More about my bar

I promised a while back to post a more detailed description of our bar makeover and I'm here today to deliver on that.

I didn't take a ton of pictures, but I think I have enough to get the idea across. To re-cap, we started with this gem, that we picked up off the side of the road,



and that Jamie once "kimed":



Despite it's condition, I had dreams of turning it into this lovely thing:



Got that? Ok. Moving on...

The first order of business was to sturdy it up a bit. Lying by the side of the road and then being climbed on by an active toddler had kinda taken it's toll. We already had a nice piece of plywood in the garage-- almost the perfect size. Screwed onto the back-- instant stabalizer!



Here's where I wish I had taken more pics of the supplies we used, but I was kinda busy DOING stuff and forgot to take pictures of all of it. Basically we haunted all the local thrift shops for a week to find a table top. This failed so we went to Lowes and picked out a slab of hardwood plywood-- which up until that moment I had never heard of. We looked at our options for legs while we were there, but ohmygosh, they are PRICEY. We were looking at $15 to $20 EACH. Waaay outside my budget of $0.

So we schlepped over to the thrift store and bought this:



It's a headboard for a twin bed. It cost a grand total of $10 and if you look closely you will see that gives us TWO legs for the bar.

After a good sanding, and some shimming, we have:



And then J went to town on the details; including my wine rack and sliding shelf:



We also bought new hardware, but in the end went with the original dresser knobs-- they just looked better.

Another genius idea of J's that I wish I had more pics of is this "wrought iron" detail on the cabinet door

I think I mentioned in the post before that he bought a section of garden bed edging, hacksawed it to the proper size, spray-painted it to match the knobs and nailed it to the inside of the door! Genius!

Here's the finished product:

AND

AND!!

Last weekend I found the perfect bar stools! No pics yet, because they're still being "upcycled", but here's a sneak peek at my inspiration board: