Big scaryyyyyyy wine cellar.

I’ve had a few legends ask me how we built the recent wine cellar so I figured I’d write a quick blog to run through how the whole build process went down. I'll keep it short.

Back in February 2024 I got an email from Gerber Group Projects asking if we would be interested in tendering for a solid timber wine cellar for a for a project of theirs in Bondi. After looking at the original sketches I thought it would be one hell of a job but definitely worth a crack. If you don’t test yourself you never grow. 

How do you price a job like this? It can be a bit tricky when you haven’t built a wine cellar of this size before. Basically, I did as I would on any large job, I broke it down into a rough guess as to how much timber would be needed, How much time it would take to mill, sand, finish and glue up. Once I had a rough guesstimate at what we needed to cover us financially I flicked off the quote. 

Fast forward to October 2024. Honestly I thought we’d missed out on this one until I got a call “Congratulations, you guys have been picked to build the wine cellar.” ….. I thought “what wine cellar?”. My memory clicked into gear and I remembered the giant beast that we had quoted about 6 months prior. 

After getting off the phone I realised that I might need an extra set of hands/brain for this Project. Michael from Peach Furniture is a mate who builds some fantastic pieces. I knew his skill set would compliment us well for the job so I gave him a buzz and asked if her was keen to assist on the job, especially with the install as I know he is a weapon onsite. He has always been good to bounce ideas off. I have found when building complicated pieces it is always good to get an extra set of eyes onto a piece. You can stare at a piece for hours trying to work out how to get something to work but all it can take is someone with fresh eyes. He kindly said he could lend us some time. 

Measure up day

We popped over to the house in Bondi and measured up. Cracked out the lasers. Measure twice cut once.

Originally the piece was to be made in clean/select grade Blackbutt but after some discussion with the client we decided that a slightly more rustic recycled

Blackbutt would be the best option as they already had some pieces in the house in the same timber. Seeing it all completed now, I am convinced we made the right decision

Design stage

4 sections of the wine cellar

We already had a rough drawing of what we needed which made life a little easier. There were a few tweaks we needed to make so that we could get it down the stairs and in behind the glass panel that it lives behind.

After some back and forth we had everything sorted out and we could work out a plan of action when it came to the build. 

Time to Build

Big jobs can be scaryyyyyy. Best plan of attack is to break it all down into sections so it isn’t so scaryyyyyyy. We began with masses of milling. Off the top of my head we needed 900 individual horizontal rungs and about 100 vertical rungs for the individual bottle section. We also had to mill up the timber for the X box section. The thickness/jointer was running flat out for about 2 weeks. 

Ryan furiously finishing

The wine cellar was built in 4 main sections. Three with the rungs and the separate the X box section. I didn’t want to see any nails or screws throughout the build so we decide on through dowels to fit the horizontal rungs. This would obviously be a hell of a lot more work that just pinning and putty but it would provide a much cleaner result. 

Every rung and vertical had to be sanded and finished individually before It went near any glue. The production line began. Mitch fashioned up a glue up jig for all of the vertical sections and I went and bought every F clamp Bunnings had. “Your back for more clamps? This is 4 days in a row” - “Yeah, I’ll be back tomorrow” 

Once we had everything finished and ready to go in the workshop the next step was to installation!

Install Day

This was booked in for the same day my wife Beth was due to give birth to our first kid. Not the smartest move on my behalf but it was pretty much the only day that everyone involved was free and we needed the space to clear up in the workshop. 

We loaded up the vans and met over onsite in Bondi.

Once we struggled down the stairs with all of the sections we get to work installing the kick bases and from there everything came together pretty easily.

We had a bit of trouble bringing the rung sections together but we managed to sort that out and get it all sorted by the end of the day.

Michael from peach was an absolute beast on the day. Took what would have a been a stressful day for me watching the phone whilst trying to run an install and made it a pretty chill experience.

Huge thanks to the great man. Also huge thanks to Beth for making sure she didn’t go into labor that day. Great work team.

We could not be happier with the result. It is our biggest piece to date. If you want a wine cellar, give us a yell. It might be another year until I have the brain power to wrangle it though hahaha.