It feels like this bar project has been dragging along for forever now! Seriously! Maybe it's because we've been staying focused on one thing for a long time, but I'm sooo ready to be done. Thankfully we are one step closer to that goal, I hung the lights I made last week. I also noticed that I didn't really go into much detail about how to hang the last light fixture I made, so I thought I'd add to that with some pictures to help explain.

 

 

It's really pretty simple, but pictures are worth a thousand words. At least that's what I've heard. Anyway, these are the items you will need; threaded rod, a toggle bolt, a washer, and an acorn nut. Make sure they all fit each other too! The threaded rod comes much longer, but the guys at the store can cut it for you. If you do have it cut at the store just be aware that you probably won't be able to screw that end into anything because the threading will be a little mangled. If its a big deal you can grind down the mangled parts with a dremmel tool or something like that.

 

 

Now that you've got all your supplies you need a hole in the ceiling to attach everything to. I used our largest drill bit and it still wasn't big enough. Luckily drywall is pretty easy to carve away so I just wiggled my drill around to make the hole bigger until my toggle bolt would fit. With the toggle bolt threaded onto your rod poke it into the ceiling. Just make sure that when the toggle bolt springs back open that it's pointed up, kinda like a little teepee.

 

Once the toggle bolt is all the way past the drywall you can attach the box of your light fixture. Slip the rod that's through the center hole, slip the washer over the end, and then attach the acorn nut. The acorn nut can only go so far onto the threaded rod, but just keep twisting. All the extra threaded rod will wind up above the toggle bolt that's hidden in the ceiling.

 

 

Sadly I did all this at night, hence the blown out pictures! I haven't even been home during the afternoon to try to get a better after picture since I hung it up, so this will just have to do for now.

 

 

Oh, and remember how I mentioned that I wanted one more decanter for the light? Well we haven't found one yet buuuuuttt, we did find this cute little ice bucket! Matt and I checked out an antique store on Sante Fe in the art district and found it for $15. Now we just need to quit putting off the electrical work and just call someone already!

 

 

Tell me what you're working on this weekend!

 

 



 

Huzzah for Pinterest Challenges! I have been playing along since they started. For some reason I always thought they went live on Wednesdays, so that is why this post is kinda late in the Pinterest Challenge world. Not only do I like to participate in the challenge Katie and Sherry present us with, but I also like to share other Pinterest projects I embark on through out the year, click here to see them all. Soooo, what's my pinspiration this time? Well, I've mentioned it a few times over this last year, and I've even had some of my more difficult supplies on hand and ready to go since this summer. I guess I just needed this Pinterest Challenge to get me over my procrastination. My project is none other than these awesome decanter lights from Lee Broom I want to put in the dry bar!

 

 

So, this summer I kept an eye open for decanters that I could have the bottoms chopped of, just for this project. And by kept an eye open, I mean I went to the antique store.... once. Anyway, here they are in their liquid holding state.

 

 

Now, chopping the bottoms off is not as easy as one might think. I called around to probably 5 or 6 glass shops in town, each time explaining what I wanted to do, before someone finally suggested Bella Glass Studio to me. When I called they said it would be no problem. I did have to leave my decanters with them for a few days, no biggie. If you're looking to do the same I would suggest looking for a more artsy fartsy glass studio as opposed to a place that installs shower doors and such. This place even offers classes and has lost of glass for artisan types to buy. Anyway, once the decanters were cut it was all down hill from there.



By downhill I mean I still had to make something to mount to the ceiling (and therefore hide all my wires with), wire the decanters, and install the thing. So I made myself a little box yesterday. I used the same method as I did when I made this pendant light a long time ago. I also used the same wiring technique to put light bulbs inside of my decanters. The only thing I did differently was add a big washer so that my socket wouldn't come through the opening of the decanters.

 

 

Now that I had my box and my lights ready it's a matter of putting it all together. Luckily lamp stuff is pretty simple, just make sure to keep the wires that are supposed to go together, together. You might also want to tie a knot in your wire so the weight of the decanter doesn't pull on your connections or get longer than you want.

 

 

Unfortunately I didn't get the stuff to mount it to the ceiling. So just picture Matt holding it up until then, kinda like this. I bet he will stop fist pumping after five minutes, saying something about his arm falling off.

 

 

Here's a close up of the decanters to enjoy until I get it mounted to the ceiling and take proper pictures.

