A Cafe Story & A Coffee Console

As some of you may or may not know {if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you would have seen updates & I think I briefly mentioned it on the blog} we recently created a cafe area in our church foyer. I was asked to help with some of the decorating and ideas and it was lots of fun and so cool to see it all come together in the end. I didn't do it all, Seth did a ton, and we had others pitch in with painting, putting things together etc. But it was definitely fun to help with paint colours, layout and accessories!

This past weekend we pretty much finished the cafe. We are just waiting on the installation of the bench {which I think was finished being installed yesterday!}, a few tables to get here, and a few other little things. Overall though, the space it pretty complete! I'm going to be sharing things in bits {teasers? yes! sorry :)} and show you how we put everything together.

Since the space isn't overly large we wanted a slim table of sorts that coffee, cups, stir sticks, and any yummy baked goods we have could rest on. Having a regular sized table would just take up too much space. We looked around for console ideas but nothing really popped out at us, the main issue being not enough "counter" space. Then Seth found a little gem of sorts hiding away in a storage room at the church that he thought we could makeover {I think I'm rubbing off on him}.
Today I'm going to share the makeover of the console. With a little paint we made this thing new again!

*You'll have to excuse the poor quality photos - the only "before" photos we got were on Seth's phone. But they'll give you the basic idea of what we were working with*

So here's what we were dealing with...

As you can see, not overly lovely right? The dust and dirt doesn't help it's character any either! I'm not really sure how long this thing has been kickin' around, probably a while judging by the fact that it is a beast to lift {seriously, really heavy}. This piece was free though, which was a great money saver, as we found it in a storage room at the church.

Perfect item for a little DIY project? I think so. 

We wiped the thing down, primed it with a good primer (it was a Zinsser) and got painting. I had originally thought it would look awesome painted navy {I'm sure it would} but, then thought that might be too dark especially since the wall we were going to be placing it along is black {yes, a chalkboard wall}. Then I thought a nice kelly green would be good and add a great pop of colour. However, we finally decided on a blue from the Martha Stewart paint collection called "Denim Blue". It's not too bright and not too dark but adds the perfect pop of colour to the space.

We also decided to paint the "counter" black with chalkboard paint. We thought it'd be a fun feature to be able to have the option to write/decorate the top with chalk. 
Lastly, we had a custom plexiglass top made and cut from a local place. This way the top "counter" is easy to clean up any sort of coffee spills etc. 
Here are a couple photos of the process..

Again, a quick look at what the piece looked like before: 

And what the piece looks like now...

After:

I just love how it turned out! Most of the credit goes to Seth as he painted pretty much the entire thing himself. I really only put on the last coat of chalkboard paint and touched up the blue in some areas. It took two coats of the blue and we did three coats of the chalkboard paint for the top. And a good friend, Kasey, drew the little ditty on top. We also just re-attached the old hardware that was on it and I think it suits the piece just fine!

We now have a great little counter space for our coffee, tea, and yummy baked goods to rest on. I can't wait to show you how it looks in the completed space!

I've linked this post to:

- live laugh rowe
- 52 Mantels