Nicest ladder in town

When the owners of The Reagan first reached out to us their property was still in the early stages of construction. Alex (Owner) and Hector (GM) first walked into our door to place an order for wooden serving boards which we delivered about six months before their doors opened for business.

Once the finishing touches were finally being put in place at the bar they reached back out to have us build some items; the most interesting of which was a rolling library ladder for their 18 foot tall wall of liquor shelves. There were a few considerations that we needed to take into account. Most importantly, the space between the main bar and the back wall was only about four feet wide, so we needed to minimize the ladder's footprint in order to reduce obstructions for the bar staff.

Our solution to this challenge was to construct a ladder with an angle so that the bottom four feet of the ladder were vertical and didn't block the walkway for bartenders. We built the ladder from solid ash with beefy 1-1/4” dowels for rungs. The angled joint, which is reinforced rectangular steel tubing that’s 1/4" thick, was fabricated by our partners at Black Knuckle Metals and powder coated by Atomic Powder Coating.

We were told that the ladder would be constantly used so it needed to be very stable and easily moved back and forth. For this, we sourced heavy duty wheels and bracketry and modified them heavily for safety. Specifically, we added wheels to the upper mechanism so that the rail was fully captive and the ladder would not be able to tilt away from the wall.

Installation took about ten hours to fine tune the upper and lower rails for smooth movement. Like most construction projects, we were faced with unevenly sloping floors. Since the upper mechanism held the rail captive, it was critical that both the upper and lower rails were equidistant throughout the 30 feet of travel.

This was one of the most unique custom fabrication projects we’ve ever taken on and in the end it was a total success. The owners have told us that they think the ladder is one of the coolest things in their bar, but we’re pretty sure they’re just trying to get us to keep ordering drinks.