Coffee Anyone?

Oh coffee, how I love thee! In fact, when I think about coffee, a line from a certain very famous little tune comes to mind, it goes like this…..

“I love you in the morning, and in the afternoon. I love you in the evening, and underneath the moon”! That’s right, I’m totally quoting “Skinnamarink” by Sharon, Lois & Bram lol, but it does absolutely sum up my love of coffee and how often I’d actually like to consume it lol! Also, a close runner-up to my love of coffee is my love of coffee mugs lol! I have quite the collection, actually I should say “had” quite the collection because, staying true to my word of 2023, declutter, I went through and purged my collection down to the ones that bring me the absolute most joy and donated the rest so someone else can enjoy them too!

Now, when one has such a love for coffee, they feel the need to put it on display for all to see, as if to shout from the rooftops “I LOVE COFFEE” lol! Well, at least I do anyway lol, so after making over my dining room a few years ago, I set up a “coffee bar” using an old China cabinet that belonged to my Mother-In-Law, with the thought that I would eventually paint the cabinet and make it more suitable to my tastes, and to fit in with the other furniture in the room. The problem was, I knew it was going to be a horrible job lol! There are spindles, wood slats…..ugggg, just so much sanding was going to have to occur in order to be able to paint it so I just kept putting it off! The cabinet is actually 2 pieces and I was just using the bottom piece so that I could have the storage, and I actually would have used the top piece as well but there wasn’t enough clearance to allow my Keurig to open up! Here’s the cabinet, I’m sure lots of you will recognize it as something from the past or something you still have, heck, I still see them all over the place, at used stores, on FB Marketplace, and I get it, they’re sturdy and well built, just not the “look” I was going for!

As you can see, it’s in pretty good shape, but it’s just not my preference of design! I was asking my husband to remove the doors, cut off any curved trim, replace the slat doors with flat doors, etc., etc., etc. lol! I just wanted clean, straight lines, nothing fancy, and for some handy people, that would be completely do-able, for my husband, not so much lol! Finally, the more we talked about it and again, as I’m trying to “declutter” my space, we decided that the whole project was too much for both of our capabilities so, like the true shoppers we are, off to the Ikea website we went lol! Hours later, I had it all figured out! After hand-picking each and every component of doors, knobs, shelves, colour, legs, and probably a dozen more things that I’ve now blocked from my memories lol, we were set! The next day we headed out bright and early to our first Ikea stop, a mere 2 hours away, and yes, I did say “first” because since the one I chose was all separate pieces, not all the pieces were available at one location so that meant we were heading to 2, possible 3 different Ikeas throughout the Toronto area!!!!!!! Are you thinking that we’re crazy? Just remember the song, remember how much I love coffee lol! It did almost feel like we were all of a sudden in a hurry to get this done lol, once we had decided this was the way we were going to go, getting a brand new piece, it felt like let’s just do it and get it over, and any cost lol!

So we arrive at our first location and head into the madness…listen, if you’ve ever been in an Ikea on a weekend, then you know exactly what I’m talking about lol! Anyway, as we’re wandering around looking for what we had picked out, a completely different cabinet caught my attention….and it was pretty much exactly what I needed/wanted and the most awesome part of it was that it was a complete unit, no choosing anything other than do you want white or black lol, oh, and also, it was half the price of what we were going to get so YaY! The only thing that wasn’t exactly what I wanted was that it had glass doors, which, while I do love the look of them, for me they aren’t practical in this case since I will be using this to store lots of stuff that I don’t necessarily want on display, but that’s ok, I can cover those easy enough! Which, finally, leads us into this week’s sewing project!!

So here’s the Brimnes Cabinet we ended up getting from Ikea!

And now, here’s my new coffee bar!!!!!

Oh my gosh, I’m just in love with it! It is absolutely what I envisioned, and now that I think about it, I’m glad I got to add my own hand-made touch to it, that makes it 100% uniquely mine! And talk about an easy project, my goodness, I think the longest part of the whole process was washing and drying the fabric lol! Here’s a quick little explanation on how I achieved this look! I figured out the size I needed each panel of fabric to be then I hemmed each edge so that they wouldn’t fray. I sewed on some shirring tape that I had from a previous project on the RIGHT SIDE of the fabric, then pulled the strings till I achieved the measurement I needed the width to be. I attached adhesive hook tape to the inside of my doors about 1/2″ above the glass because shirring tape will “stick” to the hook tape and ta-da, project is done!

You can absolutely skip the whole shirring part if you just want a flat panel look instead of the gathered one like I did. In that case, you would just sew on non-adhesive loop tape on the fabric, still using the adhesive hook on the door and it would be even quicker!

My goodness, I’ve kept you long enough but I just have one more question for you, and that’s, “who’s coming over for coffee?” lol!! Oh and if you do, come later in the day and then you can also enjoy my custom made coffee bar sign made by me and my Cricut!!

I hope you have an amazing week and if you find yourself enjoying a coffee or 2, think of me and know I’m probably enjoying one too lol! Cheers!

Shawna