Create a basement playroom children love creating in
Our last few recent projects have all had to do with the small room in our basement. We have been slowly turning this room into a creative playroom for our children. We have loaded the craft supplies in and continue to encourage our children to just go use their imagination in this space.
Here is our homeschool room that has already been getting plenty of use..from zoom school to any type of preschool craft you can think of.
The “Before” Small Basement Room
This room has had many lives. When we first moved in, it was golf wallpaper with a crazy golf border. Yuck…it was dark and depressing.
Then we painted it a blue color, which was fun for a little when my husband had his weights in this empty space.
After that, this old room was my husband’s office for a second. And before this last transformation, we had a bed in there for grandparents to stay. However, as our lives have drastically changed, this space needed to.
We believe this change to a homeschool room with be a permanent one. We built it so that our children will be able to use it for the next decade and more!
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First, we needed to paint
Okay, I love fresh paint just like any DIY girl. However, I hate having a ton of leftover paint just sitting and going bad. Since we had a can of Behr Charcoal Blue leftover from our laundry room cabinets, I just decide to try to use that to paint our accent wall. Normally I would never use an enamel latex on the wall, but hey it was free!
To brighten the space, the remaining walls were painted use Sherwin Williams Pure White. Once that first coat of white went up, we knew it was going to make the room feel much bigger.
Before painting any room, you may want to consider how to update the outlets or trim first. Because this is our basement, we decide to keep the oak trim. It is honestly the only oak left in our house!
How to update old outlets?
This room and every room in our house had almond-colored outlets. This looks very funny when you go to update with fresh white plate covers. You can use this spray paint to update the outlets. However, be very careful! You do not want to spay it directly into the outlets.
Hold a paper or cardboard under the outlet so that spray doesn’t get everywhere. Spray from the side and different angles, but not straight on.
Remember, we are sharing what has worked for us. Always be careful when dealing with electrical works.
How to paint a simple accent wall
1. Tape the baseboards.
2. Paint the side walls with white paint by trimming and rolling. Repeated this twice.
3. Once the white paint is dry, tape the edges of the wall where the colors will meet.
4. Trim and rolled with the charcoal blue paint. Again, repeat twice.
5. Remove painter’s tape. This is our favorite brand and one that we have used to create all of our accent walls! Make sure to pull away from the accent wall.
Notice how the painter’s tape is not all the way pressed down. This is a tip my dad always gave me as it can catch any extra drops that might spray off.
6. Touch up any areas that bleed through the tape. Use a simple small brush can make this easier.
Read More>>>>11 DIY Accent Walls That Are More Than Just Paint
Budget Kid Craft Room Organization Ideas
- Build a desk space (consider building one with multiple spots if you have more than one child).
- Create a place to store supplies
- Create a place to display work
- Organize supplies that are used regualry in easy to reach spots
- Consider how to declutter and rotate artworks and projects
- Use recycled containers to help store materials
- Have children help create DIY craft room decorations
- Create a charging station for ipads and other school devices
Depending on the year (yes I am looking at your 2020), this room has had many functions. It is a great space in our basement for my children to go to. Not only can we store art materials, but they now have a distinct place to paint, sculpt, draw or do homework or even Zoom school.
Since our children are younger, this room is used for school, but their school projects air on the creative side. This is why it was so important for us to figure out ways to store tons of craft supplies and more.
This room will still work for older kids, but books, calculators, and ipads may be on the shelves instead of fuzzy pom poms.
The L-shaped desk really utilized the small basement room. The craft closet holds most of our art and craft supplies. From glue sticks to anything our children may need to color that quick worksheet.
Instead of adding just artwork on the walls, we decided to add more DIY storage and organization by creating DIY pegboards. So each child can have their own workspace while having a place to store school materials used every day.
Our favorite homeschool decorating idea
The favorite DIY project that we added to this space was the DIY string art with the words IMAGINE. We went back and forth about what message we wanted to send to our children and we are so happy that we chose “imagine”.
Other homeschool decorating ideas
- Create a space for children to hang work when finished. We did this by making a pegboard and DIY art display. Soon we plan on adding DIY art shadow boxes as well!
- Have places for children to put things and use the containers as decorations.
- Finally display that old globe, encyclopedia, etc.
- Create art together: word canvases, abstract art or this simple watercolor painting idea
- Create a DIY pegboard for your workstation
- Repurpose old chairs by reupholstering the seat and using our cheap DIY chalk paint recipe.
- Paint an accent wall.
- Add fun colors to your accessories. Even if it means letting your children paint fun Dollar Store Chalkboards or figurines. The more they take ownership for a space the more they will want to take care it.
- Use old plastic containers (that you have cleaned) to help organize school and craft supplies.
- Use old records or newspaper photos to add extra framed artwork to your walls.
- Add musical instruments on a stand.
- Find flea market finds like our old desk.
Our homeschool room ideas
Homeschool Room
We absolutely loved turning this small room in our basement into a space where our children can "imagine anything" (no pun intended...)
Creating this L-shaped corner desk was the perfect way to utilize the space in this small basement room. Now we have 3 spots for our children to work at without feeling completely cramped.
Above our children's floating desk is a pegboard with different accessories. Now they can easily reach their craft supplies without much trouble (and put them back). We painted the two on the charcoal blue accent wall white and the pegboard on the white wall charcoal blue. It really helped create a unified space.
First of all, we love reusing old containers to keep all of our craft supplies organized. I believe this one with the poof balls is an old cashew container. Secondly, once you have a pegboard you have to decide how to organize it. We found this simple accessory kit, created our own CHEAP shelves, and add some Dollar Store containers to create a functional and organized space.
This basement closet needed some love before we could do anything with it (you have to see how bad it was before we sealed it). Now that it was waterproofed, it was ready to store all of the children's school and art supplies.
Adding farmhouse shelving brackets and reusing plastic containers we already owned was a great way to utilize this old closet. We also decided to take off the basement closet doors in order to make everything easily accessible. The good news, if our children are unable to keep the homeschool room closet clean, we can always put those doors back one.
At the bottom of the craft closet, we put our last shelf 2' off the ground. We wanted to create a large storage crate on wheels that could store books and other toys that we might need a home for. While this DIY project took a lot more time than we thought, we are happy with this addition to our closet.
One of the first big projects we did in our whole basement was to update the old dusty drop ceiling tiles. If you are considering how to brighten up your basement you should seriously consider this DIY drop ceiling tile idea. We never knew we could love a ceiling product so much!
While we haven't used any of these ideas yet, we may be adding another way to display our children's artwork in this space. We love our pallet wood art display in our kitchen, that we could see this working well downstairs. We ended up using one of the pegboards with this similar idea to give our children a space to pin their schoolwork and artworks.
Create unique DIY shadow boxes to not only display your child's artwork but also store it. You will love this DIY frame idea that helps cut down on the extra clutter.
When we had a large empty space on the wall, we knew we wanted to add some inspiration. And what is a better way than a large word art. We want our children to imagine they can do anything and hopefully this string art
Our finished side of the basement sure has gone through a few DIY makeovers to make it a space our family can love.
We love to encourage all the arts in our children. Musical instruments make great decor items as well as encourage creativity! A simple guitar stand is a great way to store and display this guitar.
Taking the closet doors off and having open shelving really gives our children free access to the materials they need and repurposing plastic containers is eco-friendly. Win, win in our book!
These painted chairs were the perfect addition to our space. Not to mention we didn’t have to spend any money buy more furniture because these were sitting in our attic!
This art easel finally has a home and we know creative messes will be contained in this room!
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