The bar cart
There was no room for a cabinet, so the bar went on wheels.
Not a sponsored post, despite the large logo visible on the box in the photographs.
Someone in this house came back from a bartending course in the autumn, and the texting while he was still away had already turned to where, exactly, all of that would happen. There is no corner of the kitchen that could become a bar cabinet without something else losing. So: a cart.
The one I wanted, and why it didn’t happen
I had been eyeing a particular cart since it came out and had been waiting for a reason to buy it. I pinned it, felt pleased with myself, and then someone pointed out it was on the small side.
They were right. I looked up the dimensions properly and it would have held a handful of bottles and nothing else. No glassware, no shaker, no room to work. A bar cart that cannot hold a bar is an occasional table with ambitions.
Check the dimensions against what actually has to go on it, not against the photograph. In the photograph there are three bottles and a plant.
What we got instead
A plain rolling utility trolley: three deep open shelves, castors, steel. Everything fits and everything is reachable, which is the entire specification.
It is not white, which is my one complaint, and the plan is a few coats of spray paint. That plan is now shelved until spring, because spray painting season here ends somewhere around September and there is no point starting.
How it is working
Well, is the answer. Bottles and glassware on their own levels, the tools where a hand falls, and the whole thing wheels to wherever people are sitting.
It gets used constantly, which is the test. And I get offered cocktails, which is not nothing. The Bee’s Knees and the Gimlet are winning so far.