I’m sure you have all seen beautiful, light-filled craft rooms on Pinterest and blogs, colorful and just waiting to inspire creativity. I have this dream craft room…second-story room, windows with a beautiful view, waist high island with lots of cubbies for storage, colorful and organized. Sadly that room is still a far off dream, but sometimes you have to make due with what you have!

For years I have hidden away materials, only dragging things out to the living room when I had a project (or five) that I was working on. I had a card table permanently overflowing with those materials…it was an eyesore. Finally, a few months back, I decided that was enough!

Now, our basement is not nice, or pretty. But it definitely will work for a craft space.

I started off clearing out most of the stuff out of the back room and painting the walls. While these are not drywall or anything, the paint helped a lot! Then I upcycled a dresser for some extra storage. If you are interested in what I did for that and missed it, check out this post.

I moved around some of the furniture and then started on these cabinets! My goal for this room was to use storage items that I already had around the house. Saving extra money is definitely something I’m aiming towards!

These cabinets have been hanging around the basement for YEARS….they were an ugly yellow color, beat up, stained and just overall icky.

I wiped them down with a cleaning solution, lightly sanded them and painted them with primer. Then started on the white paint.

Once these were all painted white, doors included, I started on the design I wanted on the top cabinet doors. This is where I had….a bit of a learning experience.

See these doors? These almost done doors with the pretty fleur de lis? These doors were a learning experience. When painting a design on cabinet doors, it is very important to check which way is up! These doors are upside down. I’m sure you can imagine my disappointment when I went to hang my finished doors and realized I painted them upside down. So on went the primer and the white paint again, followed by repainting the fleur de lis the CORRECT way! I may have triple checked that they were the right way before I started repainting them.

Finally, the cabinets are finished!

As for the rest of the room, here is how the dresser is looking now.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have a lot of work to do in this room. But it is so much better than it was! I have a space that I can work in, all my materials easily accessible, and now that I’m in the basement I don’t have to worry about glass shards and puppy paws!

Where do you do your crafting? Do you have a dedicated space for it? If so, how did you put it together? I would love to hear your thoughts!