Our Cottage Coffee Bar

9/28/13 Edited to add:  I saw that Donna of Funky Junk Interiors was hosting a link party featuring Creative DIY Coffee Stations, so I immediately knew I wanted to feature our fun coffee station that we put together from vintage finds and junk - so, even though this post originally posted about a year ago, I thought it was worth revisiting...enjoy!  Here's the link to the party so you can see a lot of other inspiring coffee stations as well as a host of other creative ideas:  http://www.funkyjunkinteriors.net/2013/09/party-junk-206-creative-diy-coffee-stations.html

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It's hard to believe it's been almost a month since my last post - wow! The day I posted all the photos of my studio for Where Bloggers Create 2012 was also the day we left for a week long trip to Orlando to attend the International Christian Retail Show and meet with gift manufacturers about licensing my art. It's been a bit of a whirlwind around here since that day - after the trip I had a lot of follow-up to do (my meetings were very positive and promising!). Plus it's summertime with family get-togethers and home projects and so on and so on.

But things have leveled out and as often happens in August, I am gearing up for the Fall with a great amount of energy and anticipation! In the midst of all the activities, we have continued to make progress with decorating the Woodland Cottage, and I wanted to share one of those decorating projects with you today. This is our Cottage Coffee Bar...

(click any image to enlarge)

This is located on a small wall that is just past our foyer on the way to the kitchen - it is open to the living room and dining room as well. I got this wonderful black and white enamel-topped cabinet from my Aunt - it belonged to my Grandmother and was in her kitchen for many decades. I have very fond memories of it from childhood...

I knew I wanted the cabinet to anchor this little nook, but I didn't want this space to become just another spot to put collectibles or knick knacks - I wanted it to be functional (and adorable of course) in some way. One day it hit me - how about a coffee bar? We love coffee, we love to serve coffee to our guests - how about we make a central place where we and our guests can easily get coffee any time...? So, the next step was to go to Pinterest (of course) for some coffee station inspiration. I ended up creating a pinboard called "All Things Coffee" where I pinned all the cool coffee goodies I found. Then I began to look through all my stash and pulled together what I had in addition to the cabinet...

This was a start, but I wanted height and color and much more coffee cottage-cuteness (but for little or no $$) so I had to get creative...  

I had used these 1 x 6 boards to make valance shelves at our mobile home - since I didn't need those anymore, I took one that was already painted, and had my hubby cut a piece of scrap beadboard to fit under it and we added side trim boards and scolly iron shelf brackets that we had laying around and combined it all into this shelf structure to go on top of the shelf I already had up.

I was pretty sure I wanted to incorporate a chalkboard into the design, so I went to my stash of garage sale frames and found what I hoped would be the perfect candidate - a nice oval frame without the glass - it just had a print glued to a piece of masonite - great for holding chalkboard paint...

I just had to make sure it would fit...and it did!

So we combined the existing shelf, a few coffee collectibles I had...

...like these vintage cups, my mom and dad's old coffee pot, and this coffee grinder lamp that we used to have in our shop space...

...moved things around a bit, added more coffee collectibles I had here and there...and painted the oval frame and picture with heirloom white spray paint for the frame and chalkboard spray paint for the picture. Then I used acrylic paints to paint the lettering ("Anytime is Coffetime") and the coffee cup...

I am really pleased with how it all came out. The shelf unit looks like one unified piece and works well with the oval chalkboard and collectibles. I also like the way the hanging coffee can storage worked out - I just took the paper wrapping off two small coffee cans I had, spray-painted them black, use a tin punch to punch two holes, then threaded black and white gingham ribbon through the holes to make a hanger...then I hung them on the shelf pegs - easy-peasy...

The cans hold sweetener and hot chocolate packages now, and when I create two more matching ones they will hold little creamer containers and other coffee add ins...

Someday we plan to buy a Keurig single-serve coffee pot to put here and we'll add a bunch of K-cups in a cute container of some type...it will be nice to be able to grab just one cup of coffee at any given time without having to make a whole pot...

This was such a fun, easy, inexpensive, and very gratifying project. We are really looking forward to getting a lot of mileage from this coffee bar for our guests and ourselves!

Thanks for stopping by to check in friends! There are lots of fun things in the works around here, and I can't wait to share them with you! It's shaping up to be a busy, but good, Fall season - I'm really looking forward to it! (especially the cooler temps...please...?!) Take care and be blessed in the sweet fading Summer days - we'll talk again soon!