My Coffee Bar

Today I thought I'd write a little post on my coffee bar, one of my most favorite-est projects I've ever done. 

This story begins like many others...

Once upon a time there was a Pin. A pin of a lovely little idea of making a special place for all of your coffee stuff. Up until this point I had just put my coffeemaker on the counter which was so un-special and didn't express Alex and I's coffee love quite like I wanted to. When I saw my first coffee bar pin I knew that this is what our apartment needed. But it took me a long time to come up with how I wanted to do it.

I didn't have room or money for anything fancy. The original pin had a shelf with cup hooks from Hobby Lobby that was well out of my price range. So of course I searched coffee bars on pinterest but still didn't come up with much. I eventually decided that my small bookshelf that wasn't being used for anything in particular would work just fine for my base. I added a little scrapbook paper to the back of the upper shelf a while ago to give it a little color (I didn't do the bottom shelf because I had an aquarium down there at the time). Bookshelf = Check!

But the shelves were a whole different enchilada. 

I thought about buying shelves from Lowes or Walmart, but they just didn't have what I wanted (I searched for months...). So I recruited good ol' Dad. He is pretty handy with wood and since I had such a specific idea in my head of what I wanted it ended up being the easiest and cheapest alternative. We bought some shelf brackets from Lowes for around $5 a set and an 8x10 board. We measured and cut the wood but it was still lacking in something...so Dad pulled out his bevel tool and we beveled the outer edges of both shelves (or more accurately Dad beveled the edges...I just watched...and kept all of my fingers intact). I stained the shelves with a light color oak to match my table other natural wood furniture and stuck the brackets on. Ta-da! Shelves for about $10 a piece and just the way I wanted them. 

Next was the cup hook dilemma. I really wanted cup hooks, but didn't want to spend the money (are you picking up on a theme here...?). So I came up with about 15 different methods for hanging cups from my coffee bar and didn't like a single one. But then...I found another coffee bar pin. One that used a curtain rod for mugs. Brilliant! I went to Walmart and found a $6 curtain rod that was attractive looking and found some shower curtain hooks that were the 'S' shape. I spent about $9 on the shower hooks but I only used four for this project and was able to use the rest in a different project. 

In the end I think my total project cost was about $30 (Not including the decor on the shelves...). Not too shabby!