Working For The Rich & Famous P3 Custom Wine Wall

Oftentimes the wealthy won't take no for an answer. In this case the customer wanted me to build him a custom wine wall with specific properties. The span had to hold 5 bottles across, the rods could be no thicker than 5/8", they had to be gold, and it had to have two glass doors with a solid glass back. I knew what he wanted was not manufactured by any vendors I knew of, but I tried a few out anyway to see if they could do a custom job.

The most flexible vendor wouldn't do a span over 36" without having a support panel or bracket and they didn't make any rods 72" long. So I told the customer that no vendor would make what he wanted. That left me to run around for a whole week trying to engineer it and make it work. The problem was the rods. Sure, I could find some rods that would span the opening and not flex under the weight of the bottles, but the rods I sourced were 3/4" and the customer wouldn't accept it.

I continued working on another project of his while trying to source the right rods. Then he called me on a Saturday and said he thought he had found something that might work, a grounding rod for your home. These are meant to be used as lightning rod grounds, but we decided to gave it a try.

When I arrived Monday we tested the rod for strength and it held up quite well for the span so we decided to proceed with the project.

I had the framers frame & head out the opening to what I needed. I cut my poplar(wood species) jambs and set them, then laid out the rod positions and began to drill each hole. These had to be dead on it level or the you would see them out of level because of the wide span.

When I had finished this portion the painters came in and sprayed it before I began setting the rods. In the meantime I spent the next two days spray painting each of the 26 rods and 26 regular metal washers gold. The washers were used to give each rod termination into the jamb a finished look.

Then it was time to install the rods. The washers had to be put on before I inserted each rod into the jamb then glued into place.

The customer loved it and we were good to go.

That is until about the 4th row. We noticed sagging in some of the rods, but not others. Each rod extended about 6" into 2 - 2x4s in the walls. So we knew they had enough support inside the wall, but why were only some sagging and not others? What I discovered is I had to make each hole about 13/16" in diameter in order to get the rods in without a fight. This was just enough space to weaken the centers of some of the rods so a simple solution was to shim them in the hole so they were tight. That worked and we had a green light to finish!

I finished up my part and called my glass guys to come in and do their part.

A week later the glass was installed, wall paper went up and this is the finished product.

Backside.

It's nice to have a customer push you to do something that you think can't be done. That challenge and reward is an awesome feeling. Now both you and I know how to build a custom wall not even wine rack vendors will do!

We are still working on the island for the barbecue area and once that is all finished I'll post about that.

If you are interested in where this all started here are my two previous posts about the other work I've done in this house.

https://ecency.com/hive-178708/@rt395/working-for-the-rich-and
https://ecency.com/hive-178708/@rt395/working-for-the-rich-and-765053d7f2ad9

Thanks for reading!

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