Bookcase Redo: Wine Bar Edition

So let’s make a long story short and then make it medium length.  One day I looked at the bookcase pictured below and thought, “That could totally be a wine bar.”  In probably what will prove to be record time, I thought of an idea and managed to execute it in the span of a day.  Good for me. 

On to the medium length story, the below bookcase sits in the corner of my kitchen with his buddy Wine Fridge where they hang out having grand adventures of keeping my booze at the proper temperature and storing serving pieces/cookbooks.  As you can see, the contents of the bookcase are pretty sparse and no matter how many times I wandered through the house looking for other pieces to make this look like a real space and not something that was thrown together in a corner (which it totally was) I kept coming up empty.  The husband and I just do not have that many decorative pieces.  Moving from a one bedroom apartment into a three bedroom home left a desire for a lot of different items and we’ve focused our extra money towards other things, like a kitchen table, bookcases, computer desk, etc. and not necessarily towards items to help beautify and personalize our home.

All in all, I like the placement of the bookcase, it helps adds some nice height to the corner and seems to ground the eating area.  But it lacked something to make it a stand-out piece.  And then the wine bar idea came to me. 

 

The only materials I needed to purchase were two of the upside down wine glass hangers.  One trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and $20 bucks later, I was all set to go.  After empting the top half of this bookcase (actual shelf area and cupboard are not connected) I enlisted some help from the muscles of the family i.e. the fella, and finagled the shelving half to the floor to get to work.

Attaching the glass holders took all of ten minutes.  The only tricky part of this process was I was attaching them to a fixed shelf (could not be easily/at all removed without taking the entire thing apart) so I was working sideways the whole time.  However you are working on this step though, whether it be sideways, from the top, upside down, or perhaps under water, simply place the hangers where you want them and mark the holes where the hardware is going to go.  I drilled small pilot holes as well, taking extra care not to drill straight through the shelf, so there was less chance of splitting the wood and the screws went in really easy.  Honestly, I probably could have skipped this step, but I like using power tools so I'll take any excuse to bust out the electric drill.

Not pictured: Hobbes on the other side of this shelf attacking the back of the bookcase.  Bookcase backings are apparently really threatening.

This project also allowed me to do something I’ve been dying to try which is add a paper or fabric backing to a bookcase. The pop of color and texture poking out from behind items displayed on a bookcase just makes me smile.  After digging through my fabric stockpile, I found a couple yards of a neat geometric pattern in a kelly green color.  The backing on this bookcase was the flimsy kind that was held in place by tack nails so it was easily pried up using the claw side of a hammer.  Once that was up, I used a staple gun to fix the fabric in place, trimmed the excess off, and then replaced the flimsy backing using some fresh tack nails being careful not to hammer them into the newly added staples.  Am I the only one who has a ton of leftover tack nails from assembling furniture?  I can never seem to use all of them up on their designated piece.



Back of shelving with backing removed



Hold the fabric tight as you staple around the edges. 



Kitten interruption: one of the many hazards of crafting



Shelving dekittened and excess fabric trimmed off.

Once the backing was back in place, the fella and I returned the shelving to its proper place and BAM, instant wine bar….well, almost.

A few glasses and accessories later and then BAM, instant wine bar.  Pictured here are a variety of wine glasses including our only set of champagne glasses that have Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas printed on them because that’s where we got married and they were free with the wedding package we chose.  So yea, we’re pretty fancy.  Also pictured is a half drank bottle of wine which used to take up space on the kitchen counter before I made this beautiful new home for it.  To help with the drinking of wine, I also snagged a small tray (pilfered from another room) to house a couple bottle openers, a foil cutter, and a glass container to collect corks. 

Yep, vintage milkshake tray to hold wine stuff.



Overall, I’m pretty stoked about this project.  It still needs a little tweaking, maybe a small piece of artwork to go in the glaringly empty space between the bottle of wine and the tray.  But, next time we have a party, I can totally see a couple open bottles of wine along with small bowls filled with antipasto goodies for snacking being stationed here.  Also, bonus, having the majority of our wine glasses in this spot cleared out some much needed space in our kitchen cupboards.