When one sets out to build a custom home they should be limited solely to their dreams and budget constraints. If they want a wine cellar so be it, and if the neighbor wants a conference room to host AA meetings that is thier choice. I once did the plumbing in a house that had four bedrooms but 6 full baths and three 1/2 baths and only two people live in the house. Personally i thought it was a bit too much, but far be it from me to tell the next man or woman how to build their dreamhouse. What truely amazes me is the number of people who are designing their dream house, then post on the forum asking the opinions of others as to whether they should have a certain feature or not? The whole idea of a custom home is to create an enviroment that befits your personal lifestyle and interests. In my personal opinion if a guest drops by and don't like your choices they have the option of going back to their little corner of the world where things are done their way. If a wine cellar complete with a tasting bar befits your social habits then by all means that is what you should have, just don't forget an adequate storage facility for the cheese to be served with the wine.

Anyone building this type of cellar would be well served by getting Richard Gold's book on the subject. Also cork flooring is a very good option in the cellar. Cheers

I recently completed a project to do exactly this. After recently completing a kitchen remodel, the plan was to make a small broom closet outside the kitchen, that would open into the living room. However having a normal looking door in that location would have looked out-of-place. After some research, I found several of the websites listed above and none of them were exactly what I was looking for, and as someone noted they are not exactly cheap. I also found a site named facadedoor.com which seems to sell bookcase doors through Home Depot, but their offered sized were bigger that I could use. (and no prices are listed anywhere) So instead I built and installed a bookcase door of my own design. The hinges were the most difficult thing to figure out. I ended up going with heavy duty swing clear hinges (from Hardware Source and then carefully placed the frame trim so that it covered most of the hinges. You can see the barrel of the hinge protruding from the right edge of the trim in the first picture below. The other big difficulty was remembering enough of college trigonometry to figure out how much the sides of the cabinet needed to slope in at the back of the cabinet so that the door would be able to swing open. (In my case the answer was 12.5 degrees) The sides, top bottom and shelves are 1x8 poplar, the bottom panel and the back are 1/2" plywood. The face frame is 1x3 poplar. The costs for materials was about $250. I already had a table saw, a miter saw, and a router, but I needed to buy a pocket screw jig kit. Some of the above posts have made realize that safety-wise the design needs a little more work, since there is no way to undo the latch from the inside of the closet. Although the broom closet is small enough that I don't think an adult could fit in there with the door closed a small child probably could, and I'd really hate to find an actual skeleton in my closet.

edenchild, I bet you could find fancy stuff online or in an upscale sort of store if you wanted to... but just the basic stuff a local fabric store would have would work just fine. Most fabric stores sell felt by the yard in basic primary colors, some pastels, and sometimes some prints. Get it by the yard, it comes in different widths, but common around 36 or 44 inches, sometimes wider- then you can cut it to whatever size you need it and you don't need seams or anything to finish the edges. Don't get squares or sheets of the stuff, you got too much racks to play with that. If you want, you could pick something bright to add a wee pop of color to the shelf fronts while still being functional. Red would be traditional, but light or bright colors would be nice too. Cut the felt to be barely inside the depth of the shelves, draping over the front edge is a PITA and usually looks like tacky crap. But do be sure to leave yourself with a few inches of drape on both ends over on the width of the shelves, gives you shift room for bottle movement as they get added or removed from the shelf. To do this... and use a fabric tape that's soft and not a hard ruler or metal measuring tape... measure the depth of your shelf just inside the braces, and that's final. Then lay the tape across the width of your shelf, using a bottle in each slot to make sure the "dip curve" is accounted for, and use that for your width measurement. Also... you might not be one for chardonnay since it's a white, but since you like reds... watch your cabs and pinot bottles. Some of them have a slight taper with the bottle and it's better to store them punt facing out instead of the wall if you stack your bottles on top of each other. Again, vibrations can cause a slide, and better to slide into the wall instead of onto the floor.