His Coffee Bar, Our Cocktail Bar: The Two Stations That Keep Our House Running
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His Coffee Bar, Our Cocktail Bar: The Two Stations That Keep Our House Running
One gets the day started. The other is there for the days when coffee just isn’t enough.
There are two bars that help keep this house running.
One serves coffee.
The other serves something a little stronger.
Because some days, baby, you need more than coffee—even if BigDog drinks his black.
BigDog is the barista in our house.
I may rearrange the coffee bar, try something new, decide we need another mug, or wake up one morning convinced the entire setup needs changing because apparently I can’t leave well enough alone.
But when it comes to actually making the coffee?
That’s his department.
And then there are those days.
You know the ones.
The days when you’ve handled whatever life decided to throw at you, you’ve done enough adulting for one day, and another cup of coffee isn’t going to cut it.
That’s when our other bar comes in handy.
And that one started with my mom, a pantry cabinet, BigDog with some tools, and me eventually deciding that if we were going to have a bar, we might as well stock the damn thing properly.
So yes, technically this is a story about our coffee bar and cocktail bar.
But it’s really another story about us—and how two people with very different personalities have slowly made one house feel like home.
Welcome back to our Boho Dream Home.
And just like the rest of this house, it didn’t come out of a decorating catalog.
It came together because of how we actually live.
First, You Need to Meet the Barista
BigDog drinks his coffee pretty straightforward.
Me?
I’m a little more willing to experiment.
Different flavors. Different setups. Different things to try.
And yes, occasionally different ways to arrange the coffee bar because I like changing things around.
BigDog just wants his coffee.
That’s probably why he makes such a good household barista.
Coffee isn’t just something we drink in this house, either. It’s part of our routine.
Those little everyday rituals are something I’ve come to appreciate more since retirement. You don’t necessarily notice them when you’re rushing out the door every morning.
Then life slows down a little, and suddenly you realize:
This is the good stuff.
A cup of coffee.
Your person nearby.
The house still quiet.
And, more often than not around here, Luna supervising the entire operation.
Our Coffee Travels Even When We Don’t
One of the fun things we’ve added to our coffee routine is our Atlas Coffee Club subscription.
Coffee arrives from different parts of the world, so instead of drinking the same thing over and over, we get to try something new.
That’s right up my alley.
BigDog gets to make the coffee.
I get the fun of seeing what’s coming next.
Everybody wins.
OUR COFFEE SUBSCRIPTION
We subscribe because we enjoy trying coffees from around the world without having to hunt them down ourselves.
If this is an affiliate relationship, add the appropriate disclosure before publishing.
And Then There’s the Other Bar…
Now we get to the fun part.
My mom gave us what was technically a pantry cabinet.
Normal people might have looked at it and thought:
“Oh, what a nice place for canned goods.”
Apparently we are not normal people.
We looked at it and saw a bar.
BigDog put the cabinet together, and once it was standing, it didn’t take long for us to start turning it into something completely different from its original purpose.
Shelves for glasses.
Room for bottles.
Cocktail tools.
Our better liquor.
And eventually the whole thing became our bar.
That’s one of my favorite things about decorating a home.
You don’t have to use something for whatever the manufacturer decided to call it.
It’s your house.
Make it work for your life.
And Yes, He Was Pretty Damn Proud of It
This picture still makes me smile.
There he is standing beside the finished bar after I stocked it, looking very pleased with what we’d accomplished.
And he should have been.
Because that little pantry cabinet had officially been promoted.
It wasn’t holding cereal anymore, baby.
It had the good stuff.
Caption: BigDog, very proud of his handiwork—and possibly even prouder of what we stocked it with.
What I especially love when I look at this picture isn’t whether every bottle is perfectly arranged.
It’s him.
This is our house.
That’s our stuff.
And that’s a little moment from our life that we happened to photograph.
Those are becoming my favorite pictures to share.
We Believe in Having a Few Good Bottles
We’re not trying to recreate a nightclub in our house.
But we do enjoy having a few good bottles around.
Scotch. Bourbon. Whiskey. Whatever we’ve discovered and decided is worthy of staying on the shelf.
Some bottles are everyday.
Some are definitely not.
And some are the kind you pull out when you want to sit down, pour a little something, and actually enjoy it rather than just drink it.
The same goes for the glassware.
I like having the right glasses available—not because we’re fancy, but because there’s something nice about turning an ordinary evening into a little ritual.
Good glass.
Good pour.
Nowhere you have to be.
That’s retirement I can get behind.
BigDog’s Cigars Needed a Home Too
Of course, if BigDog was going to have his corner represented properly, we couldn’t forget the cigars.
Cigars have been part of some pretty memorable moments in our life.
When I first retired, we went camping at Usery Park. I had champagne and a Padrón cigar to celebrate finally being done with working life.
So cigars aren’t just something sitting in a humidor around here.
They’re tied to memories.
