Thanks to some inspiration from other WB threads, and the fact that I had some decent height in my crawl space, I decided to build a small wine cellar beneath my house. I had limited space to work with due to the way the ground sloped in the crawl space and location of the footers/pylons, so I was shooting for finished interior dimensions of 5ft wide/7ft deep/5.5ft tall. My other constraint was trying to complete the project as cost effective as possible; function was a much higher priority than looks. After all, it is in my crawl space, so not a place I’m taking people to hang out and drink wine.
It was a very fun project and I love the end result, although much more time consuming than I had originally anticipated. Hope this might be helpful to others at some point, and let me know if you have any questions.
Prepping the foundation for the concrete slab - On the left side, I had to dig down about 18 inches. The goal was to have the top of the slab at grade on the lower side (right side of the picture).
Slab poured with vapor barrier beneath - Not having done any concrete work before, this was a challenging step and I certainly didn’t do a professional quality job. But in the end it was a solid slab of concrete (remember, function over appearance).
Framing the walls - I just went with 2x4 framing, wrapped that with the vapor barrier, then added 3/4 inch rigid insulation panels to the outside which functions as the exterior walls.
Fiberglass insulation installed - R15 insulation in the walls (plus the R4 from the rigid insulation), R30 in the ceiling.
Drywall hung then mudded and sanded - Never too much fun doing drywall, but this turned out okay. I used the moisture resistant drywall.
Primer on the walls and ceiling light installed - Since the air unit I picked has the power cord on the back of the unit, I installed an outlet in the crawl space behind the cellar. I ran it off a 20 amp circuit that goes to the dining room where we don’t have anything plugged in. Then came off that into the cellar ceiling for the light and light switch.
Painting and floor covering - Threw some left over blue paint I had from my son’s room on the walls, and covered the concrete floors with a self-adhesive vinyl tile. Nothing fancy, just wanted to cover the concrete.
Installed the door - To make the door, I cut two pieces of 3/4" plywood, and sandwiched them around 2" of the rigid foam insulation. The door compresses against an inner frame with weather stripping foam to create an air tight seal.
The wine racks - The plan for the racks was to create a 2-bottle deep rack on the left side of the cellar, then have a kind of horizontal display rack on the right side. For the main racks on the left, I started with a bunch of 1x6 pine boards, and cut them down into tons of small strips. This involved about 8 hours of cutting on a table saw and miter saw.
Next, I built a jig so that I could replicate the main support pieces of the racking system. The wood is held together by wood glue and small brad nails.
Then, it was just a matter of attaching the vertical pieces with some horizontal bracing.
Here’s the finished left side installed in the cellar. Capacity = 612 bottles on this side.
On the right side, it’s a similar idea, just horizontal bottle slots. Capacity = 68 display bottles, for a total cellar capacity of 680 bottles.
Air unit - I went with a CellarPro 1800XT air unit, installed on the back wall. It has performed without issues so far, including getting through a few hot weeks in July/August (I finished this project at the end of June).
Finished product with the wine loaded!
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