A Bar for Chris’s Apartment–Complete with Glasses

Chris moved into an apartment last October. It’s a nice apartment, but it has a built in desk right in the main traffic path from the front door to the bedroom which makes it unusable as a desk because the chair would always be in the way. Being the good parent that I am, I suggested that it would make a fantastic bar because of its proximity to the living/dining room and kitchen.

Here is the before picture:

This would have been a really simple project except that Chris is not allowed to screw anything to the walls, otherwise we would have installed some metal standards and brackets and glass shelves. So, Mike and Chris designed a freestanding shelf that could sit on the stone backsplash. Mike didn’t want it to feel cave-like, so he added places for glass shelves to sit in the walnut shelves.

Here it is installed:

We really wanted to use rain glass for the shelves, but tempered glass only comes in clear–and you MUST use tempered glass for a project like this. Regular glass isn’t structural–even for this little weight. So I found a cling film that you can put on glass that makes it look like rain glass. Pretty tricky…

So that Chris would have a fully functional bar, I have been on the prowl for all sorts of glasses for it–mostly at the Samaritan Center in Ooltewah. I paid between $.35 and $1.00 for the glasses from there.

I found double old fashioned, a few kinds of beer glasses, martini glasses, and water glasses. I ended up getting a set of high ball glasses at Home Goods so that he would have the full complement of glassware needed for cocktails. Chris’s Aunt Debbie gave him the wine glasses on the top shelf. Total cost of everything including glasses was $80. Pretty great project in my opinion.

Now he just needs to throw a party.