It's all finished and I am in love with the outcome!
As I mentioned in my previous post, we were tackling our wet bar with a quick, inexpensive update and we finished it over the long weekend. It is amazing what a little paint can do to transform a space.
Here is the before picture. This little wet bar is actually located in our living room and is behind two doors. I just looks like a closet from the outside, but inside it's a great space for storing alcohol, drinking glasses and wine openers. It even has a sink, working drawers and cabinetry that was already there.
We definitely had a great starting point, it just needed a little love.
After making a few mood boards I knew I wanted to do a blue/black/white combo of some sort and then accent with some natural/distressed wood shelving.
After finding the shelving at Lowe's and a fun stencil at Michael's, we were ready to start. Once we removed the existing shelving Mike had to do a little bit of drywall repair and electrical work. Our router and modem are stored in this space as well and there were open holes in the wall to accommodate those cords. Mike added a cable plate and patched a small hole where speaker wires used to come out.
We also switched out the off white face plates on the electrical outlets (there are actually 3 in that small space!) and we updated the GFCI outlet to a nice bright white.
I painted the cabinets first a nice bold blue color and ordered more modern knobs to replace the old ones. You can find the knobs I ordered here. We kept the bottle opener that was there when we started.
I primed the walls and then added a top coat of Extra White by Sherwin Williams which we already had on hand. Once the walls were ready, the stenciling began...dun dun dunnnnn.
I opted to start in the top right corner. I was going to start in the top left and work left to right since I am right handed, but I would have had to contend with the outlets right off the bat and I wanted to get a few stencils in before I tackled that (which wasn't bad at all).
I used a 4 inch foam roller and made sure to roll it a few times on paper towels to get all of the excess paint off. You don't want a lot of paint on the roller at all or it will seep underneath your stencil. After a few repeats of the stencil I wiped the back of the stencil off with paper towels as well just to ensure no bleed.
I also washed the paint off of the entire stencil approximately 3 times during this project. Hot water and a scrub brush took the paint right off.
In the beginning I ended up going down a few repeats and then began to go left once I got the hang of it. Everything was going well...until the corners.
I was using an outdoor stencil which was very large, which was awesome in the fact that it covered a lot of area at once, it wasn't so awesome when I need to bend it or fit it into smaller spaces.
I will say that one of the biggest pros in using stencils, besides the low price point, is how forgiving they are. By looking at this picture you would never know how hard or awful the corners actually look (the other side is even worse). Everything kind of just blends in and from a far it looks amazing.
I free handed a little bit of the corner work, but I'm not sure if that helped or made it worse! It was pretty frustrating at times, but once I stopped and stepped back and realized it wasn't that noticeable, I was relieved and inspired to keep trudging on.
There were a few times that I got a little overwhelmed with lining up the stencil just the right way to be able to bend it, especially when it didn't line up juuuust right, and luckily Mike came to the rescue. He would tape it up and I would stencil.
I almost cut the stencil up into smaller pieces, which in theory would have been easier, but I didn't have a small 1 inch roller, so it actually would have been harder to get the paint where it needed to be with a 4 inch roller. Thank goodness he could see what I couldn't and helped out. After about 4 hours my eyes were crossed!
We did end up cutting a few pieces at the very end to match up a few tricky spots, but all in all we kept the stencil in tact the entire time.
The result? So amazing!
I was floored by the initial transformation and I couldn't' wait to get the new shelves in. When we were originally planning the space we were thinking floating shelves, but we couldn't find the right size in the right color for the right price. I found the shelves we used at Lowe's and although they were a little shorter depth-wise than we originally wanted I think they were absolutely the right choice.
I love the black brackets and how they tie the shelves in to the black paint and knob pulls. Once they were up the depth was perfect and knew it was the perfect fit, whew! The original bar had three shelves and going down to two (that weren't as deep as the other shelves) has added so much more space.
We added the glasses and liquor (definitely a random collection we have) and can't wait to start making some drinks!
This makeover cost us less than $150 and has added so much pizzazz to this little hidden gem. Bring on the parties!
Expenses:
Cabinet Paint - $15
Shelving - $70
Stencil and Paint - $10
Cabinet Knobs - $6
Foam Roller - $3
Electrical - $23
Drywall Repair - $6
Total - $133
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| We even let the kiddos pick their favorite stencils from their pile to add a personal touch on the "hidden wall". They were so excited to be a part of it! |
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