If you build it, they will come!

Have I ever mentioned that my husband is pretty awesome? No? Well, here's a whole post on how amazing Evan is.

I love our dining room now!

When we moved into our new apartment, it was decided that I could decorate the guest room in the girliest of manners and he could have the dining room for his "man cave." I got straight to work painting the guest room wall a lovely shade of pale purple and decorating with my favorite books, old pointe shoes and sewing/craft supplies.

The dining room was stagnant for a while. Then we got the donated chairs and table I posted about here. And then we stalled again.

We had a lot going on. We were quite busy! Helping friends move, baking extravagant cakes, working really hard, helping friends get married, trying to catch up on sleep, holding babies...we are exhausted! But does that stop this girl from wanting to have her apartment all put together? Nope. I'm a little ambitious. (Let's hope Evan thinks of it that way!)

We originally discussed Evan mounting his TV in the dining room and connecting his computer system so he could play video games and be really awesome and manly in there. But he lost the power cord to his TV and, truthfully, I wasn't that sad. So then we were faced with what to do in there. I don't know if many of you know this, but Evan is a Home Brewer. He brews beer. It is tasty. He's currently going back to school to get a few credits so that he can apply to UC Davis to get his Masters in Brewing. Yeah. That's a thing. My husband is pretty damn cool.

While being cool is awesome, brewing comes with a lot of equipment. Most of that equipment is not really the aesthetic I was striving for in our grown-up apartment, but I know that Evan needs to have fairly easy access to it and thus it could not reside in the storage closet off the patio that is roughly large enough for a small cat and one medium-sized box of books. Don't ask how I know this. My cat is not good.

Our solution? Let's build a bar back to hide all of his things and provide a surface for us to put out Evan's rare beer bottle collection! I thought it would be particularly cool to paint the entire wall behind it with chalkboard paint so that I could make the dining room feel a little like Evan's very own brewery. Except we're going to have to call it a "brewing company" because I have a very hard time saying words that include one "r" followed too closely by another. This is why, growing up, I always called my friend Greer, Gweer. Brewery automatically turns into Brewewy or Bruurry.

I digress.

A few weeks ago, I came home from work and Evan had already painted the chalkboard wall! Score one for ambition! I could hardly wait to start working on it. Lord knows I love Pinterest...so I found some inspiration for my chalkboard wall. Here's the progress on that...

Love shots like these. Nothing attractive at all...

Shameless self-plug on Evan's wall. What?
My cookies and cakes are delicious. 

See what I mean? Beer stuff isn't super pretty. 

Messy but fun! :) 

Partially done. Getting better. 

After that, we kinda stalled again. When Evan and I are on the ball, we're very productive. But then we take a little while to finish. It's like we have bursts of energy and inspiration and then we go into creative hibernation for a while.

So nothing really happened on the bar back until the weekend before my sister's baby shower. Which is when we needed it done. Oops. Good thing Evan works fast! :)

He went out, bought lumber, borrowed a router, jigsaw and saw horses from our friend Ben, and got to work! He knocked that thing out in 2 days! And then he stained it, to boot!! Awesome hubs award!

I woke up to the smell of lumber in the morning!  

Cali was not happy she couldn't help!

We had originally wanted to put cabinet doors on the front and we may revisit that at some point, but we were short on time and cash and those things are EXPENSIVE. So our alternate solution was to put up a curtain of sorts with industrial strength velcro and plain cotton duck cloth. My mom handled sewing the edging and measuring things. Thanks, Mom! :)

Close-up of how we made it work! 

About one hour before the baby shower was supposed to start, I finally got the fabric up and put the finishing touches on the bar itself. :)

I had to display the glasses mom bought Evan from the New Glarus Brewery! :) 

You know you wanna tap that...

Every bar needs some good art...Dad found this watercolor picture at an arts festival.
It may be one of my favorite things ever! Ketel One and Crown? Thank you!
Oh. I also love the colorful straws. :) 

After all this work, we are so excited to enjoy this room now. Unfortunately, we're both too tired. Excuse us while we sleep for a week!