We are counting down the days til spring break over here, so what better way to get spring break ready then inviting you all to hang out at our basement bar? ;) While my spring breaks now mostly revolve around: “watch this mom, are you watching? ARE YOU WATCHING?” rather than kicking back at a bar with a margarita, our basement wet bar does get occasional use after a long day with my kiddos!

We really wanted a bar area in the basement (see more of the basement here) since the lake is right off this space. It’s nice to have an area nearby to put out snacks and drinks rather than having to run up and down to the kitchen all the time. It’s also convenient for family movie night to have snacks right at hand down here. Our little mini fridge is stocked with juice boxes and cans of sparkling water and popcorn is tucked in the cabinet.

The cabinets do double duty holding craft supplies and toy overflow as well. My favorite thing down here is  the two large pull out drawers. One has a trash can and one has recycling, so my kids have no excuse not to pick up after themselves. It also makes clean up easy when we entertain in the summer.

The wet bar creates a natural hallway feeling in the basement with the way we ran the wood floors down here. Also, the ceiling is 8 ft in the hall section to accommodate the duct work and then opens up into 9 ft. I took a shot from both sides because I know people are always wanting to see how our floor plan works.

One side of the hall leads to my son’s bedroom and bath, mechanical room and storage.

This side goes to my daughter’s room, her bathroom, and our workout room. I put a gallery wall of family photos outside of each of their rooms that they love to look at.

If you remember when we were building, I wanted to put butcher block down here and we couldn’t find something that I liked the way it worked with the flooring. Then I was kind of scrambling to pick something and just ended up with this black soapstone looking laminate. I will admit it’s not my fave and I look forward to changing it out someday. It just feels a bit dark and I think a lighter grey tone would be a fun contrast.

That leads me to a big tip, which I will probably do a blog post about soon, and that’s where to cut costs when you are over budget. Countertops in a non essential space like this that you can easily swap out later can save a ton on a budget. I spent the money for quartz in our master bath and kitchen and we put laminate in the laundry, pantry, kids bathrooms and this basement wet bar. That cut my counter top budget by 2/3’s, which really helped when we went over in a lot of other unexpected areas. Counter tops are easily swapped out someday down the road with minimal damage.

Again, in deference to the budget, I went with simple white square tile from Lowe’s set in an brick pattern with a dark grout to tie in the counter top.

The pop of blue is fun down here and it didn’t feel like as big of a commitment as painting our kitchen cabinets a color.

You can see more of our basement here.

SOURCE LIST: 

Paint Color – Newburyport Blue by Benjamin Moore

Wall Color – Agreeable Gray by Sherwin Williams

Tile – Lowes

Flooring – Build Direct

Hardware – Local store in Grand Rapids I don’t have any info sorry!

Counter top – I don’t know the name of this either

Blue and wood vases – Michaels

Blue glasses – HomeGoods

Popcorn Bowls – Crate and Barrel

Blue Glassware – we picked these up on trips to Mexico