HQ Build-Out: Episode 7

The whiskey wall is up, the doors are orange, and I can finally taste the finish line.

Ninety-six shelves, and not a single bottle from my home collection on them. Yet.

I hope you survived Bourbon Heritage Month. It's been weeks since the last update, and I'll be honest, there wasn't much worth filming. A build like this is mostly coordination and waiting on other people's calendars. If you're in the Discord, you've seen a few photos trickle out. Everyone else, here's where we landed.

The big one: the whiskey wall is built. My buddy John cut and set all 96 horizontal pieces, and he was fastidious about every one, so raise a glass to John. I loaded it with what we already keep at the shop (minus the tasting stock) just to see how it looked. It looks fantastic. It's the first thing you'll see when you walk in the door, and at night with the spotlights on, it's even better. Here's the thing, though. I haven't moved a single bottle from home yet, and somewhere between 800 and 900 of them are sitting there. That wall is going to fill up fast, and we'll be adding more cabinets around the space when it does.

The front room is starting to feel like somewhere you'd want to sit for a while. We're not going high-end. It's the furniture we already had, a little bit of a hodgepodge, with a coffee table still to find and a game table on the way. There's high-top seating for 14 now, thanks to two Facebook Marketplace tables. I'm normally not a high-top guy, but even as a big guy I could sit in those chairs all night. Over by the doors, a pair of heavy-duty science tables we picked up for $30 apiece became what we're calling the landing area. Event food, crock pots, whatever we need to set down.

Down the hall, things get a little weirder. The first draft of a wall is up, made of the same stuff as yard signs. I promise there's a plan for it. The community's very own Rebecca Weller came to town to help me paint, and if you follow the pumpkin spice orange doors, you'll find the bathroom. My wife also made something for the back room that might be my favorite thing in the whole space.

Next up is the floors. They're a hot mess, and they make the whole place look dusty and dingy. Refinishing should happen in the next two to three weeks. After that, the furniture goes back in, the whiskey moves over, and we start hosting. We've got client events and a few auction donations lined up for November, and open houses are coming. If you're in St. Louis, keep an eye out for an invite. If you're not, come anyway.

Watch the full video below for the walkthrough, including what that yard-sign wall is supposed to do at night and what my wife made for the back room.