Inside the 1920 Bungalow Coffee Bar
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
A quick note before we get into it: a few of the links below are affiliate links through ShopMy, which means we may earn a small commission if you shop through them. Every piece here is something we used in this project or something I'd reach for in another one — or in my own home.
From Stackable Laundry to a Small Coffee Corner
If you'd seen this corner before we started, you would have walked right past it. It was a stackable washer and dryer in a narrow utility hallway off the kitchen — completely practical, and quietly eating square footage in the room that needed it most.
When we took the 1920 Bungalow down to studs, one of the first decisions I made was to pull the stackable laundry out of the kitchen and move it to the basement. That single move gave us back this entire corner — and then we had to decide what it was going to be. We were renovating this home to sell, which made the decision more interesting, not less.
What it became was a small coffee bar. But it could just as easily have been a wine bar or a cocktail bar, and the reason it didn't is the kind of decision that doesn't usually make it into a reveal post.
Why the Laundry Moved Downstairs
Stackable washer-dryers tucked into a kitchen hallway are functional — they're also a quiet drag on the room you spend the most time in. In a small bungalow where every square foot has to earn its place (the primary bathroom story is exactly the same lesson), the laundry was the first thing on the layout I knew I wanted to move. The kitchen needed those inches more than the laundry did, and the basement had the room to give.
The basement gave us room without taking room. The kitchen got back its square footage. The hallway lost the humidity. And this corner — which had been a forgettable utility space — got to become something we'd actually love walking past every day.
The other thing that removing the laundry did — was open up the whole hallway. The space immediately felt lighter, brighter, and noticeably bigger. A few other moves compounded that (a new Dutch door out to the deck pulled real daylight in — another post coming on that), but removing the laundry and arching the stairwell made this part of the house start to breathe.
Why a Coffee Bar — Not a Wine or Cocktail Bar
Before this corner became a coffee bar, I sketched it out as a wine bar and as a cocktail bar too. All three were beautiful on paper. A wine bar would have leaned moody and elegant — open shelving for stems, maybe a small under-counter cooler. A cocktail bar would have been a moment — a brass tray, a few good bottles, a vintage shaker on display. Both would have looked stunning in photos.
But we were renovating this house to sell, and the job of a corner like this in a listing is to feel like yours the second a buyer walks past. Coffee bars do that across the board. Almost every household has a morning coffee routine. Wine and cocktail bars read incredible to the right buyer and like wasted square footage to the wrong one. Coffee was the broadest yes.
That's the part of design work that doesn't get talked about enough — the spec is rarely "make this beautiful." It's "make this beautiful and make it land for whoever walks in next." A coffee bar in this corner does both.
And it worked. The house drew real interest from day one, a steady run of showings, the kind of buyer feedback you hope for, and multiple offers. A small corner doesn't sell a house on its own. But it's part of why a buyer walks in and starts mentally moving in.
Built for the House It's In
A coffee bar this size is built for a bungalow. In a bigger house with more square footage to work with, I might have done something more ambitious — a full station with a built-in grinder shelf, a wine fridge underneath, the whole thing. Those can be stunning. But this corner had its own scale. A bigger station would have been gorgeous in a different house — this one needed something that spoke to the bungalow itself.
So we built it to its proportions. Enough counter for the espresso machine, the mugs we actually reach for every morning, and whatever beautiful thing has come home from the market that week. The cabinet base earns its keep underneath — drawer and storage tucked away — and above the counter, we kept it open and easy. Quiet, layered, just enough.
The other beautiful thing about a corner like this is that it isn't only for coffee. It's where an espresso martini gets made at the end of a long day. It's where a friend stands next to you with a glass of something while you talk about nothing in particular. It's a sweet, quiet pocket of the kitchen that does more than its size suggests. The bar pulls double duty for the way you actually live and host.
Why I Chose Cohesion Over Contrast
Here's where a designer can take a corner like this in two directions. The first is contrast — a darker cabinet base, a different counter, a moody paint behind the shelves — and lean into the bar as a moment that stands apart from the rest of the kitchen. Done well, contrast is gorgeous, and it reads as intentional and a little dramatic.
The second is cohesion. Match the bar to the kitchen — same cabinet finish, same counter, same paneled wall language — and let it quietly belong rather than announce itself. That's where I went, and it was the right call for this house. The hallway is narrow. Pulling the bar into the same family as the surrounding cabinetry kept the whole space feeling lighter, brighter, and more open. Nothing competes. Everything flows.
That cohesion shows up in the actual material list. The tongue and groove paneling on the wall is the same as the rest of the kitchen. The counter is the same quartz. The cabinet base is the same greige finish as the kitchen cabinets. The only piece that breaks the pattern is the warm white-oak floating shelves — and even those pick up the wood tones already in the room.
Repeating what's already there is also a budget-friendly call — fewer finishes to source, a cleaner build, a tighter timeline. And the result is the sweet part: a corner that reads like it has always belonged here, the kind of space that feels right this easily and keeps feeling right for a long time.
Sources - The Pieces I'd Send a Friend
If you've been saving this corner — or putting together one of your own — here's what we pulled together. Some are pieces we used in this exact project. A few are pieces I'd put in a kitchen tomorrow, or purchase for my own home. You can find these and the rest of what we're sourcing right now on our ShopMy
Espresso machine - my absolute favorite; I have this one in my home as well.
The whole story of this corner is really the story of the decision underneath it. Pull the laundry. Give the kitchen back the square footage it was missing. Then build something small and intentional around the way the day actually begins. The arched doorway just past the bar leads into the new primary bath — same arch language, same greige palette, same quiet restraint. The two rooms talk to each other, even though they're doing different jobs.
If you're working through a small renovation of your own, fix the layout first. I really mean that. Look for the room that's losing square footage to a system that could live somewhere else — laundry stuck in a hallway, a closet eaten by a furnace, a built-in that was solving a 1980s problem nobody has anymore. The corner you free up is almost always more valuable than the inches you "save" by leaving things where they are.
More from the 1920 Bungalow coming soon. If you haven't read the primary bathroom story yet, start there — same project, same restraint. The full source list for this bar is linked here.
Designed by HIDG
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