Tagged: beach bar, ed bauer, home bar, personal bar, tiki bar
Ed Bauer, who calls Bowley’s Quarter in Maryland home, decided to bring the islands to his backyard and did he ever! Building his Bama Breeze backyard beach bar himself, Ed created a backyard escape sure to be the envy of others. I reached out to Ed to see if he wanted to be featured on the blog and he was more than welcome to oblige. So, here in Ed’s words ….
“Our Beach Bar started as a place for family and friends to gather 20 years ago when we first bought our home. Actually it wasn’t even a bar at that point … it started with a deck I built onto the back of our home. As time went on, we started to add on a little at a time … changing things year to year and always sharing laughs and great memories with our friends and family. What started as a raised deck evolved into a tiki bar under the deck. There is always shade and cold drinks!
Luckily, I am a licensed Contractor by trade, so my labor is free. I actually enjoy building and changing things year to year and we do what we can without trying to spend a lot of money. A lot of the tropical artwork I make myself. I cut the wood and hand paint the designs … if I didn’t build it, it most likely came from the islands. My mom always brings back authentic island masks, license plates, arts and crafts from her many cruises that we display. I have a collection of sands from the world – small jars filled with real sand that we have collected from places we have been or friends and family have brought back for us as well. I also love gardening so I do all of the plants and landscaping myself. I just put on a little Bob Marley and tinker around to make it look nice.
The inspiration for our bar, which we call the “Bama Breeze” after the Jimmy Buffet song, is simple – it’s the Islands or the Island lifestyle. We have so people come here and just leave with the biggest smiles ever. They tell us they feel as if they are on vacation. Since we live in the north east USA, we do what we can in season. From spring to late fall, we make the most of it! And we love to have a warm fire under our pergola all year long. We even had a wedding here (check out the pic of the white chairs in front of the banana trees). My sister and brother in law had a beautiful island style wedding right here at the Bama Breeze.
I built a waterfall out front and a custom rain wall out back. The sound of water really makes a relaxing experience. I also wired the bar with WiFi and CAT 6 Ethernet cable so sometimes we do movie night and I put up the custom 12 foot video screen so we watch true HD movies with surround sound. This idea came after drinking too much Blue Chair Bay rum with my friend. we said “what can we add?” So outdoor movies were the idea! The kids and I stream surfing videos often from YouTube as we chill and relax.
In the end, I just feel lucky to have a great family – a beautiful wife, 3 kids, great friends and honestly more stories of awesome times at this bar then you would want to hear from me!”
Do you have a personal/home bar you’d like to have featured on the blog? It doesn’t have to be beach or tiki themed. If so, send me an email at info (at) beachbarbums (dot) com and we’ll get you on here. It’ll make you the envy of all your friends. I promise. In the meantime, check out these other articles on people who built their own bars.
