Welcome to the Black Barn Pub!

Welcome to the Black Barn Pub, where (like our logo says) our focus is on “friends, family, & pour decisions!”

When we built our barn garage, we didn’t have any intention to have a bar in it. Honestly, the bar was a complete afterthought. But it’s one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, and have had so many good times here in the short life of the barn. So if you’re interested, I’ll share a little of our backstory, and the backstory of the barn and the Black Barn Pub. Everyone loves a little backstory, right?

We live in a beautiful little village in Western New York. We moved here from San Antonio, Texas in 2016. This is the part where people typically ask…well, more accurately state with an incredulous tone, “You moved here from Texas?!? Why?” More about that in an future post, but what I will tell you is that this little village is pretty amazing. It’s completely walkable, and is speckled with restaurants, taverns, and little shops. It has a storied history, and people who take pride in where they live. If you’re a cheesy Hallmark Channel Christmas movie watcher, you’ve likely seen our village on more than one movie and didn’t even know it. Usually the movie is about a prince from some European kingdom who comes to our village and falls in love with a local girl. Like I said…cheesy. Kids here walk to school, walk to the skating rink in the Winter, and ride their bikes or walk the village at all hours of the day and evening. It’s a little slice of true Americana. Suffice it to say, we really love it here.

So when we considered moving here, we were super lucky and found a truly rare empty lot right in the middle of the village among all the older, established homes. We designed our home and found a builder to build it. But we waited on the garage. Sometimes we have more ideas than money!  We put in the garage footers and the parking pad, but waited to build the garage. And waited…

When it was finally time to build, we wanted a two-story barn, but the village code capped the structure height, precluding the second story. So after tons of research, hiring an architect to put our design into plans, and lots of other leg work, we requested and were granted a variance to build out our two-story design.  Through all of this, we never even considered a bar.

We had an Amish team frame the barn from fresh cut green timbers. They also did the rough cut board and batten siding, and the metal roof, as well. Our general contractor did all the permits, the electrical, and the rough cut shiplap interior walls. I did the detail work, trim, exterior timber pergola accents, and made all the windows and sliding barn doors. We stained the barn black, although I would have loved to do traditional Japanese sho sugi ban (flame charring the timber, then brushing off loose char and soaking in oil). Then, we named her the “Black Barn.” Seemed appropriate. As things were wrapping up and we were finally able to move our motorcycles inside after trying to keep them covered and babied through the long Winter build, I said to my wife… ”Maybe I’ll build a little bar in the corner. A moveable bar that we can use once in a while, and tuck it away when we’re not using it.” She was all for it. So, as we tend to do sometimes…we went a little “overboard,” as they say.

There was a good amount of rough cut lumber left over that I could use for the finish work and the bar build. All I really had to buy were some 2x4s for the bar frame, and some walnut butcher block for the top. We use a lot of walnut in our home and in other projects around the yard as we had to (reluctantly) take down a very large, very old black walnut tree during our home build. We had a good amount of the timber from that tree milled on site, and I’ve been using it wherever I can to pay homage to that tree. So the Black Barn Pub has lots of little walnut touches from the tree that used to shade that spot for probably 75 years or more. I’ll highlight more about that in future posts. But where we wanted walnut to keep that theme going but didn’t have the right amount or dimensions, I purchased some…like the walnut bar top. 

So with our goal of opening the Black Barn Pub to friends, family, and neighbors  for a neighborhood Halloween party, I got to business building!  And things just seemed to flow. We knew that just like any traditional pub, it’s never done. There’s always something new tacked up on the wall, various and sundry curiosities, oddities, and knick knacks will find their way onto the bar, the ceiling, and some random bare surface. So the Black Barn Pub will always be a work in progress.

This site is our attempt to share that work in progress. It’ll be our way of documenting our little corner of Heaven, and hopefully share some great memories of fun times yet to be had. Of course, we’ll post photos and videos on Instagram and YouTube for the world to see…but this is where the collective memories will reside.

If you’ve found your way here, have a look around. Maybe you’ll be inspired with an idea or two for your own little corner of the world! While this is the first post, I’ll also copy this over to the “About” page…so don’t be surprised to see the same thing if you head over that way.

All the best  🙂