Basement Bar Update, a Lesson Learned, and a Surprise

Well, we are almost finished with the basement bar! It's not really a bar, but much more a place where I fold laundry and stack clothes for my daughters to pick up. (It's directly across from my turquoise mirror, though, and really adds to the space now!)

In my last post, I had just started painting it. Now, the painting is finished and the plywood top is on it. 

Next step.... have a piece of stainless steel cut and fitted to the top. (I wish I had a photo editing program where I could "draw" it on there to see the "finished" bar. Oh well - I will have to wait!)

I wanted it to look built in, but there's a gap between the bar and the wall. When we put the bead board and trim on the bar, I should have planned for that and made it flush to the wall. Lesson learned!

But... should I caulk the bar to the wall? It's not secured to the wall, so I'm afraid that it would pull away if it got shifted. (It's a heavy piece of furniture now, but it can still be shifted a little.) What do you think?

I priced corbels at Lowe's, and they were way above my budget for this project! Then I remembered these oversized hooks that my mom gave me to put on the deck posts by our hot tub to hang towels on. Since we rarely use our hot tub, I never put the hooks up. Now, I'm going to use them as corbels! They kind of look like their different sizes in the picture, but they are identical and I think they'll add a surprise element to the bar. I'll show you how they look when the bar's all finished!

Tomorrow, I'll share our progress on yet another project - finally updating our master bath with plank walls. 

Wishing you a happy new year! 

Nif

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Basement Bar Renovation

It always amazes me when I see that it's been so long since I posted on this blog! One of my goals for the new year is to do more DIY projects and update more often. It's what keeps me accountable and trying new things. 

So... I've written about our basement update several times... first about painting the dropped ceiling grid, then the basement bathroom re-do, then the laundry room makeover, and most recently the pop of turquoise over the sink.

Our most recent project is transforming the basement bar. You can see it in the picture below from the laundry room makeover post:

You can see part of the bar on the left. We've been wanting to replace it, and we couldn't figure out what we wanted to do that would be budget-friendly. 

Then it hit me - we could just "wrap" the bar in beadboard. I was inspired by THIS kitchen island transformation over at remodelaholic.com. I told Hubs about it, showed him the blog post pictures, and he was all for it. We looked in our storage room, and we had enough beadboard left over from our basement bathroom make-over that we didn't even have to buy any! Score!

We took all of the doors off and removed the drawers. We're leaving one side open with shelving, and the other side is covered with beadboard. The picture above is just after we nailed on the trim pieces (1x4 on the top and sides, and 1x6 along the bottom edge) and filled all the holes with wood filler.

We also had a piece of plywood cut at the store to fit the top with an overhang on one side. We have a friend whose family owns a company that works with stainless steel and we are going to have him to fit a stainless "cover" to the plywood which will be our new bar top.

I also had to share a new favorite painting tip! 

I've read about this painting tip, but had never tried it until this project. I didn't have any paint tray liners, and I knew I would need some for the primer and for the gloss paint, but I was eager to get started without another trip to the store. So I tried lining my paint tray with aluminum foil. It worked like a charm! When I finished, I just balled up the foil and threw it away and put more in for the next paint. Have you tried this before? I highly recommend it.

I will be sure to update you on our progress. In the meantime, enjoy your holidays!

I'm linked up at

Flaunt it Friday

Tweak it Tuesday