An Unfinished Basement Playroom

Walk into my home on any given day, and you will be confronted with toys in almost every corner of our home. My kids have so many toys that I am actually at a loss as to where to put them all.So, I am hoping to convert our unfinished basement into a playroom. I hope to create an unfinished basement playroom without incurring the costs associated with actually finishing or remodeling the basement. Like many homeowners, I could add a lot of useful square footage to my home if I converted the basement from storage space to usable space by remodeling the basement.

A Thrifty Unfinished Basement Playroom

So, it’s with interest that I read Thrifty Decor Chick’s post, “Our Unfinished Finished Basement.” Her post has a lot of wonderful thrifty basement remodeling ideas. Her neat and orderly basement, while unfinished, has a craft area, a workout area and an unfinished playroom space for the kids. What’s amazing is that it the unfinished basement playroom space looks very much like the ideal unfinished, yet useful space that I have been hoping to create for my elementary-school-aged daughters.

I have a lot of work to do! My basement looks exactly like Sarah from Thrifty Decor Chick’s “before” junk-filled basement photos. Sarah  did a wonderful job in cleaning out her space. While I can’t completely clean out my basement (there’s a lot of stuff that I can’t junk, unfortunately), but what I can do is at least regulate only a portion of our basement to storage, and make the rest of it usable space. So, I have been doing a lot of research on budget basement remodeling and unfinished basement designs. I’d really to create an unfinished basement playroom space for my kids!

These are among the options I’m considering for making our unfinished basement more of a livable space:

1. Paint the basement walls in the stairwell. I may also stain the stairs and add treads, which is something I, who is only a novice when it comes to DIY projects, can do on my own.

2. Move the storage to a back corner of the basement. In that corner I can add shelving for organization and separate the storage area from the usable area with curtains.

3. Either stain the floors with a garage-floor epoxy, or install carpet tiles. I was thinking of creating a checkerboard pattern with two carpet-tile colors (perhaps green and gray) to make the basement  space more fun.

4. Add storage for my daughters’ toys (either with bins or small bookshelves).

5. Create an exercise space — I might also like to bring my family’s lonely (and not used enough) exercise bicycle downstairs to the basement and give it a family of more exercise equipment that my husband, kids and I can (hopefully) use together.

I will let you know how it goes!

Have any remodeling ideas for an unfinished basement, or have any basement project results and basement photos you’d like to share? Please add them to the comments. I’d love to hear from you!