A Parkville Basement Might Just Be Baltimore’s Most Authentic Irish Pub

“I just started doing it from scratch, and everything ended up being done by hand,” says Phelan. “My wife, Katie, and I did all the building of bits and pieces, like the bar and the stage and everything. My mother-in-law painted the place for me. So it was kind of a little family project between the three of us for a while.”

They created every part of the pub together, save for the floors, which were laid down by a friend. A group of friends then joined Jim to lend a hand when flood damage to the space required major repairs three years ago. And the DIY-ing goes all the way up to the mock tin ceiling.

“I had an idea to put in a nice tin ceiling,” Phelan says. “I knew nothing about that sort of a thing.” After doing some research, he discovered that the real tin tiles ran about $25 apiece, but a cheaper PVC alternative that could be cut at home had a nearly identical look. “I bought a hundred fully expecting that I would return them, that they wouldn’t look as good as they did online—like most things. But they arrived, and no one could tell the difference.” Instead of $2,500, Phelan ended up spending $600 on the project.

The result is a near-perfect replica of the antique tin tiles that came into fashion around the turn of the 19th-century. With the basement’s low seven-foot ceilings, visitors to Phelan’s Irish Pub can, and have, reached up to touch the intricate pattern. Still, they don’t believe it’s not tin. It’s just one of the many successful projects that the rookie DIYer took on to create his dream bar.

“I spent a lifetime riding horses, so I never did anything artistic or anything like that before. I kind of joked about it, because I have a wood-burning fireplace upstairs, and I was just going to go out, buy a bunch of two-by-fours, and worst-case scenario, I’ll just tear the whole thing down and I’ve got firewood,” says Phelan. “So I started from scratch, and bit-by-bit-by-bit it just started to come together. And the more I did, the more confident I got. I got pretty decent at it by the time it was all finished.”