This Gorgeous Home Bar Used to Be a Dinky Closet
"It was a nasty little thing," is how designer John Fondas describes the nook that he turned into this glamorous home bar in some friends' Palm Beach apartment. To be fair, that descriptor sounds about right: Shabby accordion doors hid a peeling Formica surface, dropped ceilinged, and fluorescent lights. It was the kind of odd alcove that lurks off to the side of many perfectly lovely living rooms, a space to stuff with paper towel reserves and shopping bags you'll never reuse and then close up as quickly as possible before it stresses you out. Now, though, this one is a helluva place to pour yourself a cocktail.
It was the apartment's new owners-James Sharp Brodsky and Philip McCarty, who Fondas lovingly refers to as Jim and Phil-who instantly knew the closet could be more. After all, they'd spent many a cocktail hour at Fondas' own home in Lyford Cay, Bahamas, where the decorator has just such a bar-similarly transformed from an existing niche. "When they bought the place," Fondas recalls, "Jim called me and said, 'I've bought the apartment, and it's got the space to do one of those little bars!"
Out came the accordion doors and the drop ceiling and-after cutting the opening upwards to add 14 inches of height-in went a Celerie Kemble-for-Schumacher tortoise-print wallpaper, which Fondas had been eyeing for just such a statement. And a Mahogany countertop, a pair of light fixtures (Phil and Jim found one they loved, a 1940s vintage sconce, and had it replicated to make a set). Then, the trio and their builder sat together and worked out just how deep each shelf should be to hold their bottle and glass collection, inch by inch.
"It was the most fun we had on the whole apartment," Fondas recalls. "Anybody anywhere with a cupboard could create the most wonderful home bar like this. And then you make the first drink, and your guests make the second-that's my policy." We'll drink to that.
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