We don't really drink. Oh, the occasional bottle of red wine with a good pasta or some such, but otherwise we're pretty close to being teetotallers. Well... maybe not that far... we do enjoy the occasional drink. And I've started to get into micro brewed lagers. I'm sure my German / Norwegian ancestors are absolutely appalled at the lack of beer in my life.
An interesting aside on that note, however, and something about which I'm quite excited, is that I actually have a bottle of mead in my possession; a bottle which I'm hopefully going to be drinking soon. Anyway, that should make those vikings proud.Anyway... we like to entertain, and that usually involves drinking. And we like furniture. And this piece is absolutely gorgeous.
Strangely enough, it is actually the single most expensive piece of furniture we've ever bought. But it's worth it. It is seriously solid. And seriously beautiful.
I recommend enlarging that ↑ photo and taking a closer look at that gorgeous wood.
I like that it offers a huge amount of storage, and efficient storage at that, while not having a very large 'footprint' (it doesn't take up much floor space).
We shopped around for bars and wine racks and the like, for quite a while. About a year. The wife wanted something that wasn't going to look terrible, or take up much room, because - after all - our lifestyle does not really necessitate owning a dedicated piece of furniture for drinking. Myself, I was also picky, but for the functionality of it; I was specifically looking for something that offered a large amount of wine storage.
So... when we saw this bar, we both fell immediately in love. It is perfect. And beautiful, and stunningly crafted.
From the sheer thickness of the wood:
That's a top-down view of one of the doors, and you'll note that even though there's technically a 'veneer' it isn't laminate or other cheap crap, it is actually SOLID WOOD veneer. First time I've ever seen that.
To the cool, unique, 70's style vintage mirrored glass on the inside of the main compartment:
That's so cool!
But what I like the best, is that it has 16 dedicated wine slots (more if you want to lie them down underneath) in the 'wine rack' portion of the bar:
You can see that in addition to the sixteen slots for wine, this compartment also has lots of shelving underneath for various tools or hardware (or even more wine bottles). Add to that the cool hanging glass function, and this part alone sold me on the bar. The glass hanging hardware is actually surprisingly well-constructed. Really thick, solid, wrought iron (I think... could be some other type of metal), that is very sturdy.
We put all our "nice" stemware in there. :)
(Thanks, Anthropologie, for those).
The top cabinet is just large enough for most glassware, including my new pint glasses, and our new 'old fashioned' glasses (two of these four were dirty and thus absent from this picture).
The next compartment is - arguably - the most important... the liquor cabinet.
You can see we have a long way to go in flushing out this cabinet, but (I think) we're off to a decent start.
Other than that, the bar offers an amazing amount of storage space, including a large open area which I think we're going to use as a bookshelf for bar- or drink-related literature (possibly will include cookbooks here also, not sure yet).
Right now we only have one drink-related book. Thanks to @em_ingram for that one!
Look at how pitiful that is!!! It just means we have a lot of fun book shopping (and reading) ahead of us!
In conclusion, blog readers, this bar is phenomenal. I love it. The wife loves it. YOU love it.
Now let us just hope it does not unhealthily enable us.
:)
