Create A DIY Craft Room On A Budget

Do your kids love to create, imagine and make arts and crafts? If you wish you had a designated space or spare room for them, this post is for you. See how we turned a small space in our basement into an awesome creative space for our children.

basement room turned into homeschool and craft room for children

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This room also gave us much space to do anything from zoom school to any type of preschool craft you can think of.

Table of Contents

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 in the entire room.

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 home office for a second. And before this last transformation, we had a bed in there for grandparents to stay in. However, as our lives have drastically changed, this space needed to.

We believe this change to a crafty room will be a permanent one. We built it so that our children will be able to use it for the next decade and more!

New Paint Colors

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 enamel latex on the wall, but it was free and did the job.

Since we do not have the luxury of natural light we needed to brighten the work space. We chose to paint the remaining walls with Sherwin Williams Pure White. Once that first coat of white went up, we knew it was going to make the room feel much bigger.

Sherwin Williams Pure White Paint Chip being held up on blue wall — I totally wish I would have known about **Samplize**. It would have been so much better than just holding this small paint chip up.

Before painting the whole 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 Spray Paint 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 piece of 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 work.

How To Paint An Accent Wall

The first step in this craft room makeover was to add an accent wall and new paint on the surrounding areas. Here is how we added a simple paint accent wall to our crafting space.

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 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.

Charcoal blue accent wall in basement room

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. A simple small brush is a great option and can make this easier.

small brush touching up white paint with charcoal blue accent wall

Budget Kid Craft Room Organization Ideas

Build a desk space (consider building one with multiple spots if you have more than one child).
Create an extra storage solution to store supplies
Create a place to display work
Organize supplies that are used regularly 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

Create Zones For Different Uses

Depending on the year (yes I am looking at you 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.

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.

Make Art & Craft Supplies Easy To Reach

Currently, this small craft room is holding all the wonderful crafts and art supplies our children love to use. It is so nice to have a designated space that can hold all these items.

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.

This room will still work for older kids, but books, calculators, and ipads may be on the shelves instead of fuzzy pom poms.

plastic containers to organize kid's craft closet

Taking the closet doors off and having open shelving really gives our children easy access to the materials they need.

Create Unique Storage Containers

No one wants to spend a lot of money on containers. Repurposing plastic containers is a brilliant idea because it is eco-friendly and free. Not to mention you can get containers in different sizes depending on what art and paint supplies you want to store. Win, win in our book!

Pegboards Easily Store Supplies

Instead of adding just artwork on the walls, we decided to add more DIY storage and organization by creating DIY pegboards. Each child can have their own workspace while having their own storage space.

large rainbow word string art in kid craft room.

These painted chairs were the perfect addition to our space. Not to mention we didn’t have to spend any money to buy more furniture because these were sitting in our attic!

Utilize Space With a Corner Desk or Table

The L-shaped desk really utilized the wall space. Building a corner desk is a great option if you have a small space to work with.

wood corner floating desk with purple and white chair with globe in the corner.

Add An Art Easel

This art easel finally has a home and we know creative messes will be contained in this room! You could even store dress-up clothes are other imaginative toys in this space.

Create Unique Wall Art

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 Budget Craft Room 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 a patterned accent wall.
Add fun colors to your accessories. Even if it means letting your children paint fun Dollar Store pots, chalkboards or figurines. The more they take ownership of the space the more they will want to take care of 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.
Add a doll rod to the giant pegboard for ribbon storage

painted wooden letters by children for homeschool room decoration — Involve your children in creating DIY homeschool decorations!

Our Kid Craft Room

Come on a tour of all the budget DIY projects we did to create this fun art space for our children.

Kid Craft Room Ideas

We absolutely loved turning this small room in our basement into a space where our children can imagine anything (no pun intended). Use the links to get to all of the DIY tutorials we used in this craft room.

Build A Corner Desk

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.

How to Build A DIY Pegboard

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.

How To Build An Easy Pegboard Shelf (Not Using Wood)

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.

Update An Old Closet

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.

Add Farmhouse Brackets For Craft Storage & Organization

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 this art closet clean, we can always put those doors back.

Create Extra Crate Storage

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.

Add Modern Drop Ceiling Tiles

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!