I’ve discussed some of my vices here on occasion.  I won’t reiterate them all, but cigars are one of my favorites as I discussed last year with my Review of the RabbitAir Filter.  My degenerate friends and I are fond of having a stick, a glass of aged rum or whiskey, and conversation all while our lovely partners provide cigar service.  During the spring and summer and early fall the patio works out quite well for such activities.  But come late October, the rain sets in and it loses the fun.

So, as the kids say;  “what do?”

What do is we convert an unused storage room in my shop to a cigar lounge.  That’s what do.

The room itself is a 12′ by 20′ enclosure inside my larger shop.  Walls are simple 2×4 with OSB and an OSB roof.  There’s a workbench on one of the shorter walls and three cabinets on the longer wall that has the door.  Floor is concrete.  The lights are a couple of florescent hangers and some bare bulbs screwed to the wall.

Right before Christmas we did some work to make it functional and I thought I’d write an article about it, with future articles as we do more work.

The Cigar Lounge Plan

  1. Install ventilation
  2. Install heating
  3. Remove cabinets
  4. Acid Stain the floor
  5. Add paneling to walls
  6. Paint a Mural
  7. Replace lighting
  8. Find used leather club chairs
  9. Add hard points to ceiling.

That’s the grand plan.  But the only two we need to make it actually functional are the first two.

For the ventilation I elected to purchase an Aero Pure exhaust fan. This is intended to be used to ventilate a bathroom.  The particular fan has a multi-speed control and can move up to 120 CFM at the highest setting and has less than 1 SONE of noise when running.  I managed to catch last year’s model on sale for half price, so instead of $250, it was $125.  I love a good deal.

For mounting it, we bought some exhaust angles and instead of cutting a hole in the ceiling and putting the entire apparatus above, we cut a hole for just the exhaust pipe, caulked that up and wired it into the controls.  It took about 2 hours and that included the extra trip to the hardware store to get the exhaust pipe used.  There seems to be some Iron Law that no project, no matter how well planned, requires a trip to the hardware store in the middle of it.

This was my first time wiring something more complicated than replacing one light fixture with another.  Fortunately, my friend helping me was a nuclear tech on a submarine in the Navy and between the two of us we figured; How hard can it be?  No one got shocked, the fan works as does the already in place lighting, and nothing has burned down yet.  So apparently not all that hard to replace one switch box, add in extra wire, and connect it all back up.

For heating, I purchased an electric fireplace that produces 5100 BTU and will allegedly warm up to 1000 sq. ft.  I’m not sure I’m satisfied with this solution.  While it does warm the room up, I don’t think it is quite adequate.  There’s some additional sealing that needs to be done when I put up the paneling.  I think I’ll likely add 2x4s to the walls to create an air gap all the way around and better seal some of the corners.  We had a cigar in mid-December, the day we did these improvements, with the temps around 35 degrees outside. While the room wasn’t quite toasty enough for the ladies to be in lingerie only, it was at least dry.  For most of the winter though, this should be adequate.  When temps are in the low 50s it warms the room up to the desired temperature and we are able to ogle to our heart’s content without robes interfering.

As you can see from the picture, we are using camp chairs and lawn chairs currently.  Because we are classy like that.  It works though!  We had five people smoking cigars at once and the fan moved the smoke out at least as well as some of the lounges in the area with industrial air movers.  We may purchase a second fan and chain it together to the first, but it’s warm(ish), dry, and keeps the room from being a fog of cigar smoke. Total cost so far is around $300.  I’ll call that a win.

Next Up: Removing the cabinets and relocating them to the main shop area.  Staining the floor, and adding the paneling.  I’m hoping to get those things done this month.