Cocktails & Dreams

Hope everyone enjoyed Father's Day weekend! We took Sara's Dad to Granite City for brunch on Sunday morning...if you haven't been to their brunch before, you need to go...it's excellent. Wish we could have also shared the day with Brian's Dad, but we will have to postpone our celebration until July. We are both so fortunate to have amazing Dad's in our lives that have always been there for us and who continue to teach us about life and love each day. Plus, they are the ones that introduced us to home improvement and diy, so we wouldn't be anywhere today without them. Love you both!

This week was pretty busy for both of us, but we still got a lot done on our kitchen/main room remodel. It's starting to come together and we will be sharing those details later this week.

One of our favorite projects that we started this week is our bar area. Remember when it looked like this?

Our bar nook

Yeah, we weren't sure those bowed faux-wood shelves were going to hold up much longer, so they were the first to go. Oh, and don't forget about that hot neon-blue shag...

Don't worry...that's staying :) We need a little character in there :)

We had thought about replacing the faux-wood shelving with glass shelves, but we weren't sold on the idea yet so we left the space alone while we continued to demo, drywall and paint. Then on a whim, we stopped by the Habit for Humanity ReStore and found what we didn't even know what we were looking for...

This was too good to pass up

Now, of course we measured the space before we went to the store...I mean it was a couple days prior and we didn't write any of the measurements down, but Brian convinced me that it would work. And he was spot on...check out this handsome handyman gloating over his brilliant mind:

Couldn't have cut it better than this

So the first thing that we did was con Sara's dad and brother to come over to screw it into the wall. Thanks to Tequila and Callie, it took twice as long to put up because they were running around like idiots knocking everything over (surprise, surprise). But we got it hung...

Good news...it didn't fall!

Once it was leveled and hung, we stood back and noticed how uneven our ceiling looked. It almost made the entire cabinet look like it was tilting, but Brian was convinced he could fix that. Either way, it is a major improvement from the bowed shelving!

So, being the patient wife, I waited an entire hour before I got right to work priming the cabinet. Not satisfied settling with just painting the back of the cabinet to match (and ok, I ran out of primer), I decided to look for alternatives ways to update the cabinet. And I did the one thing I swore I would never do...I decided to put up wallpaper. After some research and sticker shock with some of the prices I saw online for wallpaper, we decided to hit up Lowe's and found a pattern that we really liked. It was about $21 a roll, so it wasn't too much to spend in case it turned out to be a disaster. There weren't too many left at the store and when I reached in to pick up a roll, there was one inside that had been opened already...we took it to the front and they let us walk out with the opened roll for $8.50! Score! Especially since Brian wasn't sold on the wallpaper idea...he remembers very clearly his dad putting up wallpaper in his little sister's room when they were growing up and remembered vowing to never attempt it due to all the mess.

But I am so happy that we decided to try it! All we had to do was add some water...after a few trial & errors, we got it up and I am so impressed with Brian's measuring, cutting and alignment skills.

The color changes with the light and it has just enough sheen to make it interesting...not a bad $8.50 investment!

Then, since we have already sharpened our carpentry skills with the bar stools and console table we decided to build a custom wine rack to fit below the cabinet. This replaces the one we had in mind to go in between the studs of our kitchen and mainroom but didn't have enough space for. Sometimes compromise works out in our favor...

Fully stocked and ready to go

We also painted the back piece of drywall black to add a little contrast with the wine rack and as a background for the some of our finishing pieces (that will come later). Then, to finish the piece we added some trim and pieced in some scrap wood to add a base at the top corner of the cabinet to help lay in some caulk.

I love trim!

After lots of caulk, 2 coats of primer and Impervo, here is the end result:

After the last coat of paint - and my husband did an amazing job caulking the top to fill in the gaps!

What do you think? Not too shabby :). And the best part, we spent less that $60 on everything including the cabinet piece, wallpaper and the wood to make the custom wine rack! It was a lot of work, but I think it is one of my favorite areas of the house now. We also cut windows in the doors and will add those and the shelves once the paint cures, so we will add more pictures once we get those up. Granite will come next and then we will be able to finish it up with a backsplash, so stay tuned to see the final after. For now, we are enjoying our progress:

A little work goes a long way

We'll have more updates this week on our progress, but for now we will leave you with an Awkward Schorr Family photo...

Tequila doesn't really enjoy these moments as much as we do :)

Hope you enjoy the rest of your Monday!

XOXO,

Sara, Brian & Tequila