Brightening Up a Dark Bar with Vintage Finds

I am adding more and more color into my home as the days get longer and warmer. I decided to give my bar that sits in my great room a fresh, bright, and cheery new look too. 

Here is what the bar looked like at Christmas time.

I made this bar from a wood beadboard box that was left in our basement. It faces our TV, sits behind our sofa, and is perfect for entertaining. I also sit at it and paint or do projects. I recently hosted book club at my house and hubby played bartender for us. So, it has been a fun and useful addition to our great room. I keep a few things on either end of the bar top as you can see in this picture. The round tray that holds liquor and glassware is metal and because we live near the railroad tracks, everything would rattle on it when a train rolled by. Today, I set out to fix that issue (I hate rattles and repetitive noises) by looking for a wood, round tray at the thrift stores.

I found this carved wood tray at the second thrift store I looked at. I am not sure if someone didn't finish carving it or if this was the intended pattern, but I thought it had a great vintage, art deco feel to it. I gave the dry wood some much needed moisture with Wise Owl Furniture Salve. You can buy it from my friend, Tina, HERE.

I added some bright and colorful items to the art deco, wood tray. The red ball-bottom cocktail glasses were a gift from my daughter. She thrifted them and gave them to me for Christmas, along with the Raise Your Spirits cocktail recipe book that she created and all of the flavored simple syrups to make the drinks in the pamphlet.

I found the matching shot glasses at Goodwill. 

A white, yellow, and green liquor bottle adds more bright colors, along with the brightly, rainbow colored, vintage cocktail shaker.

On the other end of the bar sits a thrifted, small, wire wine rack, a vintage shot glass carrier with rainbow striped shot glasses, and a sunny yellow dish of pistachios.

The vintage, carved, Italian corks or bottle stoppers that I got from a free box at the thrift store sit in the shot glasses. 

The added color lightens the dark wood bar and the wood tray eliminated the rattle issue that was diving me nuts. Cheers!