pre-made shell of some kind. What I decided on was more like a television or movie set than a finished building. Once I accepted the inevitable, I did some preliminary measurements and was surprised to realize just how big this sucker was going to be when complete. Space in my 'creative room' is at a premium, but PB&G has secured two-thirds of a desktop for it's foundation. The base of the bar is approximately three feet across, and eighteen inches deep. The pic at right shows the unfinished shell, made from sturdy 1" thick pine with a half inch plywood back. The supports for the second floor are just thin strips, un-attached to the actual floor. This makes the 2nd floor a shelf that is (fairly) easily removed, which is handy in a number of ways. That shelf is recessed about a half-foot "inside" the bar, for a balcony effect. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I left those wall gaps on the second floor. The recessed edge of the second floor made adding a staircase much easier, and with a bit of searching I found a nice one in the correct scale. Speaking of which, the entire bar is set up in the standard 1 inch = 1 foot scale, which is as close to actual DC Direct scale as I could get. I did have one slight hurdle since I used a pre-fab staircase: the bar's ceilings (equivalent to about 14 feet) were much higher than the standard dollhouse ceiling. So that meant building a platform to go at the base of the stairs. Though an open floor plan is easiest to work with when you're using a camera, I still wanted to partition off the kitchen and bathroom. This was accomplished by building a "T" shaped, self-standing wall with division between the kitchen and toidy. I decided to use an "L" shaped bar, situated next to the kitchen, and the round dancefloor pretty much filled up the rest of the inner bar. I had initially planned to add an office to the second floor, but a lack of "standable" space on the first floor meant the seating area would take the place of an office upstairs.
1	2	3	4
The thumbnails above are all from the early stages of construction. #1 Shows the exterior paint job and the base paint for the inside. #2 is a frontal view of the same stage. The interior walls took a long time to finish, and included no less than twenty coats of various paints (green, gold, white, black) and gloss paint sealers to achieve the "marble" mirror finish. Unfortunately, yours truly didn't sand as well as he could, and the back wall retains some of the wood grain. #3 and #4 above are closeups of the bar and dancefloor. My original plan for the bar was to build a long cabinet with shelves underneath, but with so many details for other pieces banging about in my head, I opted to make something simpler. The bar is an "L" made out of 2" thick solid hardwood. (No shelves or storage space, alas!) The pieces were primed after being attached, and covered on three sides with black felt. The top uses decorative ceramic tile strips, glued to the base. These pics don't show the wood trim that was added to the front edge of the bar (see below for more detail). The dancefloor is a pre-made wooden disc, with beveled edges. I glued a round mirror to the painted base, and added a tinsel-like strip to the mirror edge. Simple, and relatively decent looking. I also made two tall tables, using a wide wood "spindle" base and square ceramic tiles.
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9	10	11	12
Thumbnail #5 shows much of the furniture and appliances for the bar, though some of these pieces were later painted to match the green & gold color scheme. #6 shows just a few of the teeny tiny items I bought to stock and decorate the bar, from fake food and drink to hardware to disco balls. The next group of pics is from several weeks later, after the interior walls had been painted, and the second floor assembled. In #7 you have a head-on view of the set, with carpeting, stairs, railing and molding in place. I used wide molding to hide the underside of the second floor, and the reflective light string as well. You can see the big drop at the foot of the stairs, without the pedestal. I got a lot of use out of a roll of rubber matting, the sort of non-slip pads people use on kitchen countertops. There are strips of the mat acting as stair treads on the staircase, and also on the floor in the pool table area. I tried painting the mat white for a faux-tile look in the kitchen and bath (lower right), but the mat remained sticky and had to be replaced with felt. #8 is a closeup of the staircase, and shows more of the detail on the edge of the 2nd floor. #9 is a good view of the 2nd floor, unfurnished for the most part. Note that at this point the wall gaps on either side hadn't been filled. #10 is a view of the first floor, and includes a view of the finished stair platform. (Yup, more rubber matting on the pedestal sides...sooo stylish!) #11 is a fairly complete look at the first floor with the basic components in place. Note you can only see the face of the interior wall; the kitchen and bath are on the right side of the white partition. This partition took some time to detail and assemble, with three apertures (kitchen entrance, serving window and bathroom entrance), and not a little painting and trim work. The light string is also in place here, though this pic was taken before the loose cord was taped out of sight. That big, unsightly hole in the back wall was a necessity for the electrical plug, but is high enough to be out of view in story panels. #12 is a variant view that includes the dancefloor in the left corner.
The next group of pictures are from the tail end of bar construction. Though most of the furniture appears in this set, the final wall decorations (mirrors and art) weren't in place at the time. #13 shows the left-most corner of the second floor, which is a sitting room. #14 continues the view to the right, and shows the center of the second floor. #15 completes the top floor, with a view of the pool table area. #16 is a split-level view of the area around the stairs. #17 offers a good view of the pedestal at the base of the stairs. (Can you tell that said pedestal is made from four pieces of square board? Each is felt covered, and the assembled platform has rubber mesh on the non-stair sides.) #18 offers another view of the dancefloor, though without the mirrors and mirror balls in place. #19 is a head-on view of the bar, including a "cabinet" I built (rather hurriedly) to display various bottles, cash register, etc. #20 moves us a little farther to the right, and shows the partition wall that separates the bar from the kitchen and bath. #21 gives a closer look at the service window to the kitchen, though it's too dark to see the interior. Last, #22 is a view of the interior of the bathroom, which is pretty plain. Like the rest of the bar, space in the bath is at a premium, but allows most of my DCD figures to get around. The finished floor plan is very close to my original designs, though I wish I had made the base longer. All told, this project took me around two months to complete, though I suspect the contents of the bar will be subject to change as time goes by. As you might guess, the bar is very heavy and somewhat difficult to maneuver for moving. But then again, I know the construction is solid, so moving it is less painstaking than moving your average dollhouse. As a finished set or stage for adventures, I'm very pleased with the results. The only thing that I'm not 100% happy with is the decor, but fortunately it's much easier to change decorations than to add more rooms or levels. Persistence and imagination served me best in this project, and regardless of how highly you value your skill at such crafts, I think it's safe to say that ANYbody could do what I did. If building something like this from scratch is too much work, remember that there are pre-made kits that you can adapt to your desires. It was a LOT of work building PB&G, but a lot of fun too. Best of luck to you in all your creative work!		13	14
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