One Room at a Time :: Kitchen Cart turned Coffee Bar DIY

Hello!

Before I finally share the details of our little kitchen redo as part of my one room @ a time series, I wanted to share one of the projects we did in the space. 

You've caught peeks of the old kitchen cart we have in the room in our post about our kitchen command center, but it's been hidden for a pretty good reason:

It's boring. And borderline country. 

Eh. 

I had Jason give it a quick sand, and I painted the base with leftover paint we had as well as stained the top with stain we had from another project. Some new hardware and it was already looking much better. 

We also gave the cart a whole new purpose by turning it into our coffee bar. 

I made the larger tray out of the top to the ikea storage box we already owned. The top was always being thrown around anyway (because keeping a lid on anything in this house would be a crime according to our children, ha!). I added some new fabric to the top and covered that with clear contact paper to protect it from coffee spills. 

We attached the hardware that was originally on the cart to really make it look like a tray: 

This area now houses everything we need to make coffee. Coffee, (filters are held in the drawer), Truvia is held in the sugar tin I picked up a couple of years ago at Goodwill, cinnamon is kept up front, and mugs are ready to go. 

The inside is equally as functional. The drawer houses our random stuff that I shared with you in our junk drawer redo.

The bottom half now houses our new, smaller microwave (out of sight!) and a basket that we use to hold our potatoes and garlic. 

It's now beautiful AND functional :) Ready to see the ugly one last time?

Aside from new hardware, this entire project was F.R.E.E. 

I can not wait to share the rest with you - including a little tweeking that was done to this area!!

Happy Weekend!

xo-

Rachel

Fall List :: Junk Drawer

Happy Labor Day!

 

Here's a quick post to show you how I fixed our out of control junk drawer, a must on my Fall Organizing List:

 

 

Our drawer {I'm sure like many others} had gotten out of control.

 

I mean, really!

I honestly think that cleaning out your junk drawer is a {relatively} simple task that gives you a big sense of accomplishment. This time, however, I wanted to fix two of our biggest issues as well.

 

 First, the drawer we were using is set at an angle. I don't know what is wrong with it, but everything slides down, into the cabinet. Super annoying. I didn't want to switch drawers with anything {like our silverware} because the same annoying issue would still be there.

 

My second issue was the cheap, blue containers we had to "organize" the drawer.

We bought them at the dollar store when our first little guy was still a baby. They are supposed to lock together, but they are constantly coming apart and "drifting" around the drawer.

 

First thing, I did was take the top drawer of our kitchen cart {freshly moved into our kitchen from the garage as part of our kitchen command center redo. } and turned that into our new junk drawer. The old drawer now houses our cutting boards-something I don't mind moving around!

 

 

I found a great drawer organizer at HomeGoods. I knew that I wanted a nice fabric covered one, for no reason other than wanting something nice after dealing with those plastic ones for so long :)  I also like that it was large and one piece.

 

 

Next, I took some of the purple fabric I bought to recover our hanging file and lined the inside of the drawer with it. There are several ways to do this, but I just cut a piece of cheap posterboard to fit the drawer and glued our fabric to it.

 

One of the great things about clearing out a space {even a small one like this} is going through everything and really seeing what you need and don't. For me must-haves were a post its, a notebook, our tape measure and some of the chalk board labels I made.

Because you just never know when you may need to label something. ;)

 

So, there you go! An easy project, but for me, has made a world of difference!

 

Hope you are enjoying your last day of summer!

 

xo,

Rachel



Fall List :: Kitchen Command Center

Happy Monday!

 

I am so excited to show you our new and improved "Kitchen Command Center".

 

Last week, I left you off with my fall list looking like this:

 

{you can see how I got our snacking situation under control here }

 

To me, one of the most important things to get under control was the place in our kitchen that holds all the stuff that comes into this house. The bills, the homework, the shopping lists, the receipts....the list goes on and on!

 

Our previous system was not really functioning well, and was {in short} UGLY.

 

 

Ready to see what I did?

 

 

The first thing I did was redo our chalkboard.

 

I rearranged the things that were working for us, and added additional storage on the wall to the right, to help with what wasn't working. {Big help--having a spot dedicated completely to our "needs to be filed" stuff (manuals, bills, etc) Yes, I have a file of things to file. No, I cannot believe this is my life!}

 

Things that were ugly, I redid. The square fabric piece on the top (middle) is our original black magnet board that we had. I reupholstered it in extra fabric from our dining banquette.  The purple hanging file is actually our cheap, plastic one recovered in fabric.

 

How perfect is that print on the right??? I just HAD to get it once I saw it :)

 

 

 

:::sigh::::

 

Much better!

 

 Better yet? With this little redo of ours, I have brought in our old kitchen cart from the garage {seen above}...which means even more projects are ahead! We are in the middle of so much family room stuff, I don't even know if that is a good thing or bad thing at this point. ha!

 

xo,

Rachel

 

 

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