 

 



Until then, what was your Pinterest Challenge project this time around? Have you ever made your own light fixture? Oh and make sure to go check out the other projects from the challenge linked up at YHL, Bower Power, The Ugly Duckling House, and Our Fifth House.

 

 



 

Or a giant broach, in the case of our bar.

 

 

Yes, we finally bedazzled the bar! But whatever you do, please don't say bling. I really hate that word, it's up there with 'sassy'. I just can't stand either. Ok, now that we have established forboden words, let's talk about hanging this bad boy up. Since drilling holes to hang the shelves was such a fiasco, and I wanted to keep our options open down the road. I decided (as in Matt disagreed but just let me do it anyway) I didn't want to drill anymore holes in the tile. I figured we could just suspend it with some cable from the bracket that supports the larger shelf on top. Lemme show you what I mean.

This is a shot of the bracket from just beneath, and if you look closely you'll notice that the anchors don't go all the way into the wall. I am sure if this were drywall they would be nice and flat, but since tile doesn't have the same amount of give (or any for that matter) there is this tiny gap between the bracket and the wall. Whiiiich is perfect for running a little bit of cable around.

 

 

First I wanted to paint that cable so it would blend in with our giant broach thing.

 

 

And the little clampy things that go with it. I just used some black primer I already had.

 

 

Once they were painted I attached one end to our art. Simply feed the little furrow thing onto the cable, through the loop on the art, and then back through the furrow. Pull the slack so that your loop is a normal size and not ginormous and then use the wire cutting part of some pliers to crimp the furrow.

 

 

Then me and my hunky assistant (that would be Matt) took the giant broach over to the bar and did pretty much the same thing around the shelf bracket. Matt held it in place while I tightened the cable and crimped the furrow.

 

 

 

Then to keep the broach from swinging around I added a Command strip to the back. Oh, and if your art or whatever is dark, I would suggest getting the black ones so you won't be staring at a little scrap of white Command strip for the rest of your life. That would be unbearable.

 

 

Oh, and when Matt isn't being my hunky assistant he likes to step in and take some pictures for me, like these fancy ones that look like fireworks! Don't worry, there were no explosions going off in our home, I was just cutting off the excess cable with our Dremmel tool (not the exact one but close). Say it with me.... Oooooooohhhhh

 

 

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh

 

 

Once the broach was hung I was a little disappointed with the spray painting job and just touched it up with some craft paint. We won't really be man handling this thing too much, so I'm not really too worried about the durability of craft paint on metal. Whatev's. After that we officially marked the broach hanging project done-zo!

 

 

Never you mind me in my pj's, Tubbs, or the messy living room that you can see in the reflection. What you CAN focus your attention on are these other little accessories we picked up. The tray is from Z Gallerie (along with the giant broach) and the bar was the perfect excuse to buy a bottle of that Crystal Skull Vodka. I've always wanted one, but Matt would just roll his eyes and say it was rediculous. It's crystal filtered!!! I'll keep it as a decanter once it's empty. Oh, and I've had a giant bag full of corks hanging out in the studio for an occasion just like this! Thanks Sherry for the smack-to-the-forehead corkspiration!

 

 

More detail shots! All these cute little Maker's Mark accessories were free! Just sign up to be an Ambassador and they will send you cool shit like this once a year! We also have fancy wrapping paper with little snow flakes that are made out of tiny Maker's Mark bottles, and a sleeve of golf balls with the wax drip printed on them.

 

 

We also dug out some bar books from our still unpacked boxes in the basement, and then sat this adorable drawing of my favorite down town art piece on top. The drawing is from an Etsy shop called Mountain vs Plains that has a handful of cute drawings of Denver hot spots. Why yes, Casa Bonita is included (not familiar with Casa Bonita? This South Park episode is very accurate. For realsies).

 

 

We are down to the wire (quite literally) on the dry bar! All that's left is the electrical stuff and then we can put this project to bed. Now, who needs a drink?

 



 

Finally!

 

Well after a day and a half of drilling holes into tile, they are finally up! Yes, you read that right, a day and a half. Behold the drill bits it took to make this happen. The two on the right are the exact same bit, and they also suck for this project. Drilling into tile and glass is what they are made for, but Matt and I only got four holes drilled with those ones. The one on the left is the one I picked up at Lowe's after dropping Matt of at the airport. It worked much, much better (except when I was moving the drill around a little bit and broke the first one. Thankfully Lowe's exchanged it for me). I was actually able to drill the remaining five holes by myself in an afternoon. Here's a link to a similar one, I couldn't find the exact bit I used.

