Wine Bar

One of my favorite quarantine projects was curating my wine bar. I have this huge empty space in my dining room and I was debating an office space, a coffee and tea bar or a wine bar. Since the room is a dining space, I figured the wine bar would be best for hosting and entertaining. I might have sat on Pinterest for a few days but I brainstormed quite a few ideas.

I knew I wanted to have large wood shelves, some type of artwork, bar stools and a marble counter top. I reached out to home depot about building a custom cabinet and bar. I grabbed my sketchpad and started sketching out multiple ideas and designs of how I wanted the wine bar to look. After a few configurations, I finally settled on the right placement of each section. In my mind, the wine bar was broken up into four sections. There would be a gallery wall, a bar cart, the physical bar itself, and some beautiful shelving. I ended up, sketching out some of my ideas with painters, tape and paper on the walls to try to envision what was in my head.

I knew I needed some custom cabinetry done, and after researching local vendors in Chicago, the most financially kind option was to work with Home Depot. I had a custom specialist come in home and measure my space. It was so fun to look at cabinet swatches and countertop samples. I ended up picking a taller and thinner cabinet style and a cool tone grey veneer. I originally wanted an Italian Carrara marble of the counter top but doing a faux marble quarts countertop seemed like a better idea in function and in price. Better to have a stain resistant counter!

I found these insanity beautiful fire place mantels on Wayfair. They are ginormous but they had the reclaimed railway tie look I was going for. I wanted two large shelves to host all of my glassware. I liked the idea of buying four glasses per style, that way when friends or family come over; they can pick the glass that best suits their personality. I curated my collection of glasses from CB2, Anthropologie, Foursided, Antique stores and Crate & Barrel. My absolute favorite set of glasses came from Anthropologie. I have been obsessed with the set of red wine glasses from Anthro forever! The ornate and dainty details on some of my glassware truly brings me joy. I love how bold the dark shelves look on the wall. They make such a statement visually from across the room. Shoutout to my dad who installed the shelves and hung my gallery wall. The wine bar truly started coming together.

The artwork was a little tricky. I wanted black, white and grey art prints with accents of dark wood to tie in the color pallet of the room. I found a few art prints from Urban Outfitters, Rifle Paper Co and a local shop called Foursided in Chicago. I framed most of them myself from Michaels or Target. I commissioned an incredible portrait of my grandma and grandpa’s house on this wall. A wonderful friend named Chelsea hand painted a watercolor portrait in black and grey. It is the crowning jewel of the gallery wall. The dining room is first and foremost a family space. I wanted to commemorate their home because they have hosted our family my entire life for every single holiday or event. A lot of special and amazing memories were made at Three North Pine Street in Mount Prospect and I knew I needed to have something very sentimental on this feature wall. I grew up in that house, I lived there when I was little so I got to spend a lot of time with my grandparents. They had a hand in raising me. My friend Chelsea did such a spectacular job capturing my grandparents house. It was so beautiful I decided to get it custom matted and framed at Foursided to match its beauty. This painting is one of my favorite focal points of the wine bar.

The barstools were such a good find at Marshalls and Home goods. My mom and I found an iron base and dark maple wood seat for the the wine bar. Three stools fit the space just perfectly. After finding some of the finishing touches from home decor stores around the city, the wine bar was finally coming to life! This is one of the most curated corners in my home. It turned out even better than I envisioned!