I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I’ve become someone who drinks liquor. Not just drinks liquor, but someone who stocks it at home and always wants to know what you’re drinking and if it’s delicious. I think it could partially be blamed on my bar-tending best friend, Morgan, moving down the street and making me many delicious drinks. But I, a former beer & wine drinker, have turned into someone who has very strong opinions about how a proper Bloody Mary should taste (note to 90% of restaurants: not how you just served it!), is likely to order a martini (straight up and a dirty with three olives, thankyouverymuch) at the bar, and has things like vermouth and celery salt in my kitchen.

One of the things on my 26 before 26 list was finding and altering an old library catalog. I tried to do this, I really did, but did you know that other people also have unhealthy love affairs with books and libraries and old things? And all of these people apparently have a lot more money than me? Library catalogs on craigslist have been going for between $800 and $3,000. Ha! Not happening. So instead, I bought an old record cabinet for $15 bucks. Of course I forgot to take any before photos (though you can sort of see it in the background of the first photo here), but please just picture any destroyed piece of wood furniture that you have ever known and/or loved, with peeling laminate and a myriad of water rings. It was a mess, but I loved its shape and small size and I knew I could turn it into something awesome. So Steve picked it up and then it sat in our living room, holding things we shoved in it when people were coming over and we didn’t have time to clean. I could not for the life of me figure out what to do with it. And then one day, while Steve was in Israel, it hit me while I was making myself a drink (vodka with muddled mint leaves, homemade lemon simple syrup and soda water)(see? I told you) – a bar! It was meant to be a bar!

So I went to visit my orange-vested friends at Home Depot and picked up some sand paper and paint. I decided on two grays and an orange, matched to the chair fabric from this project. Incidentally, did you know that you can get tiny paint samples of any color for around $3? I managed to get three different colors of paint for this project for around 12 bucks since the surfaces were so small. I sanded and taped and painted and taped and painted. I wanted rustic-looking shelves for our glassware, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I got some simple brackets and a rough redwood fence post ($2.50), flirted my way into a free in-store cut down the middle, stained them with the same orange paint mixed with some water and ta da – shelves!

I dropped our liquor in the top-open compartment, our wine/mixers/barware/accessories in the shelves, our glass/barware on the open shelves and now whenever I mix a drink after work, it feels vaguely glamorous.

Now if only the perfect vintage hammered ice bucket would just appear on etsy already, we’d be all set.

PS. This is one my favorite songs ever by Oakland’s The Coup. It is genius, but please don’t listen to it if you have no sense of humor, are around small children, and/or have a problem with well-placed & plentiful curse words.

PPS. Let’s all count down to my mother’s email telling me that I should not curse on my blog. 3…2…1…

• August 24th, 2010
• 26 before 26, at home, projects
• 4 comments
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