When we first built our home, we thought we should have a wine cellar. Not because my husband and I are wine connoisseurs, we actually don’t hardly drink the stuff. We just thought it would be a nice thing to have in the style of house we were building. But as things progressed, and the length of time it took us to build, 9 years, we kinda put the wine cellar room on the list of “to do’s” after we moved in.
This was the glass door to the never finished wine cellar.
And this is how it looked inside. Pretty boring and not really screaming wine cellar huh? People would bring over bottles of wine as gifts, knowing we had a “wine cellar” and after the guest would leave, I would put the wine bottle down in the cellar…yep, on the floor. Classy I know!
But as life would have it, we lost our home to the California Cedar fires. Lost the whole darn house, including our wonderful unfinished wine cellar. So on the second go around of building, the footprint of our house stayed the same, which meant we were still going to have a wine cellar. I decided this time it was a must to include a finished design and build of a real wine cellar. {there is no natural light in this room, so bear with me on the pictures, I did the best I could with my limited photographic skills}
I fell in love with this speakeasy door. Didn’t even know what a speakeasy door was, but I thought the style of the door and the finish was amazing. It became my inspiration piece for the overall design of the room. A rustic and old world design.
So this is how a speakeasy door works, just in case you are like me and didn’t know what it meant. It has a widow cut out on the door, so that you don’t have to open the whole door to talk or see the person on the other side of the door. It makes it easy to speak to them, hence, speakeasy. Cute huh?
The focal point once you open the door is this beautiful large hand painted tile Tuscany mural scene. {I am only imagining this, I have never been, sigh}
On each side of the tile mural area there are custom wine racks. I found this beautiful wood flooring which is made by the Amish, it was rustic and old world, and I knew it had to be used in this room. My wonderful finished carpenter helped me bring my vision to life and used the wood flooring for all the wine shelving “x’s”, cabinet backing, drawer fronts and counter top. The really neat thing about this product, is that every shipment comes hand engraved by the person who made it. Signed Chester Miller. How cool is that?
The little travertine tiles that surround the wine racks took the tile setter over two weeks to install. It was a very tedious slow process, poor guy. I love the unevenness of the tile and the texture it brings to the room.
On the left side of the room are these two beautiful antique chairs I found at an antique shop via the Internet {sorry I don’t have the shop name}
This is view of the other side of the room across from the chairs. The credenza holds extra stuff like the wine opener and extra glasses. {I don’t think more than two people have ever been in here at a time but just in case}
The walls did not photograph well in these pictures. 
They are a beautiful cream, gray and brown rough venetian plaster that just finishes off the whole rustic old world feel of the room.
So now we have a wine cellar to officially hold wine, wine refrigerator and all. This little room has turned out to be one of my favorite rooms in our house. The funny thing is, I am not any more of a wine drinker than I was 7 years ago, but just sitting in this room is calming even without a glass of wine.
