Some days, coffee is the only thing that gets me out of bed. I dread pulling off the covers until I think of the rich smell, frothed milk, and warm ceramic mug in my hands, and then I’m up. I’ve been wanting a coffee bar for a long and told Nick that’s what I wanted for Christmas. So we finally have our DIY coffee bar!

Building the bar

Per usual, I was the creative director and Nick the handyman. I drew up simple plans; three shelves connected with iron legs. Dark wood stain close to a walnut.

Although we still have a supply of scrap barn wood, we’ve been using purchased lumbar for recent projects because it’s so much lighter and easier to clean up.

After gluing and clamping the boards, Nick cut them to size and stained them, and finally added several coats of polyurethane. We ordered the hardware on Amazon:

He made a small shelf with similar materials (I still need to get hooks to hang my mugs) And that was really it! Now the smell of fresh brew wakes me up in the morning and I feel like a barista walking over to my little bar to fix my cup.

What’s on my bar

I decided to part ways with my Keurig. It was great, but Nick doesn’t drink coffee so it was just me making it in the morning. A few years ago a stopped using K-cups because they were expensive and I honestly don’t love the taste compared to ground coffee. So every morning I fill the reusable cup, make a single cup of coffee, and repeat at least once before I leave (sometimes twice). It seemed a little impractical and I decided to get a regular coffee pot and just make several cups.

I asked around and researched coffee pots and landed on this Cuisinart model

I love that:

  • I can preset the start so the coffee is brewed right before I get up
  • I can set it to stay hot as long as I want
  • I can dispense coffee from the holding tank as I need it (basically I just top off my cup all morning long)

I sill have a hand milk frother that I believe literally makes my coffee worth drinking. I wrote a post about how to use it to basically make a coffee shop latte so check that out if you haven’t.

But while researching coffee pots I kept coming across ones that had an attached milk frother. While this sounded great, I use mine every day and didn’t think I’d enjoy cleaning it attached to the machine, especially now that the coffee bar was away from the sink. But I did find an electric milk frother that makes REALLY good frothed milk. I use half and half so you can really taste the sweetness of the lactose (natural milk sugar) in the foam. You still have to clean after each use so I usually reserve this for mornings I’m home a while because the hand-held one is so easy to clean (just turn it on and dip the end in soapy water).

We were gifted this Bella electric ceramic tea kettle a few years ago and it’s been sitting in a box. We finally have a place for it now and have used it more than the coffee pot for almost instant hot water for tea and hot chocolate.

Overall I’m very pleased and have that much more reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Here is a list of the some of the products I mentioned.

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