 

 

This is what I got with just a few minutes of drilling. The other drill bit just left me a tiny little dot after what felt like the same amount of time.

 

 

Once I had all my holes drilled, I used these anchors from the Container Store to attach the brackets.The smaller shelves came with some, and after seeing how secure they were I bought an additional pack for the big shelf. Sorry I didn't get a picture of the anchors, but the instructions on the back of the bag are pretty clear. It was pretty nice to finally be done with this step of the project. Oh, and now we will be on the look out for some art or perhaps a fancy mirror to put in this big empty spot. I vote for something light that we can hang with some command strips.

 

 

We are so close to being finished with this project! We just need to do the electrical, and by we I mean we need to find an electrician and have him do a little wiring. Then I'll whip the decanter lights together, and throw a party!

 

 

Oh, and in the spirit of full disclosure, this bottle of wine was opened a week or two ago and has been in our fridge ever since. The more you know!

 



 

Look what I picked up this afternoon!

 

 

Those shelves from Container Store that I mentioned earlier this week. I know the color looks pretty off in this picture, but it's much closer in person. And once they're not stacked on top of each other and they're up on the wall I think the difference wont be noticeable at all. So, fingers crossed, these babies will go up this weekend!

 

 



 

This weekend was kinda lame. It was the kind where you have made plans to get a good chunk of things done (which you're excited about) and then at the end, you've got nothing to show for it. Let me explain. Last weekend Matt and I tackled most of the bars back splash. Since we couldn't finish the whole thing we also spent some time brainstorming about our upper storage conundrum. After a fair amount of googling and chatting we decided to do some floating shelves. Particularly the high gloss grey LACK shelf from Ikea. But we also wanted to chop off a little bit of it to make it fit into our design a little better. So we made our first trip of the weekend to Ikea on Saturday morning, picked up the shelf, and ran home to continue brainstorming.

 

 

Once we got home and tore open the plastic, we quickly figured out that our plan wasn't going to work. That reason being we wanted the shelf to be smaller than the mounting bracket. Well onto plan #2, keep the shelf intact and mount it quite a bit higher and then get two smaller 1'x1' shelves in the same color to mount below the longer one. Those two white pieces of foam board are taped up as reference and then just imagine the longer one centered above the highest one. We think the top one would be a nice place to store a little wine, and if we put one of those strips of led lights at the back it wouldnt be too dark. On the smaller shelves we could just accessorize with bar paraphernalia.

 

 

Here, I made a terrible doodle ove the last picture to help. Those green dots are bottles of wine, obvs! The sparkly things are my still to be made decanter pendants, and then we thought we would just get a cute little tray to keep our booze in right beneath them. Oh, and maybe hang some art or a cool mirror in the empty portion.

 

 

Well, during our second trip to Ikea Sunday morning, we learned that they do not make a 1'x1' LACK shelf in high gloss grey. It only comes in black, green, or white. Boo. Oh, and we didn't get ahold of Matt's friend that lent us his tile saw until after the Bronco game started, which means these tiles will sit in my car for another week waiting to be cut.

 

 

On the bright side, after a little more searching I found these shelves from the Container Store that might work. I need to drag the longer one from Ikea over there to compare color, fingers crossed. So after all that, we didn't get one thing done. Unless you count learning that Ikea doesn't sell 1'x1' LACK shelves in high gloss grey. Have you had a disappointing diy weekend lately? How about awesome plans that were thwarted by something not existing?

 





 

Now that the floors and that pesky moulding between the railing spindles are done, Matt and I decided to return our ever wandering attention back to the dry bar. So if you thought we just weren't sharing, we weren't. Our remodeling ADD just prevents us from doing a project start to finish without distractns. Anyway, this weekend we started the back splash. After installing the countertop I mentioned thinking the tile we had picked out was too dark, but we are just going with it anyway. Hopefully the lighting and other stuff will keep this little cubby hole bright. With that in mind, here's a look at the box of tile we needed to purchase to get 'er done. We only needed seven tiles, a box has eight, that means we have one oops tile just to be safe.

 

 

Here's all the other stuff. Spacers, mortar trowel, bla bla bla. First thing was to tape down some paper to keep any messes from ruining our beautiful butcher block countertop. Oh, and those little bits of tape at the very front are to mark out where the studs are. That's what we like to call "thinkin' with your dip stick".

