Building a Wine Cellar: Wine Cellar Plans for Renovation

Welcome to another round of the $100 Room Challenge! I am so excited to work on my Wine Cellar. Yep, you heard that right. I have a wine cellar. Today I am sharing the Wine Cellar Plans for Renovation because it is not working for us right now, and I will share with you why.

If you don’t know about the $100 Room Challenge let me give you an overview. Erin from Lemons, Lavender, and Laundry created this challenge a while ago, and I am so happy to be a part of the challenge for the fifth time!

The idea is to redo a room in your home for less than $100 and in under 1 month. For more details on how the challenge started click here.

First I want to tell you that I did not build this wine cellar, it came with the house when we bought it. And I know a lot of people don’t like alcohol and this renovation will not be about alcohol. It will be about how to transform a room to fit your needs.

Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

*This post contains affiliate links. For more details see my full disclosure.

Table of Contents

Plans for Re-Building a Wine Cellar

I will share photos of the room in a moment. Before I do I should share a little info.

Current Wine Cellar Design:

The room is about 50 square feet, so not too big at all. It’s dark, like really dark. There are tin ceilings that are painted oil-rubbed bronze. The walls are a dark amber/yellow color. I don’t like the walls at all.

The lighting in this room is minimal. There are two wall sconces which are super cool but there is absolutely no natural light. This room is technically underground in our basement.

The floors have been stained a dark rust color which gives the room a very rustic Italian look.

The shelves are a very dark stain. This adds to the rustic Italian feel but also adds to the darkness in the room.

Here is the gate that is acting as a door to the wine cellar. — This is the gate at the entrance of the wine cellar.

The right side of the shelves where you can see the stuff on the floor that needs to be on shelves and the angled shelves which don't really do anythingl. — Lots of stuff on the floor that needs a home.

Here is the main source of shelving in the room and how badly it is working. — Dark tin ceilings and dark yellow walls.

Here are the additional shelves we had to put in there to add storage. — Super cool light fixture that is hidden by these ugly shelves and too much stuff.

This is my wine barrel and blank wall that needs painted and decorated. — My birthday barrel. And this wall needs some decor stat!

The left side of the shelves where you can see how hard it is to store things on the X shelves. — It’s very difficult to store stuff on these x’s.

Wine cellar plans to remove the large X's for wine storage and create functional shelves. — These squares will stay, and the center portion. Everything else will be changed.

As you can see from the photos this room is totally not working for us.

What are our needs?

Clearly, I have more spirits than wine. My husband works in the liquor industry. We have been given a lot over the years. We have many specialty bottles that are seasonal and some that we will never open because they have been engraved or have a scarlet and gray wax, like the Makers Mark bottle.

I like wine but there is too much wine storage here for me. Just the squares alone hold 136 bottles. I will never have that much wine. Then there are all the x’s. I will never put wine there. I need those shelves for storage and I can’t use them the way they are right now.

Too much storage for wine when we aren’t big wine collectors.
Not enough storage for spirits, while we clearly have more spirits and wine.
Not enough storage for glassware.
And there is not enough storage for entertaining dishes.

I have some really great stuff in here, like the barrel. Isn’t it so cool! I love it. My husband got it for me for my birthday a couple of years ago.

I also have a nice plate that depicts a vineyard and some sconces I want to hang but have never done it. This room has always been storage or an afterthought and it’s too cool to let that continue.

Wine Cellar Plans

The first thing I plan to do is remove everything from the room and start demo-ing the shelves. The center part I will leave alone.

The x’s have to go. The shelves on the right are angled and I love them but they don’t function for me so they will go too. That was a tough decision.

Once the demo is done we will rebuild the shelves to function for our things. I have a cabinet above my fridge that has glassware that I would love to put down here.

Also, the dust level in this room is off the charts. Whoever built them didn’t poly the shelves and they are very rough. Dusting them is impossible. So I will not only stain the new wood to look like the existing but the existing wood needs more poly to make it smoother. This way I can keep this room clean.

I want to paint the walls and apply a glaze to keep the old world feel but to brighten up the space.

Lastly, I plan to put all my stuff in here and make it pretty. Also, the wall decor needs put up, it’s literally been sitting on these shelves for 4 years. I know, so bad right?!