Step Inside this Eclectic Office, Complete with a Built-In Wine Bar

Bar Area Metallic plaster walls and a green crocodile foil finish on the wine-barrel-turned-table, both by Pamela Grace Coloured Paint, shimmer beneath a Hubbardton Forge Griffin Starburst pendant. Custom cabinets are by Plain & Fancy Cabinetry with Stoll Industries steel-mesh fronts. | Photo: Eric Lucero

Like a fine wine, the best home offices can be inspiring, uplifting and empowering. But people’s tastes can be completely different. That’s why a good interior designer is also good at understanding their client’s personality and priorities. Gina D’Amore Bauerle, of Denver’s D’Amore Interiors explains, home offices are “very heavily psychology-driven. If that’s a room that you’re using every day in your house, it’s affecting the way you feel.” So, when Bauerle had a chance to apply her expert skills to the Westminster home office of a wine connoisseur with a 600-plus-bottle collection, she came up with a striking concept that’s a perfect fit for homeowner Kevin Nanke.

He wanted his new office to be functional yet unique. “I’ve wanted a wine cellar for years,” Nanke says. “I came up with the idea to remove the closet between our office and sitting room that we never used, and glass off the two rooms,” he explains. “Gina came up with incorporating a walk-through and splitting the wine cellar into two units.” As Bauerle recalls, “I’m kind of laughing at this point, going, ‘Well, you’re going to have to walk through 500 bottles of wine to get to your office.’” Her innovative solution was a multifaceted bar, wine storage and office space, complete with refrigeration units, a tasting area and a traditional desk and work area.

Office Polished wood and rich coppery brown Kravet wallcovering in cork lend sophistication to the secreted home office space. Handcrafted two-tier chandelier by Ashore Lighting incorporates natural quartz and wrought iron above a modern-leaning Theodore Alexander desk. | Photo: Eric Lucero

“She took my idea to the next level,” Nanke notes. Bauerle was determined to give the inner office a distinctive look to balance out the bar and wine storage zones. “This needs to be a super-cool, secret room that you don’t even know you’re walking into,” she says. “Like a speakeasy-meets-office situation.” She suggested a desk that is “really a piece of art and an unusual design.” She also installed shelves for Nanke’s collection of crystal decanters and added a handsome wingback chair. Each space makes a strong statement, but they all blend together harmoniously, thanks to a shared natural color palette emphasizing warm hues.

Knowing that Nanke loves the color green, Bauerle had the bar walls covered with a metallic green shimmering plaster. The bar cabinets have custom steel door panels, and the pub table is an artfully modified wine barrel with olive-green crocodile foil sides and a gold-leaf glass top. Bauerle designed a new arched passageway and covered the ceiling and office walls with coppery-brown cork wallcovering.

Decanter Collection Stoll Industries floating shelves display the homeowner’s crystal decanter collection. | Photo: Eric Lucero

The walk-through, backlit-onyx-walled, temperature-controlled wine enclosures have both wooden racks and a floating metal racking system. The total effect is one of secret sophistication, and Nanke clearly loves the renovation’s unconventional results. “The office is a great place to work, hidden away from the rest of the house,” he says, “and a pretty good conversation piece when you’re on a conference call with the wine cellar in the background.” He admits, “My favorite part of the office/wine bar is every day at 4:30—the lights in the bar and the onyx in the wine cellar light up, letting you know the workday is about to end.” Cheers to that.

Design Details

Interior Design: D’Amore Interiors
Construction: RLK Custom Builders

As seen in CH&L’s July/August 2025 issue.

Wine/Office Combo Designer Bauerle took the homeowner’s wine cellar dream to the next level, splitting the glass-walled storage with an arched doorway to facilitate her clever “speakeasy-meets-office” solution. | Photo: Eric Lucero