Can you believe this space used to be a dark corner of the basement for unpacked boxes?? 📦 I never envisioned myself spending much time in the basement since basements are cold spider habitats. But now that I’ve finished this craft room I’m down here nearly every night with a glass of rosé, a good podcast and my pencils.
The hardest part about this space was organizing the crap that used to live here, which you can see in my Organization Instagram highlights if you’re interested. Once I had a blank slate, it was fun and easy!
Below I highlighted 5 tips for transforming an unused space in your house, whether that’s an extra bedroom or a basement corner. I also linked everything at the bottom of this post.
My Craft Room Reveal
Tips for Transforming Your Unused Space
Pick a purpose
Choose a purpose for your empty space, whether that’s a home office, craft room or sitting area. Defining this will help you decorate the space. It seems like a simple concept but you’d be amazed and how overwhelmed people can get by the idea of decorating simply because they don’t have a function in mind for the space.
Start with a rug
Always start with a rug. I can’t stress this enough. A rug takes a space from Foreign Territory to Cozy Nook. Make sure the rug is substantial enough to define your space, especially if it’s not separated from the rest of the house with walls. Since this room is small, this 8×10 rug (similar linked here) almost fills the entire space.
Assess what you already have
This room is in the basement and not somewhere visitors will spend much time, so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on furniture. I already had an old kitchen table from my apartment (that actually once belonged to my great grandparents!) so I positioned it perpendicular to my drafting table to create a makeshift L shape desk.
This black wire storage unit that used to live in a closet works perfectly in this space for extra storage (We detached it). Eventually I want to find a solid board to stack on top of the wire unit so that smaller decor items don’t fall through.
I also used the old mirror from our powder room down here. I spray-painted it gold.
Invest in function
The goal of my room was to house all of my craft supplies in an organized fashion. The only furniture I purchased for this space is designed to help achieve this function: these two sets of these drawers, a printer stand and this rolling cart.
My parents got me this gorgeous drafting table for Christmas and this comfortable chair. I highly recommend the chair, it’s so comfy!
Add aesthetic details
In my opinion, this step is a never-ending and ever-evolving process. Changing out little details keeps a room fresh. I plan to hang plenty of creations in this room but for now I added some real and faux plants, bulletin boards and our guitars.
I hope this inspires you to do something with your own dark corner!
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