My New Craft Room- On A Budget

Finally a craft space all my own and so well organized! This is the story of my new craft room we put in this January- February. I love to craft and for years I used a little corner of my basement for my personal crafting area or my dining room table like an another crafter does.  Who new I had a great space for my own personal craft room just under my nose. I have this separate room in my basement that my Husband was going to create a man cave out of. He removed all the drywall from the dividing wall (shown in the first pic) and then he never completed his project. So then I started using this room for storage of all the outdoor holiday decor and junk we had. I thought it was a shame to use this room for storage when it had great bones and a cute wood burning fireplace. So my Husband whom is and always has been my greatest craft supporter suggested putting plywood up in the rafters in the garage and using that for all my outdoor holiday decor storage and getting rid of the junk. Wow what a great idea. Then I could make this room in the basement my own personal space!!! My New Craft Room was dreamed up and now to get it to take shape. With a little love this room could be My Dream Crafting Room.

So after 2 weeks of hauling holiday decor and junk to the garage I had a empty room. Total gross/ dirty empty room. Nice thing about this room was at this stage is it was mostly concrete. So the hose to the wash sink in the room next door, a broom and bleach this room cleaned up nice.

Here is that great real usable fireplace in the basement. For years we thought it was weird this unfinished room had a unfinished fireplace.
Here is a little of our house's history. We are the 3rd home owners this house has had. Not so long a go the original home owners who built this house their Daughter who grow up here stopped by and introduced herself. She lives out of state, now in her 60's she came home for a class reunion and thought she would drive bye. She was thrilled to see how beautiful the landscaping was and the overall appearance of the house so she decided to stop and take a chance by introducing herself. She was glad that we welcomed her warmly and invited her in. What a trip down memory lane for her but a lot of question got answered for us. It was great and she was glad to see how we restored the house, updated it and fixed it up. She visited for a while as my husband and I asked question after question. The answer to the basement fireplace was...They added the living room on for extra space with a fireplace and added the basement fireplace so they could heat that basement room in the future to use as a bonus room but it never happened. Also the reason why the basement fireplace was not finished decoratively was because the man her Father paid took off with the money!! Here was are answer.

This is just a picture of the dividing wall before we started hanging the new paneling. See that ball of light well one day out shopping with my Mom which we love to do I told her I would love to have a chandelier for my craft room make over. At Home Depot I had a little sticker shock on the price of chandelier's. Well while we where there my Mom took a wrong turn looking for something and came a crossed a discount/ discontinued/returned section with a glass looking chandelier for under $30.00 dollars. We bought it and it turned out it was clear plastic to look like glass but all the parts where there and when together it looked great. So my new chandelier to add some class to the new craft room.

I'm glad my Husband is handy!! After searching material and prices we decided to use a basement paneling you can paint, on that dividing wall because it was cheaper, less work then drywall and would hold up better against moisture (with moisture is mildew)  that is a factor in basements.

Here is the completed paneled wall. Looks great and what a change it made to that ugly wall.

Next step paint!!! I hate picking paint colors but I did like the cream already up on the walls from the previous home owners. So I got my samples and pick a creamy wheat, yellow it's a basement so something to brighten it up and it is a craft room so you need to feel inspired. The color looked great so good I decide after the completion of the craft room I would clean and paint the other half of the basement so it to would look just as good.

So now to the unfinished floor. Well it is a basement water/ moisture is always a factor so we decided the best thing is to paint the floor and in the event it happens with rain and power outage because we do have drains and sub-pumps their is always that factor of water in the basement it would not ruin anything or cause us to have replace the flooring in the event it would happen. We painted the floor and it looks great. Color- Charcoal 

What a difference already with the walls painted, paneling primed and floor painted. I told my Husband we should have done this a long time ago. What a great bonus room this is becoming.

Now time to come up with a plan for storage. My Husband had the idea to use plastic cabinets with doors to help with the possible basement moister and the doors will neatly hide the items inside. I really wanted to use a kitchen cabinets but his plan made a lot of sense in storage and if their was any moister issues in the future. We also decided after picking out and buying are cabinets to get 4x4 treat lumber and cut them to fit under the cabinets to get the cabinets off the ground so that once again if we had a future issue with water it would keep the water from getting in the cabinets and ruining all those great craft supplies I have. I also painted the front half of the 4x4's the same color as the floor and they just disappear under the cabinets.

This picture is to show you the plastic cabinets we went with and how they look up off the ground on the 4x4's.

I used a 8ft wooden banquet table we had for my sewing machines and a old black shelf up on the wall was the first decor up.

This is a better picture of my 8ft table with my sewing machines. My opinion this is the best and fun part decorating. So my cork board is up and a old shelf made new, then at the far left is a piece of left over paneling painted with chalkboard paint and later I painted some old molding black and placed it as a frame around my chalkboard.

So I added a second smaller shelf painted black and a dowel rod to display ribbon. A small board with ribbon to hold completed hair bows and then on the right my magnetic board.

Next a large fabric board to hold picture's and etc. I use it to display picture's and it will work great to hold picture's for when I'm scrapbooking.

The biggest thing about the new room was the fireplace... I love having a fireplace in my craft room. My Husband added a large board I painted black to the top of the fireplace as the new mantel for displaying items. Now the major problem my room has little heat and it's to much work to haul in wood and start a fire every time I craft. The one big reason I crafted in the large room next door is because it has a heater to heat that room. Well to install one in this room would have cost me almost my entire budget. Lucky for me it was the end of January into February and large room space heater was a big clearance item at Home Depot. As a quick fix for now until I can afford to add a gas heater like the other section of my basement has this would have to do. We used a large piece of stainless steal we had and added molding to 3 sides to place in front of the fireplace opening to block the opening  because my husband felt that the heat was going right out the fireplace from the new fake but super cute and completely function space heater. It looks great and the heater heats my craft room good.

Closer look at that smaller shelf with the dowel rod to hold ribbon. My Mom gave me these 2 picture frames so I sprayed painted them black used material around the wood insert and used my cricut to cut out inspire and create. Super cute cheap decor.

So the completed project cost us just under $500.00 dollars which this project was completely paid for by sales from my Tutu Hair Bow holders I sold this Christmas season. So crafting paid for the new craft room. So get inspired and be creative!!!!!!!!! Now I'm enjoying my new craft room, the space, being organized and I feel so inspired! Happy crafting!!!