More money in the tank means less for the local bar.
Crude oil again touched the $100 per barrel mark today signaling a return to high gas prices. Unfortunately, the more money we have to dump into our fuel tanks, the less money we have for spending at the local bar. With recent smoking bans, the local bar owners are hurting enough already, but with rising tensions in the mid east and summer price hikes just around the corner, the cost of entertainment is definitely heading higher.
A recent trip to a local bar was proof that more people are staying at home, which was immediately evident by the complete lack of bar patrons. It’s clear these local bar owners are hurting.
A mug of stale beer was $3.25 and a nasty burger & fries was $5.75. The two of us had the special and a couple beers which totaled $24.50! A little high for a good case of heartburn. These days frugality is in order, I could buy a case of beer and a couple of sliders for less.
Now I’m not saying you should stop pumping money into your local economy and having an occasional night out, but at the same time don’t let yourself sit at home, alone and bored, build a Home Bar!
Once your home bar is completed, you’ll save loads of money while entertaining your friends in the safety of your own man cave. It’s all the fun without the hassle and half the expense.
The Easy Home Bar Plans website gives you all the plans and design ideas you need to brighten up your social life and bring fun back into your otherwise ho-hum home life.
May 2008: Just a few short years ago, it was nothing to dump ten bucks in the gas tank and drive five hours for a two night vacation in the north woods. Today that trip, financially speaking, is no longer a great idea. The trip burns about 20 gallons of gas (30 in my truck) for the round trip and today that will run over $78.20 (and rising) leaving much less cash for food and entertainment.
Unless you have a large stash of disposable income, vacationing away from home is fast becoming less practical for many families. So what’s the solution?
Take a Staycation! “Staycatioing” is fast becoming the “green” way to save green while investing your money into home improvements. Stay at home and invest the money you’d normally spend on a vacation into an unused space in your home; like a basement home theater or for summer months your backyard. Sure many people feel trapped by their daily grind and just have to get away for a vacation, but what if everything you ran 100 miles away to enjoy was right in your own backyard?
Taking a staycation has many advantages:
- No long “are we there yet?” drive.
- No speeding tickets.
- No traffic hassles.
- Clean facilities nearby.
- No crowds.
- Quick escape when weather turns ugly.
Taking just one staycation per year can not only save money, but also helps the overall gas problem. With the number of people out there today, we all need to start doing our part.
Once we got to our vacation destination, the things we enjoyed the most were simply sitting under the tent and next to the fire, so rather than spend hundreds of dollars each year on the long trek to increasingly congested campgrounds and resorts, we decide to bring the best of the resorts to our back yard. Now we have our own relaxing gazebo, jacuzzi and fire pit right in our backyard.
Money spent on a vacation is gone the day your vacation ends, but money spent on items you can continue to use keeps providing fun and enjoyment year after year.
We decided a few years ago to start using the money we normally put aside for vacationing for improving our back yard. We first erected a fence, which for our rather large back yard was equal to a winter Mexico vacation we had planned to take. The next year we again stayed home and installed a Jacuzzi hot tub. Now we can feel like we’re in Mexico every day of the year!
This year we are continuing our staycation tradition adding more trees and a 12′x24′ garden garage with an attached 10′x12′ greenhouse. The greenhouse will help us offset the rising price of fruits & vegetables, allowing us to become less dependent of store bought produce.
This year, try taking a staycation, you’ll find it more relaxing than an expensive trip!
Tell us about your staycation experiences.
Update 2011: We’ve take the whole staycation idea to a new level. The images above are from early 2008. Since then we have added another gardening shed, a 10′x12′ greenhouse and a 15′ x 30 three season room to our “staycation” resort. The indoor hot tub now makes for a resort like atmosphere year round, even in the dead of our Wisconsin winter.
When you finally decide to save money by entertaining at home and want to build a home bar, you have two choices in planning your unused room or basement remodeling bar project.
1. Get out a pencil and paper to sketch up a working bar design or…
2. Join a website that offers a bunch of tried and tested bar designs and a bar photograph gallery with thousands of pictures that is second to none for finding great design ideas.
No matter if you are an expert woodworker or a complete novice, there is only one site the gives you so much for so little. Consider for a moment what you time is worth. Even If you make minimum wage, our bar plans design website will save you money by saving hours of guesswork and time. The fact is that we help you do it right the first time. Other sites sell plans with rickety designs that even their own members claim are “shabby” in their framing techniques. When a bar if framed up, it should be solid, but according to members of one other site, once the bar is framed up, it’s wobbly and unstable. That indicates a poor design. Our designs are rock solid even before the side sheeting goes on and are designed to take all the wild party abuse you can throw at them.
The Easy Home Bar Plans site will help with great time saving ideas and designs for your home bar. Other look-a-like bar plan sites deliver less that one tenth the amount of useful content.
Combination bar perfect for your basement game room / rec room layout.
Versatility is also something you should look for and not just an empty claim of such. Our designs can be easily modified and combined to create unique and beautiful bar layouts that will be the focal point of your basement rec-room. As you can see, this classic bar and bar back combination is possible by simply combining our EHBP-09 45 degree corner bar (leg lengths modified by using the CHBD resizing tool) and our EMBP-01 3 in 1 Combo Bar Back project plans. Both are available for resizing for literally thousands of possible custom size layouts.
So if you’re interested in saving money by building you own home bar and saving money by entertaining in the safety and comfort of your own home, then check out the rest of the Easy Home Bar Plans website for the best bar plans available on the web.
All bar blueprint plans are available for instant download. All plans documents are in universally accepted Adobe PDF format. Full access to Forum, Gallery and Custom Home Bar Designer Tool included with your membership. Join Today
Once we got to our vacation destination, the things we enjoyed the most were simply sitting under the tent and next to the fire, so rather than spend hundreds of dollars each year on the long trek to increasingly congested campgrounds and resorts, we decide to bring the best of the resorts to our back yard. Now we have our own relaxing gazebo, jacuzzi and fire pit right in our backyard.
We decided a few years ago to start using the money we normally put aside for vacationing for improving our back yard. We first erected a fence, which for our rather large back yard was equal to a winter Mexico vacation we had planned to take. The next year we again stayed home and installed a Jacuzzi hot tub. Now we can feel like we’re in Mexico every day of the year!
