Thirsty?

Happy new year!
Winter project completion, check.

In the interest of moving the whole house thing forward, I've gotten in the habit of assigning myself a summer and a winter project each year.  Having a deadline, seasonal or otherwise, seems to help.  It's also one of my little secrets of hosting a couple of big parties every year.  If I know I'm about to have a house or yard full of people, I'm much more likely to bust a move and make sure things get wrapped up and primped sooner rather than later.
As a result, Boy and I are wondering what the heck we're going to do with the rest of the weekends until, say, March, because we've knocked out a big chunk of our cold weather to-do list already.  Yippee!  Long dog walks on the ice and movies and popcorn it is! And cocktails, of course.

Speaking of....
Here's the before photo from this deal.  Perhaps you recall the original incarnation of the powder room tucked under the stairs, with a DIY shed style frameless door:


And now from the same perspective, the fabulous new after, aka the "Cocktail Station":


The powder room itself remains unchanged but is now graced by a new bit of wall doing dual duty, creating a little more privacy for the entrance and a surface and nook to contain the bar cabinetry.  And for the first time ever inside Modern in MN, there's an actual hinged, swinging door, albeit with a little tweak to fit the sloped "roof".  Because tweaking is what we do, yo.



And since it's impossible for me to condone the wasting of space, the hidden agenda:


Way under there and now totally concealed for day to day, this storage shelving was something I started last Winter--AFTER--our big New Year's party and thus after any strong impetus to complete it had passed. So much for busting a move.  But really it took me until about five minutes ago to figure out how I could get the whole area to come together and be functional and look great. As boring as it is, this is actually one of the best parts of the whole project because it's freed up a huge amount of pantry cabinet space I had been using to store off season, little used but still very necessary stuff.
So the trick that eventually came to me is two separate sections of cabinets on wheels, and as you can see from the photo above, everything other than the two wall cabinets pulls out for access to the storage area behind.  It was tedious as heck to execute and getting all of the fixed and mobile elements just right took what seemed like ages but it ended up super functional and pretty great looking, I think.
I used a combination of IKEA's Akurum stuff (the blind corner cabinet and the roll-front high cabinet mounted to the wall under the stairs, which, for the record, was insane trying to hang) and the Besta line for the wine, glassware and liquor cabinets.  It's got LED strip and undercounter lights and an additional light on the faux wall that's attached to the corner cabinet and conceals the storage area.
My favorite feature, being the obsessed addict that I am, is the insulated, recessed ice bin:



Cheers and happy new year!  Here's to thinking about Summer projects while I enjoy a craft cocktail...