An antique longcase grandfather clock that we transformed into a gin bar!

Our lovely customer Lynda contacted us to ask us to look at transforming her 'tatty, tired and useless' longcase clock into something fun that she could use to store her gin bottle collection. We collected it from Lynda and discussed what we thought we could do. She gave us a free hand to do what we could and chose the colour.

We gave the internal storage much thought, then designed and constructed the diagonally oriented birch plywood bottle racking, which proved a challenge to size to fit the clock case correctly. We painted the plywood components before final assembly to ensure a good finish. We made an aperture into the clock base and fitted shelves inside for glasses. We then made a new beaded door.

Multi-coat finish:

• Thorough preparation
• professionally spray painted
• two coats shellac-based primer
• one coat water-based acrylic resin dark undercoat
• two coats water-based acrylic enamel satin topcoat in Railings

We fitted a new piece of toughened glass to the top of the clock case (it had never had one) then we mounted the clock face to the (removable) top after taking off the defunct mechanism. The face was originally mounted on the mechanism which itself sat on top of the longcase. Finally, we fitted a new battery quartz mechanism to the face and grafted on the original clock hands. 

We fitted a push-to-open concealed catch to the base door.

We surprised Lynda when we returned the clock (contactless delivery during lockdown) as although she had seen 'finished' photos, she did not know that we had made it into a working clock too. 

Lynda said "Have now got it situated in its temporary home and it looks fab - will send you some pics when I get a chance. Thanks for transforming something tatty, tired and of no use to a beautiful and useful piece of furniture! Now it will always be gin o’clock!