home bar idea

My wife and i just bought our first home and one of my first projects is going to be a home bar for the basement. We've been tossing around ideas and came up with an idea for the bar top. I just wanted to mention it here and get some feedback as i do have some concerns.

My bartop idea is to pretty much make a picture frame about 1 inch deep. Inside the frame i want to put assorted hops and grains and then use a pourable epoxy resin on top of it. My concern is, will the grains and hops wilt and die over time or would it be preserved in the resin?

Another question is, once the resin hardens, can you use polyurethane on top of the resin?

no help here but i like the idea

Yeah I don't think I would try it, that resin stuff is expensive and would probably a pain in the butt to work with poured over hops and barley, I would hate to have to redo it.

If you do try it I would put down a thin layer of resin before the hops/grains, if they are against wood they may spoil since the wood is permeable.

Check this site out:
http://www.bestbartopepoxy.com/bartop-epoxy/

Looks like its been done. Not sure on longevity though.

Hops the restaurant, which I haven’t see an open one in many years, had grain in their tables. It was probably about 2 cups worth in a clump. I assume it was real grains.

2B_Brewing said:

Hops the restaurant, which I haven’t see an open one in many years, had grain in their tables. It was probably about 2 cups worth in a clump. I assume it was real grains.

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Did it look nice? I would to attampt this and have it look like garbage.

i have used this bar topper before. It does great with just about everything. even paper doesnt get see through or wet looking. The thing you would have to do is put down a small layer first and let all the hops and grains glue in place, then put the top layer. Its fairly self leveling. I dont know why you would need to put any polyurethane on top.

We still have a Hops restaurant open here and the grain coated in epoxy looks pretty cool. Seems to have a slight yellow hue but might be the resin they used.

CTBrewer said:

Did it look nice? I would to attampt this and have it look like garbage.

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I thought it looked great

Try a small test area, on a plate or something, just to see how it looks. Better yet, build a small 1'x1' wood box with the wood you plan on using and test it there