 

 

Here I am in my awesome novelty facial hair styles t-shirt. It was the best $2.50 I've ever spent at Urban Outfitters.

 

 

We maintained the same brick laying pattern on the walls to keep things uniform. Back when I installed the floors I just cut our remaining tiles in halfsies so we could return the tile saw to Matt's friend. Bad news is we need to rip some more tile to finish the partial top row. We are all but finished with the tile, so this weekend we will cut those last three pieces, install them, and grout. Then I'll give you a backsplash reveal. How's that sound?

 

Oh, and we still have yet to decide what to do for upper storage. So far we've nixed the cabinets idea, and we are exploring some floating shelf ideas. I'll be sure to let you know. Oh, and I think the next bar project (at least I hope it's next) is to get those decanter lights made and installed! I'm really excited about that part. Anyways, what kind of projects have you been thisclose to finishing but couldnt because you needed just one little thing?

 

 





 

Last night I finally installed the countertop for the dry bar!

The last time you saw this little closet I was making a template to cut out the countertop. After sanding off the factory finish, I applied a stain to match the butcher block to our flooring. I took a scrap piece of butcher block to the nearest Sherwin Williams along with a piece of our hardwood flooring to have them color match the stain. Unfortunately, they were a little behind in their color matching orders so I had to leave it with them for a few days. I picked the stain up last Thursday and quickly proceeded to stain one side that evening. I wanted to make sure to give everything ample drying time, so while each coat/layer was a quick evening project, it took a while to get it all done. I didn't do the best job documenting the finishing process, it was pretty quick and messy. But here's an Instagram pic of the stain setting in before I wiped off the excess.

For both the stain and the finish I applied them to the bottom first, that way if there were any dings or marks from sitting on my cooler workbench they wouldn't be seen. Oh, and I did run into a little problem with the finishing product. I used Arm R Seal Topcoat in Satin, it was suggested to me by the staff at Woodcraft. The finish was fine, but I noticed that as I was wiping it on, my stain was lifting from the wood. This is after my first application of the topcoat.

It was so light that I decided to put another application of the stain on top of the first coat of topcoat. Luckily it turned back to the dark espresso color it was before I applied the top coat. From that point on I kinda just dragged my rag over the countertop to apply the topcoat so I wouldn't remove the stain anymore. Maybe I need to learn a little more about the application process. After three coats on each side with a day of drying time in between I could finally install. According to the instructions I was supposed to drill holes through the tops of the cabinets. I didn't have the drill bit that they instructed me to use (9/16") in either of our two separate drill sets, so I just went with one that was slightly larger than my screw. I drilled holes in each corner of both of the cabinets. That would be 8 holes total.

Then I lined up my countertop evenly. They suggested a gap between the countertop and walls of 5/16" I think. I used the same spacing technique from my template making to place my countertop. Just slide some extra strips of foam core board in between the walls and countertop like this. Look at this dark grainy goodness!

Now that you've got the spacing all taken care of youll need to predrill your holes for your screws in the countertop. I measured the depth of the cabinet tops (1/4") and added that to the suggested depth of the pilot holes (3/8") and taped my drill bit so I wouldn't go further than needed. Now just center your bit in your holes that you drilled earlier and pull the trigger.



The directions also called for washers, so they're in there too.

Now that the countertop is firmly in place I started to dress things up a little bit. Stacking some of the tile we planned for the backsplash on top has me questioning if its too dark. The picture here isn't too bad, but we are planning to cover the back wall with our back splash.

I picked up these yellow and teal murcury glass candle holders from Crate and Barrel after Christmas for about $5 total, and I think they look perfect in here. They really show off the satin finish too! Not to shiny or flat.

This wouldn't really be a bar if I didn't include some booze now would it. You might also notice that I found some decanters to turn into light fixtures too!

So let's take a look at the list from the mood board post.

Remove doors and hardware
Paint door jamb
Paint walls
Lay backer board
Install floor tile
Install lower cabinets
Install countertop
Backsplash (same tile as floor, or maybe not)
Upper cabinets or shelves (I think we'll go with shelves but just incase we change our minds)
Run some electrical thru the wall from the kitchen
Lighting
Stock with booze and wine



We still have a few design decisions to make but I think we've made it past the half way point of this project. Maybe Matt will want to go shopping for tile to put on the back splash this weekend (a girl can dream right?).



So what do you think, is the tile too dark? What would you put in there? What plans do you have for the weekend?