Before Erwin House, I had never lived in a house with a bar. When we were designing it, I kept thinking about the Sopranos hanging out with their teenagers at their bar. It took us 3 months after moving in to find the perfect bar stools, and for that time the bar was a surface that collected paper, dirty glasses, and stuff. Now we’ve had the bar stools for about 3 months, and we living la vida bar.
Breakfast, snacks, and lunch are eaten there. Homework is finished there. Baby Erwin is propped up there to watch mom make dinner. The boys have figured out which seat affords a view of the TV in the living room. My laptop is perched at one end. (We call it Dad’s kiosk.) And the bar stools provide an extra row of seats for the community meetings that are becoming more common in our house. It is lined with snacks for parties.
All this bar activity saves wear and tear on the dinner table and shortens the path of dirty dishes to the sink. But mainly, the bar is where we talk.
Here’s to bar life, and the millions of conversations we’ll have over it.