Celebrations.
Patio evenings.
Conversations.
Those times when you sit down and realize there’s nowhere else you need to be.
That’s why the humidors and cigar accessories fit naturally into this little bar area.
They’re part of our life, not props we bought to make a room look interesting.
CIGAR STORAGE
Shop Humidors & Cigar Accessories
If cigars are part of your household too, a good humidor keeps everything together while looking much better than random boxes scattered around the house.
A Bar Doesn’t Have to Be a Built-In Bar
This may actually be my favorite takeaway from this entire project.
For years, I think we’re sold this idea that our homes need certain things before they “count.”
A real bar needs to be built in.
A coffee station needs custom cabinetry.
A beautiful bedroom needs a designer bed.
Nope.
Our bar started as a pantry my mom gave us.
That’s it.
We used what we had.
BigDog assembled it.
We figured out what we wanted inside.
And now it’s part of our home.
If you’ve got an unused cabinet, hutch, sideboard, bookcase or pantry sitting around, maybe it isn’t the wrong piece of furniture.
Maybe it just hasn’t found its second job yet.
CREATE YOUR OWN HOME BAR
Shop Home Bar Storage & Organizers
Bottle organizers, cocktail-tool sets, glass storage and trays can turn an ordinary cabinet into something that works for the way you entertain.
The Coffee Bar Changes. The Cocktail Bar…Not So Much.
This is where you can see the difference between BigDog and me.
The cocktail bar has a job.
It does its job.
BigDog is perfectly happy with that arrangement.
The coffee bar?
Well…
I might wake up tomorrow and decide it needs something.
A different tray.
A new mug.
A different container.
Maybe the coffee needs to move.
Maybe something needs to come off.
Maybe something needs to go on.
BigDog has learned to live with this.
Marriage is about compromise, baby.
He gets black coffee.
I get to rearrange where we keep it.
COFFEE BAR FAVORITES
Shop Coffee Bar Organizers & Accessories
Trays, mug storage, coffee canisters and small organizers are easy ways to change up a coffee station without redoing the whole space.
Two Bars. Two Personalities. One House.
When I look at these two little areas of our home, they actually make perfect sense.
BigDog makes the coffee.
I experiment with it.
Mom gives us a pantry.
BigDog builds it.
I stock it.
The good bottles find their shelves.
His cigars and humidors find a home.
I inevitably decide something needs to be rearranged.
And Luna is probably somewhere nearby wondering why none of this involves her.
That’s our house.
Coffee gets us going. The good stuff reminds us we’re retired and don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow morning.
Well…most mornings.
And maybe that’s why these two stations really do help keep this house running.
It’s not because we need a fancy coffee setup or a cabinet full of top-shelf liquor.
It’s the rituals around them.
Morning coffee.
An evening drink.
A cigar on the patio.
Talking about the day.
Laughing about something stupid.
Sitting together without needing to be anywhere else.
Those ordinary little moments have become some of my favorite parts of this stage of life.
That’s What Our Boho Dream Home Really Is
When I started thinking about sharing more of our home, I knew I didn’t want this series to become:
“Here are five things you should buy to make your house look like mine.”
Because that’s not how our house happened.
We didn’t sit down with a designer and choose a style.
We lived here.
We disagreed.
We compromised.
We collected things.
Family gave us things.
We repurposed things.
We changed our minds.
We figured out what mattered to each of us.
And slowly, this became home.
The bedroom took us eight years just to agree on a bed.
A pantry became a cocktail bar.
The coffee station keeps changing because I apparently require a creative outlet before breakfast.
And BigDog keeps making the coffee.
That’s our decorating philosophy right there.
Use what you love. Keep what means something. Make room for both people who live there. And don’t worry too much about what you’re “supposed” to do.
Because the best rooms aren’t necessarily the ones that look perfect.
They’re the ones that tell you something about the people who live there.
And this little corner?
It definitely tells you something about us.
One bar wakes us up.
The other helps us wind down.
And BigDog is pretty damn proud of both.
The bedroom took us eight years just to agree on a bed.
A pantry from my mom became a cocktail bar.
The coffee station keeps changing because apparently I require a creative outlet before breakfast.
BigDog keeps making the coffee.
And on the days when coffee isn’t enough…
Well, baby, that’s why we have the other bar.
That’s our decorating philosophy right there.
Use what you love. Keep what means something. Make room for both people who live there. And don’t worry too much about what you’re “supposed” to do.
Because the best rooms aren’t necessarily the ones that look perfect.
They’re the ones that tell you something about the people who live there.
And these two little corners?
They tell you quite a bit about us.
Coming Next in Our Boho Dream Home
There is one wall in our house that deserves its own story.
Motorcycles.
BigDog and I both have history with them.
Mine just happens to include a broken ankle, a broken jaw and a chipped femur.
So you can probably already guess how that decorating conversation went.
We’ll get there, baby.
