How to Make a Swim-Up Bar For Your Pool With Scraps of Wood

It cost me zero dollars to make a sturdy swim-up bar for our above-ground pool.

This weekend I was enjoying our backyard pool when my son began to do cannonballs off of the deck. Not wanting to be constantly splashed, I was forced to the opposite end of the pool, away from the deck that was holding my beer and snacks.

With a drink in one hand and a bowl of chips in the other, I thought there must be a better way. I immediately started to Google "above ground pool bars" and surprisingly very little came up. There doesn't appear to be any company I could find making bar tops for the side of an above-ground pool. I did see some do-it-yourself videos that converted old wooden pallets into bars, but I was looking for something that was a bit more sophisticated and permanent.

I remembered that I had a garage full of scraps of wood from the deck we built, so I began to pull out pieces that might be useful. I found two posts that I stood up against the pool and measured to height. With deck screws, I attached two thin horizontal spindles connecting the top of the posts and two heavier planks about a foot up from the bottom. The idea was to make the bar heavier on the bottom than the top so it didn't easily flip over.

With both posts attached to each other, I cut four foot-long pieces of wood for the tops and bottoms of each side making an "I" shape (see the crude diagram below). The bottom pieces would act as feet for the bar, while the top piece would be used to nail horizontal planks that would make up the bar top.

The simple design went together pretty quickly and came out just as sturdy as I hoped. Because the ground isn't exactly level next to the pool, I created two brackets out of wood that would tuck under the side of the pool edge, stopping the bar from wobbling or pulling away from the pool.

Now, all that's left is to stain the raw wood and enjoy some drinks on our new swim-up bar.

Have you built your own bar or poolside piece of furniture? We'd love to see it. please post some photos on our Facebook page or send them to us through our app.

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