Horizontal Bar above the Header?

I'd like to add some space at the very top of the page.

So, I made my way to:

header.php

and found the following code:

<?php wp_head(); ?>

and pasted together a line of made up code without any real idea what I was doing:

<?php header_items( $horizontal_bar1 = ' '); ?>

I can't be too far off, it seems, because it turns my home page into one big blank horizontal bar - in the appropriate color.

Could anyone suggest a way to have a regular height %bar1 above the Header area?